Call for more research on usage of employer rating sites

A few days ago I started a LinkedIn Poll on usage of review and ratings site, which basically looks like this:

In order to find out more about a prospective employer, when do you visit an employer review and ratings site?

*  Before sending off my application

*  After I've got invited for an interview

* After I've attended the job interview

* As soon as I receive the job offer

* Never

As long as the poll is active, you can see it in the right column of this blog. I look forward to the results. Thanks.

Out of interest I recently also checked German employer review site kununu.de to compare two companies, two established Internet Start-Ups, one in B2B, one in B2C field.

Results? The B2B company received nearly 60 ratings, while the B2C company only some 15. While the profile of the B2B company was viewed nearly 20,000 times, the profile von the B2C company has been opened nearly 5,000 times. The average rating of the B2B company was worst by around 0.3 percent point.

Is it possible, that

* the brand image of B2C company influences the perception of their employer brand and blocks job seekers to seek out more information about them .

* employer rating of B2B company are viewed more often because job seekers may not have any associations with the company

* The better brand image of the company, the less likely the employer brand will be explored via employer review site.

Or is the varying activity level of ex-/employees and job seekers on these two employer profile sites just a result of the time lag in their profile existence, information that cannot be obtained on the kununu-site. Nota bene, both companies have been heavily recruiting based on the number of job advertisements on their career sites and job boards in May 2012.

“Knowing-doing” gap and employer rating sites

Employees have always shared their opinions by word of mouth. In Web 2.0 they have the opportunity to do so on employer rating sites, such as glassdoor.com, employerinformation.co.uk, aboutacompany.com, kununu.com, opracodawcach.pl, etc.

Employer rating sites have three main stakeholder groups, candidates, ex-employees and HR departments. Current employees are an insignificant minority, as I don’t think they would be genuinely interested in sharing their opinion.

Candidates, particularly, the young internet savvy generation, are the recipients of information on potential employers. Hopefully while doing so, the readers use their critical mind when reading the comments. After all, each posting is a personal experience, though the personal circumstances of its author remain largely unknown.

Leavers are the content producers. While companies’ career websites provide subjective positive case studies, the opinions on employer rating sites are quite often negative, and in best case, more balanced. Particularly, non-voluntary leavers cope with the detachment from the company publicly and anonymously before moving on with life. This public criticism is an act of revenge.

The HR departments are the observers. Though, they too can engage in the conversation. HR needs to decide with the management whether the company will comment openly or not. Though people respect organizations if they respond to criticism, "it won't always be appropriate for organizations to respond online" accordingly to Vanessa Robinson, Head of HR practice development at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Secondly, HR can also note those commentaries and pass them internally so that the company can act upon it. However, I am afraid that in this respect most of the management teams face the “knowing-doing” gap identified by Pfeffer and Sutton (2000). This “knowing-doing” gap describes the today’s general management practice at many companies. The problem is not that managers don’t know what do, but actually doing it. Then senior executives know exactly what they should be doing to improve, but lack the time, energy, techniques, commitment and maybe even incentives. As the result, employee feedback received on employer rating sites is pointless.

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

Leaver Journey

Similar to candidate journey, companies design leaver journey in order to ensure that each employee quitting the company is exited in a structured and orderly manner.

The leaver journey starts from the time the employee gives notice to his or her employer about the intention to quit (voluntary separation) or the company asks the employee to leave (involuntary separation). It ends formally when all tasks on employee departure checklist are completed.

In case of resignation, HR departments regularly conduct exit interview
* to assess the reasons for the employee leaving the company,
* to take the employee’s views on work and the company in general as well as
* to explore any “de-motivating” factors that led the employee to resign.

In case of involuntary separations, exit interviews are rare, as the leavers seldom cooperate. At the same time, any discussions beyond the termination chat are not easy to perform, neither by line-manager nor by HR. They are biased and besides this almost every list of exit questions addresses positive aspects of employment and this only increases leaver’s sorrow and regret.

Having no possibility to discuss the dismissal in an organized way, leavers do not have the opportunity to talk about their feelings, alleviate their emotions and verbalize their anger. Full of discomfort, desperation and bitterness, they go home and have all incentives that can cause harm to the company despite that their separation has been handled in a professional and mature manner. Stealing clients, poaching talent, failing a law suit resulting in financial burdens and bad press on employer ratings sites are only some of them.

As the fair and appropriate severance pay, may sweeten leavers unexpected turn in life, companies should go beyond it. Companies who want to mitigate risks of leavers’ “revenge” should help them to cope with the dismissal. Providing counseling, career, and job search support, delivered by an objective third party such as an outplacement provider, is one possible way.

Top HR Topics in 2012

The first quarter of 2012 past. Three HR Topics facing HR professionals this year have all to do with Employer Branding.

The first one is recruitment related topic, candidate journeys/experience and concerns future and potential employees. Designing candidate experience in a way that it ensures recruiters’ responsiveness can help companies to differentiate themselves in a war for talent.

The second topic relates to performance management and concerns current employees. Key issues include employee conduct, performance improvement plans and strategies for dealing with a problem employee. Designing full-filling jobs with the right performance metrics can help companies to create meaningful customer relationships and outperform their competitors.

The third topic pertains to leaver journeys/experience which affects departing and ex-employees. Companies need to design outplacement processes in a way that emotions are well managed, feelings are compensated, and financial matters are taken care of. Other issues are strategies and tactics for dealing with any potential ex-employees negative feedback on employers’ review and ratings site.

Job Agent is out - Career Agent is in

Job agent is a common service of job boards to keep candidates in the loop of new job openings in the “visible job market”. Job agent significantly decreases the amount of search activities performed by job seekers. However, candidates must still evaluate job ads, prepare their CV and cover letter and send them off.

