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Everybody's Story Matters: #TChat Recap

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“Everybody’s story matters.”

That sentiment is from an amazing interactive storybook we’ve been watching with my older daughter on the iPad. It’s called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and it’s all about the importance and power of reading books and stories.

Everybody’s story, including yours and yours and yours.

As I wrote Monday, when TalentCulture founder Meghan M. Biro and I launched #TChat last November, we had no idea it would take off like it did. It’s been an amazing journey and we are more inspired more than ever to keep the conversation moving forward.

To now keep the stories moving forward and to actually elevate 140 character Twitter texts into the spoken word every now and again. And the fact is, stories were told aloud for thousands of years before they were Tweeted and read.

We launched #TChat Radio last night and you can listen to the replay if you missed it. A special thank you to all our guests and to everyone who dialed in and listened as well as participating on the #TChat Twitter channel.

We’ve nurtured a fantastic online community of professionals and enthusiasts that we hope to continue to deliver value and grow relationships with our World of Work audience. This eclectic group of fabulous talent is comprised of leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, HR, career pros, recruiters, business consultants, marketers, public relations and social media enthusiasts, bloggers, job seekers, and a variety of eclectic innovative passersby.

The stories we share are all about re-imagining how we lead, acquire, empower and retain our workforce today, with emotional connectivity and global cultural inclusivity. It’s about the intersection of Talent + Culture, the wickedly wonderful World of Work.

Businesses will come and go. Jobs will come and go. The economy will ebb and flow.

But everybody’s story matters. Thank you for yours.

Look for our next #TChat Radio show on Tuesday, August 30. We’ll be back next week with our usual #TChat Twitter Chat.

The #TChat Twitter Chat and #TChat Radio are created and hosted by @MeghanMBiro and @KevinWGrossman, and powered by our partners @Monster_WORKS, @MonsterCareers, @HRmarketer, and @Focus.

Brand Reality of Buying Wonka Bars at Walmart: #TChat Recap

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Your brand is how your company tastes inside and out. This includes your your employment brand and B2B and/or B2C corporate brand.

Used to be that all we ever saw of the inside was what was printed on the outside — the pretty packaging and marketing spin as well as what was regulated by the Federal government (which most of us never really read, and if we did, we didn’t understand it and still don’t).

The brand tastes were still pretty much similar and controlled by the company. In fact, until recently it was only the sugar coating we ever really tasted, no matter how much we bit off.

But mercy, if we really knew the stuff that was on the inside…

Then a little phenomenon came about called social media that threw flying monkey wrenches into the batter. As I’m sure you’ve gathered, flying monkey wrenches are bittersweet and can give both employees and customers a horrible belly ache.

Not that eating highly saturated fats around the water cooler wasn’t/isn’t fun when talking smack about your employer and other employer’s gut bombs you consumed recently. But now you have access to online forums and review sites and social networking sites and unreality TV shows that delve deep into the inner workings of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Another interesting phenomenon? Most of you didn’t stop buying Wonka bars when you found out children had fallen into the chocolate lake, the one that was supposed to be child free. And those of us with kids know just how dirty kids can be.

Here’s another example: we were on a family vacation on the Oregon coast this last week where my folks live and we made multiple runs to Walmart. For tons of cheap stuff including stuff for our two little girls. Some of you may scoff, but hey, we know Walmart is the low price leader and price. We also know that they’ve had discrimination lawsuits filed against them by female workers, have been chastised forever about not allowing their employees to organize, have been accused for paying employees lower wages than other major retail chains, have been accused of buying marginal product in bulk overseas, etc.

In other words, the sugar coating for us overrides the flying monkey wrenches. That’s why we still see such a differentiation of company and employment branding today, when in the optimal organics world they really should be aligned.

So, who controls employer brand today? We do, the employees and the customers. But does that stop us from buying Wonka bars at Walmart? Or even working there?

No way. That’s the brand reality.

