Recruiting Innovation: Programmatic Advertising and Marketing Automation

“80% and 95% of all prospective candidates who land on your careers page don’t actually fill out an application”

The days of post and pray are coming to an end. Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Marketing are finally embracing a new set of tools in order to advertise their jobs more effectively and efficiently. The change that is going to make the largest impact on our marketing is going to be programmatic advertising. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term.

According to Marketing Land, “Programmatic advertising helps automate the decision-making process of media buying by targeting specific audiences and demographics. Programmatic ads are placed using artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time bidding (RTB) for online display, social media advertising, mobile, and video campaigns.”

An example of a programmatic advertising campaign would be when you shop for something on Amazon and then the exact items you were shopping for start to appear in your Facebook feed. If you have ever wondered how that was done, this is how. Amazon has a system that will bid for advertising space on your Facebook feed. It is extremely effective and inexpensive targeted marketing.

How does this relate to you and advertising your jobs? If you take a look at your own data you are likely to find that between 80% and 95% of all prospective candidates who land on your careers page don’t actually fill out an application. In the past, it has been hard to even know how many people land on our careers pages much less capture information on the people that bounce off of our career pages. In the past, those were leads that were lost forever but with programmatic advertising, we can now, inexpensively and directly, advertise our jobs to those prospects.

If someone lands on our careers page they will start to see our jobs advertised on their Facebook, Instagram or other non-career search websites in the form of banner ads. This is a major shift in the way that we advertise our jobs. If you have a 90% bounce rate from your career site, programmatic advertising offers a maximum increase of 9 times the number of applicants for your job. Now I doubt you will see that type of increase but for twenty cents is it worth it to double your candidate application and conversion rate?

Importantly programmatic job advertising can place your advertisements out into the full world of advertising while not being limited to the traditional places like Indeed, LinkedIn, GlassDoor and Google for Jobs. Those are places people only go when they look for a job but it totally ignores the entire rest of the population. As we have learned from sourcing, there is value in approaching people who are not explicitly looking for a job.

While this technology has been mainstream for most of the marketing world for a number of years it has taken a while for TA to adopt this technology.

There are two major reasons I think this is and I will address both of them.

Challenge One

The first, most obvious challenge, at least in the US, is to maintain OFCCP and EEOC compliance when it comes to posting our jobs. Our vendors have done a great job of convincing us that their existing packages are compliant and so we don’t worry about it until it is time to make a change. I ask an honest and perhaps difficult question: Do you even know what “diversity” sites your jobs are being posted to? If the answer is no I think you have more than one takeaway from this article.

Programmatic advertising platforms are able to post to any site that you direct it to and that you have a relationship with. In most cases even if you don’t have a relationship with a specific site you can ask your vendor to post to these sites and they will do the legwork for you on the back end so you remain compliant.

I would like to suggest that if you are looking for a way to advance in your career or demonstrate your value to the business that you actually do some homework on this subject. If it were me I’d consider presenting a new plan for diversity hiring that has the objective of increasing diversity in your candidate pipeline versus simply checking the OFCCP / EEOC check box.

Challenge Two

The second, perhaps more important reason, is up until recently the methodologies we have used have more or less worked. However, over the last 2 years there have been on average over 6 million jobs posted in the US and as of the writing of this article, there are nearly 7 million posted jobs in the US alone. There are more jobs posted online now than ever before. For context in 2006, there were approximately 4 million jobs posted online in the US. Another factor is that fewer people are looking for work. Unemployment in the US and the UK are currently standing at 4%. This means fewer people are going to look for a job in the first place and when they get there they have more jobs to choose from.

Programmatic advertising is part of the solution. Right now you are spending thousands of dollars buying parking space job advertising that will only find you people who are actively looking and are willing to click through literal pages of other advertisements to see yours. They then have to select your job and go to your career site and fill out a 30-minute application. Even then only about 10% of the people you are connecting with are actually filling out an application. You can keep doing that or you can spend hundreds of dollars advertising in more places, more selectively.

The nice thing about most of these systems is that once you set up the initial conditions then the AI can run the platform without much supervision. It costs Amazon 20 cents to advertise to you on Facebook. They have used this simple, powerful and cost-effective advertising channel to turn themselves into the most valuable company in the world. I think those results tell you all that you need to know about the future of advertising. Simply put, done correctly a programmatic advertising platform can make you better, faster and cheaper.

Empower the Disabled Workforce To fill the Talent Gap

“When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.”~ Steve Pavlina

A caveat to the title; “with a few adjustments.” I didn’t want this to be about another “Diversity and Inclusion” initiative and how it benefits companies and contributes to the bottom line (it does). The benefits of having a diverse and inclusive workforce have been well documented.

The “Other” Diversity and Inclusion Category

The disabled workforce falls under the scope of diversity and inclusion, but there is more to their story. It requires organizations to think differently about how to engage this workforce and create environments that work for everyone.

After speaking with Lindsey (Haaser) Braciale, founder of the Charlotte, NC based Advocations; an organization that helps companies source, hire, train, and retain an inclusive workforce; I learned more about some of the individuals in this community. They are highly capable, educated and experienced as well as loyal, consistent, dedicated, and stay on the job. They also have sky-high unemployment rates. Within the Autism community, for example, there are skilled, highly educated men and women of all ages, and yet they have an average unemployment rate of 75%? Many of them are degreed in “hot” skill sets; engineering, technology. I went from intrigued to dismayed; why the big gap?

We have a labor market so tight candidates are “ghosting” companies

Not only after a couple of interviews but often after accepting the position; they just don’t show up, because they found something better. The power is back in the job seeker’s hands.

So then my business side kicked in; this isn’t about “doing the right thing” and “helping” people who need help. These talented individuals don’t need help, they need jobs and a way to support themselves in a way that is fulfilling. This looks like a solution to a problem; we have record low unemployment numbers. U.S. job openings hit a record 7.1 million, exceeding the number of unemployed Americans (6.3 M). ~Market Watch Oct. ’18.

The Gig Economy can provide an Avenue for this Workforce

The way work gets done has undergone a major transformation. Companies today are moving to a more “fluid” workforce; made up of full time, part-time, and the “gig economy. This includes independent consultants, contractors, on-demand remote workers, and crowd-sourced employees.

The main components of the Gig Economy provide multiple avenues and ways to earn an income, in an environment that allows for flexibility and remote work, within certain niches. Per Lindsey; “It’s easier to get a job when you have a job. Gig work can bridge employment gaps and provide unique ways to enhance critical skills valued by employers. For example, one of our clients with down syndrome drives for Uber Eats and he accepted a job that was in the uptown area with limited parking. He assessed the situation and decided to park his car in a no parking zone. He then asked a passerby to help him avoid getting a ticket while making sure he was able to deliver the food in a timely manner. They did!”

19% of our Working Age Population has a Disability

Only 4 out of 10 working-age adults with disabilities are employed. So we have a business problem in need of a solution; the highest unemployment rate in over 50 years, a talent shortage, and candidates ghosting employers. We have a solution ready and available, albeit with a little bit of extra effort and mind shift.

