I realize that job role is often unclear at most companies, and the hiring process is usually fairly broken, but I think it would make sense if we were a bit more honest about what exactly we expect from new hires.
Continue reading “We need to be honest about what we need from new hires”
Glad you asked, because they’ve got a new report out about just that.
Look this over and let us know if you have any “hot takes” as a result.
Some of our society’s greatest strides come when the private sector innovates on the back of foundational work by the public sector. The HR profession stands on the precipice of making just such a contribution right now.
For an example of the underlying principle, consider the massive shift toward an online economy, as Internet service providers – from Comcast to Amazon – expanded and elaborated on the networks built by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1973.
Or more recently, as private aerospace companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin participate in a modern-day space race – but only because NASA’s discoveries enable them to.
What’s the next new thing? For a few years now, HR professionals have been looking forward to a future in which employers make smarter hiring decisions. Slowly but surely, that new world is coming into view, as recruiting software providers use their troves of hiring data – such as iCIMS through its Monthly Hiring Indicator – to supplement and enhance the information provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) since 1884. This brave new world is coming not a moment too soon, as the BLS faces significant funding constraints that limit its ability to adapt its work to the changing nature of the U.S. economy and U.S. workplaces.
Twenty to 30 percent of U.S. and European adults are independent workers, according to the latest McKinsey Global Institute Survey, Independent Work: Choice, Necessity and the Gig Economy. The report characterized independent workers as: highly autonomous; paid by task, sale or assignment; and having a short-term relationship with the client or employer.
McKinsey broke down the numbers by country. In the U.S., for example, 13 percent of its workforce works independently on a full-time basis, while another 14 percent supplement their regular income with freelance work. This equates to 68 million independent U.S. workers, 5 percent (12.6 million) of whom are temporary workers.
Increasingly these on-demand staffers are turning to mobile apps to find work. Apps such as Wonolo, Bellhops, Shiftgig and FigureEight quickly, easily and cost-effectively pair on-demand workers with employers or clients.
The real pioneer in the on-demand hiring world is Shiftgig, which has just rolled out a game-changing marketplace-as-a-service (MaaS) platform for staffing firms.
Launching its mobile app hiring platform in 2015, and receiving $53 million so far in startup funding, Shiftgig pairs on-demand workers with employers who typically need to fill work shifts as short as one day. According to Shiftgig Head of Software Sales Amy Henderson, 85 percent of positions are in hospitality, though they’re looking to expand into other industries such as home care.
Shiftgig does not employ workers but rather acts as conduit between independent workers and employers, with a Web or mobile app that profiles and pre-qualifies staff, so that they can search for relevant jobs and accept them without having to upload resume, fill out a job application, or participate in a job interview. The worker simply views the available shifts, commits to one or more, and goes to work. The platform includes virtual interviews, job orientations, mandatory background checks, and training quizzes and videos. The app geo-locates and time stamps the worker, so there’s no clock-in or clock-out requirement. Shiftgig even manages the pay. An employer displeased with the work can block the worker from getting future notices of available shifts. She can also rate workers as All Stars, giving them first dibs on subsequent openings.
If the worker gets a notification the shift is full he has the option of adding his name to a waitlist, to be notified to come to work if someone is a no-show.
Shiftgig has introduced a revolutionary business platform called Deploy, which it is now licensing to recruiting firms, and hopes to license to employers as well. So far, three recruiting firms have signed on to manage their temp workers.
“Seven or eight months ago, we introduced Deploy to 35 staffing firms all over the nation,” Henderson told RecruitingDaily. “These were recruiters who were hungry for this type of platform, but not prepared to build it themselves.”
Shiftgig recently offered the platform to 10 of the 35, feeling that that was as big an initial ramp-up as the firm could manage.
Hanna Resource Group of Lexington, KY licensed Deploy as its EZGig app for temp workers, though, unlike Shiftgig, EZGig workers are Hanna employees. Hanna Resource president and founder Lyle Hanna came to Shiftgig, which spurred the licensing concept.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you let me do it here?’” Hanna told the Lane Report. “This can be a test model and a good way for them to grow their business.”
So far, 1,300 on-demand workers and 12 employers have signed on with EZGig.
Wonolo founded in 2014, is another on-demand mobile app that’s realizing great success. Number 534 on the INC 5000 list for 2018, Wonolo has experienced a 938 percent three-year revenue growth to $2.4 million annually. Like Shiftgig, Wonolo pairs registered and profiled job seekers with hourly and same-day jobs in line with their time and location requests. Wonolo handles the background checks, and employers only pay Wonolo once they’ve hired a worker. Employers can rate and review workers, and workers can rate and review the employers.
TechWeek, the much-lauded festival for techies and other entrepreneurs, has been working with Wonolo for three years, to staff the event. According to Chris Bordeaux, the event’s Chief Operations Officer, it takes an army of workers to pull off the festival.
“It doesn’t make sense to have that army full-time, though, since we just need them for that week-long event,” Bordeaux said.
TechWeek’s ongoing love for Wonolo began with TechWeek New York in 2015, when volunteers began to cancel last minute. In a 3:00 am panic, Bordeaux turned to Wonolo. Almost immediately, workers were self-scheduling. Wonolo saved the say, with an average hire time of 1.5 minutes.
“It was great knowing that at any moment when an unknown came up, I could shine the bat signal and have as many Wonoloers as I needed,” Bordeaux said.
Some on-demand gig apps are industry specific. Bellhops puts laborers with individuals or businesses that need moving help.
Figure Eight finds work for work-at-home entrepreneurs such as programmers, mathematicians, psychologists, and Web developers.
