Time for hiring managers to exit the comfort zone!

As we all know there is a problem in the employment system today. No I am not speaking about the 9.6% out of work, but rather the fact that even with unemployment that high, companies can't find qualified people to do the job. I was speaking with a recruiter friend of mine recently and was told that many hiring managers are being so exact and so picky that it is making the job of finding a qualified candidate nearly impossible. Case in point, let's assume that the hiring manager wants a corp. comm person who has 5 to 7 years of experience in health care and someone comes along who has 8 in tech. Nearly every time that person will be rejected, despite the fact that the skills are there.

Similarly, managers can often hire someone and not fully fleshed out their position. I have a rule of them that when ever I am reading a job description if it is one paragraph or less, I keep looking. Granted there may be a gem in there but the fact is that if a company only describes a position in one paragraph then they haven't really invested the time in seeking the long term potential for the position and whomever ends up with it will most likely be going crazy in a very short amount of time!

Let me be clear on one thing, I do believe companies have a right and, to be honest, an obligation to construct a job description that works as much for the internal audience as for external candidates seeking to join. But that should be an ideal and not a straight jacked which prevents the hiring of a qualified individual for the role. While I can't claim to be an expert on other fields, I can be sure that a qualified and capable marketing or communications person has a set of skills which are capable of being used in any field. Speaking as someone who has worked in various industries I can testify that if you are a good marketing communications person for a software company, your skills will be equally useful in hospital setting.

The other too that hiring managers must remember is that we do not always get everything we want. When we were young children we wrote out lists to Santa every year. Now if you were a young boy like me, you weren't really happy when you saw clothes in what you unwrapped Christmas morning but what you may not remember is how those clothes were put to good use. The same hold true for hiring a candidate. Someone may not be an exact match for what you want but if they have the skills, and have experience comparable to what you seek then you should find the best way to make them fit. Your industry can be learned a lot quicker than the skill set necessary to do the job can be taught!

I may be preaching to the choir here but I do think we need to have organizations realize that by adhering strictly to a pre-defined list of qualifications they may be missing out on some individuals who have amazing skills and who can bring fresh perspective and make a strong, positive impact on the organization. I don't recall the exact story but I remember hearing that in either Chinese or Japanese the characters for risk and opportunity were nearly identical? Well even if the story is wrong, the sentiment is dead on. Look at the candidate who can contribute the most to the organization, not the one who can simply fit the bill of what you're looking for!

Dealing with the reliance on technology

Yesterday featured an attack on Twitter which resulted in the service being down for most of the day. The result was wide spread anxiety among the hordes to whom Twitter is as addictive as nicotine or caffeine. I found myself in a state of schadenfreude at how people were lamenting the loss of a service that had not existed five years ago.

This outage proves the point that any technology can be a tremendous value to marketing and PR people in the execution of their jobs. However, the job goes on regardless of what is running or not. You do not delay a product launch simply because Twitter or Facebook are not running at 100 percent. They exist to compliment your marketing service, they are not there to replace it.

My first recommendation to all those who were taken aback by the Twitter outage is take a deep breath. First of all, if you stop and think about it, what is not being said by you on Tweeter? I have seen very few messages that were so Earth shattering that they needed to be sent out immediately, despite what senior executives seemed to think at the moment.

No the Tweeter outage yesterday showed us three things that are good learning lessons for marketing and PR pros. The first one is the most obvious, always have a back up plan. You may decide to send out that press release the day of the next great black out, or you may decide to have your event on the day of the big blizzard. It is essential that there always be a plan B. A lot of managers don't like to have a plan B because they believe that is planning for failure but by not having one, you are in fact planning to fail.

It also proved that new technologies, while helpful and, at times, exciting, are subject to risk. All technology is but the newer ones by virtue of their youth still have bugs to be worked out and are also the target of those wrong doers who seeing them much in the same way that a hungry lion seeks out the youngest prey in the herd.

Lastly, there is an old lesson we need to remember and that is while technology does make our lives easier, it is not irreplaceable. Remember that computers used to be the size of a room and typewriters used to require people who can spell and even on the web we just had basic web sites. So while losing a service can be a headache, it is just that. Having your car in the shop is a bigger one. So keep that in perspective.

Technology is great, but it's loss while a pain is not the end of the world!

RIP-John Hughes

Branding yourself and your organization via social media

Social media is a great unknown in marketing and public relations and anyone who claims they understand it is flat out wrong or trying to throw one by their client. Like any new methodology of marketing or communications, social media has both its pluses and minuses. To hear social media evangelists speak you would think that we are at the dawn of a new age and this is the greatest thing since Gutenberg started printing the bible.

The fact is that, like most things, social media brings both positives and negatives and the potential for both risk and reward to the marketing mix. First of all, from a personal perspective, people see their Facebook pages as intensely personal outgrowths of their personalities. As a result they will post what ever catches their fancy. However if an employer or family member sees these posts, the wrong idea can quickly be established. A social media posting should be seen the same as any other public posting. Once you post it, the subject is out in the open for all to see.

The same holds true for organizations and social media. We're seeing a rush to jump on the social media band wagon that reminds me of the rush to have a web site and have all the latest cool tools on web sites that still dominates web theory. Very little, if any, thought is given into how these materials integrate into an overall marketing and branding strategy. Rather, in classic cart before the horse methodology, the Twitter site or Facebook page is put up and then the powers that be try and figure out, what next?

What I have found fascinating is that senior level executives will parse and argue over what wording to use on a news release, but then allow anything to go on Twitter or Facebook or even worse yet, have no idea or policy about what their staff is saying online. No company will ever let an engineer post a news release yet few have any firm policy on what they can say via social networking sites.

My recommendation is that social networking be treated as all other essential communication tools. There should be very strict rules regarding what can be posted on them and who can speak on the company's behalf. Also, social networking should join web development and other marketing communications functions as key components of the overall marketing plan. By using this methodology, companies should be able to successful navigate these dangerous shoals.

In non-related news there was a bank robbery outside of Boston yesterday. The robber tried to escape in a bright red Vespa. Well as one might have guessed he did not get that far. I hear this story and I am reminded of the old joke of the undercover cop told to go into a crowd and be inconspicuous. His superior then saw him dressed in a gorilla costume. When asked why he disobeyed orders the officer said, "I didn't, who is going to be looking for a guy in a gorilla costume?"