My sister Chrissy was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in her early 20’s. She has been on an off meds, and in and out of hospitals and institutions. She’s sweet and quirky. She has self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. She’s been homeless and is also a talented artist. She is trying to stabilize her life now, on her meds, and in an apartment. She dreams about working and what kind of job she could do, maybe draw greeting cards? We talk about that often. She is not ready now, but someday she will be.

It’s just Good Business Sense – How Can Companies Engage and Accommodate this Workforce?

It starts with identifying and eliminating barriers in the hiring process; organizations that actively eliminate barriers in their hiring process are able to recruit a more diverse applicant pool. With steady advancements in technology and changing attitudes, the world of accommodations and “charity” is being replaced with empowerment and inclusion.

As a national leader in job placements for people with disabilities, Advocations focuses on corporate partnerships that will amplify their efforts toward disability disruption. “This starts with one person at a company willing to step up and say ‘how might we.’ Disability is different, but if you follow the golden rule (treat people the way you’d like to be treated) it’s not that complicated.” Lindsey Braciale

With a little bit of help, the right company and the right opportunity, my sister, and others with various disabilities could continue to move towards the person they were always destined to be and contribute something meaningful and valuable in the process.

Isn’t that the core of work? To contribute something of value and be rewarded in kind?

Editors note: image credit to the the wonderful story: https://blog.theautismsite.greatergood.com/gfl-mcdonalds-employee-retires/

10 Ways To Recruit Better In 2019

Everybody loves high-quality candidate lists. Who wants low-quality candidates streaming in by the boatload? That’s not a recipe for growth or success.

But it feels like the white whale of modern recruiting in terms of how you get those high-quality candidates. So, let’s bust it open and offer some hacks.

Build a proactive pipeline:

This is the No. 1 way, honestly. People are social animals and they want to build relationships with others. Too much of recruiting can feel transactional like you are a sale to the recruiter because of your skill set. While that’s admittedly how the system works, the best recruiters find the best candidates by going out and meeting them: dinner, drinks, coffee, local events, etc. Then they know the “scene” around tech or healthcare or whatever industry they need to know in their region. Once you know “the scene,” you know how and who to place. You’re delivering high-quality more than most.

Leverage LinkedIn:

It’s still a gold standard for recruiting, even if it has flaws. Post interesting stuff. Talk about the flaws of standard recruiting. Engage with people that way.

Use sourcing extensions to work smarter:

Here ya go.

Source outside the norm:

Consider:

Conference speaker lists are a great place to find talent that’s qualified in different areas.
App stores are a good place to browse technologies that are similar or related to your own, and if you find something of interest, consider reaching out to the people behind the app.
Quora showcases great talent who are knowledgeable and passionate about specific topics.
Amazon book reviews tend to be a great source when looking for commenters who make intelligent remarks about books on your industry or subject matter.

Write job descriptions that actually mean something:

… and you’ll get better people. Maybe speak to where the role could go in 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. Show a growth path.

Use referrals:

Your current A-Players? Go talk to them. Who do they know in the area? Who have they worked with before and been impressed by? Any remote candidates? Know their ecosystems. The best like working with the best.

Mobile-optimize that career site:

A-Players are busy people. They likely check jobs from their phone. If you ain’t mobile-optimized, they’re bouncing. Be mobile-optimized.

Keep the process simple:

No one wants to fill out the 27-screen ATS data points when they’ve already uploaded something. Keep it simple. What do you need? Ask for that. Once you have that, the candidate is good. When you make a smart person do unnecessary things, they get frustrated. A complex process alienates your best possibilities.

Learn from others:

Attend events. Find the best sourcers. Learn what the best tech is. Learn what others have done and wished they hadn’t done. Build a tribe.

Tech tech tech tech:

Get it, use it, embrace it, love it. But make sure whatever you have is working for you.

AmazingHire’s Chrome Extension is free!

AmazingHire’s Free Chrome Extension

While AmazingHire is a paid tool, the AmazingHire Chrome Extension is free and well worth checking out. When open, the tool works from the side of the screen on a variety of sites. It notifies when it has found information and displays a breakdown of relevant info and links.

The tool works from and links to a wide variety of social sites. In addition, to stand sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, it also works with more specific technical sites like GitHub and StackOverflow.
AmazingHire also finds contact information, which gives you a number of free credits to unlock. However, many of the social profiles the tool links to may also contain contact info.
The tool also brings vital information such as location and job title right to the top, saving you the valuable time it would take to find it on your own.
Additionally, AmazingHire allows you to add comments for your future reference, and to sort profiles into folders for better organization.

The wide variety of sites that AmazingHire works with in addition to its ease of use makes it a great addition to your collection.

Though there are many extensions that find social links and contact information, AmazingHire is definitely work testing out. It is specifically made to help you locate technical specialists, and it follows through on that goal. ~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

A fresh pair of eyes: Doing diversity right

“60 percent of employers surveyed believe there’s a direct financial impact on the business when an organization is competitive in diversity.”

You know the photo. A group of hands, disembodied from their owners, showing a variety of different skin tones, grouped together, sometimes grasped, sometimes raised excitedly, intended to illustrate “diversity.” It’s supposed to be a positive image, one that repeats all across the internet, and yet, in most organizations, couldn’t be further from the truth. And to overcome that sad reality, we need to take a step back and appraise ourselves of the misconceptions that plague diversity initiatives and hinder progress every step of the way.

Common misconceptions & understanding

The photo is a prime example of diversity taken out of context. Devoid of any actual details, we’re left to imagine that the hands include all people, regardless of biological sex, gender identity, race, national origin, religion, disability or age, at a minimum. In a perfect world, that’s how the scenario would play out, but for too many organizations, corporate diversity gets limited to just two of those factors: race and gender.

We know what caused this mindset, with reasons and rationale tracing back to legislation passed in the 1960s. But what doesn’t add up is why organizations haven’t moved beyond the stock approach. Taking a dictionary definition approach to diversity isn’t changing the situation, and it certainly isn’t helping us innovate or boost the bottom line. Even more mind-blowing is that organizations recognize the correlation, with recent research from HRWins showing that nearly 60 percent of employers surveyed believe there’s a direct financial impact on the business when an organization is competitive in diversity.

So what’s the hang-up? The hiring process, for one, coupled with a pervasive, unspoken fear that going against the way we’ve “always done things” will somehow lead to the organization’s immediate, and for some reason, unstoppable demise. However, this is not an action movie, and no one is under attack. Opening up how we interpret diversity is a first step, one that helps inform our understanding of one another and in turn, how we work together.

Real world hits & misses

Of course, that’s not to say that diversity is so easily attainable. That would be foolish. Even with an expanded definition, there is no magic switch to flip. Lots of organizations have tried to improve their diversity, some have succeeded while others…have not. Those are facts. At the same time, so much of what we know about diversity up until this point comes from the same sources, repeatedly cited (cough, HBR’s “Why Diversity Programs Fail”). That alone is doing our work a considerable disservice, reverberating the same thoughts and increasingly outdated examples around the echo chamber – the opposite of diverse.

