Are you ready for the next “War for Talent in Healthcare?”

Frankly, no.

I have little patience for superficial and inane slogans in general, and no patience for this slogan in particular. (An actual headline for a webinar, in case you’re wondering). In the context of healthcare, there is a jarring dissonance between the term “war” (violence, carnage, and death) and the term “healthcare” (care, compassion, and hope). Such thoughtless and lazy use of concepts marks a thoughtless and lazy mind. Unfortunately, I see it all the time. It just ain’t pretty.

Looking beyond healthcare to Talent Acquisition as a whole, I find this term is increasingly anachronistic and reflective of a tired philosophy, one that pits “us” against “them” in a “battle for supremacy”. Yep, it’s easy to use the terms. Yet false and misleading. And potentially destructive. No one benefits for long from a hostile mindset or a continuous escalation of competition.

A different and more progressive philosophy acknowledges competition but doesn’t attempt to destroy its competitor. In healthcare this philosophy allows for collaboration between talent teams within different companies as everyone seeks solutions for the shortages in nursing, rehab, and other critical skill areas. And this philosophy is not new, just overlooked. Maybe if we give it a new, hip name that will help raise its image. Let’s call it “open networking.”

Now that I’ve coined the term, tell me, what does it mean to you?

However, the very title of the book presents a paradox: you cannot consume authenticity. If authenticity is defined as that which is fundamentally real and without pretense, then manufacturing the pretense of authenticity destroys the meaning. Pretending to be authentic is a nonsensical idea, and attempting to sell authenticity is itself an inauthentic action.

Here’s a real-world example: the corporate mission and values statement. They’re flashy; they’re ubiquitous; they’re often effectively meaningless. I’ve worked for a company that used the statement as a cover for poor business practices, and I’m currently working for a company that seeks to embody it’s statement as fully as possible. The difference is striking: one company advertises authenticity, the other lives it.

Wow, that’s a big response for a book I haven’t read yet. Now to see whether I’ll have to eat this post. (I like my blogs with a bit of pepper and a handful of salt).

Amanda Picton doesn’t like disillusioning nursing students about their first job out of school, “but I want to be honest with them.”

So when she tells the students who call her for career advice to look in Texas and expect $50,000 a year, rather than in Missouri for $100,000, she’s not surprised that some of them tell her she’s wrong. “In nursing school they are misled to believe they are going to be making $50 an hour and are in demand everywhere,” says Picton. “We do this (recruit and place nurses) everyday. We know what the market is like.”

Amanda knows it’s tough to be authentic. For her and other recruiters, being authentic doesn’t always get the quick win; in fact, it can result in a highly-qualified candidate deciding not to apply. For those who have a myopic view of success, losing a single candidate is tantamount to failure.

Only it’s not.

Recruiting is not about sales. Many recruiters and experts will disagree with me on this, but the fundamental nature of human interaction in recruiting precludes the use of a sales methodology. To put it bluntly, candidates place their livelihoods on the line with a recruiter. They’re not buying a computer or a car—objects with no intrinsic value—they’re determining their financial emotional, and mental fate. And in order to do that, they need to trust that the recruiter who is presenting the opportunity to them is doing so with honesty; they need to know that the recruiter is authentically concerned for their well-being.

With this expanded view of recruiting we define success not simply as positions filled, but as positions filled with the right person.

With this in mind, here’s my simple prescription to recruiters for building credibility through authenticity:

• Always follow the Golden Rule

I’m amazed at how finely tuned people’s BS meters are. I’m also amazed at how much BS is out there.

Over the past year I’ve become deeply involved in the sustainability movement, a return to my roots, really. And with each passing day the gap between my “work” and my passion has grown wider.

This is one of the major reasons I’ve been finding it so difficult to write here. Every time I started a post about traditional recruiting/talent management dilemmas I ended up trying to respond from a traditional corporate capitalist perspective, and every time the content rang false. A traditional corporate capitalist I am not. But I have been acting like one for a number of reasons, bifurcating my professional and personal identities to avoid the inescapable clash of cultures and philosophies. In retrospect none of those reasons seem compelling, but they may have been necessary for me to get here.

And here is where I stand now, firmly embracing my personal convictions as they relate to business in general and “talent management” in particular. The time for a new approach is come. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go water my garden.

He also spoke quite animatedly and passionately about programming. I asked him what a good language for someone in my line of work might be, and he waxed poetic on Ruby on Rails. I now have a couple pages of notes to help me get started on my programming career.

In the process of giving me advice, Dan (we’ll call him Dan, though I never got his name) filled me in on how computers were a hobby of his in high school and college, and that he learned some HTML and Java while he got his degree in photography. So, to be clear, Dan works at Apple, which is his second tech job after working fir the City of Austin for four years, with no formal degree. He has a few certifications, but no formal degree.

How did Dan land such a sweet gig without the résumé bling to even get him in the door?

A recommendation.

One of his coworkers at the C of A was a former employee at Apple and wanted to go back. They made a deal that whoever got hired first would help the other guy in the door. Two months after his buddy got hired, Dan was working for Apple, too.

What does this mean? Two things:

1. The best hires are referrals
2. Network your ass off

The end.

And here is where you spend your ad money.

BUT! Do NOT let the ad agency oversell your company. Seriously. The candidate’s will KNOW if you’re lying.

Let’s pretend I’m a candidate:

Lalalalala, just googling jobs at work…oh, what’s this? An ad for Initech? Wow, they really have a great place! I’d LOVE to work there. I think I might apply.

THEN I google the company again, this time looking for all the problems with it. I check out blogs, I chat with current employees, and I find out that, in the REAL WORLD, Initech looks very little like the ad claims. And I MIGHT have considered working there if I knew the truth beforehand, but now I’m totally DISAPPOINTED. My expectations—built up by the ad—have not been met. So maybe I won’t apply.

Now this job at Microsoft…

• you made on Word (or even In Design for the fancy people) and had printed at Kinkos?

OR

• you sent to an ad agency for professional-level ad copy?

What I’ve seen and heard from employees is this:

• Don’t waste money trying to impress us with slick campaigns; just show us the money and the respect
• If you DO produce a slick campaign we’re going to wonder a) how much money you spent, and b) why you’re so concerned about APPEARANCE

What it boils down to is authenticity. As long as you produce quality collateral that gets employees’ attention, and as long as you’re representing what employees know to be the TRUTH about the company, you’re golden. In fact, collateral produced in-house will almost always ring truer and generate a better response than flashy ad-copy produced by a mega ad firm—and that LOOKS like all the other collateral produced by a mega ad firm.

Of course, you CAN make a mess of your collateral, but then so can an ad firm. So an even better idea is to have your employees help you create the brand. Then they’re invested in it, you’ve conducted a simultaneous focus group, and you can be pretty sure the finished product will go a long way toward representing you in an authentic and effective way.

This raises another question: do you think your CANDIDATES really notice the difference between a nicely designed position profile that

• you made on Word (or even In Design for the fancy people) and had printed at Kinkos?

OR

• you sent to an ad agency for professional-level ad copy?

But that…is the subject of the next post.