What do you do if you own one of the world’s most successful corporate brands, enabling you to
- operate in a dynamic, exciting industry that attracts great talent
- tap any job market in the world
- enjoy fame for building lucrative employee resumes
- have the financial resources to meet or beat any competitor’s offer…
but you still can’t recruit enough people to meet your company’s growth targets?
That is the question Marvin Smith has been helping to answer at Microsoft. His assignment: find out if the emerging phenomenon known as social media could help solve the problem.
Remember that, even 18 months ago, social media was barely on most companies’ recruiting radar, and even today there are far more companies just beginning to experiment with it than there are those reporting concrete results. In addition, Microsoft’s success also speaks to the importance of detailed, metrics-based workforce planning as a critical component of competitive strategy. This is also comparatively rare.
Marvin’s project had been instigated when an analysis of the company’s performance in the job marketplace pointed to a looming crisis: Microsoft was a talent-driven enterprise competing in a world where traditional hiring practices would no longer reliably meet internal demand. Unless that demand was satisfied, the company could not meet growth targets. Applicant quantity was not the issue, nor is it usually the issue for large, international companies with exceptional employment brand strength. For them, applicant quality is usually far more significant.
This is what the problem looked like:
The company also knew that:
Competition for talent was increasing. Detailed statistics on talent lost to other companies documented the voracious and rising worldwide demand for computer talent, both from established domestic competitors like Google and new rising stars in China, India and other prime talent markets.
Off-shoring would not solve the problem. The company had already recruited thousands of employees abroad but Redmond remained the mother ship that all talent needed to cycle through. Immigration restrictions made it impossible to place people where they were needed.
Its employment brand had dimmed somewhat. Although Microsoft was investing heavily in cutting edge research, that work wasn’t visible in the marketplace. Consequently, the company was viewed as technologically old school and no longer a place to become involved in exciting new projects.
Turnover would remain a problem as long as young, ambitious top performers viewed Microsoft as a useful stepping stone to a lucrative start-up.
Its target audience was active in the job market but hard to reach quickly and dependably through Internet job postings because 86% were employed and viewed such postings infrequently, if at all.
The conversion rate in local talent fairs was predictable but low, producing only two hires per 1,000 invitations.
Direct sourcing was expensive and hard to scale. There was no sweet spot for communicating with potentially interested candidates, some willing to review new job openings weekly while others desired contact only annually. There was also a decreasing tolerance among top talent for multiple cold calls.
The company did, however, have some advantages:
Their internal and external audiences were identical, so observing their own employees provided critical insights.
The technology itself was familiar and Microsoft employees were among its earliest users.
It was clear early on that the interactive model for Web 2.0 was quite different from the information delivery model that built Web 1.0. Its core principle was sharing, or what the Chinese refer to as Guanxi: share with me something I value and I will reciprocate.
This interactivity took place in varied environments, each with its own implicit but unstated boundaries and customs. Unless these were respected, recruiting could easily backfire, alienating the very candidates Microsoft was trying to cultivate. Instead, relationships had to be nurtured through subtle combinations of awareness and engagement.
So Marvin’s group began experimenting. They joined communities and became familiar with their dynamics, learning the principles of “what goes around comes around.” The more they contributed to a community, often insights and information gleaned from Microsoft’s proprietary research, the more favorably they were then viewed by others with similar interests.
They began cataloging and targeting groups based on critical skills and interests:
Where there was a target population but no active community, they started one, regularly seeding it with useful information and maintaining active communication with all eager participants.
While this experimentation was taking place, traditional recruiting was also updated. Job fairs, college recruiting, Internet job postings, email marketing, direct recruiting and the jobs website continued to expose the company to the 14% of the market that was actively looking. Marvin’s team worked the other 86%.
A search for reliability engineers, always a difficult hire because of the small pool of candidates, provided proof of concept. Microsoft had identified 2,523 individuals in 17 communities. Over a period of six months, they sent out four email invitations to submit a resume. The results were excellent:
- There were 983 click-throughs, a 39% rate, and 2.5 times the average for similar ads.
- 211 candidates applied, 53% of them within 24 hours, 3.5 times the average.
- 32 candidates were interviewed, 9% of them viral (from referrals). Candidate quality was exceptionally high.
- Eight people were hired, from eight different sources, 38% of them viral.
Since that early success, the social media program has been refined and institutionalized. There are now four components:
- Research is charged with culling prospects from all possible candidate sources. Among other tasks, they monitor groups and communities, manage distribution of content and monitor interactions. Their metrics are to maintain a 100:1 ratio of total prospects to prospects qualified to interview.
- Talent Sourcers contact, vet and appraise prospects and begin relationship building. Candidates who do not advance are invited into communities and monitored. Their metrics are to maintain a 1:10 ratio of qualified prospects to active prospects.
- Talent Consultants manage the relationships with candidates qualified to interview and drive the interview process. Non-advancing candidates are invited to join Microsoft communities. Their metrics are to maintain a 1:5 ratio of qualified candidates to interviewees.
- Hiring Managers determine needs, make requests and drive the interview loop. They, too, join and participate in communities and invite in friends and colleagues. Their metrics are to maintain a 90% or better offer to acceptance ratio.
Today, by all signs, social networking is an integral component of Microsoft’s ongoing success at recruiting the industry’s best talent.
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