HRmarketer.com Enhances Lead Referral Program for Human Resource Vendors

Two months ago when we added a new media relations application to our HRmarketer.com software we said it was the first in what will be a number of really cool new features being added to HRmarketer.com this summer. Earlier this month we introduced enhancements to the software's SEO Center to include long-term trend analysis for keyword rankings.

This week we announced another new feature. (what summer vacation?)

Our latest enhancement is to our popular HR Lead Referral Program, a service that delivers qualified sales leads to human resource vendors each month.

With the latest upgrade, leads are automatically posted to a new database on the customer's HRmarketer.com software account where they can manage their leads or export them to the customer relationship management (CRM) tool of their choice.

Watch the video for details or read the press release.

More upgrades and new features coming soon - after a short vacation :-)

Well Duckie, we're only as lucky as the next net job.

When Laurie Ruettimann (Punk Rock HR) posted on Facebook yesterday that:

The good news is that SHRM is hiring. That's more than most companies can say. (This in reference to SHRM CEO Lon O’Neil departing.)

I couldn't help but think about the NPR Planet Money podcast I had just listened to (you can find it below) that reiterated what most economists have been analyzing for the past few years.

The fact that in this recession, as parts of the U.S. and global economy struggle to regain life, job creation just ain't happening like it has historically. Even the spike from earlier this year that's now dove-tailed primarily had more to do with temporary jobs from the Census 2010 work than anything more substantial.

Even compared to the dot.com bust recovery -- it no where near compares.

It's like the economic ebbs and flows from the past completely pulled away from shore, and for every fish that's born and thrives in the shallows, another bakes bleach-boned in the hot summer sun.

I'm oversimplifying for sure -- but it's true that job growth is dead and unemployment remains high.

And now more than ever before fewer people in the workforce can afford to retire, even taking on second jobs in retail and other service industries, leaving the job market at the other end of the age spectrum (teenagers) fewer and fewer jobs.

It's unprecedented.

More disheartening economic research that came out of the podcast is the fact that each younger generation that's entered the workforce post a recession earns less than other generations. In fact, the economic disparity in pay can last upwards of 10 to 15 years post a recession.

And you liberal arts majors, English majors in particular, forget about it.

Movements like JobAngels and HR Margo's HireFriday efforts are commendable, but without job creation we're just moving folks around on the game board.

Which is better than a stick in the eye according to my dad.

You'd think (and hope) that organizations in the HR marketplace like SHRM would increase their legislative efforts for more job creation than membership drives, but we'll have to see what happens.

I'm Keynesian; we didn't do enough to stimulate and we keep shouting half-baked polarizing entitlement chants.

Hey, there's always casting call around the corner for gratuitously degrading reality shows.

But I digress. One of my daughters favorite books is Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? and in it there's a passage that goes:

And poor Mr. Potter,
T-crosser,
I-dotter.
He has to cross t’s
and he has to dot i’s
in an I-and-T factory
out in Van Nuys!

That factory closed two years ago. All the T-crosser and I-dotter jobs were either outsourced or automated.

Well Duckie, we're only as lucky as the next net job.

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)

When a PR Plan Comes Together

Last week we posted a terrific HRmarketer case study for EmployeeScreenIQ, one of our PR Services clients. Ever since the company signed on with HRmarketer.com in summer 2009, they’ve enjoyed a steady stream of brand visibility and media coverage. At this year’s SHRM Conference in San Diego (where their COO Jason Morris was a featured speaker), one of their competitors remarked that EmployeeScreenIQ was “everywhere.” For this PR veteran, you can’t hear a sweeter story from your client.

So what’s their secret? A better question would be, “what’s their story?”

You see, media relations is all about storytelling. Early on, Nick Fishman (EmployeeScreenIQ’s chief marketing officer) and I put our heads together to come up with potential story ideas that would not only attract media attention but also make great material for white papers and content marketing campaigns. Being a background screening company, they had lots of juicy material to talk about: resume fraud, workplace violence, and HR managers’ risky over-reliance on social networking and credit checks. These were timely issues and exactly the kind of trend-based story topics that editors are looking for.

In the past year EmployeeScreenIQ has authored articles for Human Resource Executive, Talent Management, and TLNT.com, and they’ve been featured in the Associated Press and Workforce Management—plus newspapers, e-publications, and other media outlets. We’ve enjoyed strong responses to content marketing campaigns using HRmarketer.com's own list of 100,000+ HR professionals and we’ve teamed up to produce podcasts, webcasts and a major survey on background screening trends. Using HRmarketer.com software, our media database has been smoking with activity as we distribute a parade of press announcements and story pitches on behalf of our client. And we’re not stopping there.

