I ran into Mason Wong on Ryze in August. Mason is the staffing manager for Advent Software. I asked him if he thought Ryze-like social software would find its way into the features of staffing solutions from companies like Hire.com. He wrote:

While the fundamental mission and functionality of Ryze is to expand an individual's network while employing a relatively narrow set of criteria in identifying new contacts, the fundamental mission of Hire and the functionality of its applications are to bring efficiencies to processes involving high volumes of people and heavy criteria sets in sourcing and selection. I, too, have wondered if the similarities between Ryze and Hire can ever be enough to bridge the differences so the two worlds could connect.

I could envision a highly progressive and online savvy recruiter, with a lot more available time than any actively working recruiters that I know, trying to maintain an online community of potential job candidates using a Ryze-like guest book style site as a supplement to a more traditional email newsletter subscription list, but this really is limited to the sourcing side of recruitment, which is only one part of the full recruitment process supported by Hire-like systems.

I must admit, I have mostly doubts about the value in linking up Ryze-like social services with Hire-like systems, especially because it has been my experience that to effectively use Ryze and to effectively use Hire applications, it takes a lot of time and focus for each. Without a clearly viable profit driven model behind such an effort, I don't expect many recruiters, much less hiring managers, diving into some sort of synergy between the two.

I agree with Mason's observations but I have a few other conclusions.

Imagine that, upon signing up at your career site, job seekers got a Ryze-like page. Even better, you get a weblog and news aggregator too. You can not only look for work, but easily subscribe to job listings as RSS feeds, mingle with other data mining software engineers, post about your new explorations in technology and work.

In other words, what happens if you make it easy for job seekers to build social capital?

A few guesses...

• Better Navigation. Social network features (like Technorati, blogrolls, buddy lists) make it easy locate clusters of related professionals. Job seekers are effectively answering in advance the question "Well, if you aren't available, do you know someone who is?"
• Pre-branding. The knowledge reflected in the blogs, wikis, and discussion forums becomes a way for your employees to become aware of potential candidates.
• Fresher Content. Bloggers tend to post frequently, hundreds of times more often than they update HR profiles or resumes. Contact information is up to date.
• Transparency and Conversation. It may take getting used to, but you'll start to get useful and frank feedback about the job seeking experience, the company's products, etc. Engagement that's ongoing, perhaps throughout a career.  
• Career site as destination. To the degree your organization niches, your career site may be a magnet for people in related industry or occupational categories. Hang out with the other financial engineering leaders.

About your reservations, Mason, you're right for now. The positioning of the smart folks at Hire.com, and every other Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or Human Capital Management (HCM) solution, has been to automate HR bureaucracy. Their systems can save time, effort, and money in the day-to-day life of a recruiter.

This won't be enough.  Skilled labor shortages will become more pronounced in the next 9-18 months. Recruiter workflow optimization, once executed, is yielding diminishing returns.  

So where do you put your next staffing dollar? The inputs to the process: job seekers.

Manufacturing went through the same deep shift, widening from an internal focus to an external focus. From managing internal logistics to reaching outside the corporate boundary to the external supply chain. None of the new skills and practices, like MRP or quality circles, were abandoned. Attention widened to include a network of suppliers. And new practices emerged to better harmonize the internal and external.

When raw material is talent, the processes are more difficult than manufacturing lives with. The products are widely differentiated (people don't have SKUs). What they can do and where they fit changes day to day. The goods can't be moved when and where needed via UPS. And, unlike a can of soup, these goods have opinions and desires of their own.  

So ATS and HCM vendors can expect pressure to serve this new focus. Employers like you will demand features that create value for candidates. Increasing a job seeker's social capital is just one type of value, one that Ryze supports.

So I see a future for Ryze's in HR.

• As extensions to the career relationship.
• As new tools for data mining.
• As personal branding tools.
• As a retention tool, binding workers to your intranet and extranet social networks. 

After all, schmoozespace isn't so far from recruiting, is it?