You can read the excellent #TChat preview Employer Branding: Best Practice or BS?, and here were the questions from last night’s #TChat:

  • Q1. What’s your definition of company or employer brand?
  • Q2. How does employer brand differ from a consumer brand?  Personal brand?
  • Q3. What makes a strong employer brand?  A weak one?
  • Q4. How does employer brand play into talent acquisition?  Retention?
  • Q5. What effect does social media have on employer branding?
  • Q6. Who controls employer brand: the company, employees, public, etc.?

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and to her TC majesty @MeghanMBiro for moderating! Hey, quick plug – #TChat Radio is coming July 26! Great guests lining up from our #TChat family. Join us!

HR Innovation Should Keep us All In Business: #TChat Recap

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“Gadgets be gone.”

Ah, no truer words have ever been spoken. That was one of my lighter “tweetable” sentiments from yesterday’s HRO Today Forum analyst panel where we discussed the process of innovation between HR technology suppliers and practitioner buyers, and more specifically the lack thereof. A recent HRO Today survey of over 100 buyers and providers of HR technology revealed quite a disparity, more so than I would’ve guessed.

The analyst panel was a great group that included Madeline Laurano, Talent Systems Analyst of The Newman Group; Mark McMillan, co-founder of Talent Function Group; Katherine Jones, Principal Analyst of Bersin & Associates; Jayson Saba, Senior Research Associate of Aberdeen Group; and myself. Look for collaborative content to come from this group and HRO Today about the state of innovation in HR technology.

The survey itself revealed that while providers for the most part feel they are highly innovative, the practitioners disagree. This is contradictory of where many vendors are with their customer service and user adoption, because time and again late vendors will tell you that besides customer advisory councils, focus groups and user group gatherings, some SaaS deployed products have created the “sandbox” approach.

This is where customers can play with features and enhancements before they’re live. They’ve also created online care/idea centers where customers can suggest, vent and collaborate. However, the democratization of customer product development hasn’t quite closed the gap yet.

My fellow analysts and I agreed that innovation must be something new, or a re-imagining, of how technology can drive efficiencies in HR/recruitment processes and activities as well as contribute to overall business growth. It must take into consideration the how and why of the workplace today — the best practices in acquiring, empowering and retaining talent. It can’t be a gadget for gadget’s sake just so the vendor can say, “Hey, you can log in to our system on your smart phones now.”

“To do what exactly?”

“To do…cool stuff. You know.”

“No, I don’t. Can I download your system information to a spreadsheet?”

“Why would you want to do that when you’ve got our perfectly good system to work within?”

“To do…cool stuff. You know.”

Maybe you’ve heard some of that kind of conversation. But, HR practitioners need to also better educate themselves on the use of technology in the workplace and even take business “tours of duty” in finance, operations, IT, customer service and more to understand what it means to run and grow a business, not just keep it in compliance and be risk-averse.

We posed similar survey questions to #TChat-land last night (questions below), and there was a resounding agreement on one thing:

Tech and innovation is great to a point, as long as it helps to humanize acquiring, empowering and retaining the workforce.

And keep us all in business.

Read Meghan’s great preview here as well as the questions from last night:

  • Q1: How important is technology innovation in acquiring, empowering and retaining a workforce today?
  • Q2: Are HR and recruitment technology providers truly “innovative” today? Why or why not?
  • Q3: Are HR and recruitment practitioners truly “innovative” today? Why or why not?
  • Q4: How have technology innovations impacted end users’ experiences? Using it or not?
  • Q5:How do you use technology to support business strategies and objectives?
  • Q6: Do HR and recruitment technology innovations support the work, or are they just gadgets? Why?
  • Q7: What can practitioners and providers do to facilitate and improve technology innovation?
  • Q8: In summary, what do you think it means to be innovative in the HR and recruiting business today?

Thank you all who participated last night! We’re taking an extended Memorial Day weekend break from #TChat next week, but we’ll resume on Tuesday, June 7

Why Do We Have Workplace Culture Clashes? #TChat Recap

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It’s the way we organize the universe.

