What Does That Mean? A great guide to messaging and effective communication
A board member of ours sent this to all of us here at HireVue today and I just think it’s a fantastic article.
What Does That Mean? by Gerard Braud
This is a free version that doesn’t have much formatting – if you want the pdf version please just email me at mnewman at hirevue . com
When it comes to HR in particular we all have a problem with not having clear messaging – we have it, other companies have it, recruiters have it, bloggers have it (remember Jason Davis’s question on LinkedIn? Jim Durbin had a great response about how cool they were with their web 2.0 mantras – and yes, I can’t find the link now but it exists)
I believe that an exercise is in order for us all:
How do you explain what you do to a 6th Grader? (feel free to add in your responses below)
For HireVue is it: “We make it so that you can take a job interview any time at your house for the company you want to work for?”
Is it: “Just like how you can leave a message for your friends on your MySpace or on their cell phones, you can leave a video interview for the company you want to work for”
Who knows -
What is it for your company?
How do you explain sourcing? If you think about it, at first take of something like “we find people for other people to call that might be interested in working for us” the response could be “so you just find people but don’t talk to them?” – This isn’t a slight to sourcers – I think you do great work
How do you explain social networking? Do you just say “Just like you want lots of friends, so do I” ?
How about anything else recruiting or HR technology related? Why do social networks matter? What is vertical search? What about metasearch?
What about – the follow up, “well, why does that matter?”
Not being able to answer these two questions can confuse people, crush businesses and possibly hurt careers – you never know. (we all know examples of this happening)
Jonathan Goodman said,
March 19, 2007 @ 11:31 am
Mark,
Poor communication often produces dire results as you and Mr. Braud point out, just as the good communication creates opportunities. I often think back to my high-school English teacher’s constant reminder to write with your audience in mind. In the context of social media, that may be changed to “write for the people formally known as the audience who now have the power to instantly write back, or write about you and your organization.”
I’ve two posts to share also:
David Meerman Scott offers an insightful and hilarious post on this topic, “The Gobbledygook Manifesto”: http://www.webinknow.com/2006/10/the_gobbledygoo.html
Our HRmarketer blog also touches on the challenge to write an effective “About Us” statement for those in the HR marketplace: http://hrmarketer.blogspot.com/2006/11/about-us-statements-elevator-pitches.html
Best,
Jonathan Goodman