As the smartphone market increases, the demand for mobile content increases as well. And not just smartphones, but wireless devices all together. The question isn't if companies should have 2 sites; one for mobile and the other for desktop. The question is what content will people find valuable to interact with via mobile versus their desktop? I would also add the question what is the environment that the audience will be interacting with the mobile site?

There are numerous conversations around whether or not you should develop your site to be mobile enabled versus developing a separate mobile site altogether. On one side it involves a little more investment to develop 2 sites; one for the desktop and one for the mobile device. Creating 2 databases and file structures has been argued to be cumbersome, duplicative and costly. But there is a clear difference between mobile content and web content and that should be weighed into the consideration.

Let's take into consideration what people will and will not do on the mobile. Are people ready to apply to jobs directly off their phones? Not quite. The tools are starting to get there to facilitate the mobile resume, however user confidence of submitting a mobile resume to represent who they are to a prospective employee is not quite there yet. And simply sniffing out the mobile browser accessing your career site and then feeding them a mobile version of the same content proves to have problems.

The mobile web is content driven
Most smartphones (including the iPhone) cannot read flash content. That kills a lot of specific feature areas that are developed for websites. This includes social platforms like Facebook. (Take a good look and compare Facebook mobile to your Facebook on your desktop. Notice Facebook mobile doesn't have FBML components). However going back to the question of what content people want on the mobile, the behavior is completely different. The content they want is more linear, quick, simple, and transactional. So if your careersite relies on a major flash component on the homepage, you will need to rethink the mobile interaction design for the mobile user. This is a process of mobile development that takes into consideration the needs, behaviors, mobile environment of the user designed against overall site goals. The major areas of difference are dictated by user behavior.

In developing for mobile:

• The copy is edited down to easy digestible segments
• Overall content is organized to be simple, and linear
• Content driven; the 90/10 rule applied to content vs. graphics
• Transaction based for quick benefits
• Mobile SEO

Establish your mobile strategy
So before you ask yourself if you need 2 sites and that your careersite should be mobile enabled, make sure that you have a mobile strategy in place first. Mobile strategies include specific goals and objectives that mobile will deliver against. It outlines who and how your audience will interact and even find your mobile content, and how it will deliver against your overall strategic goals.

Have you ever lost a hire because no one was around to give you a salary quote?  Did you ever interview a candidate that wanted to know up front what the salary would be?  Most recruiters have probably experienced both of these scenarios.  The lucky ones are those recruiters utilizing a consistently smooth and efficient process to quote salaries.

When applicants finally interview and are excited about the possibility of employment, what is your procedure for discussing dollars?  There are two factors to consider in developing a salary quote process:  the first being identification of a decision maker and protocol to dictate salary.  The second is how you share this information with the candidate.  Even though we work diligently to streamline and expedite the hiring process in sourcing, screening and interviewing, oftentimes determining salary is overlooked – causing a definite delay in employment offers. 

Salary quotes are determined based on several variables; experience being the primary factor.  How do you count years of experience at your organization?  It matters a great deal if a candidate is working full-time, part-time or per diem and the salary quote must reflect his/her experience appropriately.  Another consideration is the environment in which the applicant is currently working.  Should outpatient and inpatient positions carry the same weight?  If the open position is for an acute care facility, how do you count experience in long-term care, office settings or other areas?  All of these factors should be evaluated and determined by your organization in order to calculate a salary quote with consistency.

Many positions require a specific degree while others offer flexibility in “preferring” a certain degree combined with experience.  The level of education is typically the next most heavily weighted determinant for salary.  These are factors that must also be considered.  In the case of nurses, do you pay Associate’s degreed and Bachelor’s degreed candidates differently?  All of these variants play an important role in determining the correct placement of the candidate’s salary quote within the pay range.

Additional schooling, the acquisition of specialized certifications and advanced skill levels may warrant an additional “bump” in compensation.  Other pay variances will also determine a candidates overall salary such as shift differentials, weekend differentials and other specific organization pay programs. 