We categorize and label everything; there’s just too much stuff out there and in our heads to manage otherwise.  We’d be blathering fools if we didn’t.

Sure, Mr. Steve Levy and I would agree that there are still too many blathering idiots in the world today, regardless of how organized they are, and they span generations.

Don’t look at us that way.

Generations — those categorizations we give to groups born over specific timeframes, like the Traditionalists (the silent generation), Baby Boomers, Gen X (the me generation, which is mine), Gen Y, Gen Z…

The over-arching question last night on #TChat was:  Do generations matter at work? The easy answer for most of those who participated was no, even though for many of us we know the answer is still unfortunately yes.

Kind of.

We expect the Traditionalists to be non-technical and Gen Y and Z to be, well, androids.  But that’s not the case — my 78-year-old dad is pretty darn good with computers, while I’ve met some young folk who couldn’t find their bottom from a hole in the ground (that’s my dad talking, not me).  No Justin Bieber fever here, and never in 3-D.

We expect our elders to be the more seasoned and smarter leaders and mentors in the workplace today, but there have been plenty of less experienced and younger, more emotionally intelligent leaders and mentors who’s impulse control trumps that of fallible old folks.

Don’t look at me that way.

Which is why mentoring shouldn’t be based on the supposed pro-rookie partnership; it should encompass bi-directional ages and experiences of all kinds.

Of course I’m speaking in generalities, but that’s the way I keep the universe organized.  The reality is we try to wrap macros around that which is unique to an individual, and when you try to wrap your head around that, you can get blathering-idiot syndrome.

But that’s now we’re supposed to recruiting and hire and develop — based on what is unique to the individual that helps to fill a specific role in a company.  I really liked the way Jillian Walker summed it up last night:

Recruit > hire on ability; Engage > determine wants; Manage > be flexible; Lead > push their limits, encourage best of the best.

Hey, the opacity in the world and the workplace is getting thinner, allowing for more of the now clichéd “transparency” to light our way.

The new transparency allows the light to shine where it never shone before.  Now, that’s not always a good thing, but more often than not, it keeps most of us honest when it comes to revealing our experience and knowledge and where the “skills” gaps are (LinkedIn profiles, blogs).  Although this is a stereotypical trend since most younger generations brought up online and in social media embrace transparency easier than older generations.  And there are still lots of folks who don’t play online, across generations.  Just check out the stats and demographics at Pew Internet.

Because we label is why we have workplace culture clashes, which is why I prefer Gen Zen, especially in our highly integrated work/life globally dispersed worlds.

I agree with Matt Charney and how he put it all together in his preview:  It  turns out that generations in the workplace share more in common than a workplace.

Indeed it does.

Mercy, it was a record turnout last night on #TChat — over 300 fine folk participated during the hour.  Thank you everyone!  Check out last night’s transcript and here were the questions we asked:

  • Q1)  What myths exist about workplace generational dynamics? Generational realities?
  • Q2)  Are there emerging personality traits, skill sets for hiring GenY, GenX, Baby Boomers, etc.?
  • Q3)  Who is currently the most “invisible” generation in the workplace and why? Most “visible”?
  • Q4) How do savvy workplace cultures recruit, engage, manage and lead all generations?
  • Q5) How does new media and global connectivity help/hinder generational gaps in the workplace?
  • Q6) How can inter-generational workforces spark innovation and evolve culture?
  • Q7) How does the term “reverse mentoring” help bridge generational divides in the workplace?

Thanks again everyone for joining us last night!  We’re taking next week off (March 8), so we’ll see you the week after on March 15.

Join the conversation live every Tuesday night as co-hosts with Kevin Grossman and Meghan M. Biro from 8-9 PM E.T. via @monster_works and @MonsterWW.  Hope to see you next time on March 15 at 8 PM ET for #TChat!

Higher Ed? Degree of Experience Counts #TChat Recap

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Remember in the 1970’s when the tech world was still in its infancy and engineers and developers walked in off the streets without college degrees?

And then again in the late 1990’s during the dot.com boom if you had any Web HTML experience and a pulse?


