Simply Hired Blog

Recruiting in the Creative Age: "Real Artists Ship"

Creative Age Recruiting Rule #5: Talent is defined by production, not opportunity

Continuing our exploration of the New Rules of Recruiting in the Creative Age.

“Real Artists Ship”

This little saying (often attributed to either / both Steve Jobs and / or Bill Gates) has gotten me into more philosophical fights than anything I have ever spoken. Coming from a family that includes artists and musicians I am sensitive to the fact that art and commerce often seem like bad bedfellows. But I still stand by the sentiment: if you remove the assumption that the phrase translates into “you can’t be an artist if people aren’t paying you” (which is where most of my opponents instantly go to), you find that the statement “real artists ship” is a little like saying “the sun produces heat": it may be up for debate, but is true nonetheless.

“Real artists ship” means that you can't be an artist if you don’t produce something tangible. The fact that you have a nice picture in your head does not make you an artist.

I have a brother who was a composition major at college. He would insist that because he was enrolled in classes and could play some instruments that he was a musician. I would ask him to play something for me, to which he would reply “I am too busy” or “I have to go wash my cat” or some such thing. At which point I would say “You aren’t a musician yet.” Eventually he wrote several pieces as part of his senior year project, and I went to see them performed. They were quite good. But even if they had been terrible, I would have said the same thing: “Now you are a musician.”

It turned out that it took a group of fairly insistent teachers to “ship” his product. Once he left school, he no longer has this support network, and subsequently failed to “ship” anything else. So I would claim that he was only a musician (artist) in the context of school, which means that as long as he is out of school he isn't a musician. Until he creates something outside of school.

Why all this about musicians and brothers? In the creative age, talent is as talent does, and talent "does" only within a context. You don’t hire someone because they have done great things, you hire someone because you think they will do great things. You ask a lot of questions about what candidate has done in the past because you figure that if a candidate has done something before, the chances of them doing it again are pretty good. Well, maybe, maybe not.

In the creative age you are looking for people who show a creative bent: they have a unique and often specialized way of viewing the world and framing problems so that their product or output solves a particular problem in an innovative and useful way. In the mechanical age it was a pretty good bet that if someone could be a draftsman in one company they could be a draftsman in another. The specialization of the role itself contained most of the variables of doing the job. In the knowledge age this started to change: just because you could be a good patent attorney for a biomed company didn’t mean you would be a good patent attorney for a disk drive manufacturer. The variables of good performance were more equally distributed between the expertise required in performing the role and the specifics of the environment within which the role is performed.

In the creative age most of the variables around performance are independent of the role. You can learn to be a great java engineer and produce some fantastic insights in one company, and then go to another company and be almost worthless. Or, you can find yourself a real superstar in one place, only to go to a new company and be completed flummoxed, even though both jobs require producing the same output to solve a specialized problem.

As a recruiter in the creative age you have to be able to go beyond a detailed understanding of the specialized requirements of the role: you have to be intimately familiar with the environment context within which the role will be performed. You can source someone who has stellar references and comes in and white boards a java test like a pro, and the probability that they will be a complete wash-out three months later is just as great as the probability that they would be a wash-out if you had never done the white board test in the first place. In other words, eevaluation of the specific skills set required for a job without evaluation of whether those skills can be applied in innovative ways inside of your specific environment is almost totally worthless.

In the creative age "talent" are as much artists as they are crafts people or trades people. They have to create something that didn’t exist before. And the only way to evaluate the future potential of an artist is by what they have produced before. But it goes beyond needing tangible examples of yesterday’s success. You have to be able to figure out whether an artist is able to shift studios, patrons, paints, canvases and everything else physical and emotional about their art and still produce at the same level. When someone changes jobs in the creative age they are moving from one platform to another: they are literally shifting everything real and emotionally connected about the environment in which they create. It is your job as a recruiter to figure out whether the new platform that you are providing will be the right one to help them create at the same (or better) level that they did before.

As we move to more of a creative foundation for value production inside of companies it is all the more important to understand that “Talent is defined by production, not opportunity”. Whether you think commerce bastardizes art or not, real artists must ship. You have to answer... will they?

