Jamey Jeff

I typically just use this blog for posting thoughts related to my work, but in the wake of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon, I’ve felt compelled to write on a more personal subject.

I’ve run Boston twice, and the events of earlier this week were deeply saddening to hear. Boston is like no other marathon that I’ve run (I’ve completed 10). Qualifying to run the race is hard. It’s something that many runners set as a major goal to achieve, and it was the same for me. With about a half mile to go in the 2006 Chicago marathon, I choked up and nearly cried when I knew that I was going to qualify.

I recall noticing while flying to Boston in 2007 for my first running of it that there was just an amazing, unique vibe to it, and amongst the fellow runners you meet. While settling in for our flight from DC to Boston, as fellow passengers discovered fellow runners, our excitement grew. First time runners were welcomed and congratulated. Returning runners were energized to be back. The same can be said for the locals and spectators. The towns, fans, even the race expo light up for this race like nowhere else. I had already celebrated having qualified, but I remember walking around before the race thinking “I am here, this is real, and this is awesome.” That weekend was made even more special because my wife, Heather, my parents, and my sister and her husband were there to watch, and Heather and I decided to use that weekend to share in person that we were expecting our first child. On top of that a good friend from college who had qualified with me in Chicago was also there to run his first Boston. 

The race itself was great. The threatened nor’easter calmed down for the start of the race and I ran a great race and had a great time. Our celebration was muted though due to another tragic event. As we sat in a bar eating lunch and beginning our recovery, we watched as the massacre at Virginia Tech, our alma mater, unfolded. Although I didn’t experience it first hand, seeing my school, which had brought so much joy into my life (my wife, great lifelong friends, 4 wonderful years, and a solid education) the victim of such a horrible event brought great sadness and anger. I was sad that Virginia Tech, and more broadly Blacksburg, VA, which had always felt like a bit of an island, were so brutally attacked. I was angry that so many people’s first (and perhaps only) knowledge of the school was due to this event. Since then, Boston Marathon weekend has always brought back this combination of feelings. The joy and elation about the race, and the sadness of the anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. 

5 years, and lots of life transpired before I would return to run Boston again last year. I had two kids, had changed jobs, and graduated from business school, and so was mentally in a different place for the race. I went to business school while also working full time and starting a family, and running simply got crowded out. After graduating though, I needed to get back in shape (a classmate told me I had aged like a president) and in the back of my mind I wanted to qualify for Boston again if for no other reason than to assure myself that I hadn’t lost too much speed during my hiatus. In reality, I lost a step or two, but was still able to qualify, and went into the race happy to be back but thinking it could be my last Boston, at least for a while. I’d re-qualified and returned, so felt like I had accomplished what I needed to.

This past weekend, I thought of my many friends who were running or watching the race this year, and I put on one of my Boston Marathon t-shirts as a long-distance show of support for them. The weather was shaping up to be perfect running weather…I commented to Heather that it was a perfect day for a race. 

After hearing of the bombings I went through a range of emotions. Shock. Concern for all of my friends in Boston (all were fine fortunately). Sadness. I cried when thinking of the 8 year old boy who died watching the race, and thought of the times we’ve brought our own kids to watch races. I had echoes of the feelings I felt during my first Boston when watching the Virginia Tech tragedy happen. Something dear to me was being robbed of its innocence.

For the past two days though, I’ve been thinking more and more about last year’s race. It was unseasonably warm; temperatures climbed above 90 degrees, making the hilly Boston course a hot, sweaty, dehydrating slog. But it made for a great day for spectators, the unknown masses who make those 26.2 miles go by just a bit quicker. What has stuck with me from that day though are the signs that were posted in each town. Full credit to Adidas for so perfectly tapping the essence of the best of marathons, the spectators, and especially Boston. As those who are familiar with the Boston Marathon know, the course is a point-to-point race that begins in Hopkinton, MA and travels through 6 other towns (Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, and Brookline) on the way to Boston.