Ah, the good ol’ days when demand exceeded supply. Actually, the good ol’ anomalies, because for most of the recruiting and HR hiring pros of the world, a college degree tends to trump experience more often than not.

Not necessarily the name brand of the college, but the fact that you went to an accredited university and received the degree, in hand (not coming up 3 units short).

Of course that will vary from industry to company to position, but ask any recruiter today filling most if not all “technical” and “knowledge worker” reqs — you’ve got to have a college degree.

During last night’s #TChat, which was all about higher ed and what was more important — a degree or experience, veteran recruiter and co-founder of TruEvents Bill Boorman wrote, “The University of Life and the School of Hard Knocks has served me well.”

Many of us can attest to that. I know I do (and still do). But as I mentioned last night, I’m very proud of my college degree. I didn’t have the traditional college experience; I was working full-time already when I finally finished my undergrad and started (but haven’t finished, yet) grad school. I worked my butt off to complete my degree in psychology, owning every minute of every class and every world of every paper written until I walked proudly into the stadium in cap and gown on graduation day.

In a sense the University of Life started while I was still attending San Jose State University. Go Spartans!

So for me, when it comes to higher ed it’s the degree “of” experience, not the either “or”. Higher ed should inspire and light the inner fire. And the other way around. Employers should aspire to do the same when they recruit, hire and onboard because it’s good for business.

As for the ever-rising costs of higher ed, that’s a post for another time (although all the smart folks participating last night shared many insights).

A special thank you to Matt Charney for running the show and for his special guest Mark Kantrowitz.

Here were the questions from last night’s #TChat (you can read the transcript here):

  • Q1: Which matters more (and why) to Jobseekers/Recruiters: what your degree is in or which school it’s from? Answer J or R.
  • Q2: Should the goal of higher ed be to prepare students for the job market or to develop intellectual capabilities? Why?
  • Q3: What are some creative ways Employers can partner with Universities on talent identification and development?
  • Q4: Do student loans/debt impact employee productivity/performance? Can/should employers develop payback/performance incentives?
  • Q5: What are some ways, either direct or indirect, to offset the rising costs of college?
  • Q6: Are degrees from for-profit, online or foreign schools the same as traditional degrees as a hiring consideration?
  • Q7: Is going back to school for a professional degree a career booster or disruptor?

See you next week. Same time. Same place. #TChat every Tuesday evening 8-9 pm ET/5-6 pm PT

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Taking Over the World With Social, Mobile & Video Rock Stars

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Yes, we want to take over the world.  Our monster end-of-year #TChat show about how social, mobile and video as rock stars impact workplace culture and predictions for 2011 was a rousing success.

Over 1,500 smarty pants tweets in the hour alone.  A hat tip and a thank you to all of you who did.

Top Contributors included:

  1. @talentculture – 315
  2. @meghanmbiro – 147
  3. @KevinWGrossman – 120
  4. @LevyRecruits – 73
  5. @dawnrasmussen – 67
  6. @jillianwalker – 64
  7. @tedcoine – 57
  8. @DrJanice – 53
  9. @IanMondrow – 50
  10. @EmilieMeck – 47

We referenced social, mobile and video as “rock stars” — even though we meant they are figurative rock stars and wanted to discuss their impact on workplace culture.

But some of the discussion morphed to literal social media rock stars in organizations today, and that’s okay.  In fact, much of the conversation was about how companies could better perform by allowing social to permeate.

And video and mobile are the two dots they’re connected to with dotted lines to us all…

Companies that don’t allow social media are killing their brand ambassadors.

Amen to that.