Recruiting in the Creative Age: Run as a P&L

Creative Age Recruiting Rule #5: Recruiting Must Run as a Separate P&L

Yesterday we talked about viewing recruiting as a fundamental business driver (URL). I called for a change in our self-perception, moving from feeling like administrators to thinking like CEOs, from being middle-people in the transaction to being the front-line inside your business. Setting the strategy and executing to it are critical parts of that transformation, but you also have to put the right business model in place in order to support your ongoing business operations. I am a big believer in the “charge-back model” as a sound way to run your business within a business.

This model is nothing new. In fact, the charge-back model is used by many companies in order to efficiently and effectively allocate costs to those business units that use internal services. But the model itself is not a silver-bullet: putting the price / cost allocation model in place and having it be fully effective means that you have to change the way you think about creating a market inside your organization. Most internal service providers continue to operate as if they have a business mandate that allows them to be bureaucratic and inefficient. So while they may have a business structure that allows them to charge for their services, they don’t have to compete in an open market for the provision of those services. Their clients inevitably grow to hate these functions, since they are forced to use them, pay the going rate and then see their own business’s P&L decrease under the virtual dictatorship of the service provider.

When we say that “Recruiting Must Run as a Separate P&L” I am talking about much more than a charge back model. I am talking about putting your clients first by creating a free and open market for the services you provide, and then charging them once they chose you of their own free will. You can’t be a fundamental business driver without being a business, and you can’t be a business if you don’t have to compete against other product and service providers. In the case of recruiting, this means that you have to ensure that your internal clients know of outside service providers (e.g. TPRs) that they can use in order to solve their recruiting problems. But in return for opening markets and providing competition that will benefit the clients, you have to make clear to your clients that you will be competing for their business, and that, if you win, you will be charging them a predetermined price for the services.

Once you have an open market, a pricing mechanism and a way to collect (charge backs) then you can start to keep a true P&L for your organization. It will be crucial to partner with your finance department to understand how you can carry profits and assets forward, as this is highly dependent on your organization’s finance model.

To read more about my thoughts around this model check out this post on Talentism.

Recruiting in the Creative Age: Be a Business

Creative Age Recruiting Rule #4: Recruiting is a Fundamental Business Driver

Continuing our exploration of Recruiting in the Creative Age, we now look at Rule # 4 “Recruiting is a fundamental business driver.”

Hang around the corporate recruiting department long enough and you will inevitably hear the following: “We need a seat at the table!” What does this mean?

Think of being 12 years old and attending Thanksgiving at your grandmother’s house. All the adults sit at the nice, big table and talk about interesting things. Meanwhile, all the kids are sitting at small, folding card table that wobbles when you lean on it, in a room located at the far-end of the house from the big table, and most of the kids are crying or picking their nose or throwing food. As a teenager you are caught between the two worlds: not old enough to sit at the “Big Table”, too old to be hanging out with the nose pickers. When recruiting talks about “being at the table” they are describing the gestalt of the twelve year old: too important to be hanging out with facilities, not yet important enough to be at the table with operations and finance.

Unlike our poor proverbial teenager, however, recruiting doesn’t have a chronology problem they will eventually grow out of. They have a perception and belief problem of their own making. It doesn’t matter how much time passes… you only get to sit at the corporate “big table” when you believe you should be there and act like it.

Recently I was on a panel at the Kennedy conference. The panel was collectively asked by an audience member the “Why can’t we sit at the big table?" question. My response? Remember the business truism: business is about investing in opportunities and starving problems. Problems never, ever win sales, develop new products or create cool marketing insights. Problems are called problems because people don't like them.

Think of problems like the proverbial kids at the small table. The kids are at the small table tucked away in some far corner of the house because the adults want to enjoy their meal and find it exceedingly difficult to do so while hearing crying, watching fingers explore noses and watching food flying through the air. All of these behaviors are problems that need to be dealt with if there is awareness of them, so in this case (and in many cases of corporate problems), ignorance is not only bliss, it is a necessary ingredient to having a successful meal (or driving the business forward). If your CEO spent all her or his time dealing with the problems that most recruiting departments think are so pressing (lack of investment in infrastructure, lack of budget, too many rogue hiring managers) there would be no company within which to have those problems in the first place. Better to keep the kids someplace else and focus on success at the big table.

You can’t get to the table if you are a problem. You can’t look to the “adults” to come in and solve the problems and then expect they are going to want you to hang out with them during the important meetings. You need to be in the same business that the "adults" are: starving your problems and investing in your opportunities. And starting with the insight that “Recruiting is a fundamental business driver” is the right place to start.