Last year, as you entered into each town, you were greeted by a massive banner proclaiming the town’s support for the race, for the Boston Marathon, for you. One by one, they appeared to rise up.

Hopkinton is all in.

Ashland is all in.

Framingham is all in.

Natick is all in.

Wellesley is all in.

Newton is all in.

Brookline is all in.

Boston is all in.

They were simple, but powerful, drawing upon the poker phrase that says I am putting everything on the line for just this one thing. It felt a bit like a soldier volunteering to fight for something he believes in.

To me, the banners said, “You’re running the world’s greatest marathon. You’ve worked and struggled physically, mentally, emotionally to get here. You’ve laid it all out to make it to our town. And we’re here, to fully support the runners, the race, the history, you. Our town is all in.”

These banners carried me during that race. 26.2 miles is a long time, and there’s a lot of time and distance between each town, but they appeared and uplifted me. 

But they’ve taken on a different, much bigger meaning since Monday’s attack. I remember them as larger than they probably were. They now seem to stand for pride, and community, and defiance, and redemption.

While I’ve read that some are mourning the lost feeling of innocence that the Boston Marathon has suffered, I’m feeling different. I know the race will come back, and and it will be stronger. More determined. Resilient. 

These towns, and their residents, will be there, and they will cheer, and they will be loud. They will ensure that their history and their race will not displaced by the radical few. They will go all in.

And I want to be there. I ran Boston once to prove that I could. I ran it a second time to prove that I could come back. I felt content. But now, I want to go back. Not for me. Not because I feel I have anything to prove. I just want to go back. I want to go all in.

“Natick is all in” photo by natasciarmitage

This was a post that’s been brewing in my head for a little while, and John Sumser’s post on HR Examiner today finally motivated me to put pen to paper…or characters to tumblr as the case may be.

In a sentence, John, I couldn’t agree more. The debate over LinkedIn or Facebook shouldn’t matter. The most impactful statement from the post? Right here:

“Any given communications channel may be exactly right or exactly wrong for your recruiting efforts.”

Herein lies the spirit of what’s been on my mind about social recruiting lately. So many times when folks speak of social recruiting, the discussion leads to “how do I reach people on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn?”. It’s as if “social recruiting” consists solely on reaching candidates within these three sites. 

Granted, these sites have a massive audience, and people spend a lot of time on them each day. But as a recruiter, you need to ask two key questions:

1. Are these the best places to find *the type of people I’m looking for*? 

2. If the answer to 1 is “yes”, or “maybe”, are they listening to my type of message on these platforms?

Recruiters need to think like marketers. A large audience is not necessarily your best audience. All channels are not necessarily the most effective channels. Think about where your audience congregates in the greatest density. Think about where they are paying attention to you. As I’ve said previously, if you’re going fishing, you need to fish where the type of fish you’re looking for is swimming, not just where there are lots of fish. I’ll now add to that the need to fish with the type of bait that those fish are attracted to.

So to bring the point home, what does this mean in terms of redefining social recruiting? Think beyond the big 3 of social media. Candidates have broadly embraced social communities online. Know your audience and find those communities that attract them. Granted, there are a lot out there. New niche communities pop up every day, so it can be hard to stay on top of. But knowing where those niche communities are is essential to the success of the best, most strategic recruiters who want to find and land the catch of the day.

For the past couple of weeks, the position that Glen Cathey put forth in his thoughtful post, “What’s Wrong with Job Boards” has been on my mind. As we at RemarkableHire are building a disruptive new way of sourcing candidates, the position and longevity of our industry predecessors is naturally something we discuss and give consideration to.

