You can call me Jack

When speaking with someone formally or informally in English, the “you” is used and there is no other alternative. The only difference is how the person can be addressed, for example, "Mr. Smith" or "Dr. Smith" or “Jack”.

German language differentiates between the formal (duzen) and informal (siezen) communication. Traditionally, the formal way was reserved for professional and business settings. Nowadays however, colleagues increasingly tend to be on a first-name basis even as communication with the customers remains formal at all times. Businesses often go about it without any policy while human resource departments swing back and forth between formal and informal communication. Hence even with a single company, an employee can experience the following throughout the employee life cycle:

* Formal (intending to exhibit professionalism) and informal (trying to attract youngsters) job ads
* Formal candidate communication
* Informal communication from the moment of contract signing to voluntary departure
* Formal communication in warning and dismissal letters

So, deliberately or not, the choice of communication mode depends on the message. As consistent communication fosters development of trust and creates a level of loyalty to the employer, companies should align the way to address their people, i.e. have guts to address informally any candidate (a stranger at first) despite how senior they are in their careers or any employee to be dismissed. It is just too ridiculous to call an employee by name when they are good employees, but go over to communicating with them formally once problems occur.

Failure to instill a consistent communication has a detrimental impact on the business as a whole, and makes very difficult to retain and nurture employees.

Informal Job Ad a trend - Informal Application a taboo

There is a trend in Germany to edit job ads in an informal way. Those job ads utilize informal ways of communication (duzen) and hope to attract "young" and cool candidates as well as display company culture.

There is no research showing how these job ads are received by the candidates. I suppose many candidates are at ease with them as they do send in their applications. Maybe some are rather turned off, but this is the risk the company takes.

What's most interesting for me at this point is whether any HR staff hopes to receive job applications utilizing the same code of communication.

Does Mrs. Elke Schneider, an imaginative recruiter at a company X for the purpose of this blog post, look forward to receiving cover letter starting "Dear Elke" (Liebe Elke)?

Does she appreciate to be called Elke by an applicant calling to find out more about the advertised position?

Does an informal cover letter boost one's application or disqualifies an applicant?

Dating employees

Do you remember the song „All you need is love” by The Beatles. Love can make a person’s life more fulfilling. But companies, couple run companies excluded, are seldom proponents of this maxim. On the contrary, companies are not enthused by staff dating. Restrictions if imposed may refer to bosses dating direct reports, co-workers in the same department or generally any employees. Though most will not put a formal policy to govern this issue, very few are probably really happy about such developments.

Dating employees is a good sign and acknowledgment of HR. The hiring process accomplishes what it intends to do. It brings on board people who are alike, are a fit and have some commonalities. And above all they enjoy working with each other so great that they want to hand out after work as well.

Given Valentine’s Day, I won’t bring up the downside of employees’ dating.

Job Titles to attract Career Changers

Talent shortage pushes recruiters to seek talent in other industries then their own. Niche job boards enable them to do it effectively.

With the recent job ads, Enterprise, a car rental company, seeks talent with hospitality background for their management training program. Enterprise looks for qualities associated with hospitality industry such as high service attitude, guest care skills and experience in ensuring customer satisfaction.



What makes the ad different? Well, it is their job title.

A high level of attractiveness of a job title is one rule of thumb when phrasing successful job ads. Candidates are attracted to jobs that have titles they aspire to, present some sort of professional enhancement, possibly are higher in the job hierarchy or simply are associated with a greater status (e.g. personal assistant as opposed to secretary).

Enterprise’s job titles is not a “next role” that candidate might be interested in, but precisely candidate’s “current role” or generally her educational background. Enterprise attracts attention by easy identification among their intended audience (“this is me” instead of “could this be me”). The job ad itself plays on a common note, suggesting a poor satisfaction with the current role, and hopes to motivate the candidate to change their career.

Candidate Surveys

Does is then make sense to hear what your particular candidates actually have to say? Should you run candidate surveys to gather feedback on your particular hiring process?

When candidates comment on recruitment processes by various companies, they uniformly criticize a lack of communication on the recruiter side. Updates on applications are rare, feedback almost non-existent.

At the same time it seems to be obvious what needs to be done to improve the candidate experience in regards to all human (as opposed to technological) aspects of the recruitment process. Treating candidates well, providing status updates of the application, doing what has been said (“you hear back from us within two weeks”).

Running candidate surveys can be beneficial. With this tool, companies can get candidate feedback on their experience with the company’s career website, their perception on length and complexity of the application and selection process (rounds of interviews), turn-around time of hiring decision and offer making process.

German versus Hong Kong Recruitment Practices in Comparison

A few recruitment manners practiced by Hong Kong recruiters can be missed when relocating back to “continental” Europe (I write continental as I believe most of those practices are of British origin and hence also in use on the Islands).

Hong Kong recruiters prefer chats in informal settings and strengthening their network. The former one manifests itself in the invitations such as “Lets meet at Starbucks”, the latter one in connect requests “Join me on LinkedIn”.

Hong Kong recruiters simply love to meet the candidate for the first time in a coffee shop. They seldom take any notes focusing on casual chats about the candidate’s approach to life and his/her profession. Indeed, candidates tend to be more relaxed and at ease in this informal setting.

Such meetings are then followed by the invitation to connect via social networks such as LinkedIn. Particularly recruiters recruiting HR professionals realize that today’s candidate can be the client of tomorrow.

Instead, German recruiters prefer the meeting rooms of their companies and limit the interaction to the email exchange.

“There is no HR in Asia”

Since I remember, Westerners in China often complained that “there is no HR in Asia”. The statement mostly suggested lack of high caliber human resources talent, weak HR architectures and “me too” HR practices and policies. True, for many years, little investments have been made in China in upgrading HR departments. However, HR has always been of a great consideration, particularly among MNCs and companies set-up by foreigners. Additionally, senior management and company owners have always played a key role within major areas of human resources management like recruitment and selection, retention, development, compensation and staff reduction.

After spending several years in China, the phrase got however a different meaning to me. “There is no HR in Asia” pertains to mediocre managerial skills and almost non-existent support of thereof by HR. Traditionally, line managers are poorly trained in people issues. In addition, Western managers face the intercultural challenge with lack of Chinese language skills and pitiable training in cross-cultural subjects.

Finally, one misconception prevails among Chinese and Westerns executives. In their attempt to improve HR and people management they hire a HR person or a HR team to fix all corporate culture issues and make the company live by first-class people management practices. But delegating people management to human resources specialists does not work. No! No!

HR can merely equip line managers with the necessary skills and competencies to handle people management issues. HR can overtake huge part of paper work, supply tools as well as design and align practices, and only in cooperation with line managers ensure their effectiveness.

Without close relationship between HR and line management, HR cannot bring about results. HR lacks the most immediate and up-to-date information about employees competencies and performance. HR alone also lacks authority in the organizational ladder and hence they may only have little impact on employees` behavior.

In conclusion, there will be no HR in Asia, as long as line and general managers do not fill responsible for the day-to-day 'people-management' activities at their companies.