The Great Problem Solver: Being Found Online

According to a report by the University of Illinois -Urbana-Champaign and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more people turn to the Internet than consult experts or family members to provide information and resources for help with a variety of common problems.

Our own research last year verified that HR buyers are increasingly going online to search for products and services.

So if you aren’t investing in Web 2.0 marketing and PR activities to be found online, along with a mixing it up with traditional activities, then next year may be a year with low visibility, less website traffic and fewer sales leads.

And nobody wants that.

Happy New Year! Good luck in 2008!

Posted by Kevin Grossman

Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool

We've posted numerous entries about the benefits of blogging for HR suppliers. The blog you ar reading exposes our company, HRmarketer.com, to many potential customers who otherwise may not have found us. It also enables us to communicate with HR suppliers about new industry white papers, research, tips on marketing, etc. All of which help to keep our brand visible. So it was with great satisfaction I read a recent New York Times (Thursday, December 27th print edition) article titled Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool.

The first sentence of the article reads:

"to its true believers at small businesses, [blogging] is a low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand."

Yes! Yet, a recent American Express survey found that only 5 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs.

But then the NYT article goes on to say:

"while blogs may be useful to many more small businesses, even blogging experts do not recommend it for the majority. Guy Kawasaki, a serial entrepreneur, managing partner of Garage Technology Ventures and a prolific blogger, put it this way: 'If you’re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes.'”

I must respectfully disagree with Guy. This is simply not true. Granted, as the NYT article points out, some companies like consultants are better suited to blogging (blogging can help you get hired) but if done properly, a blog can benefit just about any type of business.

Take Guy's restaurant reference. Imagine the benefits of a chef's blog at a popular restaurant whereby the chef posts recipes, announces upcoming special events, provides commentary on popular dishes, etc. This would take little time but could be a valuable marketing and PR tool to communicate and stay visible with both loyal and potential patrons.

The real problem with business blogging is finding the time to post. We advise our clients that if you can't make a new blog entry at least once per week, don't bother with a blog. But as an owner of a small business I know first hand how challenging this can be. Your first priority must be running the business and servicing the customers. Who has time for blogging? (notice how I'm writing this blog entry on a Saturday morning).

For many businesses, we recommend they share the blog posting responsibilities. If you divide the blog posting responsibility across four members of your team, then you can guarantee at least one posting per week yet each team member only needs to write one posting per month. Very doable. We practice this with our blog at HRmarketer.com. It allows you to get creative with your blog - for example, if you are a talent management firm you may have one person commenting on "technology", another expert dedicated to more traditional performance management coaching, etc. In other words, you utilize each team member's expertise to showcase your company's breadth of knowledge and appeal to a wider audience.

Anyway, read the NYT article on blogging - it's a good article. And if you don't blog, make it a New year's resolution :-) Trust me, it will benefit your business.

Posted by Mark Willaman

Outsourcing stress and strife: Where are India’s EAPs?

I’m a big fan of the Chicago Public Radio’s This America Life hosted by Ira Glass. A few weeks ago I listened to a podcast titled The Competition.

The podcast included a segment about a company in Oklahoma that hired skilled, experienced welders in India and brought them to the United States in order to compete with foreign companies by establishing an overseas factory with cheap labor in this very country. Unfortunately the company took their passports, barely fed them, and only paid them half the minimum wage. And when the men protested, the company insisted they were helping them, saving them from their peasant lives in India (which wasn’t their lives at all).

Good God, I thought. How can this crap happen here in the U.S.? Yes, I know – I’m not that naïve; we hear about the exploitation of cheap labor every day, especially with Mexican immigrant workers. I grew up in California’s Central Valley, where Caesar Chavez’s legacy still fights for the rights of these workers. (Please note this post isn’t about the pros or cons of unionizing a workforce, regardless of where you grew up or what your ethnicity is. Nor is this about illegal immigration.)

Most of us may give the plight of these workers a cursory empathetic nod, but the reality is these folks don’t have the same benefits and support resources that many of us do.

Take EAPs for instance. Employee Assistance Programs originally began to address occupational alcohol prevention problems in the 1950s and 1960s; as they expanded to tackle a variety of employee issues, they evolved into the role of counselors. Managers referred EAPs to handle all manner of personal problems, providing early identification and intervention. That early growth led to the addition of a wider range of problem-solving programs to further expand EAPs’ effectiveness.

But unless you’re a “legitimate employee” working for an organization that offers EAP benefits, you have very limited counseling and support resources.

So what about over in India? According to a recent article in the San Jose Mercury News titled India's outsourcing industry faces growing health problems, “Call centers and other outsourced businesses such as software writing, medical transcription and back-office work employ more than 1.6 million young men and women in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who make much more than their contemporaries in most other professions.”

But, because of the sedentary lifestyle combined with often very stressful working conditions for these employees in India, “They are facing sleep disorders, heart disease, depression and family discord, according to doctors and several industry surveys.”