[aka staffing]

It's time again to stretch your brain. If you're in the Bay Area this week, drive to Burlingame for the 11th Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.

 

If you're old enough you may remember how fascinating it was that someone could write the Declaration of Independence on the back of a stamp, or carve miniature sailing ships in a bottle. Ummm, this is smaller.

I can follow the presentations with my college chem1A memories. The good news: tutorials start tomorrow. 

Most of the research being presented is 2-5 years from commercialization. You can see where the scientists are putting their time and their investors are betting their money. For those who want to understand the trajectory of this transformational technology, and get a realistic feel for the short term timeline, there are few better places to spend this week than the San Francisco Airport Marriott. btw, I'm a huge fan of the Foresight Institute.

With my background in marketing management and software engineering, nanotechnology is a huge stretch for me. Especially if I want to add value. As in IT, the bleeding edge today is boring routine in 12 months. So I have to both catch up and climb on the new treadmill. There's nothing like a challenge.

The San Francisco Chronicle: On The Record: Larry Ellison:

Ellison pulled out a crystal ball when asked what Silicon Valley will be like in five or 10 years: "It's going to be a lot more like Detroit than like Silicon Valley. The great news is we're going to be the molecular biology hub for the world, but we will have more competition -- in San Diego, in Boston, in Tel Aviv. But the gestation period of a company in molecular biology is very different from that of a software company. The returns will be slower in coming, so the whole metabolism of the valley will have to be retuned for that industry."

So, can I use my C# skills in molecular biology? Will we start teaching gene splicing to grade schoolers, so they'll be ready for college?  

Mason Wong asked, "What kind of job market recovery do you think the nation will experience? Slow and gradual recovery over years? Sudden and surprising surge 6 months from now?"

The big factors that concern me in addition to the usual macro indicators:

• How much are VCs and banks funding the small business entrepreneurs who create most of the jobs in any recovery?
  • Ask around. New money isn't available.
• Will the increase in Federal borrowing (to meet budget deficits) suck up the money available for lending used for business expansion?
  • Could force interest rates up.
• Will the Bush/Cheney trickle-down economic policy still be in force?
  • Trickle-down stimulus is slower and less direct than every other means.
• Will resolution of California Gubernatorial and Presidential elections reduce managerial fear and anxiety? In what direction will the results of those elections move consumers?
• Will the average American think our $1 billion a week spending on Afghanistan and Iraq will help or hurt the U.S. economy?
• Is the resumption of a wartime footing and military-industrial complex redirecting innovation (the employment multiplier) from the private sector?
  • Smart people often follow the money. But more jobs are usually made when a new technology sells to the worldwide market instead of just Uncle Sam.
• How fast and far will labor market arbitrage drive down domestic white collar wages, so IT jobs remain here instead of move to India?
  • You're a CIO. Would you resist offshoring your help desk (saving you $2 of $4) if your local workers offer to take a 60% pay cut? A 50% pay cut? How about cutting the pay of your senior software engineers from $75k to $40k a year, and the juniors from $35 to $20?
  • You're a programmer. Would you take those cuts?  
• How badly will state and local government downsizing create new unemployment or impose new costs that stifle economic growth? 

I'm neither an inspired fortune teller nor an informed Mr. Greenspan. I'm betting on fits and starts, uneven growth from county to county and state to state, and a relapse after the 2004 election should Bush win.

[a klog apart]

One in 4 or 5 bloggers will start a new job this year. Maybe 750 thousand. They and their blogs are at risk.

Ever walk out of a job interview only to discover that you've signed away

(a) your right to blog on your own site,

(b) the freedom to post from work, and

(c) that if you violate a or b, your employer will lay claim to your weblogs, confiscate them, fire you, and sue you?

Employment and confidentiality agreeements frequently have language like this.

I want a piece of paper that I can bring to the interview, that the employer's agent can sign, that preserves my blog, my rights to blog, my ownership of my blog, and explicit freedom from retaliation for anything I post.