Here were some of everyone’s 2011 Predictions:

  • Mobile/virtual workforce on the rise. Video conferencing and coworking are where it’s at in 2011.
  • Companies will wake up and develop more inclusive SM policies at work.
  • HR will have to ROCK in 2011 if it wants to remain relevant. It will and the gap between SM and practitioner will shrink.
  • I am expecting that Role-Based Assessment will rock and roll in 2011.
  • Google to buy FB. FB to be Google. Googling your employees now unravels their whole life & danger zone commences.
  • Closer joining up of social networks. less engagment in channels. More use of 3rd party apps.
  • Lines moving between trad. old school ‘work’ continue to get erased as more people stay connected.
  • Companies are going to go to their legal dpt to define ‘privacy’ as lines between work / play get blurred.
  • Increased buy-in & participation from corp. leaders to join the conversation (social media).
  • Traditional workplaces will continue to un-teether and ppl will have to find new creative ways to connect via SM. Hello cloud!
  • More tools will become available to consolidate our SM.
  • Global concerns about privacy will slow personal SMV growth as companies trip over themselves to push out more “relevant” content.
  • Companies incorporate multimedia interviews in their hiring strategy!
  • In 2011 LinkedIn will reveal more strategies that require people to purchase premium memberships.
  • SM for the team – coming soon, because first you have to measure networking quality!

Meghan added at the end:

“My 2010 prediction held true. Workplace Brands = An intricate collection of Personal Brands :-) So much more to talk about!”

So let’s do that next time on Tuesday, January 4, 2011, from 8-9 p.m. ET.  We’re going to continue workplace culture predictions for 2011 and talk more about what they mean!

#TChat wouldn’t be what it was without all of you, so thank you again!  Happiest of Holidays to you all!

Assessments: A Satisfying Success! #TChat Recap

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I’m full, and Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened yet.

Full from the knowledge and wisdom shared from many fabulous participants and nearly 1,000 tweets in last night’s #TChat all about assessments.  You can see all the stats and transcript here.

The premise for last night was:

There are a variety of companies who provide a myriad of different kinds of assessments.  Many are reliable and valid. And some maybe not so much. The point being, we want to know what kind of analyzing techniques you and your organization uses, for whom, and why, and what results you’ve seen to date.

By no means was this valid scientific sampling of the workplace, but what was interesting was that for the most part, no one uses pre-employment assessments.  We saw Wonderlic pop up and maybe there was one or two others, but otherwise our participants use development assessments like DiSC and MBTI (Myers Briggs).

In fact, those where primarily the main two that kept coming up over and over (although StrengthsFinder came up a few times now that I’m reviewing). Considering the list I posted in the promo, even development assessments aren’t used much.

There was some confusion early on in #TChat about whether or not folks used the DiSC and/or MBTI for recruiting/hiring, which is a no-no, but I’m pretty sure it was clarified that they were not.

When I asked about emotional intelligence assessments, I received nothing but crickets chirping.  That bummed me out.

Here’s a sampling of the questions we asked (although not all were numbered):

  • Q1: Does your org use assessments for recruiting, hiring and developing employees? Why or Why not?
  • How do you screen when hiring? Only interviews and reference checking? Industry and position specific?
  • Q2: What other types of assessments do you use? (emotional intelligence, personality, talent and skills-based, etc.)
  • Any job seekers on this chat who have recently taken a pre-employment assessment? If so, what?
  • Q3: Assessments a money sink? What’s the ROI and do any of you measure?
  • Are there internal assessments to measure first 3-6 month productivity/development?
  • Q4: Besides mainstream assessments already mentioned, why aren’t many others used in hiring and development?
  • Since last week was about emotional intelligence, anyone used MHS EQ-i, TalentSmart, etc.? Results?

Most everyone was in agreement that “retention” is the primary measure of ROI on any type of assessment. But what was resoundingly clear (and probably because we had a lot of recruiting folk on the #TChat), was the fact that face-to-face interviews were preferred when making hiring decisions.  That could be the topic for the next #TChat — the in’s and out’s of interviewing candidates for roles? We think yes.

A special thanks to Dr. Charles Handler from Rocket-Hire for joining us and sharing his assessment insight (@RocketHire).  I learned about face validity again, something I haven’t heard since my college psych days.