Teamwork is another key ingredient of successful media relations, and EmployeeScreenIQ understands the client-agency dynamic. They make themselves available for our questions and they respond quickly to media opportunities. Plus Nick always makes for an engaging interview.

Clear messaging, strong content, serendipitous timing, persistence, and responsiveness—all are essential elements of a stellar media relations campaign. Combined with HRmarketer and our vast media relations tools, the sky’s the limit. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?

Sometimes marketing is gratuitous self-promotion with relevant hairballs. Vote for me.

Perkett PR launched a little contest this week: Give some social media marketing advice, win an iPad.

~subliminal message: vote for me~

We all need a little light-hearted relevant advice once in a while, right? You all know how badly I want an iPad, right?

Here's my submission (click through to vote for me):

Social media marketing, which includes blogging, is all about authentic “voice”. Customers, prospects, influencers and other folk flock to authentic voice — to be educated and entertained, even when they know there may be a pitch somewhere down the line. Keep your “voice” real and relevant. And don’t forget the occasional real life hairball. Everybody loves to commiserate around a relevant hairball. Ack.

Sound marketing advice for the HR marketplace and beyond, right?

~subliminal message: vote for me~

Sometimes marketing is gratuitous self-promotion with relevant hairballs. Vote for me.

Thank you.

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)

“What I Know About Getting A Job” – The eBook

When Rich DeMatteo -- the creator of the job search, recruiting and HR blog Corn On The Job -- approached me months ago to write a few hundred words for him and Penelope Trunk at the Brazen Careerist about career advice and "what I knew about getting a job" I thought: Right on.

What I submitted ended up being unconventional anecdotal advice, but for someone who grew up channeling the middle-of-the-road spirit of Richie Cunningham, sometimes I like to surprise, be giddy and cut to the left.

My advice became associated with 17 other smarter folk than me in an eBook titled: What I Know About Getting A Job - Advice from the Top Bloggers in Human Resources. It's free to download, so please, be my guest.

It's a great read full of multifaceted gems. Here are a few:

• The best thing you can do for your career after your education is to get a strong set of mentors.
• Know your destination and pursue it with complete abandon.
• There’s a really old saying “you’re network is your net worth.” It’s true.
• Do people respect you? Listen to you? Do your actions matter in this world? A job is what you do with your down time. Answering those questions will set you free.
• So when you choose your career path, above all choose one that will make you happy. Don’t settle for anything less.
• Be different and be distinct. Leave the gimmicks behind. It all comes down to you.
• It is possible to love your job, respect your employer, feel valued, and do work you care about. Promise.
• If your career provides the income and flexibility to pursue your real passions, then you’re in brilliant shape.

No, I didn't quote myself (wink).

A brief note on the first one, which was Penelope Trunk's advice: It's critical to have a strong set of mentors.

They can come in the form of a formal mentorship program at school or work, or they can be informal mentors, those guides and muses in your life you've grown close to and whose "life" advice is invaluable, a few of which for me are included in this eBook.

True, work can and should hold meaning for you, but it can also be callous and transitory.

Your mentors are a special lot; keep them close to your heart and let them know how much they mean to you.

And become one someday.

"A spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission." ~Neil Peart

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)

For the love of leaders, challenge, meaning and practice

Yesterday I had a Silver and Black attack.

One of the Oakland Raiders Facebook fan pages shared a homemade video montage of the 2010 draft picks.

These big boys are excited to work play. Ready to give 110% to get just chance to work play on the team they were hired to play for any given Sunday this fall (or sometimes Monday, Thursday and/or Saturday).

I grew up loving the Raiders lore, led by none other than John Madden -- Mr. Football himself.

John was an inspiration who loved, lived and breathed his game everyday. His coaching staff loved the game. His players loved the game.

Love, Love, Love -- there's nothing you can do that can't be done.

Under Madden's guidance, Oakland never experienced a losing season.

Can you imagine if your players employees worked that hard for your organization? There's no way a team just gets jazzed and exceeds expectations because they showed up to get a paycheck.

There's a lot more to it than that -- whether you're playing in the NFL, selling clothes at Kohl's or developing products for Apple.

The motivational sentiment of giving 110% is nice, but it's much more realistic to get your staff to give 100% by challenging them to give their all, to be better at what they do and why they do it, and to love what they do while working hard doing it. (I'm rereading Mark Murphy's book Hundred Percenters, which I highly recommend.)

Leadership and HR expert Dave Ulrich touts that when workers find meaning in their jobs, they’re more productive and contribute more to the organization as a whole.