Here are some steps to walk through in order to help reframe your mindset:

First, go through the following exercise: your CFO comes to you and says “We think you do a great job, but we have decided to outsource all non-strategic administration functions. We can either pick an RPO and hand your department over to them, or you can take your department “private” and have us as your first customer.” Assuming you would have the guts and drive to select the later option, you would find yourself in the position of being the CEO of your own company and not head administrator of a bureaucracy. What would you do differently? Would you spend your time bitching about bad hiring managers, or would you figure out how to sell more effectively to them? Would you spend precious hours asking for more budget, or would you retool your products and services so that you could get a better margin and still beat the competitor's price point? Would you pull your hair out figuring out how to “get to the table” or would you innovate new approaches to becoming indispensible to your clients?

Second, fully adopt this new “CEO” mindset. You are now no longer “the problem”, you are the person trying to starve your problems so that you can increase the amount of time, attention and capital you can focus on growing your opportunities. When someone inside your new "business" comes to you complaining about how you aren't making their life better you will instantly feel empathy for the poor souls you have been badgering all these years.

Third, frame all your new business opportunities around your client's top two or three strategic business drivers. If your clients are looking to reduce the cost of production so that they can be more competitive in the market, approach them with plans to increase their reliance on a variable workforce and have negotiated contracts for top-tier service providers in your back pocket. If your clients are looking for ways to reduce turnover then show them how an investment in brand transformation will decrease their hiring cycle times AND increase their employee loyalty. Of course in order to do this you will have to really understand your client's business pain points and how products and services you offer can positively affect those drivers... just like you expect the vendors who work with you to know the problems you have to deal with every day.

Fourth, start marketing and selling and stop whining. You can never start a successful business based on a belief that you are a victim, or that some grave injustice has been perpetrated against you. It is almost impossible to seek opportunities when you are defining yourself as being part of a problem, and seeking opportunities is what business is all about. The first step in this personal transformation is to change the way you think: don’t demand a seat at the table, form a new and better table. If you have a killer business model the VP of HR, CFO and COO are going to want to sit at your table every bit as much as you want to sit at theirs. In other words, if you are the 12 year old sitting at the kids table, stop focusing on how to get to the adult table and start looking for ways to make a new, better table. Have good manners and scintillating conversation and you will be surprised by who shows up.

Of course putting this into place requires more than just a change in perception: you have to be able to execute. Strategies are nice; execution is everything. But putting yourself in the “CEO’s mind” of seeing yourself as running a business as opposed to an awkward teenager constantly kvetching about how people don’t pay attention to you is a sure way to make recruiting a fundamental business driver.

Spending Your Time Wisely: Education to Entrepreneur

There are times in our careers where we may find ourselves in the position of having lost a job without being able to find another one immediately. This leads to the dreaded “gap in employment,” which can cause us to feel unsure about how to handle inquires surrounding this period. It may also suggest a yellow flag to prospective employers. II am often asked how to handle this gap on our resumes, in interviews, and how to maximize the time itself.

In the first post of this series we looked at how to craft your resume when you have gaps between jobs.

In the second post we talked about how to answer questions in interviews about gaps between jobs.

Finally, in the last post we turned to the subject of how to maximize the value of your time between jobs, starting with the concept of volunteering.

Today we finish our series with a look at three more ways to spend your time wisely when you are in between jobs:

Volunteering to Work

If you want to volunteer and double your chances of finding a job, find a company or start-up that you're interested in working for and offer to volunteer for them. This isn’t as hard as it may seem. Take your proposal to the HR Director, if there is one in the company, or to the Manager in charge of your functional area. You will want to have a clear discussion up front limiting the hours and scope of your responsibilities, so that you can still be available for your job search. This path has the added benefit of giving the company a "try before you buy" view of you and your work. Who knows - an offer could spring from it!

Pursuing Educational Goals

Obviously, you will also want to consider pursuing any educational paths necessary to augment your skills, such as taking a certification course in your field or signing up for an evening semester course. Now is the perfect time to polish those skills you have needed for advancement and growth.

