Keith Molesworth
Global Channels Manager, Intel
Meet Keith Molesworth, the Global Channels Manager for Intel Corporation. It’s not a title you may have heard of, but as I learned in a recent interview, it’s an integral role within their staffing organization. Keith explains what his title means, discusses measurement, and shares his perspective on working for a company that operates in 50 countries and has over 81,000 employees.
My scope is global, so a lot of times I come in and have a bunch of emails from my colleagues in Europe and Asia who have been working for almost two days ahead of me at this point. I’m responding to questions, such as an issue with one of the channels, requests for information, or help with answering questions. Sometimes I’m receiving the email responses back to my queries or questions, or things that I needed to check up on but had waited until late Friday afternoon to get that information out. There’s a lot of information sharing that goes on through email. We do a lot of instant messaging as well, so if I come in early enough, I can usually catch my colleagues in Europe, Ireland, Israel, Russia, Germany and England.
Usually I’m working on a lot of presentations or about to deliver them. Actually tomorrow I’m presenting information about the channels dashboard to our sourcing group here in the United States. It’s basically a report on how channels were performing in Q1 and Q2, and taking in the group’s feedback as to how to improve what they can get from the dashboard and other ideas. Then there’s the vendor relationship aspect – exploring opportunities, talking to companies that are bringing in new technology that might be of interest to us. Maybe it’s a Twitter aggregator one day or a new niche job board the next; or, conversing with someone about what’s going on in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Any of those things could happen on any given day.
It’s an unusual day when I’m not talking to at least a couple of people outside of the company and at least two or three people that do not reside in the same country.
The organization includes quite a mix of the other things that we do with staffing including the global employer referral program and marketing group. We’re all under the same umbrella, but there are two other people that are most closely connected with me that I work most closely with. They do a lot, from providing support to everyone in Staffing, working on communications and training to leading projects. I rely on them for so much. We’re a team within the team and we couldn’t accomplish much without them.
It is. A lot of times the teams may have a manager who not only works at a different site, but a different country. I’ve had managers that were in Israel and Hong Kong, but the two people on my team literally sit across the hall. That does make it easier sometimes, to just turn around in my chair and yell across the hall, as opposed to an instant message, email or a phone call. That proximity is nice.
Yes. I’ve worked globally at Intel probably for the last 8 years where I’m on teams with people all over world. I know that if I don’t get in touch with them say before 10:00 in the morning, I’m not going to get an answer until tomorrow. It’s the same with Asia. If I do something in the morning, it’s going to be later in the day or the next day before I hear back from them. It’s just something I don’t even think about. I’m aware of where people are when I need an answer and it may take a day or two before we connect.
Yes, especially when we were doing the dashboard project, which was a global team. We tried to accommodate everybody. A lot of times that means someone is suffering a late-night meeting or early morning meeting. We rotate that kind of stuff around to level out the pain.
Yes. When I was doing this some years ago I was in the agencies. We used to get a box of resumes and would just sort through the box because the applicant tracking systems were so slow and hard to use. It was just easier to have paper and pass it around. Clearly, that’s not the case today. In the terms of recruitment, back then there was a call for the newspaper ad, which in the U.S. we really don’t do anymore. Globally there are places where it’s still accepted and expected to run newspaper ads. Even now in the U.S., I think we’re moving beyond the job board posting. We realized these new spaces with social media and our blogs are becoming more critical, especially when you look at the type of talent that we’re seeking. A lot of the people we’re hiring have master’s degrees, PhDs and years of experience, so they’re not likely sitting around necessarily looking for a job. We really have to reach out and try to find the passive seeker and connect with them, and I think the social media channels are the type of places where that’s happening right now. That’s been a big shift for us, especially in the last couple of years, of getting away from the kind of posting outreach we have with big job boards, and hoping for the best. We have to be more proactive in our reaching out to the passive candidate.
My concern now is the half-life of these social media venues such as MySpace, which seems to have moved to another direction in recent years. Facebook has kind of taken on the social networking “king of the mountain.” But I wonder, what’s the next one? Who’s going to be the next company that offers something better? I’ve tried to figure out what’s going to be the next thing.
Yes. Our priority right now is optimizing for smart phone use and being ready for that. You can utilize our site, but applying on a smart phone is something that we want to get to. A process that is just a few clicks and keystrokes as opposed to the whole application and figuring out how to do that, because you’re right. Everything you read talks about tablets or smart phones and the move away from the laptop. If you’re recruiting, you’ve got to be in the same places that job seekers are utilizing technology.
Yes, and we’ve had experiences where we talk to people in the U.S. about some of these mobile applications and technologies and we’re just not as familiar with it as they are in parts of Asia and in Europe. Everything is changing so fast, every couple of months. We talked about using QR codes 6 months ago and had to do a lot of explaining, now I see them in magazine ads and Sunday newspaper inserts every week.
Sure. The compliance provided in terms of postings, to where we need to post, and the value makes the relationship nearly a no-brainer. The fact that you broadcast the postings out to so many other places also makes it really valuable for the price of admission. Just in these last few months, we took advantage of utilizing the survey and got some really good results. It was easy and we got to a group of companies that we wanted input from. I think you’ve been greatly helpful in terms of connecting companies together for sharing information in the industry, and the fact that the stated goal isn’t necessarily profit maximization is a lot more appealing. The value of the ROI that DirectEmployers provides is really top-level for all the information that you share and the connections that you allow. The resources in general are all really good.
I think we were one of those 20 companies back in the day.
Actually, the relationship predates me. I’ve been working with Tom forever. I was here, but I really didn’t start working in this space until years after that. I think it’s just really interesting to see the differences. When you compare Intel to a government or a government agency somewhere versus an insurance company and all those different things. You get to find out that we all really have the same problems…
Thanks. It was nice talking to you too, Nancy.