And Mark's post yesterday about what it takes to be better at what you do - practice, practice, practice and lots more practice.

So in a very small space, here's what we've got for why employees give 100%:

• Inspirational Leadership
• Challenge
• Meaning
  
• Practice, Practice, Practice
• And Lots of Love

And what better architect and facilitator for all of these but HR. Right? In fact if human resources and the organizations they worked for focused more on empowering their leaders and employees than enabling them (as in non-productive co-dependency), then maybe we'd advance the workplace a lot farther than we've come to date.

Change management is tough and according to John Sumser, HR could work it's way right out of a job if it viewed organizational and employee development that way -- evolving into something else even more fruitful to the business and the bottom line.

I haven't wanted to work in the alternative for years. Have you?

We should all know no other way to work play.

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)

Practice. Practice. Practice. And Practice Some More.

In spite of failing miserably trying to explain tennis scoring to my seven year old (15 love? Deuce?), I nevertheless enjoy watching the annual ATP Pro Tennis Challenger in our hometown of Aptos, CA.

This tournament is particularly enjoyable because of the accessibility fans have to the players. You can really get to know these guys. They are the up-and-coming pros that you've never heard of unless you are a die hard tennis fan. Many are in their young twenties and ranked between 100 and 300+ in the world. Some of these players will hit the big time - Andy Murray played in this tournament in 2005 as a wildcard. Today he is ranked in the top 10 and has $12 million in career prize money.

But this blog post isn't about sports - its about what it takes to make the big time. I'm not talking big time as in excessively rich and famous, I'm talking about being at the top of your game and amongst the best in your competitive field whether you are a marketing assistant, CEO or VP of PR.

Sure you collect a steady paycheck and maybe get a promotion and a bump in salary every so often - but are you really at the top of your game? And how hard do you work at improving your game?

What stood out the most at the tennis tournament was the amount of time these guys practiced.

All the time.

During one grueling match the winning player missed a few overhead shots - but he won! Even so, directly after the match without even going to the locker room the player took an unoccupied court with a coach and hit overhead shot after overhead shot - for two hours! (I want him on my team). This wasn't unique to this player - they all did stuff like this. I was blown away by just how obsessed these guys were with practicing every little detail of their game.

And it got me thinking about our own careers. When was the last time you blew a performance review or made a poor managerial decision? What did you do about it? Did you stay at work a few extra hours (or wake up early) to study the problem and find ways to correct it? As a marketer, how much time do you put into "continuing education" to really master your trade? And how often do you practice using the latest tools of your trade? A lot of people are guilty of getting into a comfort zone and then flying on autopilot for the rest of their careers. Even CEOs can fall into this trap with the inappropriate use of delegation.

Remember Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule of becoming an expert? As Michael D. Haberman wrote in his blog HR Observations a few days ago (referencing Miriam Salpeter's blog post about why Twitter users are more likely to get job interviews):

"Practice makes perfect? Maybe not, but practice does make better for sure".

My guess is most of us don't practice enough and we all have a lot of reasons I mean excuses why. And that is exactly what they are - excuses.

Like watching tennis.

HRmarketer.com Adds Long-Term Trend Analysis to its Keyword Ranking Software Tools

A month ago when we added a new media relations application to our HRmarketer.com software we said it was the first in what will be a number of really cool new features being added to HRmarketer.com this summer.

We have another.

We've upgraded HRmarketer.com's popular SEO Center to include long-term trend analysis for keyword rankings (see photo).



The new trend charts are based on daily rankings, which are used to calculate average rankings of keywords for the past 12 months. Average ranking is a much more stable and reliable indicator of overall monthly ranking than just comparing static rankings on the first of every month.

With this new functionality, the SEO Center within HRmarketer.com's software becomes a complete organic rank monitoring solution for human resource vendors by addressing daily changes that drive SEO tactics while monitoring long-term trends that shape SEO strategy.

HRmarketer.com's SEO Center enables HR vendors to:

• Track their keyword rankings on Google, Yahoo, and MSN with automatic average daily rankings displayed on their HRmarketer.com “dashboard” and via email reports.
• Monitor the impact of content changes on their website and inbound links on search engine rankings.
• Optimize organic SEO campaigns and improve their rankings over time.
• Speak with an SEO expert who can assist them with keyword research, META tags, website design, inbound links and more.

HRmarketer founder Mark Willaman recently spoke with the company's Online Marketing Specialist (Andy Benkert) about the new keyword ranking tool. Check out the video on this post or at the HRmarketer.com YouTube Channel.

We will have another cool new feature to announce next month - stay tuned!

Social networks hold their social dear, like a childhood stuffed animal.