Thanks to annual reports and strategic public relations, we’re starting to see more stats from companies like Intel, Verizon, and Marriott, touting increased workforce diversity and award wins. What’s harder to ascertain is exactly how these companies are enhancing their diversity, aside from having the internal resources and budgets needed. Every now and again we learn about diversity mistakes when Amazon scraps a new recruiting tool, or Google admits to bias in something as basic as its email client, as a what not to do. But these examples are usually few and far between, on a scale far above many of our hiring practices.

Diversity done right

That said, achieving diversity is not impossible, but it’s also not just a box you can check. For starters, we know that diversity means more than slapping up a disingenuous photo on a website, alongside an empty promise or two. It doesn’t include quotas or an off the shelf strategy, but rather, should be custom fit and tailored to the needs of an organization and the communities it represents. Because this is how diversity grows and takes shape, through programs that engage current employees, attract new applicants and deepen relationships throughout the organization.

Taking a holistic approach ensures that diversity gets considered at all stages of the talent acquisition lifecycle, from the initial job posting and description to sourcing and selection and up through onboarding and even performance reviews. And yes, there are technologies and solutions available that support this mission, working somewhere in the background to advance our recruiting capabilities and remove bias from the process. With this, we can better align our efforts and enact practical measures that produce quantifiable change.

Because once we refocus the lens, taking a broader, more comprehensive understanding of what diversity really is, in our own framework, and how we interact with it on a daily basis, we’re able to make it a lasting part of who we are – collectively.

Google For Jobs: 7 Hacks Recruiters Need To Know

Writing job descriptions is an exercise in measuring humanity.

As a recruiter, you’re tasked with creating nuanced language to accurately describe a list of roles and responsibilities in a way that will appeal to the perfect candidates you want to hire, while also deterring the ones who aren’t qualified. All successful new hires must have a winning combination of hard and soft skills, and you have the challenging task of crafting job postings that capture all of them.

The truth is there is no single foolproof method for writing the best job description. It’s a task that cannot be turned into a formula or automated with a bot. And yet Google has figured out a way to break down your unique job postings into quantifiable bits of information. Moving far beyond a simple keyword search, Google for Jobs groups jobs by categories and titles and even identifies the technical and personality-based skills needed to serve the most appropriate roles to the most relevant audience.

Categorizing jobs isn’t a new endeavor, but unlike past attempts to categorize jobs into a static list, Google for Jobs uses artificial intelligence and a list of 250,000 job titles, along with 50,000 skills and a relational model that connects them. In short, Google has figured out how to use machine learning algorithms to extract, predict and map job descriptions confidently.

When Google for Jobs launched in 2017 it was touted by recruiters as a game changer and a radical improvement in how to find quality candidates. Today, it is living up to that first impression. But, the biggest challenge so far has been getting recruiters to understand that they can directly submit their jobs to the Google for Jobs platform and increase their reach.

Below are seven of my favorite Google for Jobs hacks to help recruiters get the most from Google’s relatively-new platform.

#1 – Work backwards

Take a few moments to browse Google for Jobs listings and take a look at the behind-the-scenes structured data that each job post requires. Do you clearly differentiate between part-time, contractor and temporary jobs? Is the job’s actual location clearly identified? Have you included every necessary piece of information about the job? Then, make sure your job posts are tagged correctly so Google for Jobs can accurately read them.

#2 — Create precise job titles

Google for Jobs doesn’t work all that well when job titles are cluttered with unnecessary words. Job seekers are searching for actual job titles, which means the algorithm needs clear and precise job titles to match the right jobs with the right candidates.

Focus on the job title, not the location or benefits. Avoid using attention-grabbing special characters such as “*”, and “!”. Keep skills out of the title. Don’t include phrases such as “Do you speak Spanish?” and “Apply now.” Most importantly, make sure your titles are simple and consistent with the job’s roles and responsibilities, the position’s level of seniority, and the specific experience you seek to attract.

#3 — Post jobs to your own Careers page

Some recruiters post jobs on recruiting websites and call it a day. To maximize your outreach and to ensure that your job posts are found by Google for Jobs, you need to individually post each job listing on your company’s website.

#4 — Submit your job post’s URLs to Google

Don’t passively wait for the Googlebot to crawl your careers page. Submit your URLs to Google for faster job indexing and results. Be sure that your career pages are not protected by a robot.txt file or meta tags that would prevent them from being crawled by the Googlebot. Your job pages need to be open and available in order for Google to work its magic.

#5 — Enhance your company’s profile

Google for Jobs allows you to enhance your company’s profile within the search gallery. Take advantage of this functionality by adding a company logo, a series of images that will show up as a carousel in search results, a search box that will search only your website from Google, links to your social profiles, and more. Adding quality content and images to your profile will make you stand out from other listings and make a memorable impression on job seekers.

#6 — Refine as you go

Are you discovering that specific job listings are getting better results than others? As resumes begin to fill your email’s inbox, take note of what’s working and what isn’t and make updates and refinements to your job posts as you go.

#7 — Verify that your job postings appear on Google

A last, key step is to make sure your hard work is paying off by checking Google for Jobs and making sure each of your job posts appears online for the world to see. If your job isn’t showing up automatically, think about posting the job to an online job board, which may cost a few dollars but takes away the guesswork. You can also use a tool like Jobiak that optimizes job posts for Google for Jobs by creating the necessary tags and confirming that each job post is listed successfully on Google for Jobs.

As Google for Jobs takes the recruiting world by storm, it’s important to create great job postings to make the most of what Google offers. A few tricks and tips will help you leverage Google for Jobs and take your recruiting efforts to the next level.

Using Corporate Branding concepts and terms in your Employer Branding efforts

“now evolved into a total system and approach (mostly) embedded in a company’s Talent Acquisition culture”

It is now time to start thinking and implementing your Employer Branding Program and Strategy with Corporate Branding concepts and terms. When I began in Employer Branding in 2002, we thought about Employer Branding as an “add-on” to the Recruitment function. Fortunately, this has changed; it has now evolved into a total system and approach (mostly) embedded in a company’s Talent Acquisition culture and set of behaviors.

I have been extremely fortunate to now have a global Employer Branding position which is closely linked to my firm’s Corporate Branding /Marketing Departments. When I arrived (several years ago) I invited my colleague in Corporate Branding (early on) to partner and work with me on developing and implementing our Employer Branding strategy and program. We struck up a tremendous working relationship and broke new ground in linking HR and Corporate Branding together.

Additionally, on a number of his Corporate Branding projects, he incorporated my Employer Branding Program into his efforts in Stakeholder Management and Corporate Values.

My own knowledge of Corporate Branding was and is elevated by this partnership. I now think in terms of applying Corporate Branding Concepts to Employer Branding; such as—an “Employer Brand Architecture” where our main Corporate (monolithic) Employer Brand permeates the organization and all divisions but can accommodate “sub-Employer brands” for certain unique parts of the organization—like the IT or the Engineering Department (where unique individuals and personalities are critically needed).

