Judging by their efforts, the most pro-active practitioners of social media outreach in the government are turning enthusiastically to the mobile web, Facebook, and other Gov 2.0 modes as they strive to expand their respective agencies’ prestige and audience reach.

For those of us who are focused on recruitment, it’s a little surprising that most of these initiatives don’t begin with the intent of attracting new hires. Still, these leading agencies are building their brands and that, done well, results directly in more informed and enthusiastic recruits.

Here are three examples of federal organizations that are demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the power of social media, although each emphasizes a different aspect of the challenge:

• the U.S. Army’s IPhone application,
• the White House’s use of video on its Facebook page, and
• the EPA ‘s development of guidelines for its employees’ use of social media.

The Army has released an IPhone app that allows access to a vast store of materials, including content from the Army’s Facebook and Flickr pages, as well as all the video products on its Web site. Released in mid-December, the app achieved more than 20,000 downloads in its first month alone, soaring to a Top-25 ranking for free news sources at the iTunes App store. Take note of its Find a Recruiter facility if you need evidence of the app’s more direct contribution to recruiting. You can find out how to download the app at www.army.mil/mobile/.

Best Practies case number two is the White House, which recently posted a seven-minute video on its Facebook page. The video is a professionally produced mini-documentary about the White House advance team’s trip to an Ohio town to prep for a presidential visit. From a branding standpoint, this slice-of-life coverage, complete with jiggly hand-held camera work, reinforces the authenticity and appeal of everyday activities by the team. Other agencies—particularly those with a more urgent mission to recruit employees actively—can find a polished model here. This is exposure to on-the-job reality at its best, an indispensible tool for reinforcing the appeal of an agency to the community of potential recruits, which is almost always more expansive than agency human capital planners imagine.

My last case is not flashy in any way, but underscores an emerging need in federal social media use: how to ensure that overenthusiastic employees don’t go overboard with the tools at their disposal. EPA’s guidelines are judicious and prescient. Among agencies that encourage informed employee/brand ambassador use of social media, this is a first. In the hope that other agencies will emulate it, I’m reprinting EPA’s handy flowchart below.

For several years now, I have been pontificating on the critical importance of mobile devices in terms of the next generation of recruitment. Mobile devices are ubiquitous and offer organizations the opportunity to - quite literally - put their messages in the palms of their candidates' hands. Mobile phones are personal - we don't share them with others. They are always on - unless we are on airplanes and even that is starting to change. They are almost always within arms' reach - and if they are not some of us begin to panic.

Mobile phones are powerful tools for the communication of employer brand messages and we are seeing that mobile phones are increasingly social. In July of 2008 6.4 million Americans used social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) on their mobiles. In July 2009, that number had nearly tripled to 18.3 million.  

Today, companies MUST develop a mobile strategy for talent attraction and engagement. Leveraging mobile search, mobile video, and mobile career sites along with social media is the next evolution in the employment communications world. 

I have often tried to put the impact of mobile in perspective and I found that Newsweek did a very nice job describing the mobile evolution in a video from their 'Sum Total' series. Check it out below.

Let me know what you think.

Want to know more? Reach out to me with a comment here and join the conversation.

SZE

As YouTube and Facebook remind us daily, cell phone and other spur-of-the-moment video has become a powerful one-to-many peer communication tool worldwide, particularly among Gen-Y populations. If you harbor any interest in recruiting members of this segment for your agency, can you convincingly deny that online video deserves an important place in your web toolset?

We’re all familiar with the swarm of nagging little reasons why an agency might shy away from web video, including rights questions, the perceived difficulty of making video clips 508-compliant, and just general institutional conservatism. But these perceived speed-bumps might just crumble as you consider—and argue for—digital video’s proven and widespread appeal to an essential recruiting demographic for your agency.

For the moment, let’s take employee-contributed clips off the table. I’ll grant you that government may not quite be ready for that, although several private sector companies—like Accenture and Deloitte—have carried this off quite successfully. Even so, this leaves lots of room for video shot simply and directly by the agency itself—stationary camera, no elaborate lighting, no A-B roll editing.

New tools mean new horizons for recruiting engagement.

Digital camcorders and desktop editing software have changed the video game entirely for the federal recruiter. Short video segments are simple and inexpensive to shoot and edit. They’re also remarkably easy to post online (even with 508-mandated subtitles). A good place to start? Short videos of individual employees describing their jobs and what it means to work at your agency. This is pure peer-to-peer engagement, personal and authentic and it’s ideally framed to appeal to the candidates you most want to reach.

USPTO Employee Profiles

 A few public sector organizations are already taking the lead in producing these employee vignettes or "realistic job profiles," as some have called them. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is one. I’m linking to their employee profiles here. You might also check out the short videos at Washington’s Metropolitan Police jobs site. Another example—this one repurposed for the web from a more elaborate video training piece—is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The TSA piece illustrates yet another advantage of digital video. Baseline footage can be easily be edited and recombined for all sorts of online uses, from custo m email and mobile engagement to social media placement.

As you can see, nobody is aspiring for spectacular cinematic effects in these productions. In fact, a glitzy approach would likely be counterproductive. Online video for recruiting has more to gain from simplicity and here-and-now authenticity. It speaks in a real-world accent that many of your most promising candidates find much more convincing than the written word. 

As we are all more than aware, there is great upheaval taking place in Iran. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools (collectively the "new" new media) have provided a conduit for real-time news and information that organizations like CNN (the old media - even when considering CNN.com) have not been able to match. The twitterverse has been filled with tweets about the Iranian situation and CNN's coverage thereof followed by the hashtag "#FAIL" since CNN has not kept pace with the story.