A key consideration in determining a salary quote for an applicant is internal equity.  Once a candidate’s education and experience levels place them in a salary “bracket,” compare the quote with salaries of existing members working in the same department.   This often presents a problem when an organization increases pay ranges for incoming applicants but does not award department-wide increases to current employees.  This situation results in the new applicant receiving a higher salary quote than existing staff with the same level of experience and more tenure -- fostering a situation of inequality in the minds of your employees.  For this reason, internal equity issues must be resolved as they definitely increase turnover.

Each organization must also select a representative to calculate the quote.  Oftentimes, this is done by the compensation department.  Another method calls for Compensation to establish a standard grid value, providing the recruiter and/or hiring manager with the ability to quote salary.  Either of these systems will prove successful as long as each quote is:  timely, accurate and consistent.  If this process is delegated to only one or two eligible people, unnecessary delays in hiring could result.  There must always be several qualified people to quote salary. 

Once the salary is determined, the next step is identifying who will share the salary quote with the applicant and when will that occur.  Sometimes, it is appropriate to communicate this information up front during the time a recruiter is interviewing the candidate and other times the hiring manager discusses salary during a later interview.  Once again, either way works as long as the guidelines for your process have been determined, agreed upon and communicated to all concerned.

After an organization moves through the candidate assessment phase and salary quote determination – the quote must be documented. This will assist in averting issues of having two different people quoting two different salaries leading to candidate confusion and poor public perception/reputation in the hiring pool.  Once all these issues have been discussed and guidelines have been established, the end result will be a process that is consistent and fiscally responsible – and promotes a positive brand image.   



The winds in Washington may have shifted since last winter. But while budget pressures and Potomac politics may force “hard choices,” opportunities for step-by-step improvements give reason for optimism.

Two big issues remain on the table:

1. Taking advantage of an upsurge of interest in federal employment
2. Ensuring a pipeline of qualified candidates to replace the massive retirements which sooner or later will decimate government managerial ranks

#1: The forecast for government employment is still hot (and maybe cool)

Double-digit unemployment and high underemployment have joined with Gen Y’s response to a national Call to Serve. As a result, large numbers of candidates are applying for jobs. This unique situation generates challenges and opportunities at each stage of the hiring process:

Recruitment: Getting your share of the surge. Most job seekers lack awareness of all but a few government employers and, even then, they may be hazy on the agency’s mission. Those “dream employers,” often buoyed by fame in the media, rank high in the surveys of ideal places to work like the Universum undergrad survey of ideal employers. Meanwhile, the vast majority of federal agencies still lack awareness to take advantage of the current surge in interest. OPM is encouraging agencies to develop employer brands, making their specific advantages known in the career marketplace. It helps to remember that all agencies can tout the so-called “table stakes,” i.e., job availability and security.

Hiring process: Speed it up. The heat will be on to accelerate hiring processes that stretch into three months or more, leading top candidates to go elsewhere. After scrutinizing process issues for five months, OPM told Federal Times in late November that resumes sitting on desks created the major bottlenecks, which in turn is caused by time management issues among hiring managers. The surge has compounded the problem. Some HR professionals despair about finding the right candidates amidst mounting applications, which contain a high ratio of those lacking requisite skills sets. OPM director John Berry is determined to reverse this long-term problem quickly. For example, last June he described the structure of OPM as confusing. In January, he announced OPM’s new streamlined restructure, putting guidance and help closer to agencies. Meanwhile look for more workarounds to get the right people in place faster: direct hire authority, efforts to replace KSAs with private-sector style resumes, a move towards anticipatory hiring, i.e., hiring before vacancies are available.

Retention: Keeping new employees engaged. All agencies will need to turn the “hot” interest into government being “cool,” i.e., employee retention after the economy thaws. In 2010, agencies will be examining this issue on several fronts: attracting the right people from the beginning and ensuring job satisfaction. The Partnership for Public Service’s Guide, which TMP helped prepare, can show you how to work with your present employee survey scores to improve engagement.

Come back later this week for Preparing a pipeline: A civil government ROTC.

We all know how powerful word-of-mouth and the opinions & insights of friends, family and colleagues can be in the world of marketing.  And an overwhelming majority of us would agree that social media has made it far easier for influence – both positive and negative – to reach more ears and eyeballs than ever before. 