Similarly, you can also develop Employer Brand Equity and Employer Brand Experience where all the distinguishing qualities of our Employer Brand Equity results in a personal commitment to our Employer Brand which helps differentiate us from our competitors, thus making our Employer Brand valued and valuable. We also want to create a unique Employer Brand experience which can arise from consistent experiences which combine to form a clear and differentiated overall Employer Brand experience.

Your Employer Brand can also use the concepts of an Employer Brand Identity and Employer Brand image, where the outward (and inward) expression of the Employer Brand Identity is the fundamental means of company recognition, thus symbolizing our differentiation from our peers/competitors. And our Employer Brand Image is the net “out-take” and for job candidates based on the impressions and experiences they have with us.

These are just a very few Corporate Branding concepts which we Employer Brand practitioners can adopt and expand to our use. Lastly, I think it might be best if all Employer Branding Program and efforts are closely partnered and aligned with Corporate Branding and Marketing Departments—a strong HR partnership with them is critical.

How do we measure Representative Population Recruiting?

We know by now that even with the best intentions, diversity doesn’t just spontaneously happen. It requires a concerted effort on the part of the hiring organization, with buy-in from recruiters up to executive leadership. Even then, seeing an increase takes time, money and patience. So with diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the forefront of many recruiting conversations, it’s no surprise that the idea of representative population is starting to take hold. If you’re unfamiliar, the goal of representative population recruiting (RPR) is to hire employee populations that reflect a larger sample.

Inextricably linked, RPR has the potential to upend diversity initiatives, and offer support to organizations operating in notoriously homogenous industries (think tech, law enforcement and finance). But as recruiters figure out next steps and try to enact RPR, some challenging questions arise. Questions that need answers in order to make the business case stick. Here’s what some of those look like:

What does RPR look like? What’s the end goal?

There are several ways to approach RPR. For a small or medium sized business, with offices in a single location, they might strive to mirror the local population on a city, county or state level. For enterprise organizations, even those with global operations, RPR might be better broken down by country or possibly region. Intel chose to follow this second line of thinking, delivering on its goal of full representation in the company’s U.S. workforce at the end of 2018. That means the employee breakdown at Intel now closely mirrors the percent of women and underrepresented minorities available in the U.S. skilled labor market. You might also consider replicating your customer base. Whatever feels most authentic to your organization, corporate culture and employer brand.

How do we measure success?

To start, look at the data. Before implementing RPR, dig into your current workforce numbers by race and gender. Many Fortune 100 companies make their D&I numbers publicly available and readily downloadable at their websites. For instance, Google shared its 2018 numbers, offering a look at its workforce composition across six racial or ethnic groups and two gender categories. You can also view the information by workforce representation or broken down by tech, non-tech and leadership roles. While this doesn’t necessarily equate to success, it does provide a jumping off point for creating that definition for your individual organization.

If we’re failing, how do we adapt?

This is where things get tricky. We often hear about D&I failures, and unfortunately, it does happen – even to Fortune 100 companies with huge talent acquisition teams and massive budgets. Because the thing is, recruiting, like the people we seek to represent, is dynamic – and it needs to be. Using the same techniques and technologies won’t help move the needle when we’re unwilling to admit recruiting should evolve to meet the population. Diversified thinking is the fastest way to diversity within your organization, so if you start to fall behind, adjust your overall thinking, from training to recruiting.

If we’re succeeding, how do we keep up?

Well, first off, congratulations. Now don’t freak out and self-sabotage. Instead, spend a little time figuring out what made the difference, where and how. Did you improve sourcing and diversify your general applicant pool? Did you win across the board or only at a certain level? Were you more effective in one department over another? Even the slightest variation in strategy can add up to significant differences in RPR. This is why enterprise organizations publish their annual reports. It requires that they pause and measure their gains (and losses). Accountability works, and chances are, even if you’re ahead of the game, there’s plenty you can learn along the way.

Do we need to worry about the law of diminishing returns?

This is a big one for many talent acquisition pros, trying to draw a correlation from their spend to the organization’s bottom line. Usually, the law of diminishing returns applies more to production factors, but it has very real implications for recruiting, too. And it’s true, part of the reason we see RPR taking off has to do with budgets and how much the organization is willing to front. In these instances, it may be wise to err on the side of caution and take smaller steps toward RPR, setting goals that are both feasible and impactful at the same time. This could mean emphasizing gender equality in tech roles and racial diversity in non-tech, with subsequent plans to switch it up in the future.

If we’ve learned anything in recent years, it’s that D&I should be a business priority. As part of that, RPR can help recruiters get to that next level, providing actionable, measurable goals to lead the organization forward.

Recruiting Neurodiversity: How Dyslexic and Autistic Minds Can Move Your Business Forward

A good friend from my home country of Scotland always struggled to keep up with his peers in school. But he also succeeded where most people would have failed.

Early on in his career as an engineer, he designed and built a huge dome — essentially a projection screen stretched over curved pieces of metal — for Dynamic Earth, a conference venue and geology visitor attraction in Edinburgh.

The dome needed to represent the earth’s 23.5-degree tilt. Figuring out how to create this effect with different pieces of metal required an exceptionally high level of 3D spatial ability, and my friend rose to the challenge. The end result was a dramatic and memorable centerpiece for exhibits and gala dinners.

No doubt, my friend was helped by a little dose of grit, but he also accomplished this tremendous feat because he saw the world a little differently. His unique perspective is likely the result of a neurological trait he has in common with Jamie Oliver and Richard Branson: dyslexia.

THE UNIQUE TALENTS OF PEOPLE ON THE EDGES

There is a growing consensus that people who are neurodivergent (i.e. are wired differently than the bulk of the population) are a necessary prerequisite for innovation and business success.

People with dyslexia, for example, tend to have strong problem-solving and spatial reasoning capabilities, and individuals on the autistic spectrum tend to excel in areas like rule-based thinking. Many organizations are experiencing benefits from including individuals with these strengths in their workforces.

JPMorgan Chase, for example, hired more than 70 employees with autism between 2015 and 2018. As the executive director and head of Autism at Work at Chase told Fortune, people on the spectrum are highly focused and less distracted by social interactions. “Our autistic employees achieve, on average, 48% to 140% more work than their typical colleagues, depending on the roles,” he said.

Since Microsoft launched its Autism Hiring Program in 2015, at least 50 full-time employees have joined the company through the initiative. They perform a variety of roles, from software engineering and data science to content writing.

There are also systemic efforts to leverage the talents of people with dyslexia. Exceptional Individuals is a recruiting agency that matches employers with dyslexic candidates, and Ernst & Young recently partnered with a charity to deliver a report showing the value of dyslexia in the changing world of work. One marketing firm even posted an “only dyslexics need apply” job ad.