This is disturbing. We don’t think much of the human toll outsourcing takes. The article goes on to talk about how heart disease, strokes and diabetes cost India an estimated $9 billion in lost productivity in 2005. And sadly the losses could grow to a staggering $200 billion over the next 10 years if corrective action is not taken quickly, said a study by New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. It also warned that the outsourcing industry would be hardest hit.

Compare this to 2006 report from the Partnership for Workplace Health titled, "A Mentally Healthy Workforce – It’s Good for Business" that revealed mental illness and substance abuse annually cost employers in indirect costs an estimated $80 to $100 billion, while individuals who are depressed but not receiving care for their condition consume two to four times the healthcare resources of other enrollees; workers with depression cost employers $44 billion annually in lost productive time.

We sadly continue to win the unhealthy workforce trophy, but many U.S. companies, including HR suppliers, outsource some type of labor to India to save money – software development, data entry, call center, and other back-office work. The future impact to productivity and bottom lines is obvious.

But there is hope. A counseling company was set up in India six years ago called 1to1help and counsels 60-70 people a day. Companies like Infosys Technologies Ltd. have also set up 24-hour help lines for counseling by psychologists.

I wonder if some of the U.S. players in the work life/EAP space are looking to expand into foreign markets like India.

They should. God knows they need the help because the global economy ain’t getting any smaller and neither is the workload.

Posted by Kevin Grossman

Neat Little Piles of Mess

There are only a few times a year I go through the neat little piles of mess on my desks at work and at home, and the holiday season seems to be the apex. You know, out with the old and in with the new – neat little piles of mess. (In fact, I was just staring at my work desk last week and thought, “My gosh, I must clean now." Which I did not do, yet.)

I’m not a hoarder by any means (those folks frighten me), but like most of you I have the best intentions to read the major HR trades and other important marketing and PR and business-related correspondence. And this includes all the blogs I subscribe too, enewsletters that clutter my email inbox, etc.

No matter how neat I make these piles (print and online), they’re not really conducive to productivity unless I keep them clean and organized. We have to stay as organized as possible or we drown in the incessant information tsunami that hits us every hour.

This posting was inspired today by the good folks at the Bootstrapper Blog who posted How to: Turn Your Desk Into a Productivity Zone.

Highlights include:

• Keep your desk tidy
• Clean up your computer desktop, too
• File your stuff
• Keep the essentials close at hand
• Don’t goof off and use your work space to build X-wing fighter models (that's my addition, but not a bad idea!)
• Have good lighting
• Practice desk yoga (??? - sounds cool, though)
• Get a smaller desk (it's already too small!)
• Decorate with stimulating colors and design
• Practice good ergonomics (we had an ergo consultant come earlier this year - great idea)
• Leave your desk - get up and take a break

Happy Organizing and Happy Holidays!

Posted by Kevin Grossman

Talent Management Sweets

With all the mouth-watering consolidation and growth going on in the talent management marketplace, you’d think that more companies would be happy with their ATS solutions.

Not quite. According to a recent white paper from Knowledge Infusion, 40% of organizations are unhappy with their current talent management solutions. And over the next 3-5 years, companies are planning significant investments in talent management.

Truth is, many analysts and smarter folk than I are calling this more of a replacement market, especially at the “enterprise” level; companies just aren’t happy with the current talent acquisition systems and are shopping around.

But, sometimes I do take my smart pills and know that there are tremendous growth opportunities in the small to mid-markets in manufacturing, retail, foodservice, and hospitality and healthcare industries. And according to a recent Wall St. Journal article titled HR in a Box, there are also scores of much smaller companies and non-profits that need some kind of talent management solution. (Although it takes a heck of a lot more gigs to make money here.)

What are companies to do? Here is what I’ll call the main “Talent Management Sweets” companies should look for in an ATS supplier:

1. Addresses the forgotten applicant experience
2. Provides true hourly and salaried talent acquisition solutions
3. Configures to existing efficient workflow processes
4. Includes recruiting, screening, hiring and retention components (background checks, drug screens, paperless onboarding technology, career planning, learning management, performance management, succession management, etc.)
5. Drives the organization’s business strategies and bottom line growth

I know this has been rolled, pressed and twisted a myriad of times (milking the candy metaphor) – i.e., 10 steps to buying a talent management system, 7 steps, 12 steps, etc., and I’m sure some of you out there will argue my points.

But working with other ATS players in the space over the past few years like nowHIRE, Deploy (prior to Kronos acquisition), iCIMS, SonicRecruit and many others, I really do believe these sweet spots are where it’s at for companies large and small evaluating a move to a new ATS or looking to buy for the first time.

So whether it’s the replacement market or growing verticals, there’s plenty of opportunity for suppliers in 2008 and beyond! (Someone please take this box of chocolates away from me. Thank you.)