A recent AdvertisingAge article begins to explore the impact the powerful influence of social commentary coupled with the evolving personalization of search results will have – leading to the imminent evolution of ‘friendsourcing’.  No longer can companies go on believing (and many still do) that negative commentary from sources unknown might be disregarded or dismissed because the user doesn’t have a connection to the author of that particular comment or post.  

Working with HR clients for many years (and having been one myself) I am amazed at how little attention has been paid to the ability of candidates to share their negative experiences about a company’s sourcing and hiring practices with others.  Even the recent explosion of social media tools giving high visibility to often negative commentary and years of Gerry Crispin & Mark Mehler’s CareerXroads® job seeker experience research  (among others) has not motivated staffing organizations to be more concerned about what is being said about them online. 

Now, the very real possibility of search results including the comments and opinions of those you know and trust – not random strangers – is upon us.  Just think about the impact this can have on the sourcing ROI of hard-to-fill or high turnover hiring areas.  Good recruiters & sourcers work very hard to penetrate and gain the trust of tight knit groups of hard to find talent such as mechanical engineers, critical care nurses or software developers – looking not only for interested candidates but those willing to refer their qualified and equally in-demand friends and colleagues.  Often – this courting process takes weeks, months, even years – giving those targets ample time to share their experiences with their own networks.  Imagine the advantage gained to an organization whose sourcing and hiring practices are reflected positively and spontaneously within peer groups who actually know their fellow members. Now imagine the magnified impact of that same network receiving the negative commentary. The ROI, opportunity cost and time-to-fill improvements you’ve worked so hard for will most surely take a heavy hit – even if temporarily.

Any good social media pundit will tell you that conversations positive and negative are happening about you already – and now is the time to get involved and join in.   The time for “baby-steps” and “dipping a toe” has passed.  If your staffing organization has not figured out how social media impacts your sourcing strategy and results– your ship is sailing without a captain at the wheel.

I truly believe the impending, if not upon us, collision of search and social will have an impact far greater than the sum of its parts.  Reminds me of that old Reese’s ® Peanut Butter Cup commercial: “You got peanut butter on my chocolate!” “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” But together – it became something magical. And the rest is history.



In our view at TMP Government, this is a question that sorely needs to be asked. My colleague John Bersentes and I have attempted to frame an answer to this puzzle in an article forthcoming in the March issue of The Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

We raise concerns about issues like…

• competition with the private sector for talented Latinos
• the relative scarcity of Hispanic-Americans in regions where the Feds recruit most heavily
• the absence of visible high-level government champions for Hispanic inclusion
• the absence of multi-agency, common-cause initiatives to tackle the challenge
• the possibility that agencies are unconsciously channeling bilingual Hispanics into customer contact positions and effectively discounting their qualifications for other career paths

The government’s lack of progress on this front is a very serious problem—especially considering the rapid growth of the Hispanic workforce in the American economy at large. If the Feds continue to lose ground here at the accelerating pace we’re observing, there will almost certainly be formal mandates from the top to kick Hispanic recruiting into gear. But I’m just wondering if a state-of-emergency catch-up policy is really the soundest human capital policy.

You can find a long excerpt from John’s and my article right now on ERE.net. Your best bet is to go here to read the posted excerpt and add your comments.

There is no question the economic downturn is adversely impacting most Americans.  But, the recent recession serves as a severe wake up call for those of us under the age of 30.  Generation Y was brought up during the height of American prosperity.  Our teachers taught us the United States is the best country on Earth, with more opportunities than any other land.  We were powerful. We learned about The Great Depression and that we lost the Vietnam War, but those things were just in history books, assuredly just flukes; they wouldn't happen again.   In general, our parents were more successful than parents had ever been before, resulting in our more privileged childhoods than previous generations experienced.  Such prosperity prompted our teachers, parents and grandparents to instill in us that we could grow up to be anything we wanted - the choice was ours.  All of this led Gen Y to develop a false sense of security.  It never dawned on Gen Yers that the world wasn’t our oyster.  It was a foreign notion that America was vulnerable to economic struggles.

But it happened.  The recession took off our rose-colored glasses and smashed them.  It’s got our full attention, affecting our work behaviors and attitudes regarding employment most drastically.  But it’s not breaking our spirit, 50% of Gen Yers feel our job outlook is still positive.