While deliberately excluding people from applying for a position is a controversial tactic that may not gain widespread traction, it represents the beginnings of a shift in the way employers view neurodivergent candidates: not as a burden, but as an asset.

NEURODIVERSITY AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

If your company does not need neurodivergent individuals today, it will definitely need them tomorrow. Business models are subject to rapid disruption, and established incumbents are struggling to survive in volatile business environments. An organization can not stay ahead of the curve if all its people are thinking the same way.

At the same time, an increasing number of companies — from all industries — require the kind of technical talent normally found in Silicon Valley (a hub for people on the autistic spectrum).

However, there is a long way to go before the neurodivergent talent pool is fully tapped. People with dyslexia are not more or less intelligent than the general population, and yet, they are more likely to be unemployed than those who are not dyslexic. Around 85% of college grads affected by autism are unemployed.

TAKE AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH TO NEURODIVERSITY

If you are a business leader who wants to start seeking out individuals from the neurodivergent talent pool, you must actively recruit and retain these types of workers by design. Business as usual tactics will not work. Thankfully, with several industry leaders entering the foray, there are a number of best practices to follow so that you don’t have to do this based on gut feel.

Keep in mind, however, that you are going to be introducing new variables into your unique workforce ecosystem. What worked for another organization may not work for yours, and without proper care, there can be unintended consequences.

A good approach is to supplement industry best practices with the results from an internal pilot program. Once you have an understanding of how workers with specific cognitive profiles are best supported within your business, you can then implement neurodiversity initiatives based on hard evidence. Follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Understand the Role

The first step is to determine how neurodivergent individuals can be deployed in your organization to meet business objectives. Take a look at the roles that will be in demand six to 12 months out and what kind of strengths will be needed to perform those roles. For example, roles requiring careful data analysis and pattern recognition is one area where people on the spectrum tend to perform well.

You will also need to find a manager who is willing to work with people who have the relevant neurodivergent strengths. Look for flexible, emotionally intelligent managers who are able to lead teams with diverse needs and capabilities.

Step 2: Craft Inclusive Job Ads

There are several ways you can increase the chances of a neurodivergent worker applying for a role. Simply stating in your job ads that you welcome applications from people who have dyslexia, for example, will go a long way in terms of increasing your odds that individuals with this trait will enter the candidate pool.

The number of groups and associations representing people with dyslexia and autism is increasing. Reach out to these associations — they can help connect you with the right candidates.

Step 3: Hire the Best Candidate for the Job

At this stage, a significant revamp of your interview process may be required. Many people on the autistic spectrum do not get past the interview stage because lack of eye contact can leave the interviewer feeling that the candidate is not interested in the job.

After Microsoft moved away from a traditional interview setup towards a more evaluative process that involved group work, its hiring managers selected people on the spectrum who were previously looked over. Ensure your selection process focuses more on skills assessment, work output, and group projects than sitdown interviews.

Step 4: Adjust and Observe

Once a neurodivergent candidate is hired, his manager will need to make reasonable adjustments to the working environment. These adjustments may not be intuitive. Most people understand that dyslexia involves challenges with written material, for example, but may not be aware that many people with dyslexia take more time to process information and need more support with time management.

Also pay attention to how other workers react and what is required to get the team working smoothly. Concerns from neurotypical teammates about what is and is not a reasonable performance expectation will need to be handled carefully.

At the end of the day, you want to ensure team performance stays high and the social dynamic of the group is strong.

WHERE EXCEPTIONAL TALENT THRIVES

It used to be that companies won by running established practices better and faster than the rest. But the rules of the game have changed. No longer is it just about efficiency, it’s about coming up with entirely new ways of doing things, and this requires organizations to include people with exceptional talents. When organizations can move past our outdated views of “normal” and embrace the best of human diversity, they thrive.

There are also potential gains for neurotypical workers in all of this: in the process of including people with extreme cognitive functioning, more managers may come to appreciate that everyone has unique limitations and talents, although they may be more subtle. In this way, our differences can be a source of resilience.

Resume Bias is Real: Closing gaps and advancing the screening process

“resume bias is real. What’s more, blind recruitment isn’t solving the problem”

At one point in time, resumes functioned as an overview of the person it represented. Name, address, phone number, education, experience, and other qualifications. Maybe a few interests to jazz things up a bit. Since the advent of applicant tracking systems and other HR-related technologies, this stock approach has come under scrutiny for a few reasons. But for today, let’s focus on one critical issue often buried deep in between the lines, somewhere in the midst of previous responsibilities and job descriptions, and that’s bias.

See, whether we admit it or not, there are fundamental differences in the way people characterize and portray themselves on paper (or in the modern world, on screen). Intent and meaning are often misconstrued and re-interpreted per the person on the receiving end of a given document. It is our life experiences that make us unique and also perpetuate deep-seated issues in the way we perceive each other. In this case, that’s likely to be a recruiter or hiring manager. Even with technology in the middle, you have humans attempting to communicate with humans in hopes of piquing the other’s interest and scheduling some future interaction.

What we know

Recently, Oleeo partnered with the University College London to determine just how wide the resume gap is and what that means for recruiting without bias. The research looked at 268,164 resumes from around the world applying across the financial services, IT, management consulting and retail sectors, analyzing the lexical, syntactic and semantic differences in the text that differentiates male and female resumes.

The report provides the following quick summary, “The results show many small but statistically significant patterns of differences between male and female resumes across all the job sectors examined. Gender biases in resume document embeddings were also found to exist. Blind recruitment practices surprisingly did not reduce the bias significantly, instead only resulted in a reduction in hiring prediction performance.”

Translation: resume bias is real. What’s more, blind recruitment isn’t solving the problem.

What this means

The report also found that “90 percent of the top 10 words men used in their resumes are powerful proper nouns and common nouns, versus only 68 percent on women’s resumes.”

In IT, this meant that male resumes included words like PHP, C, software, Linux, C++, computer, have, developer, engineer, and network, while their female counterparts used volunteer, event, assistant, organize, analyze, plan, student, social, conduct and excel. So while men were out there touting tangible skills, emphasizing what they can accomplish for a potential employer, women put the focus more on the things they can get done around the office. This is an important distinction to make, especially in industries that struggle with diversity and representation, like finance, where numbers make that world go round.

Even in instances where inclusion became a hiring priority, candidate resumes may have unknowingly stunted progress. To solve this, in a meaningful way, recruiting has two options: transform the way men and women talk about themselves or change the way we perceive resumes to mitigate bias and improve screening. And with 7 billion people walking the planet on any given day, there’s really only one possible choice here.

What to do

Because whether we like it or not, the resume isn’t going away, so rather than attempt a global overhaul of language and behaviors, we need to find a way to make it work. This is not to say that the document will stay the same, time has already proven otherwise. However, candidates will always need to explain who they are and what they bring to the table. It’s how recruiters understand candidate information that remains our best bet for improving the process overall.