I want a similar piece of paper that a union bargaining unit can use.

Is there a Creative Commons style of packaging that can make it easy to create this boilerplate?

Any blawgers who'd care to suggest such language?

[a klog apart]

Gil Friend:

A larger question here, aside from the direct impact on companies that Cringely flags, is the relationship between micro and macro considerations here. The quest for ever lower labor costs may make competitive sense for individual companies (at least those that view labor as an expense rather than an investment), but what happens as it cuts the purchasing power of the US workforce? What happens as China evolves from a low cost labor haven into a serious technical competitor than can give US (and European) companies a run for their money?

The signs are already showing. Tech companies that moved manufacturing to China to cut labor costs 85% are now finding, to their surprise, quality of engineers, plants and infrasturcture comparable to any in the world.

[a klog apart]

Every U.S. government agency has a "careers" or "jobs" page. Under new orders, you won't find jobs there. Or be able to apply for them. For that, go to a portal run by the Office of Personnel Management.

Benefits:

• Faster security clearance and background checks.
• Able to mine more résumés.
• Able to browse more jobs.
• Chance to simplify the application process.

Concerns:

• Privacy. Or lack thereof. Could be a Total Information Awareness branding snafu.
• Bland Branding. Forcing everyone to recruit with the same forms, the same tools, makes it harder for job seekers to tell employers apart, to choose the right jobs.
• Choked Innovation. This makes the Fed's recruiting ecosystem homogenous, succeptible to advances in computing. Also means fewer internal innovations.
• Single Point of Failure. Technically, organizationally, and fiscally.
• Raiding the Private Sector. If the economy starts generating jobs, the Feds may make the war for talent even stronger.

Suggestions:

• Federate, don't centralize. Reaffirm your investment in department career sites.
• Open the jobs database to public programmers. Follow the lead of Amazon, eBay, and Google.

President Marty Morrow posted this project manager gig to his blog a few weeks' ago. As outsourcing and offshoring grow, so will Quovix, a project/product management collaborative software company.  

Did you know Pakistan has a minister for labour, manpower, and overseas Pakistanis? Abdul Sattar Lalika expects 200,000 people to emmigrate for work. This is double the previous year. They have interesting problems, like a nursing shortage (5 doctors to one 1 nurse); nurses leave for U.S. and Europe.

Any doubts this is a worldwide labor market?

An Always On discussion thread. Hold on to your IDEs, American programers: the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. And the Chinese. And the Indians. And the Irish. I wrote:

If you can move work to the next building because of IM, email, file sharing, SCM, etc., you can move it a thousand miles.

The questions should be:

1. What work is very hard to move?
2. What advantages can we create that will be hard to follow?
3. What limitations of remote work can we exploit?

My gut reaction is to force jobs to stay here. My head knows that doesn't work well. So the challenge is how to move up, do better, and justify a ten-fold premium over market rates.

You don't export the requirements process, the warmth of high touch service, the intimate understanding of local and industry culture and behavior. That work remains bound to the constantly evolving local domain.

But instead of the handoff going to construction engineers across the room, the customer-aligned tasks go to Irkutsk or wherever the market dictates.

This means, of course, that those who collect requirements must do a much better job, produce clearer and more specific functional specs, test requirements documents for usability and the prevailing criteria for quality, manage shorter iterations, and conduct more rigorous acceptance testing.

The new integration costs and risks are real and substantial, especially across language, culture, legal, financial and political boundaries. If two Houstonians can make communication mistakes, you know it is more difficult when working through translators (surprise surprise but most people don't speak, read, or write English at all, let alone fluently). And culture-centric ideas like courtesy and privacy vary across industries and generations, let alone regions. All parties have currency risk and in some places material poltical and safety risks (work interruptions or delays because of violence, war, government corruption, or other things that happen in the U.S.).