Also, thank you to @HRMargo, @LevyRecruits, @IanMondrow, @sbrownehr, @CyndyTrivella, @jkeithdunbar, @KateNasser, @ValueIntoWords, @AliciaSanera, @tlcolson, @BillBoorman, @AvidCareerist, @heatherhuhman, @dawnbugni and everyone else who participated!

TalentCulture captain Meghan M. Biro and her savvy team, the TC community and little ol’ me, are very grateful for you all.  Thank you again for participating. We look forward to next week already!

Here are some insightful #TChat tweets from last night. Have a bite! Happy Thanksgiving!

Emotional Intelligence: Inaugural #TChat Recap

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Bravo! It’s safe to say that our first #TChat attracted talented, insightful participants eager to engage (one of our favorite verbs). You can read up on our preparation post to see our introduction of the chat idea to the community. This is a wonderful work in progress.

At the intersection of Talent + Culture, you’re all welcomed for your like-mindedness and celebrated for your unique thinking.

At the intersection of Talent + Culture, you’re all right here.

Our community.  Your community.  The TalentCulture Community.

The first one was last night, November 16, from 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. ET.  We discussed Emotional Intelligence and the importance of assessing it and developing it, which for us, is everything that makes a best place to work – the best talent (people) and the best workplace culture.

There are many varying definitions of emotional intelligence, but the one we used last night was:

Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to understand and manage their emotions and those of others.

You can check out the participation stats here, and the transcript, but we had a smart bunch of diverse folk during the hour and beyond.  Lots who believe that the two decades of science and research behind emotional intelligence is sound and valid, and yet many contrarians who thought EI is a whole bunch of hoo-hah.

During the hour alone, there were over 240 contributors and over 1,400 tweets.  Not sure how that compares with other Tweet Chats, but we certainly weren’t expecting that kind of response.  Thrilled, but didn’t expect it.

The questions we asked included:

  • Question #1: What role do emotions play in the workplace? And should they play a role?
  • Question #2: How do you deal with conflict in the workplace?
  • Question #3: How can emotional intelligence help (or hurt) employees engage with stakeholders both inside/outside a company?
  • Question #4: Are virtual/mobile workforces changing the way we emotionally engage (or don’t) and communicate with one another?
  • Question #5: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if he/she was highly emotionally intelligent?

Okay, so #5 was a joke.  You got us there.

For those of you who asked if companies are really investing in assessing and developing emotional intelligence to improve the bottom line (like @BethHarte — thank you!), here are some examples (EI and EQ are interchangeable):

  • According to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, for leadership positions, emotional intelligence is more important than cognitive intelligence.
  • At PepsiCo, executives identified as emotionally intelligent generated 10% more productivity and added nearly $4 million in economic value.
  • At Sheraton, an emotional intelligence initiative helped increase the company’s market share by 24%.
  • L’ Oreal realized a $91,370 increase per head for salespeople selected for EQ skills. The group also had 63% less turnover than sales staff not part of the EQ program.
  • Coca-Cola saw division leaders who developed EQ competencies outperform their targets by more than 15%. Division leaders who didn’t develop their EQ missed targets by the same margin.
  • The US Air Force reduced recruiter turnover from 35% annually to 5% annually by selecting candidates high in emotional intelligence. Total cost savings of $3 million per year on a $10,000 investment.
  • Hallmark Communities sales staff who developed emotional intelligence were 25% more productive than their low EQ counterparts and EQ was more important to executive job performance than character, strategic thinking, and focus on results.
I’ve included some tweet screen shots below from last night for your viewing pleasure.  A special thanks to our very own @MeghanMBiro and @TalentCulture for their ongoing dedication to innovation within the community and beyond.  Also, very special thank you’s go out to our community supporters @HRMargo @Brainzooming @Monster_WORKS @BillBoorman @sourcepov @TanveerNaseer @AvidCareerist @ValueIntoWords @KeppieCareers and countless others for their fabulous participatory support. We heart you all!

Join us for #TChat every Tuesday from 8-9 p.m. EST, 5-6 p.m. PT and 7-8 p.m. CT.

Next week’s topic to be announced soon! You can join in from all over the globe!