The Entrepreneurial Pursuit

A time-out between jobs is also a great opportunity to consider pursuing that small business venture you were always longing for but never had the time to pursue. First, it is a very acceptable path to prospective employers to know that you took a time out for an "entrepreneurial pursuit". They understand it, and very often, they respect this kind of industry - even if it wasn't ultimately successful. More importantly, you just may find yourself on an entirely new path, one that you feel passionate about and which changes your life for the better.

During the dotcom bubble, I was in the most unpleasant role of having to oversee multiple waves of downsizings. Many people were struck particularly hard during that time, especially because there just wasn’t a vibrant employment market. Months passed and despite their most valiant efforts, they weren’t able to find new jobs. This was a period you could describe as mass gaps in employment for so many people. During that time I was often reminded of the phrase: “hope springs eternal,’ because so many of these folk decided to try their hands at the path they had always dreamed of taking, but until now, never had the courage to try. One woman from sales opened up a music retail store, a dream she always had. She is still running it today and has never looked back.

I have endless stories like this and to the degree that I could follow them, these people landed in roles that they were happier in than before. So I encourage you to try you hand at the entrepreneurial route, if that has been a burning desire on your mind.

If you have more questions, or find yourself between jobs and wondering what to do, write to me at: askrayna@yahoo.com

Effective Executive Searches: Thinking Straight

My job is finding the new boss. The one who runs the show. The showstopper (in a good way). Just let me just say there aren’t many showstoppers.

When a company goes looking for the new boss, it’s competing with a lot of other companies for The Few, The Best.. “The Package.” By definition, the search for candidates deals with a market, and marketing principles apply from the get-go. Even companies and hiring executives with great marketing instincts can miss this.

I’m not talking about the anti-marketing call you’re used to, “Hi, my name’s (Recruiter) and I’m conducting a search and let me tell you about my client and the position and what a great opportunity this is and how your background is a great fit and this is the perfect career move for you and this company’s hot and way better than the company you’re in now that’s going nowhere and you should be interested and if you’re not, do you know someone?”

No, the point here is that a search to fill a key executive position is a product, defining and going into a market of potential buyers. It needs market analysis, positioning and strategy, and, like any product, the opportunity has to be competitive, make sense, be attractive, have value and integrity and, BTW, understand the market of people who will be both qualified for and interested in it.

If the search is for “A high profile executive from a Brand Name to grow this great little company” - which turns out to have a large competitor and no cash - the search is almost guaranteed to disappoint because the market of Brand Executives isn’t going to be interested. (Don’t laugh. I heard this discussion.)

If a Board confides, “What we really need is to bring in a VP Marketing who could take over when we (finally) fire the (inept) CEO, but we can’t talk about that to anyone”, the search doesn’t have the product to produce candidates who are CEO material because the market of executives qualified to run the company aren’t going to be interested in a VP Marketing position. Tracking? This is just a lazy board looking for easy answers and the search will fall victim. A search needs to be for an identifiable, current position. Sure, people develop, but not many can read minds.

Or – and this is pretty common: “We need a real Rock Star VP who has headed (whatever function) through an IPO”. This Rocker, incidentally, will report to a D-list CEO with a marginal batting average and friends on the Board. No disrespect, but is the search here on planet earth or are we talking about one of the other markets?

It’s not unusual for a company to express a lot of passion when everyone involved believes that The-Thing-They-Happen-To-Produce is the best Thing available. Now, that attitude is essential to great companies. It’s a propellant. It creates a greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts dynamic. It’s all kinds of mixed metaphors and they’re all good. But if the passion doesn’t intersect with reason – or with the fundamental properties of marketing - it’s likely to misdirect a search with inflated expectations and foster a lot of disappointment. A thought process that leads the Company to “ We’ve got this great Thing and we want to see guys like (fill in the blank; think first-name ubiquity). He has the kind of vision and instincts we need.” Yes, and that’s why he’s running an industry leader. A trip back to the drawing board is in order here and some thought on principles of scale.

These are examples of faulty products – I’ve added a little color for effect, though less than you probably think. You get the point. These products don’t have integrity and they’re targeting the wrong markets. Most companies take a lot of care with their go-to-market plans; they need to approach searches for their key executives the same way. The executive recruiter they hire should, as a priority, take a product marketing role. The recruiters who smile and nod, (“Oh, sure. Definitely. You mean that Imelt”), let’s just say, are no help and need managing. Big time.

But that’s for Part Two...