Rocking our sense of stability, we endured our friends, coworkers, bosses, parents and perhaps even ourselves being laid off or receiving a cut in pay.  Often Gen Y employees are spared because of our much lower salaries compared to Gen Xers and Boomers.  Fortunate Gen Yers evading a job loss are absorbing the responsibilities of these former staff members.  If we’re smart, we've accepted the challenge handed to us and we're mastering the tasks performed by Gen Xers and Boomers who were let go, performing their jobs just as well as they once did.  Our motivation is selfish. It’s not for the benefit of our employer; it’s to expand our skill set in preparation for our next job, perhaps in-house but more likely for a competitor.

While the capable of us have taken on the roles of Gen Xers and Boomers, we’ve likely done it without a raise, or at best, a minimal one.  Put simply, this infuriates us.  Gen Y was given constant positive reinforcement. We had piggy banks full of allowance earned just for making our bed or cleaning our own room.  The worst player on the team was awarded a "Most Improved" trophy.  When the economy changes for the better, we expect to be compensated, handsomely, for our efforts. Or we’ll leave.

But for now, we’ll stay put; 67% of Gen Yers are likely to stay in his or her current job.  Prior to the recession, Gen Y employees were in high demand.  We didn’t think twice about quitting a job that wasn’t quite fulfilling because there were employers waiting in droves to interview us.  But now, we empathize with our unemployed friends and family agonizing over their unsuccessful job search, ourselves learning that sometimes a paycheck from a mind-numbing or demeaning job beats depending on Mom and Dad and the government.  For now, we’re thankful for employment and have temporarily stopped job hopping. 

One would think that a recession would force maturity on Gen Y and we would begin to take on the characteristics of previous generations, but this isn't so.  If anything, the recession is reinforcing our attitudes on employment, affirming to us we've been right all along.  We're gaining even more confidence and becoming more self-assured from taking on the job responsibilities of Xers and Boomers.  This is falsely perceived as arrogance by our elders.  A true Gen Y employee will always crave learning and additional training. We understand we don’t know everything, though we will rarely publically admit it.

If you thought we had no employer loyalty before the recession, you were right.  In 2008, 70% of recent grads left a position within two years of being hired.  As a result of this recession and how we or our friends have been treated, our employer loyalty is declining.  Depending on the extent of how unfairly your Gen Y employees perceive they are being handled, they’re likely looking for a job now (and have been for quite some time), even before substantial growth in the job market.  We’ve learned to be more selective in choosing our next employer, lest we get “stuck” somewhere again.  We’ll do our research and turn to social media, friends and family to get the inside scoop on working for an organization.  Our decision to accept an employment offer will heavily weigh on the manner in which the organization treated its’ employees during the recession.  Gen Y won't settle next time: they'll only accept a meaningful job, with flexibility, a decent salary and at a stable company that treats them with respect; allowing them to grow and advance in their career.

When the economy does rebound, to retain your current Gen Y employees, make sure your organization makes it up to these individuals for all of the cutbacks endured or risk them leaving.  Give them the raises, promotions and office perks they deserve for a job well done and for sticking it out during tough times.  Assuredly, many of them will find new jobs anyway.  However, these offerings will be seen as good faith efforts for other Gen Yers seeking a new employment home.  To replace exiting Gen Yers, you'll need to prepare your organization for the surge in recruitment and include Gen Y candidates in your recruitment strategy.  Gen Yers like to be pursued.  To maximize your appeal to younger candidates, give them individual, personal attention and make them feel needed.  We like to be the star of every show.  Ensure your work environment and corporate culture are attractive: implement work-life balance initiatives, allow us to network via social media, embrace a culture of learning and sharing to keep us constantly engaged and improving our skills, allow us to utilize new technologies to complete our tasks and publically recognize and reward us for our accomplishments. Create philanthropic programs for us to participate in, develop a structured career path for us to advance ourselves and provide adequate coaching and feedback on our performance.  Love us or hate us, most all organizations need Gen Y employees to succeed.

Things have changed so completely in the way candidates consume knowledge, feel about their jobs and how we will be staffing healthcare delivery facilities in the next few years, that it is definitely time to rethink the size of the recruiting staff, the mix of that staff and their role allocation.