Our social media hippie clan from Mamby-Pamby Land has been talking so much about what works in social media and the cost of not participating, that I thought it interesting when I came across a Workforce Management article last week titled Social Media Won’t Work for Benefits Information, Survey Suggests.

And just as the title suggests -- according to a survey that the National Business Group on Health:

• 47% of full-time U.S. employees surveyed by NBGH said they use Facebook either daily or weekly for personal reasons, but only 7 percent said they use the social networking site for business.
• 75% of workers said they were not interested in receiving information via Facebook about their employer-sponsored health benefits, tips on improving their health or saving money on health care.
• 80% said they had no interest in being “tweeted” with health benefits information via the Twitter website.
• Less than 20% of employees younger than 34 said they would like to receive information such as how to choose a health plan or exercise tips via Facebook.

Social networks hold their social dear, like a childhood stuffed animal worn with age and a button eye missing.

They don't want read the undecipherable legalese of their latest health benefits rate increase.

Being personable, sharing original or other's content, networking and building relationships may work on these social platforms most of the time, but obviously companies sharing internal employee information should either share on internal social platforms, or they shouldn't abandon the tried-and-true methods of benefit communications, including print mailings and workplace distributions and e-mail.

Granted the survey, which was conducted in March, included responses from only 1,500 full-time workers ages of 22 to 64, but it's still telling as to what employees don't want to use social media for.

But I do extrapolate that there is still value to some strategically targeted print direct marketing and the fact that e-mail marketing isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

So there you have it. Now, where's my teddy bear? Time for a tea party.

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)

Need Help Caring for Mom or Dad? Call the EAP. Or your Banker!

The first line in this Wall Street Journal article titled Beyond Estate Planning: Bankers Tackle Elder Care says it all:

"If you are looking for help caring for an older family member, you might try giving your banker a call."

Many private banks and trust companies are introducing services to help older clients (or parents of younger clients) sort out medical bills, hire in-home care or even manage the sale of a home. Sometimes the bank charges an additional fee for such services; in other cases, they are included in the asset-management or trust fees families already pay.

Banks, and the financial services sector, were pioneers in bringing work-life or family friendly benefits to employees in the 1980s. The reason? Demographics and Money. What else? Banks tend to employ large numbers of female employees and as record numbers of women re-entered the workforce in the 1980's banks were quick to realize that importance of child care benefits in recruitment and retention.

So it is not surprising that banks are the early adopters for elder care benefits. What is surprising is they are now using them not just to retain employees but customers!

Smart move. Really smart move.

Some examples:

• Wells Fargo's private-bank Elder Services program provides help to older clients and their caregivers.
• Merrill Lynch's family-office group offers "Stand Ready", which helps clients organize all the details of their lives in case they suddenly become incapacitated.
• Bessemer Trust offers "health advisory" services.
• Northern Trust has beefed up its training in the family dynamics involved in long-distance caregiving.
• Broadspire Care Management, which contracts with bank trust departments and wealth-management firms to provide geriatric-care management, says it has seen referrals rise 10% to 12% a year for the past three years.

"This is not just a matter of revenue. This is a matter of developing an intimate, trusted relationship with the client," says Joseph Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab.

Check out the article for more details.

We're social media hippies who live in Mamby-Pamby Land. I can dig that.

"No, we recommend that managers have no relationship with their direct reports outside of work -- don't go to lunch with them, don't have a beer with them after work, and definitely don't offer solutions to their personal problems -- and that they should keep their personal business to themselves and offline. Fraternizing and social media are dangerous and exposes our firm to great risk."

Those were words I heard recently from an HR executive at small company of about 500 employees.

Wow, I thought. That's just one big hot ball of fun.

Those of us who have big "voices" in the human resource space and evangelize the internal and external value of social media (and being human) tend to forget that the rest of our world still has a lot of catching up to do.

We go to conference tweet-ups and drink from techno-glo mamby-pamby glasses and talk tweet about how cool social media is for the HR and recruiting and marketing and how we can't wait to blog about it all.

Don't get me wrong. I dig it all. But, for example, there are still less than 300K folks in the LinkedIn HR group, with only a small percentage actively participating at any given time.

Now that seems like a big number compared to other online communities, but don't forget there are millions of business in the U.S. alone, many of which still feel the way the HR exec above does.

Employers do need to be careful how they use social media in hiring practices, though. It is an appropriate approach but it needs to be used appropriately. EmployeeScreenIQ's president Jason Morris gave a presentation at this year's SHRM that caught some flack from us social media hippies because he focused on companies needing to be very careful when using social media as recruitment and selection tool because of the EEOC regulations.

Litigation happens. Keep it real.