Posted by Kevin Grossman

John Sumser's Recruiting Roadshow

On Tuesday, December 4, I attended the Dallas Recruiting Roadshow. My sincere thanks goes out to John Sumser, Ami Givertz, the presenters, and the sponsors who picked up the tab for facilities and food. The event was "sold out" although it was free to all participants. As a sales and marketing professional by day, I felt that I earned my seat only because I'm involved in recruiting staff, so can fashion myself part-time internal recruiter!

I am repeatedly struck by the many similarities of marketing and recruiting. My eureka is hardly a new idea; John Sumser wrote about this in 2003 in a white paper (link to PDF). These ideas and more were swirling in my head during my drive home from the Roadshow. Here are a few other notes:

What I found remarkable:

• When Ami asked the participants (which I'm guessing totaled nearly 150 people) whether they've ever attended one of the ERE, Kennedy, or OnRec conferences, a trickle of hands were raised. Maybe 5 or 6. "Wow," I thought.
• Many of the show sponsors present were front and center, engaged, and fully integrated into the program. Not once did the content lapse into sales presentation. Well done!
• The passion in the room for the profession of recruiting by both the presenters and the participants was palpable. (You can't get that feeling in a Webinar).

What I found memorable:

• John Sumser must be great at charades. In his Multi-generational Recruiting presentation, he acts out a pyramid with his arms (the pyramid being the historical model of the aging workforce with lots of young people on the bottom and a few old folks up top) as well as the telephone poll (with a nearly equal number of people in all age ranges). Note: the realities of the "telephone poll" change everything about workforce planning and recruiting and staffing.

What I learned:

• This "roadshow" model seems to have the needed ingredients for success: local audiences with latent demand for expertise delivered in a live format, willing speakers and presenters who can deliver valuable content without lapsing into blatant self-promotion, and available sponsors to pick up the tab. (See Martin Snyder of Main Sequence Technologies, and his blog on ERE for one vendor's perspective.)
• I learned much more about the profession otherwise, in particular the ethics of recruiting. Much like marketing and public relations have best-practices and a code of ethics, I listened to some internal recruiters reference the practices of some third party recruiters that left them feeling betrayed and cynical about future third party relationships. Much like PR, a few bad apples...

All in all a great day and future roadshows promise a unique opportunity for professional recruiters, the industry gurus, and the vendor community to all come together for a day of professional engagement.

You'll find information on future shows on the Recruiting Roadshow Web site.

Posted by Jonathan Goodman

Don’t Just Make Stuff Up

One of our clients wanted to distribute a very creative but very fictional press release this week. And although I was entertained and really thought it had marketing potential, and the truth about their services was in the release, it just didn’t have real news and couldn’t be distributed as it was drafted.

There’s no need to share the who or what it was about, but I do have some recommendations for organizations that draft fictional news for marketing purposes:

1. When distributing news to journalists and editors, make sure it’s of true news value to their publications – i.e., know the pubs you’re pitching.
2. You should always focus on building relationships with the journalists and editors you’re targeting, becoming a reliable source for their stories and articles, not just getting their attention for attention’s sake.
3. When distributing news online, like posting search-optimized releases via HRmarketer’s Direct2Net wire service (PR Web), you can certainly be more promotional (announcing a content download like a white paper or research report, Webinar, etc.), but it still has to contain a kernel of news in a news release format. Yes, media will see your online releases, but more importantly, your buyers will find them too.
4. Take that highly creative but fictional release and turn it into a lead-generating direct marketing email and/or print mail campaign and then use PR to promote and reference the content while releasing vital news about your products and services.

And lastly, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the following line from clients over the years:

“Hey, just make something up.”

No, don’t do it. Really.

Posted by Kevin Grossman

HRmarketer Webinar Alert: 'Marketing to HR' with Traditional and Web 2.0 Integrated Strategies

The HRmarketer.com Services Group has scheduled a free one-hour marketing Webinar on Thursday, December 13, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PST. The Webinar will highlight how to create a successful marketing and PR strategy that integrates both traditional and Web 2.0 activities to generate more visibility, website traffic, sales leads and improved search engine rankings.

As many of you HR suppliers solidify your marketing and PR strategy for 2008, there are many “pain points” you all face including:

- Launching a new company, product and/or service
- Standing out in the crowded HR marketplace
- Generating quality sales leads
- Low search engine rankings
- Slow growth

According to our latest research report – Trends in HR Marketing: Where HR Suppliers Spent their Marketing and PR Dollars in 2007 and What’s Ahead in 2008 – addressing these pain points by spreading your marketing and PR budgets across a variety of tactics, both traditional and Web 2.0, is vital.

HRmarketer members will see the Webinar first on December 11, but feel free to register for the December 13 Webinar at http://www.hrmarketer.com/MarketingPRWebinar. We hope to see you all there!

Posted by Kevin Grossman