Baby Boomers, the largest work group for 30 years until Generation Y recently eclipsed them, have always accepted long response times from recruiters, traditional ways of communicating and they believe in joining an organization if not for a lifetime, at the very least, for a long time. The Ys expect everything instantaneously, including their interest in, and a response about, a position and they consider most professional opportunities as viable only as long as it serves their needs. These needs are usually a lofty combination of continuously being challenged professionally and providing an adequate work/life balance.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are scrambling to develop an interface with Smart Phones so anyone who wants a quick response about an application can get it through a text. Healthcare delivery systems know they can only control the recruitment process if they respond quickly to candidates, but are there adequate hours for recruiters to be all things to all people?

As the world continues to morph into our ever-speeding lives and revolve around our Smart Phones and the internet, it is no longer feasible to think we can continue without revaluating processes and the staff that support those processes.

When looking at how you might change things consider:

1. How does the current process feel from the eyes of the candidate? Most current on-line systems have been set up to accommodate the needs of the recruiter and/or hiring managers. Routinely the application is too long, requires too much time and information and the system crashes regularly.
2. What can I simplify within the process that will reduce time? The idea is to get the candidate into the system with just enough data for initial screening and contact. Ask them to opt-in to text messages and you’ll increase interest, call-back responses and control. Develop an abbreviated application that is quick for the applicant and quick for the recruiter. Screen for the basics and develop an ensuing database that fills the pipeline. Then look at everything else involved with getting the candidate in the door. Do you have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the hiring manager? Can you always count on being able to book an appointment electronically and in real-time with the manager? What about the time it takes for physicals and drug screens? On-line and in real-time? Do you have a streamlined process for references and license verification? These administrative systems should be working in parallel with the interview process and not by a highly paid professional recruiter.
3. In light of today’s recruiting environment am I asking too much of recruiters who continue to work within a traditional process? Most “Best Practice” non-healthcare recruiting functions include a person who goes through the initial applications, responds personally and quickly (within the hour) and then sorts those candidates into workable groups for the recruiter. You cannot expect a recruiter to be recruiting, keep the hiring managers happy and cruising the in-box providing turnaround times of an hour or less, unless they have five heads and ten arms. And that doesn’t include Job Fairs, committee meetings and all the other odd jobs tossed the way of the recruiter. Provide administrative support—it’s so worth the money. If you are harnessing the internet appropriately, then you are producing candidates at a very low cost-per-application and that alone will justify paying for bodies to capitalize on the high-functioning, but much less expensive internet.
4. What about social applications such as Facebook? Over 750 hospitals and healthcare providers in the United States have a social presence connected in some way to their recruitment and retention functions. We aren’t there yet, and simply grappling with the social sites in terms of policies covering access to the sites at work is daunting. But the sites are growing and by the end of the year, facilities that have world class recruiting processes will have a strong social presence. Remember at the very least you need to post positive videos on YouTube. It doesn’t cost anything, doesn’t appear to be outdated as quickly as social sites and it helps control the message and brand among all the conversations.
5. How can we keep candidates interested and wanting to be selected for the position for which they have applied? Because Generation Y does not believe accepting a position means they will work forever for an organization, accepting that position doesn’t carry the same magnitude as it did for the Baby Boomers or even the Generation Xers. Which facility gets back to them and which one offers a position first is normally the one they accept. But if a candidate is communicated with and sold on the position, then much of that “whoever is first” can be eliminated. Communicate, communicate and sell, sell, sell. Make people feel special—even lucky to be chosen. Post a video about what the hiring process is and why they might want to work at your organization on the web site. One of the best examples is Google’s video about working for Google and what to expect in the hiring process.
6. What is the single most important element in recruiting today? Your web site. Thirteen billion Google searches were conducted last month for jobs alone. You need to come up in the first few listings on those searches and once you come up on the Google pages, you must link to a robust web site that provides almost unlimited information about the organization, the job specifically and what it is like to work at the facility. You need videos that reflect the mission and vision and ultimately the practice environment. Your web site needs to be fun, multi-functioning and easy to navigate.