Clay Shirky delivered a TED Talk at the U.S. State Department this month (June 2009) about the impact of social media on the dissemination of information. He discusses how "Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics."This video showcases how these tools are fundamentally changing the way we communicate as a society. It is absolutely worth watching.

As you watch Clay discuss the impact of these tools on the global stage, think about these open questions on a more local HR level: How do we share information about employers? How do we engage with employer brands? How do we leverage these tools not only for attraction, but also for retention? How do we identify and empower our internal and external brand evangelists?

In NO WAY do I wish to diminish the severity of the events in Iran. The questions I raise above are about the impact of social media and the fundamental shift in the way we communicate on every level.

Let me know what you think.

Want to know more? Reach out to me with a comment here and join the conversation.

SZE

In a post earlier this year, I commented on a survey of 30,000 American undergraduates sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service. Among other findings, the survey identified factors that appeared most attractive to graduates for their first jobs out of school.

The top three potential attractors are:

• work/life balance
• job security, and
• the opportunity to serve a greater good.

As I’ve said before, all three attributes are (or should be) strong suits for federal recruiters, and the agency that doesn’t accommodate all three in its employer brand positioning is probably missing a bet. What selling point for government employment in general could be more compelling than the notion of serving the greater good--particularly in light of the surge in enthusiasm for public service inspired by last Fall’s election?

I’m not suggesting that you emphasize these three baseline attractors to the exclusion of your agency’s unique attributes—the particular challenges and satisfactions of your mission, the qualities that distinguish your workplace culture, your special programs for learning and advancement, and so on. Your recruiting proposition should draw on both government-wide and agency-specific selling points.

Even so, presenting your employment value proposition accurately and compellingly is just a start. You should consider a “push” strategy, which means propelling this authentic positioning outward into the talent marketplace, where it can work for you by engaging students who may be particularly inclined to favor your agency over others. Find the folks who find your values, culture, and mission compelling; if you handle the interaction right, you quickly find yourself in conversation with high-value prospects. .

So I’m suggesting two mutually supportive approaches here. First, make sure that your employer brand addresses the general strong points of federal employment as well as your agency-unique attributes. Second, consider “push” techniques like advertising, sponsorships, online search approaches, and even direct e-mail campaigns. In a nutshell, place your employer brand where it can attract the most attention from the most desirable and most motivated candidates.

As part of its 2008 Global Human Capital Study, IBM polled senior HR executives in more than 400 private sector companies in 40 countries. Federal human capital professionals might find certain of the study’s outcomes interesting.

Take the executives’ responses to the question “What do you see as the primary workforce-related issues facing (your) organization?” Here are the most frequently cited issues, listed in order:

• Inability to rapidly develop skills to address current/future business needs.
• Lack of leadership capability.
• Employee skills not aligned with current organizational priorities.
• Inability to collaborate/share knowledge across the organization.
• Inability to attract qualified candidates.
• Inability to build an engaged/motivated workforce.
• Inability to retain key employees.

A brief exercise. Let me propose an instructive little pen-and-paper exercise here. Without looking at the bullet points above, make your own list of the most important workforce priorities for government human capital managers. And then rate your agency or department on how well it addresses the priorities on your list.

Now reread the list from the IBM study: strategic skills development, leadership, strategic business alignment, collaboration and knowledge management, recruiting, employee engagement, retention. I’ll bet that most of these issues — with the possible exception of knowledge management — appear in your priorities list too. What’s more, if you were to write a functional description of the human capital mission in any government agency, which of these priorities could you possibly leave out?

The point in all this? Your agency’s most vexing workforce issues are just as insistent for your private sector counterparts, and they’re essentially the same around the globe. The positive thinkers among you might find this encouraging. For one thing, there’s certainly a much deeper pool of best practice models to emulate, since HR pros worldwide are grappling every day with these challenges. On the other hand, how comforting is it to realize that virtually everyone in the profession of human capital management is in the same pickle?

Speaking generally, the federal government has significantly improved its track record for hiring and retaining minorities over the last few decades. Even so, there are two minority classes that have lagged far behind: Hispanics and the disabled . Last summer our team released a white paper on recruiting and retaining the latter group; you can find it on TMPgovernment.com.

The low proportion of Hispanics in the government’s workforce is less widely known but equally troubling. In spite of being the nation’s fastest growing minority population, and in spite of comprising 12.7% of the U.S. civilian workforce, Hispanics make up only 7.8% of all federal employees. What’s more, Hispanic men and women represent only a scant 3.6% of individuals at federal senior pay levels—a proportion that drops to 2.5% when you take political appointees out of the calculation.

One more note in what could be a much longer litany of discouraging statistics: research by the Partnership for Public Service reveals that Hispanics attending college are more interested in working for the federal government than any other student segment they surveyed.

So how do we account for the government’s less-than-perfect track record on this metric? Our team at TMP Government is studying this issue in detail right now, and we will issue a white paper on the topic in just a few weeks. We won’t be delving as deeply into the why of this sad circumstance as into practical solutions for correcting the imbalance.

If you have been following my commentary in this blog, you may guess that our prescription for improvement will include niche branding, internships, mentoring, Web 2.0 approaches, workforce planning, career modeling, and a raft of other proven as well as emerging engagement techniques.

In the meantime, if you want to weigh in on this topic, suggest solutions, or point out Best Practice exemplars in government and out, don’t hesitate to contact me.