Knowing there is bias in the process is one thing, applying technology to remove it is another. That’s why we see increased adoption of intelligent automation, supporting the needs of recruiters against the desires of candidates eager for the chance to interview. With the aid of custom algorithms and integrated solutions, recruiters and hiring managers can leverage technology to process candidate language and share prescriptive predictions related to potential performance.

This alleviates the shortcomings of a more human-centric approach and puts a fresh spin on the old adage, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Instead, offering recruiters useful data points based on candidate profiles that maintain the value of the resume, account for potential biases and ultimately, sidestep adverse selection. What results is a more informed, better-balanced screening stage that minds these recognized gaps and presents candidates for who they actually are, rather than the words they use.

To learn more about overcoming bias in recruiting, visit https://info.oleeo.com/diversity-hiring-guide-to-gender-blind-recruiting.

Recruiting Tips: Measuring Soft Skills

LinkedIn Report Shows How Valuable Soft Skills Really Are

Spoiler alert: The workplace, and most importantly, the way people work, has changed drastically over the past decade. As recruiters, we’re vying for the attention of candidates who have the options of free lunch, on-site puppy sitting and the opportunity to work when and where they want. In fact, on LinkedIn’s platform, there has been a 78 percent increase in job posts mentioning workplace flexibility options since 2016.

With more and more teams changing the rules of the game, having the right experience and technical skills simply isn’t enough anymore. Candidates must have the skills and attributes to change paths quickly, think outside of the box, and work across teams and projects.

Finding candidates with those soft skills is a key focus for recruiters today. According to LinkedIn’s annual Global Talent Trends report, 80 percent of those surveyed agree that soft skills will be extremely important this year and the key to a company’s continued success. Why? Well, it’s a waste of time and money to bring in candidates who don’t fit the bill. The report found also that 45 percent of talent professionals say that “bad hires” are typically due to poor soft skills, while only 11 percent say it’s due to poor hard skills.

So with an increase in the value of soft skills across the board, what can recruiters do to better assess these personal attributes? Let’s dig in.

Explore more online skills assessments

The report found that 57 percent of talent professionals shared that they struggle to assess soft skills during the interview process. Completely understandable, considering we have a limited amount of time during the interview process to truly understand a person’s ability to adapt or be creative.

One of the most common methods of soft skill assessments is asking behavioral questions. In fact, 75 percent of respondents shared that asking behavioral questions was their top choice, before reading body language and situational questions during the interview.

While these methods are still highly effective, companies are starting to turn to AI solutions (17% of respondents) such as Pymetrics, to help shape soft skill assessments.

Take Citi for example. Recently, they have put a greater focus on hiring for potential by assessing soft skills. In addition to their problem-solving case studies and group exercises, Citi is piloting Koru, an online soft skills assessment, for their graduate hiring. The AI-powered tool lets them assess a wider pool of applicants and enables interviewers to ask more in-depth questions about a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

Beware of bias

When it comes to soft skills, inconsistent, unstructured interviews are highly susceptible to unconscious bias. For example, you might prefer a candidate because they remind you of yourself (affinity bias) or allow one key attribute you observe to formulate your entire opinion of the applicant without defining or measuring it. In fact, 68 percent of talent professionals surveyed say the main way they assess soft skills is by picking up on social cues in interviews. She’s pretty friendly, so I bet she’s a good collaborator. He’s really quiet, so he’s probably not a strong people manager. These cues are dangerous.

Why? Because they aren’t predictive, meaning people often interpret another person’s body language and social cues based on their own background and experience. That’s unconscious bias at work. This kind of unstructured and subjective approach to soft skills is common but doesn’t result in an accurate measurement of a person’s capabilities.

One of the best ways to protect against bias is by standardizing your interview questions related to soft skills and training interviewers in a formalized fashion across the board. Asking behavioral and situational interview questions are a great way to suss out soft skills, so long as everyone is asking the same set of questions consistently, and interpreting them based on an agreed upon standard of measurement.

Create a standard process across the hiring team

92 percent of recruiters and HR professionals say soft skills matter as much as hard skills when hiring — if not more. So there’s no question that the entire hiring team should be paying close attention to these skills.

To make this a part of your interview routine, begin by identifying which soft skills are most important to your company culture and train interviewers to ask a standard set of questions suited to the skills you’re targeting. This allows you to easily compare evaluations, even if they’re done by different interviewers.

For example, collaboration, creativity, adaptability, persuasion and time management; those are the top soft skills employers are looking for today, according to LinkedIn data. That varies, however, based on your industry, hiring needs, etc.

At LinkedIn, our talent team uses a similar process to interview product managers, using four key focus areas: ‘Building Quality Products’, ‘Takes Initiative & Gets Stuff Done’, ‘Strong Communicator, Collaborator, and Leader’ and ‘Mission Driver & Ecosystem Thinker’. The role of a product manager requires an employee to be adept at specific soft skills in order to work effectively across multiple teams like Design, Engineering and Product Marketing.

To support the consistent assessment of these four key areas, we have streamlined our hiring process to focus on one key area per onsite interview and follow specific interview guidelines. Hiring panels also receive interview training to be able to assess all areas and participate in weekly calibration sessions to compare evaluations. The four areas are based on soft skills and underpinned by relevant product building experience that are core to not just what products we build at LinkedIn, but how we build them.

Soft skills are less about what you can do and more about the way you do it, like how you approach collaboration, adapt to time crunches or deal with team dissension. Computers can’t do that, so it’s imperative now more than ever to find people who have the proper soft skills under their belt to propel your company in the right direction.

Representative Population Recruiting in College

Representative Recruiting

Want to recruit better in college and university environments? Of course. We all do. That’s the next wave of talent for organizations, right? But most of the approaches that we’ve been using in university recruiting for the last 15-20 years are flawed, and social media has probably muddied the water even more there. While there are admittedly some brands who kill it on social university recruiting, many miss the mark. But, never fear. There’s a better way.

A quick refresher on Representative Population Recruiting

We touched on the idea of RPP at the end of 2018. Essentially, it’s the idea that employee populations could (and should) mirror a larger sample. Here’s an example:

For example, though the U.S. Census only accounts for two gender options, it tells us that 50.8 percent of the population identifies as female and thereby 49.2 percent as male. Even taking into consideration other options, determining the gender breakdown of an organization should be reasonably straightforward. Set the percentages against different representative population samples to understand if current hiring practices reflect the right numbers. If not, then there’s work to be done.

In some ways, this is about diversity and inclusion, yes. It’s also about using the information available to us in smarter ways.

How could this be used in university recruiting?

Any number of ways:

Get the demographic data on different universities that you target, as well as 10-20 that you don’t. Run those against broader American demographics and the current demographics of your company. This should tell you where to recruit to find more diversity in your ranks.
Look at the same demographic data of each university you’re now targeting, and consider convening small sample sizes of each population to discuss messaging options. Now you can apply different messaging — phrases, branding efforts, visuals, etc. — when you recruit at that campus and see how effective it is based on what the target populations indicated in the smaller groups.
Even look at the data around where target candidates might live at that university and consider adjusting your placement during on-campus periods. For example, if many seniors or second-year graduate students live on the west side of campus and the university is traditionally offering space at a student union on the east side, see if you can adjust your table spot — or even be in their walking path to campus. Then you’ll be the first interaction they have. Make it memorable and you might have yourself some amazing young talent.