As the internet, search and social applications drive more and better qualified candidates to the door, money spent on traditional candidate drivers can and should be moved to different places. We can no longer expect recruiters to do everything from pulling the resumes, to screening and hiring and then processing all of the paper work. It’s not a smart use of resources. They need to be highly functional and appropriately compensated. They also need administrative support because it is simply more time consuming to identify the best candidates in a sea of online applications. Processes must be streamlined and framed to accommodate the needs of the new generations. We cannot continue to do it the way it has always been done, but rather we need to look at every step and figure out how we can eliminate it or at least streamline it.

Think of your process as being owned by the internet, because it is. Then think about how you are going to harness the power of the internet and what that means to the size of your staff, the mix of that staff and the roles needed to support the new functions. Welcome to 2010.



In October I commented on government agencies’ growing use of Facebook and Twitter. My focus then, based on a pair of September articles in Federal Computing Week, was on these social media tools as aids to recruitment. I’ve since taken a closer look at this trend.

The takeaway from my informal scan of federal social media: this trend is growing like a swath of mushrooms after a spring rain. I counted more than thirty major agencies or departments with Facebook pages and innumerable others on Twitter (contact me for a full list, if you’re interested).

None of the government Facebook pages that I found appears to be mounted with much conscious attention to recruiting. Most are devoted to agency programs and activities, and most are (first) linked from their sponsor’s home page, rather than their Careers sections.

What does this tell us? I’d venture that in most of these instances the creative impetus to enter the social media realm originated with agency public affairs professionals rather than HR staff. This doesn’t diminish their effectiveness as collateral recruiting tools. After all, they do reinforce their sponsoring agencies’ brands, and that’s a bonus for recruiting…although a bit more focus on the agency culture--and its employees—would be nice. The same goes for Twitter.

All this is good news for human capital professionals and recruiters, even if your agency’s Facebook and Twitter outreach is administered by your public affairs department. In the first place, an agency social media presence is a powerful branding “hook” for engaging potential recruits. Just because HR doesn’t own your agency’s social media resources doesn’t disqualify you from at least promoting it in your recruiting outreach, both online and off.

What’s more, these tools can provide a recruiting engagement platform that’s accessible to HR at virtually no cost other than the exercise of your team’s intra-agency persuasive powers. If you can sell the team that administers these resources on letting HR contribute content, that’s a big win indeed for your recruiting program.

Although employer branding has been around for years (Simon Barrow of TMP Worldwide’s UK subsidiary defined the term back in 1996), it hasn’t quite received presidential attention. In fact, government agencies, however, in spite of encouragement from OPM, have been slow to make it a priority. But all that’s about to change. In October, Harvard’s Kennedy School along with University of Maryland and OPM held a closed door meeting with members of the administration and Congress. OPM Director John Berry is taking key ideas garnered from the gathering to the president.  As reported by The Washington Post, one of the hot topics is that “Uncle Sam should do a better job branding and promoting his work. “

Agencies have their own reasons for being and need their own unique brands. The Post article states it well: “The Army and the Marine Corps know how to do it. Certainly money is a motivating factor for recruits, but the military, in part through TV commercials, has successfully branded itself as a place where young men and women go to become mature adults with a clear sense of mission. You can't say that about your average civilian agency.” [Emphasis supplied]

The word wasn’t common when government workforces shrunk while government contractors grew. The Obama administration is reversing a trend that goes back to President Eisenhower. Now government managers and HR must get more work done by federal employees rather than contractors. Government acquisition has stepped up as the first prime example. In April Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that he would hire “as many as 13,000 new civil servants in 2010 to replace contractors and up to 30,000 new civil servants in place of contractors over the next five years” This task involves shifting thousands of contractor employees to the government payroll. Gates feels getting more work done in-house is essential to restoring accountability to procurement.

Even with upsurge in applications to government, agencies know that bolstering the acquisition workforce and hiring former contractors will not be easy. It strikes at the root of defining competencies and comparing experience to potential. To find qualified people, some agencies may well  consider hiring and training “generalist” technical and business professionals to become, as TMP’s program for the Federal Acquisition Coalition puts it, “America’s buyers.” I’ll wrap my “government recruitment challenges and trends” in my next post, so check back soon.