But the separation of user/customer relationship from engineering/construction creates value. It gives freedom to shop for the best partners you can trust. To bid for world class performers in niche specialties for the strategic parts of your project. To make your customers' biases and assumptions explicit, perhaps for the first time. To get more satisfying tradeoffs between scope, schedule, budget, quality and risk.

This looks good for those who buy software development services. Prices "rationalized", quality varied but improving with experience.

How will this affect those who market packaged software to consumers? To businesses?

What career advice would you give a US programmer with ten years' experience? A compsci student in Mexico City?

What knowledge, skills, and abilities will the new offshore software brokers need?

What would an insurer want to know before selling you a completion bond for offshore work?

What process might buy you a sustained competitive advantage as a London game development firm?

p.s. The author of the initial post has financial ties with the AO operators. This isn't disclosed in the post. Be up front, please.

p.p.s. More gripes about AO's design (courtesy of prock+jaffe creative):

1. Comments don't have permalinks.Add permalinks, dudes!
2. Comments aren't listed in chronological order. Topics in reverse chron, Comments in chron order. Have you ever tried to follow a thread from the wrong direction? Argh!  
3. No RSS feed for comment threads. Feed me!
4. Site not accessible to the visually impaired. Pass the Bobby test!
5. Rewrites html, destroying lists, html entities, and link attributes. Let me express myself! 
6. Member profile pages don't show all of a person's posts and comments. They should.
7. Don't call posts "blogs" when they are posts.
8. Enable trackback.
9. Human readable urls, please.

p.p.p.s. What roles should blogs and wikis play in coordinating work across national boundaries? 

Roland Tanglao takes exception to an AO post. The post...

How efficient is it to pay a software engineer in the Valley a loaded salary of $170,000, the average salary reported in the fourth quarter of 2001, when Asian engineers provide a much better value? We've all read the cost differentials between US and Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese workers. And one of the main reasons this work went overseas is because clients knew they were being gouged by US engineers and consultants. After all, programming is, essentially, production work. And is labor not the most expensive variable component of a software product?

Roland...

Good software is not production work. If this guy had ever actually developed good software, he'd know.

There's a huge fork in software development. If you can define scope clearly and it seems like a straightforward thing to build, then you shop it to a code farm.

On the other hand, if the scope is fuzzy, elastic and frequently changing, and there are elements of novelty (never done that before), sub-cultural awareness (how do our surgical nurses model their work process), you may need local auteurs.

When the business schools started to teach MIS 30 years' ago, you could tell that whole categories of software work would become routine. Both the problem set and the tool set had no barriers to entry. We have a million programmers in North America because of lighter weight problems and easier to use tools. That same lack of barriers makes it easy for India, China, and the rest of the world to enter our labor market.

The things that don't fit?

Thorny problems. Intractable ones that take deep scientific education and grad school maths. Edison problems that require years of tinkering to get the chemistry just right. Collaborative ones that involve close knit teams of world class experts.

Proximity. Where the development team must work intimately with the customer, eating and breathing with them.

And those barriers won't last. When you throw mass quantities of smart people at an education system, like they are doing in India and China, the bell curve says some will become world class computer scientists. People who invent things, who break through conventional thinking, who upset the apple cart. And they will compete with the industrial world's best and brightest.

So you have a few choices.

• Get your PhD in computer science.
• Become a product manager or product requirements manager, because outsourcing demands coordination.
• Become a world class specialist in a technology or an application, one of the top 5 in a very narrow field.
• Or get out. 

Sometimes you gotta love the job seeker's voice. Tanya B's weblog, Fuck That Job, has been a nine month rant on the pain of finding a job.

Her tagline:

My answer to employers taking advantage of folks having a hard time finding a job in this economy. Job hunting daily is bad enough without having to deal with employers who want you to speak Swahili for low or no pay.

She quotes horribly written job ads, unbelievable correspondence between recruiters and candidates, and engineering jobs paying below the poverty line. You can feel the vitriol ooze through the html.