“Data is the new oil”

“RPP is about drilling down into populations and understanding broader demographic trends”

We’ve been saying this for 10 years now. But how true is it, really? It definitely can be true, but for it to actually work as a statement, we need to be smarter about how we use data. RPP is about drilling down into populations and understanding broader demographic trends, what you might need in your organization as a result, and then trying to figure out where to locate those people and how to appeal to them.

University recruiting has been broken for decades, broadly speaking. It’s all table tents and “one size fits all” approaches and poorly contextualized messages on social media, with a hint of geofencing in the modern age. It’s not working, and it’s not getting organizations the young talent they need to drive forward. But RPP can help you isolate information more effectively and know where to go to find people who are currently lacking in your company.

7 myths about data-driven recruitment

The hiring of successful people is still one of the most important factors for any company, no matter how small or large your company is. Most companies look at a candidate’s resume, perform aptitude tests, interview them, and much more, to make sure that they will make the correct hiring decision.

Yet despite all these efforts, recruitment is still a messy process. An average job receives 250 applicants, yet the candidate chosen by the company fails 30%-50% of the time. Resume reviews often lead to biases, resulting in women and minorities being disadvantaged.

Moreover, the process is often frustrating for both the applicant as well as the company. The company has to wade through all these applications, review them diligently, and manage the entire process from start to finish. On the other side, applicants often review the recruitment process as poor, with 45% of applicants not even hearing back from the company.

The recent shift into data-driven recruitment is a natural shift to improve the entire recruitment process. However, there are still plenty of companies who are still a little hesitant to incorporate data into their recruitment process. These companies have several reservations about this change. They think data-driven recruitment is expensive, time-consuming, or that it takes the human aspect out of the recruitment process. These are persevering myths about data-driven recruitment that can hold a company back.

In this article, I will be going over 7 of these myths and explain why these myths are inaccurate.

1. Data-driven recruitment is expensive

Collecting and tracking recruitment data not only sounds daunting, but it also sounds expensive. However, the cost associated with data-driven recruitment is, in reality, one of its best parts. It not only helps you improve your hiring process, but it will also help you to reduce your hiring costs.

An example I heard not too long ago, was of a company where management was complaining that it took a long time for HR to hire new candidates. To analyze this, one of the recruiters created an overview with all the steps in the hiring process in Excel with the number of days it took to complete each of them. The result? Three steps severely delayed the hiring process:

Getting input for the function description from the manager
Getting the ‘go’ for the CV selection from the manager
Planning a date for the interview… also with the manager

By showing that the biggest bottlenecks were in the steps where the manager was involved, the recruiter was able to show that the recruitment process was delayed because it wasn’t given sufficient priority by the manager. This solution wasn’t expensive at all.

In addition, smart selection tools will allow you to decrease time to hire and lower associated costs.

2. Data won’t allow you to assess candidates’ true fit

Assessing whether a candidate is the right fit for the company is a difficult task. A well-prepared interview, combined with an experienced recruiter, used to be enough. However, the addition of assessment tools, such as IQ- and personality tests, may put a wrench in the recruitment process.

These assessment tools sometimes go against the gut instinct of a recruiter. Therefore, recruiters often thought that this type of data doesn’t allow for the true assessment of a candidate’s fit for the company. Assessment tools should be used as an afterthought, and the recruiter’s gut instinct should lead the way.

However, unfortunately for recruiters, this gut instinct has been shown to be an unreliable predictor of success for new hires. Recruiters are often biased and frequently make mistakes. Assessment tools allow for a much more unbiased look at the fit of a candidate. Furthermore, assessment tools give you the capability to test a wide range of variables that are important for the success of the new hire, such as how detail oriented they are.

Finally, these assessment tools are created by people and are therefore flawed to a certain extent. We choose variables that we think will help predict the success and performance of new hires. Recently, there has been a surge in machine learning for fit, that will allow you to to create models you never even thought of. Vendors are now successfully applying algorithms to create tests and simulations to make hiring more effective.

An example of this is the fast-growing company Pymetrics. This company developed a series of cognitive and neurological tests that are fun and easy to take and that have a direct statistical correlation to the candidate’s success in multiple roles. They can assess a plethora of traits through these tests and virtually eliminate any bias in the recruitment process. Companies like Unilever and Tesla swear by the system and it’s forecasted to take the recruitment world by storm in the next few years.

There is a risk in these machine learning approaches, as the recent controversy regarding a hiring bias at Amazon showed. Your algorithm is as good as your data – so your data should be accurate as well. This leads us to our next point.

3. Data removes the human-aspect from recruiting

This is one of the most prolific myths about data-driven recruitment. Most people think of cold, hard facts when they hear the word “data”. So, it’s no wonder recruiters often think that data-driven recruitment removes the human aspect from recruitment.

However, data should never be looked at in isolation. When you look at finance, marketing, production; All of these departments are driven by data to help inform people’s decisions. Where to prioritize, which people to promote, where to invest. These departments combine data with the expertise from people to make data-driven policies and decisions.

Likewise, data is a tool to help your recruitment function succeed in making the best hiring process. Data will allow you to see which problems arise in your recruitment process, but it won’t tell you which problems to tackle. It is up to the recruiters, the people, to make the final decisions.

4. My team has trouble understanding the data and shifting their mindset.

This myth is one of the most troubling myths for talent acquisition leaders. Even though you might want to change their recruitment process to become more data-driven, how do you get your recruitment team to understand and support this process?

There are two ways you can tackle this issue. First, to make sure your team understands how to work with data, put them on a small course that teaches them how data works and the way they should approach data. This can be done at your local university, or by looking online at several courses that teach students how to understand and process data correctly.

This doesn’t have to be a course that takes months to complete and many hours of work. Often times, courses that show the basics and take 1-2 days are enough to get a recruitment team up to speed. After, they can expand upon this foundation by simply implementing data-driven recruitment processes in their work.

Secondly, you can create support for your data-driven recruitment function by showing your team the benefits that it gives. Don’t give them a long-winded vision of how data will transform their jobs for the better down the road. Instead, look at short-term wins that immediately impact their work on a day to day basis. Do they have to give weekly reports on each vacancy? Create simple and powerful dashboards that automate this work for them, allowing them to focus on the thing that actually matters: Finding the right people for your company.

5. Only large companies benefit from data-driven recruitment

While it is true that large companies can benefit a lot from data-driven recruitment due to their size and hiring capabilities, this does not mean that small companies cannot benefit from data-driven recruitment.

Within small companies, every hiring decision matters. I’ve personally witnessed multiple thriving companies who went under due to the intake of bad hires, who brought the rest of the team down and had enormous costs associated with them. Therefore, it may be even more beneficial for small companies to adopt a more data-driven way of recruiting, to enable you to better make hiring decisions.