Here’s where I’ve landed on a couple of his key points. First, I think there’s a translation issue between the implied meaning of calling the job boards “dead” and the literal meaning. I believe that when people suggest that job boards are “dead”, that what they mean isn’t a reflection of the present, but of the future of the industry. It’s the recruiting equivalent of when the Internet began to emerge as a prominent content distribution platform, while newspapers and traditional media executives shouted, “we’re not dead yet!” When online job boards originally emerged, they replaced print classifieds and other analog methods for facilitating the talent market. Why did this disruption take place? It was because the observation of the limitations of the previous methods converged with the technological feasibility of addressing some of those same limitations. The same is happening today as a second wave of disruption is now rolling through the industry. Just as with the newspapers / Internet analogy, it took some time for the older way of doing things to experience a significant decline. Newspaper subscriptions didn’t fall off a cliff over night. Likewise, job boards remain a significant source of hire, as evidenced by countless recent reports.

What I think is happening here is that the same convergence of observation and technical feasibility is repeating itself. There are limitations to the job boards and the resumes they house (I’ll leave the enumeration of them to another time, I trust most readers will be able to suggest a few). Likewise, the technology - and adoption of that technology - is now enabling a better way. Social media adoption and engagement, talent communities, etc. are at the level of penetration that alternatives to job boards are sufficiently viable. And the smart folks who see and evaluate these options can imagine a new, better way of doing their jobs that relies on products and services that address or improve upon the limitations that job boards suffer from. So are job boards dead? No. Will they remain in the dominant position they once (or even currently) hold? Again, no.

Secondly, since Glen relied heavily on a statistical argument to make his point, as someone with a background in statistics, I do feel compelled to offer up an important  consideration. While looking at job board populations as a whole may produce a normal distribution (i.e. “bell curve”) of candidates, this may not be the case for select professions or subsets of the data. It’s in this distinction where I think recruiters’ job board critique that “there are no A players on job boards” comes from. Recruiters who are seeking select professions or types of candidates are not going to find that each of their target candidate pools are equivalently represented and distributed on every job board. It’s possible (likely) that select subsets (“executives”, “software engineers”, “custodians”) have drastically different representation on a board-by-board basis, hence leading some recruiting professionals to correctly state that they can’t find A players - for the types of positions they are seeking to fill - on the job boards they are looking on. Put another way, you need to fish where the fish you are trying to catch are. Better yet, find a pond stocked with just your favorite type of fish, and you’ll have much greater success finding above-average fish with the same number of casts.

Referral recruiting sounds like a great idea: you’re looking to fill a new position, and where better to start looking for folks than through people you already know?  The referrers can be employees at the hiring company, or simply people in the network of the recruiter or hiring manager.

In my experience, the outcome of referral recruiting can vary significantly based on the source, and their incentives for making the referral.

Starting with the ideal case, a hiring manager brings on someone with whom they’ve worked in the past.  Often, these moves materialize as part of the “hidden” job market; no open position is ever posted, no resume changes hands, no position is formally “applied” for.  The manager simply picks up the phone and “gets the band back together” by assembling top talent they’ve worked with in previous lives.  While there are lots of reasons where this sort of move might not work out in the end, one factor that heavily favors a positive outcome is that the manager and recruit have worked with each other previously and choose to do so again, with the insight of knowing what they are getting into. 

It is this ideal that forms the motivation for any sort of referral recruiting.  There is a belief that since “A players tend to work with other A players”, that if I ask my employees (who are all A players, right?) or talented people in my network to recommend people for open positions, that the people whom they refer will naturally be talented as well.

Is this belief correct?  Well…it depends.  I was interviewing a seasoned recruiter recently, and asked him about A player referrals.  His response, loosely paraphrased, was, “Do A players know other A players?  Of course they do, but those other A players all currently have jobs and most aren’t looking for a new one.  The problem is that A players also know their unemployed drinking buddy, or their just-laid-off college roommate… and more often than not, the A player you are talking to is more interested in helping their friend than they are in helping you connect with the most talented folks in their network.”

So where’s the gold in the gap between the idealized model for referral recruiting and the unemployed drinking buddy?  It’s in the incentives or, more accurately, the potential for shared pain/opportunity.  By this I don’t mean direct financial incentives, as in many employee referral programs that pay for a successful hire.  I mean how much is your own professional success influenced by the placement of this candidate? For those 1-degree of separation positions (manager, peer, subordinate), no A player would refer anyone but the best, because they realize that their own career trajectory (and reputation) will be heavily influenced by any names they throw in the hat.

