Critical Staffing Trends (Part Two) - The Implications of Information and Social Contract
David Earle

We continue our examination of major trends in the job market and their impact on recruiters –  begun here last week with a look at access and complexity – with research results related to the visibility of information and the social contract between employers and candidates.

The Triumph of Information
Access to information has always been the key that unlocks recruiting efficiency, both for job seekers and recruiters. A candidate who can locate attractive opportunities more quickly can then apply for them more quickly. And if he has better access to information than other candidates he stands a better chance of being hired. Likewise, employers who have more and better information about candidates can hire more quickly and inexpensively. Underlying this two-way flow, the Internet, by providing radically improved access to both candidates and employers, has radically altered job market economics.

Although the vast majority of employers have now embraced Internet recruiting, our research points to a couple of legacy attitudes and behaviors that lower not only the Internet channel’s overall efficiency, but also the job market competitiveness of individual employers.

The first problem concerns making information available. In the pre-Internet business world, information was to be guarded, hoarded, and doled out sparingly on an as needed basis to as few people as possible. This legacy was created over the years by a variety of legal, competitive, and political concerns, with the cumulative effect on recruiting being that companies became very cautious about allowing job candidates access to the “secrets” of the firm; for example, its HR policies and benefits, its training and development programs, its corporate culture, the types of candidates it both sought and didn’t seek, and candid comments by employees – the very things that candidates have always most avidly sought to learn when applying for a job.

Our research into candidate attitudes and behaviors clearly shows that today’s candidates, across education and job levels, appreciate superior information characterized by quantity, candidness, and easy access. We find that all types of candidates in our surveys are media-savvy and want basically the same things. All respond to differences between ample, well-presented information on one website and skimpy, indifferently presented information on another. And all are fully capable of downgrading sites that don’t measure up.

A second legacy attitude here concerns the response to criticism. The all too common response by companies in the past, particularly large ones, was to try to ignore, mute or deflect negative comments, no matter how accurate and relevant they might be. Doing so had, and continues to have, certain perceived advantages. Problems that remain unacknowledged don’t have to be dealt with. Time-consuming, perhaps difficult work can be avoided. If criticism has resulted from a personal oversight, misjudgment or mistake, personal consequences may also be sidestepped. All in all, it often appears wiser to keep the manure as far from the fan as possible.

In recruiting, the practical consequence of this attitude is seen in the cautious approach many companies have taken to the new tools provided by social networking, and well before that, in their treatment of employees (or ex-employees) who publically aired their candid thoughts outside the approved chain of command. Many companies were, and still are, so cautious that their policy manual mandates sanctions, including dismissal, against anyone stepping out of line. What these companies may not realize, though, is that these attitudes have negative recruiting consequences.

As noted, candidates are information-savvy. Most of them, given a lifetime’s exposure to traditional media and now years of exposure to the Internet, quickly detect spin, obfuscation, evasions, cover-ups and other forms of bs. They can sense when something has been sanitized or whitewashed. While a well-controlled, blemish-free public corporate façade may not have raised candidate red flags in a pre-Internet world where all played by similar rules, it does in today’s changed world where a more honest and open presentation is valued. (Actually, the most trusted source of pre-hire information has always been the insider who could truly “tell it like it is.”)

Also the simple fact is that the Internet’s information efficiency means that any employer deficiencies perhaps lurking behind the façade are becoming increasingly hard to hide.

The Weakening Social Contract
The social contract between the American employer and employee has been deteriorating for some time. Created in the aftermath of another troubled time, the Great Depression of the 1930’s, it was built around the idea that if a person worked hard and lived responsibly, he should be rewarded with a certain degree of economic security. He would earn his fair share of the American dream.

When the Rockefeller Foundation studied that contract last year (before this current recession would have distorted the results), their survey clearly showed that employees had become disenchanted. Decades of exposure to union decline, job shifting, mergers, conglomerate bundling and unbundling, downsizing, and offshoring had left them feeling much less secure and optimistic about their prospects than ever before. Nearly eight in ten (78%) agreed that the old social contract had been broken and needed rewriting. Barely half (52%) believed that if they worked hard and played by the rules they would be properly rewarded. And 78% felt they faced greater financial risk today than in the past.

Our own research complements those findings. Lifetime employment is a concept pretty much off the table. Workers of all ages, but particularly younger ones, now accept a future consisting of multiple jobs and the reality that they alone will chart their personal advancement, prosperity and security.

Employers do not appear to be ready to reverse this trend on their own or any time soon. They continue to downsize and resize; off-shore and re-shore; acquire, merge and partner, then reverse themselves; and staff up or down at will using temporary and contract workers. In their defense, they are responding reasonably to a highly competitive, fast moving, globalized, competitive landscape that shows no signs of decelerating and continues to demand ever more, not less, flexibility in matching work to workers.

Workers do not say they are enthusiastic about a job market that has turned into a kind of jungle where it’s every man for himself, merely that they accept its reality. Recruiters who understand this psychology, and also that workers still value stability and are eager to locate employers who will honor their efforts, are in demand. Those who can help workers develop professionally, and demonstrate loyalty in return, can skillfully create more competitive job offerings in the market.

In sum, the most successful recruiters of the next decade will understand that the trends related to information and the social contract will require a revised set of job presentations. Best practice in information management will mean granting applicants access to all available information about specific jobs and the work cultures of those companies offering them.

Best practice will also require creating jobs that are not only useful and productive but also sustainable, and a workplace that actively strives to keep work and workers in sync. In other words, recruiters will have to recognize that recruiting is not an isolated, purchasing-type function, but rather, is organically and intimately connected to the working culture of the company. Understanding and developing that connection will require, among other things, systematic tracking of retention, detailed analysis of the findings and help resolving those problems identified. For many, these may be new assignments.

Related Reading:

The Great “Push-Pull” in Recruiting
 
Mastering Internet Recruiting - Part II: What Candidates Want

Branding Drives Recruiting Success

Rockefeller/TIME Campaign for American Workers Survey: Exec Summary

Rockefeller Poll Finds 8 in 10 Seek New Social Contract