Smaller companies can also benefit a lot from data-driven recruitment policies. Whilst some advanced techniques like extensive candidate profiling based on existing employee profiles are impossible, they can still leverage metrics such as time to hire and cost per hire.

Furthermore, small companies looking to save their budget can particularly benefit from low-cost recruiting tactics. Recruitment tools that can streamline the hiring process will allow you to save precious time from managers and employees involved in the hiring process. This blends into the next point.

6. It’s too difficult to get the recruitment data needed

While it may seem daunting to start with the collection of recruitment data, it’s easier than people often realize. The main thing you need to do is to select several important recruitment metrics. Recruitment metrics are measurements to track hiring success and optimize the hiring process.

While you could track dozens of different recruitment metrics, it is best to keep your selection small. This will allow you to focus on the ones that will truly help your hiring process, making it easier for you to get the recruitment data needed and create an impact.

Metrics that are both easy and important to measure are:

Time to hire
Cost per hire
Sourcing channel effectiveness
Quality of hire

Smart job promotion techniques through highly targetted LinkedIn advertisement tools can also be very effective at bringing in suitable candidates at low cost. In my experience, LinkedIn can be a very effective channel for highly educated professionals. Depending on your candidate profile, other mediums could also be effective. For example, we’ve had great success in finding suitable interns in specific study and university Facebook groups that we wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise. Posting in such groups is free.

Some of this data might already be present in your applicant tracking system. Taking a look at the data these tools collect can already provide you with a lot of input.

7. It takes too long to analyze all of the recruitment data

While it does take time to analyze your recruitment data, this does not mean that you shouldn’t do it. Data analyses is a skill, and through practice, you will be able to become more efficient at it. In addition, it can be very simple, just like I showed with the example before.

If you spend all your time measuring recruitment metrics and not enough time actually recruiting, you’re doing something wrong. It’s all about finding the right balance between analyzing your recruitment data and putting your insights gathered from your analyses to work.

Furthermore, the time you spend now on creating a well-thought-out data-structure will help you in the long run. If you change the processes and tools you use now, you’ll be ahead of the game in a year. The time you will save then will more than make up for the investment you will do now.

Finally, more and more tools are coming out that help us understand the data that we’ve gathered. Think of tools such as Hirevue, BreezyHR, Workable, and more. These tools allow you to quickly analyze your data, pinpointing exactly where you need to look and improve your efficiency.

While it may seem daunting to start with data-driven recruitment, this should not stop you from pursuing it. While it may be easy to dismiss it with the myths mentioned in this article, data-driven recruitment holds immense potential. It should be an assistant to your own experience, help you reduce your hiring costs and improve your recruitment process.

Do words perpetuate biases unconsciously through recruiters?

Taking off the blinders

As kids, we often heard, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” And sure, this might be considered a decent way of reframing childhood bullying at the moment, but it’s problematic in the long run. By completely overlooking the lingering impact of verbal insults and taunts, we inadvertently accepted that words don’t matter, something that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is increasingly apparent in recruiting, where communication directly corresponds to the decision to hire one candidate over another.

Intent vs. perception

At Oleeo, we wanted to know how pervasive the problem is, deciding to partner with University College London to conduct the first large-scale statistical linguistic analysis of male and female resumes. We studied some 200,000 across multiple industries and found the results were staggering. Women defer to softer words like “volunteer” and “organize,” while men stress powerful proper nouns and nouns. What’s more, this demonstrates that even when resumes are anonymous, with gender removed, there’s a potential for unconscious bias based solely on the language used.

On the flip side, without even intending to, the words used throughout recruiting materials like job descriptions and ads can also skew hiring outcomes in favor of one population over another. So in posing the question, do words perpetuate biases unconsciously through recruiters? The obvious answer is yes. To begin to solve for this, mitigate issues of partiality and improve candidate experiences, consider taking the following steps:

Focus on real titles: People react differently to different words so choose wisely. In fact, research shows that male-oriented titles sometimes prevent women from applying to specific jobs. Gendered ideas permeate our brains from an early age so skip anything with an obvious connotation such as “superhero” or “ninja” in favor of more descriptive titles like “specialist” or “project manager.” Doing so will expand your reach to more job seekers and ultimately, increase the odds of gender diversity.

Fix your pronouns: As our understanding of gender evolves, so does the language that surrounds it. So rather than “he/she” or “her/him,” avoid gender entirely. Instead, rely on “you” and “they/their.” Here’s that approach in a sentence: “As Product Manager for Company, you will be responsible for r product positioning, including articulating customer challenges and solutions.” Also, “They will supervise the processing of global requests from the project’s inception through completion, working business clients and other stakeholders.”

Skip the superlatives: One LinkedIn study found that “In the U.S., women on average include 11 percent fewer skills than men on their LinkedIn profile, even at similar occupations and experience levels.” In being less promotional, women become less likely to connect with skills described as “expert” or “superior.” If more women held “leading” positions at “world-class” firms, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation. Rather than alienate this talent pool, who often favor a workplace that puts teamwork above competition, steer clear of this exaggerated language.

Limit what’s “required”: The confidence gap mentioned above tends to follow women throughout their careers. Take this example from Hewlett Packard: after reviewing records, the company found that female employees would only apply for a promotion when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications list for the job. Men would apply when they thought they could match 60 percent of job requirements. As such, try developing job ads that emphasize only what’s necessary.
Look to technology: So now that you’ve checked the boxes, it’s time to incorporate these learnings into your overall recruiting strategy. And what better way to do that, than with a solution that uses intelligent algorithms to screen candidates and make prescriptive recommendations based on the data. This helps ensure equal opportunity across your applicant pool while maintaining compliance and monitoring for any gaps in diversity. With this level of insight, you can make more informed hiring decisions, free from the trappings of unconscious bias.

Increased diversity isn’t apt to happen overnight, though there are measurable steps we can take to expedite improved results. Changing the way we talk to candidates represents a considerable step forward, provided you make the time to sit with your communication style and how candidates perceive your positions. From there, you can move ahead, without blinders, knowing that every candidate you encounter arrived free and clear and of their own volition (and hopefully, far away from any playground bullies).

For more ways to reset and remove bias from your recruiting process, download “Diversity Hiring: A Guide to Gender Blind Recruiting and Overcoming Bias:” https://info.oleeo.com/diversity-hiring-guide-to-gender-blind-recruiting.

Editor’s Note: This post was sponsored by Oleeo, and RecruitingDaily received compensation for publishing this post.

Engagement, data, bad/good managers, and the recruiting function

Amy Leschke-Kahle, the VP of Performance Acceleration at The Marcus Buckingham Company (which was acquired by ADP in 2017), gave us some of her precious Milwaukee-area time (Go Bucks! Giannis!) to discuss issues of engagement and data. We wanted to come in hot on this one, so we led with a rather-direct question.

Continue reading “Engagement, data, bad/good managers, and the recruiting function”