Recognize this, and apply it when considering referral recruiting.  Targeting referrals from not just the most talented individuals, but those with the greatest incentives to provide access to the best talent in their networks, will greatly increase the likelihood of getting the desired inbound flow of A players.

With the rise of social media, we began to publicly share and show more things about us.  We show where we are, we show what we see, we show what we like, and who we work with.

These have all been great advances for human connectedness and for the flow of information, but until recently, the power to share for the benefit of finding the right job or candidate hadn’t begun to emerge.

The earliest innovations in recruiting technology were, for the most part, digitizing an analog process.  Systems were created to electronically post jobs and deliver resumes.  But the essence of the process, and its limitations remained.  Resumes remain a flawed representation of a candidate.  As a best case, they are like watching a professionally produced highlight real, with successes glorified and polished, and shortcomings excluded.  The real tragedy though is the case where highly qualified candidates simply aren’t highly qualified resume writers and end up slipping through the cracks.

For several years now, we’ve seen the emergence of social recruiting technologies.  These advances though, like those before them, are not fully transformative, but rather just leverage the platform advances of the day.  As Facebook and Twitter have risen, so have products allowing candidates and recruiters to connect with each other through these platforms.  But still, the fundamental constructs of the process persist.

That’s now beginning to change though.  Better ways to find and evaluate talent are emerging.  For the candidate, there are a growing number of platforms that allow individuals to demonstrate their knowledge and skills, rather than just claim expertise on a resume.  Today’s sites allow contributors to develop a reputation, earn skill-related badges, complete online assessments, and follow & rate peers are providing the underpinnings for a much more robust means for individuals to showcase their know-how.  Recruiters and hiring managers benefit by having a much more objective view into talent than what can be conveyed in a resume. At Remarkable Hire, we refer to this as “social evidence”, and believe that this is a truly transformative advancement for the recruiting industry.

2.5 months into Remarkable Hire, the value of Eric Ries’ lean startup principles are clear.  Getting out of the office and meeting with as many potential customers as possible has greatly accelerated our learning and the development of our business, while investing development cycles only where essential. 

I’ve been running with the customer development activities, putting paper and pdf versions of our product in front of our customers, manually running the “algorithm” to source candidates for their hiring needs, and doing a lot of listening.  The amount we’ve learned from this approach has been immeasurable.  Most importantly, it’s a lot easier to iterate a Microsoft Word version of our UI than it would be to be changing code at this stage. 

It’s also allowed Scott to focus his development efforts where learning by writing the code is the most efficient means (ie the backend candidate identification system…the “secret sauce”, so I won’t elaborate).  By dividing our efforts in this way, I can continue to learn and iterate on the customer problem side without distracting Scott’s focus on separate product solution matters. 

As we rapidly approach our planned private alpha test, we do so with much more confidence that the UI that we initial test with will be much closer to what our customers need than it would have been had we not followed lean principles.

Now a couple months in to the new gig, Scott and I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the ways that people find talent and how to improve and simplify the process.  It’s still much too manual, time consuming, and inefficient.  Are resumes really the best way to evaluate a candidate, or are they just a cat and mouse game of cramming the right keywords into a Word document?  Do the best candidates spend time on job boards or polishing their LinkedIn profile?  We don’t think so.

We do believe however that the ever-growing amount of content and data and contributions that individuals post online provide a signal.  Much of this content is created in the act of doing one’s day job, and hence provides a better indicator for someone’s talent, interests, and professional network.  Known by some as the “reputation graph”, this compilation of what everyone who knows or interacts with you thinks of you is getting increased attention as a means to evaluate individuals.  Business Insider recently suggested that this digital value could eventually outweigh the value of your financial assets.  This is perhaps a bit extreme, but it does articulate the current opportunity from a talent identification perspective.