To really ease the job hunt process, candidates in Poland (I did not find this service in other countries) may use career agent, a service rendered by professional career consulting companies. Essentially, a candidate commissions a career professional to actively promote his/her job application to the prospective employers for the period of 2-6 months while he/she can jump into the process when employer demonstrates interest in interviewing. The service include: preparation of CV and cover letter, social media profiling, job offer research and liaison with the prospective employers, job interview and salary negotiation coaching, as well as an individual marketing campaign in the “hidden job market”. Candidates can spend their time on other activities then applying for jobs and substantially lessen their frustration with the job hunt processes.

So how is all this relevant to HR? Should HR care that candidates’ applications are sent by third parties? Accordingly to some recent articles, HR does not appreciate to receive applications sent by helicopter parents. So, are they happy to receive them from career agents?

Given the war for talent, HR should be happy about quality candidates no matter how they get informed of openings and whether or not they contact the employer by themselves. After all, career agent is similar to head hunter who introduces talent to the company. There are important differences though. Whilst head hunters are paid by the company career agents are paid by the candidate. Notably, the remuneration include a basic flat fee plus a success bonus, around 60-80% of candidates first gross salary at his/her new employer. Second, while head hunter act in the company’s interests, career agents and parents always have the candidate in mind first. But unlike parents, career agents may help candidates to define career goals, help them find opportunities that balance their passions and market opportunities, and aid with candidates self-exploration.

What are the odd for career agents to boom? Can career agents get the foot through the door of e.g. German HR departments? Can in-house recruiters get used to dealing with candidate’s career agent just like it is normal for the casting director to deal with the actors’ agent? Would career agents be easier accepted when they represent senior candidates? What impression make candidates (senior or entry-level) who let themselves represent by a career agent? Why it can be beneficial for a company that candidates work with a career agent? And finally, are HR departments prepared to deal with career agents?

National Characteristics of Job Ads

At first, job ads seem to be uniform across the regions. Their components are pretty much the same: a short description of the employer, a teaser, a task list, a candidate profile, employer’s rewards to the successful candidate, and contact information. Yet, there are some characteristics of job ads that are unique to certain countries.

To circumvent scarcity of resources in human resource departments, many companies in Hong Kong, Poland and Great Britain opt for communication with shortlisted candidates only. Some companies will indicate their approach in the job ad by placing one of the following phrases:
* Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.
* We regret only shortlisted candidates will be notified.
* We reserve the right to contact shortlisted candidates only.

Another line often included in job ads in those countries is
* All data collected will be used for recruitment purposes only and will be used strictly confidential.

However, in Poland applicants are also asked to include consent with personal data processing. For example:
* Please include the following clause in your CV: I hereby give consent for my personal data included in my offer to be processed for the purposes of recruitment, in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Act dated 29.08.1997 (uniform text: Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland 2002 No 101, item 926 with further amendments).

By indicating the salary range, HR and recruiters in Great Britain attach great importance to efficiency of recruitment process. In Poland, this practice is coming about slowly. In Germany, it is completely unusual.

Next, while indicating a contact person and a phone number is very common in German job ads, it is rather an exception in Poland. However, an emerging trend among local recruitment agencies in Poland is to invite questions to the job ad by skype or gadu-gadu (Polish instant messaging system). Skype and gadu-gadu nicknames are included as a result.

A rather recent note appearing in job ads in all analyzed countries, but yet not aimed at job seekers is the request to refrain from resume forwarding by recruitment agencies. Such request accompanies ads by global players such as Google and companies with well staffed in-house recruitment departments or established agency relationships. For example:
* To all recruitment agencies: Google does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Google employees or any other company location. Google is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

How to get a job in HR with experience in operations?

Some people enter Human Resource management by design others, including myself, by luck.

If luck is not on your side yet, the management did not entrust you with the new role in in-house HR, you need to do something to impact your ability to work in HR field.

With solid experience in operations, but little to no formal education in HR and no experience in HR, this is what you can do:

* Try to take on additional tasks in your current job that take you in the HR direction. Make your workplace (boss and HR person) aware that you are interested in an HR role. Maybe there are ways the departments can share you. You can support HR Manager in a component of Human Resource management, like training, e.g. orienting new hires, preparing their training plan, conducting training sessions; or recruiting, e.g. scouting talent in social media, engage with users to recruit talent, conducting screening interviews.

* Consider taking a sabbatical to do a HR internship abroad, there are companies out there who paid will surely find you a placement.

* Consider taking up a voluntary HR assistant job with a local nonprofit organization in your neighborhood.

* Make your current skills and tasks relevant to HR. Don't expect your prospective employer to connect the dots in your CV. Get the support of a decent CV writer to take your current experience and make it sound useful in an HR department. There are many skills needed in HR department - project management skills, analytical and problem solving skills, (internal) customer orientation, excellent verbal and written communication skills, with an emphasis on tact and diplomacy.

* Look at niche job boards to find specific openings for HR professionals. Read the job ads carefully. Some companies look specifically for HR staff with experience in operations.

* Apply for term jobs (fill in for a person on sabbatical or maternity leave). These are usually not attractive to HR professionals with linear CV, so the competition might be not so strong.

* Inform your network on Xing, LinkedIn and even Facebook about your desired career direction.

* Network in HR groups on social media networks and engage in discussions.

* Get a twitter account and start twitting on you insight and link your experience to HR.

* Once invited for an interview, prepare well. Be enthusiastic and turn every HR need into an opportunity you could fulfill.

* Read books, blogs, and magazines on Human Resource Management and Talent Management.

* Get a formal qualification in HR – however, do not overestimate its value.

* Do not give up hope and use every chance to put a foot in the door in HR.