But don't avoid it all together.

According to a recent CFO.com article titled The Cost of Social Media Phobia:

The CIO practice at Forrester Research recently surveyed 303 information-technology staffers who use social media in the course of servicing their organizations:

• 72% of the respondents said social media has a positive impact on productivity in the front office
• 70% said it makes IT operations more productive
• 61% said it makes the back office more productive
• Only 46%, however, saw a positive influence on marketing

Dang that marketing conundrum. Hey, the value is there, I'm telling you.

Also in Forrester's survey:

• 72% of respondents said social media helps them get answers to questions
• 68% said it helps them find information they need to be successful
• 62% said it lets people know what kind of help is available
• And large majorities of respondents said social media has a positive impact on brand reputation (86%), innovation (80%), and customer service (78%)

You don't need to overthink your social media endeavors, but don't underestimate the risk and the value either.

Remember when businesses thought e-mail and the World Wide Web were sinkholes?

"It is the nature of man as he grows older to protest against change, particularly change for the better." ~John Steinbeck

We're social media hippies who live in Mamby-Pamby Land. I can dig that.

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)

Think Yokel. Off the grid. The other revolution of work.

• Working with my hands and living off the land.
• Growing my own food when possible.
• Riding a bike as alternative transportation.
• Recycling cans and bottles.
• Networking locally face to face.
  
• Organic serial entrepreneurship.
  
• Providing goods and services in collaborative micro-markets.
• And fresh air. Lots of it.

You can't beat that, right? But I'm not talking about the revolution of work as I did a week ago, how serial entrepreneurship is at all time hight and according to a stat I heard last night, there are about 22 million single-employed business owners today. And growing. How there are also more collaborative part-time workers worldwide than we've ever seen before. And how it's the clicking with one another that makes for this collaborative magic.

And I'm not talking about organic farming either or any other legally mainstream sustainable way to make a living.

I'm talking about living off the grid, the other future of work.

This isn't a political diatribe about public policy or how the glow of motivational HR speak from the likes of Steve Forbes and Al Gore still shines off of SHRM 2010 attendees ready to take on the workforce world.

No, this is about the fork in the economic road, or more realistically many-pronged fork, that includes living on and off the grid.

I just read this morning in The Washington Post that "the Senate failed once again late Wednesday to advance a plan to restore jobless benefits for people out of work more than six months, leaving millions of unemployed workers in limbo until after the July 4 recess."

But that they "extended the deadline for home buyers to claim a tax credit aimed at reviving the housing market until Sept. 30."

Job loss and foreclosure -- two reasons why homeless shelters are spilling over into the streets, underpasses, hillsides, hidden valleys and other nooks and crannies in and around our cities.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless:

On an average night in the 23 cities surveyed, 94 percent of people living on the streets were single adults, 4 percent were part of families and 2 percent were unaccompanied minors. Seventy percent of those in emergency shelters were single adults, 29 percent were part of families and 1 percent were unaccompanied minors. (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2008).

And that's from over a couple of years ago.

The total number of homeless people in the U.S. varies depending on who's doing the counting, but it's anywhere from 1 to 5 million.

The problem is that many people will not be counted because they are not in places researchers can easily find. This group of people, often referred to as "the unsheltered" or "hidden" homeless, frequently stay in automobiles, camp grounds, or other places that researchers cannot effectively search. For instance, a national study of formerly homeless people found that the most common places people who had been homeless stayed were vehicles (59.2%) and makeshift housing, such as tents, boxes, caves, or boxcars (24.6%) (Link et al., 1995). This suggests that homeless counts may miss significant numbers of people who are homeless, including those living in doubled-up situations.

And who knows how many choose to live off the grid because of mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism and/or the serial entrepreneurial spirit of selling contraband in local markets.

Can you imagine what the workplace violence is like?

I can't.

No matter, the off-the-grid market is booming, let me tell you. And it's right down the street from where I live in Santa Cruz.

In fact, recently a local park called Pogonip was cleaned up and local law enforcement uncovered about eight campsites, including an elaborate two-story makeshift home. The sites were littered with more than 100 needles, and a range of junk and furnishings, which filled a large, 40-cubic-yard Dumpster parked at a farm off Ocean Street Extension.

Multiply this locally outward from every city across the nation.

1 to 5 million homeless at any given time, a percentage of which are permanently off the grid in this new millennium market growth sector.

It's going to take the mainstream entrepreneurial spirit to transform the growing off-the-grid world.

But for those who own their faculties in our local markets, there is a choice in leading one's self and employment destiny.

There's always a choice.

We have the opportunity to guide folks along the fork.

Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)