Admitting when you’re wrong
This was originally published on the PSC blog on Feb. 6, 2020
The last year has been a lot for me and the team at PSC. A lot of work, clients, joy, happiness, challenges, you name it, and whatever it was, we had abundance. That includes an abundance of a ha moments. You may have read about a few of these here, here and here. What’s really happened in the last year was I’ve realized just how wrong we are about a lot of things.
All of us rebels out here are trying hard AF to make change in an industry that talks like they want change but is quite reticent to change. We’ve made the attempts to ground this change in pithy analogies to marketing and sales. Hell, I even talked about this in 2013 – a full 7 years ago! We’ve even started talking about candidate experiences being more like consumer experiences. A few years ago, I talked about creating frictionless experiences for talent. I am here to tell you that after a LOT of research and conversations, I was completely and unequivocally wrong.
Here’s what I’ve learned in a nutshell that has brought me to this crossroads:
1. We talk to ourselves about ourselves and rarely to the actual audience
2. Candidates have no idea what we are talking about
3. Everyone knows what a good customer experience feels like
4. No one (with few exceptions) knows what a good candidate experience feels like
All of this has led me to believe the opposite of what I talked about in the ill-fated “frictionless experiences” session. The way we fix what we’ve broken, and yes, we broke this, is to look at where we are placing our friction points. But before we can do any of that, we need to know where we are placing our friction and we need to do that my covering off #1 on the list. I’ve seen survey data, but I have also been doing some social candidate listening and it tells me more than any survey will. It tells me where they are experiencing all of the friction. It tells me what they hate. It tells me when something goes well. But it tells me what they are actually thinking and the sentiment of those thoughts.
When we understand where we have friction, we can start looking at where we can more elegantly place it to get the results we are going for. In reality, we can design the greatest candidate experience in the world (that includes well-placed friction), but in the end, we will still have sad people who we don’t hire. We can only hire 1 person per job in most cases. Even when we are talking volume hiring, you can’t hire all of the people who apply. Ever. It’s not how any of this works. So the best candidate experiences will still end up with sad people. But, when we move friction points around in our experience, we can get to a net result of #fewersadpeople. Which we all know is a good thing for our bottom line. We know that fewer sad people will result in an uptick in spend (according to the Talent Board). How do we get fewer sad people? This is where the magic is. It’s in getting people to screen themselves in and out with employer brand content and stories that are LEGIT. I am tired of authentic and real. I am more focused on honest and legit. Because they don’t know what the hell we are talking about, they are not thinking everything through.
It’s like my new dog. Piper is a German Shepherd. The AKC tells me: “German Shepherds will be gentle family pets and steadfast guardians, but, the breed standard says, there’s a “certain aloofness that does not lend itself to immediate and indiscriminate friendships.” What it should say is: “German Shepherds will be gentle family pets and steadfast guardians (read: BARKS A LOT), but, the breed standard says, there’s a “certain aloofness that does not lend itself to immediate and indiscriminate friendships. (read: if you don’t live here, don’t come in)” We should be more honest in our communications so we don’t end up with a Piper – just kidding, I like her.
Look for more content this year about friction. Good examples, bad examples, and tips and tricks. If you haven’t signed up for the newsletter, now is a great time to do it (the form is right below this post!). I‘ll be sharing exclusive content with subscribers that won’t appear here. Also, if you want to start measuring your friction points, call me, I am taking a few more early adopters in our Candidate Experience Index product.