The number of U.S. on-demand workers is predicted to double in the next three years, according to Emergent Research and Intuit. In 2016, there were only 3.8 million contingent workers nationwide. By 2021, that number will have grown to 9.2 million. With a U.S. unemployment rate of 3.9 percent, reaching beyond traditional job seekers is crucial. Sourcing these temp workers by way of robust mobile on-demand hiring apps could significantly, and quickly, boost hiring.
What is loss aversion, you ask? Well, let’s get right into it. We’ll start with this article from Harvard Business Review, which discusses both loss aversion and conformity. The latter term you probably understand at work — it’s why new ideas are stunningly rare. But as for “loss aversion,” well, let’s get into that.
Humans have a negativity bias, which is logical. Most of our thoughts in a given day are negative. But in this context, “negativity bias” means our fear of losing usually outstrips our potential thrill from winning. In short: we are terrified of taking risks. Cultures like Silicon Valley have deified risk-taking, and in the process a few guys over there have made eye-popping amounts of money. In general I think we all know that risk is a good thing when somewhat managed, but most of us are clueless about how to manage it.
I’m guilty of this 100 percent, or even higher than that. In 2012, I was living in Queens surrounded by friends. I was restless in my job and potential career arc, though, so I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. At that point, my only real connection to Minneapolis was an airport layover. Going to grad school had pros and cons, but I’m not sure it was worth the risk — or the debt. Then I moved to north Texas for a job. Again, pros and cons — but I got canned from that job. I’m maybe not the best with “taking a leap” risk decisions, you know?
Here’s some nice research on loss aversion. Give a person a bet, and tell ’em they have equal probability to win or lose. An average person requires a gain twice the value of potential loss before he/she will accept the bet. Same deal: we react to angry faces in any crowd faster than happy faces. Negativity bias. Loss aversion.
See how some of this might be tied deeply to how we work?
Continue reading “Is “loss aversion” killing your recruiting?”
Look at this. It’s from here:
Yep. But see, the thing is, it’s about much more than meetings and emails. Those are time sucks, for sure, but the picture is bigger than this.
Continue reading “Where you work, is it more important to be busy or to be strategic?”
Reaching Passive Candidates through Recruitment Marketing
With the U.S. unemployment level hovering somewhere near 3.7 percent and more job openings than there are active candidates, recruiters need to get crafty. Facing an uphill battle, the time has come to think strategically and look to passive candidates as a way to fill those open reqs and strengthen their talent pools. But, with job markets shifting and the demand for new skills growing, attracting these folks is easier said than done. Some seem content in their current roles but could be swayed if the right gig came along, others might be lifers and the rest just haven’t thought about switching jobs – yet. It is now part of the recruiter’s job to find and engage the best and brightest around, even if they aren’t necessarily available.
To accomplish any already tall order, recruiters must look beyond advertising openings, to catch the eye of their ideal candidate. They must know where this candidate lives, works and hangs out online, building a basic profile to follow across the web, offering them an incentive to click through, reach out or respond. This is where the overlap between recruitment and marketing exists, giving recruiters the opportunity to showcase the organization’s employee value proposition and overall employer brand across multiple channels. In doing so, recruiters can cast a wider net and reach previously untouched – and potentially viable – candidates. But all of this requires taking on giant step back and getting to know modern candidate expectations and behaviors.
The State of the State
In today’s multi-generational, increasingly diverse workforce, there is, ultimately, a candidate for every job. The challenge is, figuring out which candidate to target. This is the stage in the game that requires recruiters to pause, evaluate and develop candidate personas before doing anything else. Remember, modern candidates are smarter and more informed than ever before, and some hear from recruiters on an almost daily basis, despite their LinkedIn settings. In thinking like a marketer, recruiters need to know who they’re searching for before creating a campaign.
Data-Driven Job Marketing Strategies
Once the “who” gets established, the “what” comes next, and in the era of marketing automation, even the recruiting-related possibilities seem endless. However, once again, there’s cause for pause. See, recruitment marketing should be measured and analyzed throughout. Otherwise, it’s back to flinging things at the wall, hoping something will stick. Not exactly good use of anyone’s time or budget, especially when it comes to passive candidates.
Building Competitive Advantage
From here, with the right persona in place, supported by data-driven marketing, the objective of elevating the employer brand comes into focus. As mentioned, without a well-crafted, deliberate approach to passive candidates, recruitment marketing can fall short, often going unnoticed or worse yet, recognized by unqualified talent.
In today’s digital age, the framework for recruiter continues to evolve and with it, so do the actions and intentions of recruiters, seeking to find top talent wherever, whenever and however possible.
To learn more about recruiting for the future workforce, including recruitment marketing for passive candidates, register today for the Nov. 28 webinar here MORE INFO
Let us know in the comments! We’re dark the next two days and then back for the holiday rush. Are you filling many vacancies this December?
We’re thankful for all y’all, of course.
We’ve been banging this drum for a few years now and most companies still aren’t there yet, but let me frame this up for you with an example — or two! — you’re probably comfortable with from your day-to-day life.
You’re watching Netflix. Because you finished a season of Ozark, for example, the algorithm that underpins Netflix gives you options based off that show. You seemed to like Ozark because you tore through it, so the algorithm (hopefully) rightfully assumes you’d like similar shows, because other users have. Now the content is personalized for you.
A lot of people like Netflix. Admittedly their stock is being sold off right now, yes, but it’s got 140M user base and makes about $12B in revenue off of that. It’s a successful company and the root of much that it does is personalization.
Now think of Amazon. You buy dog food, a book, or a toy for your kid. What does Amazon do? It shows you what else you might want to buy with that item. It gives you personalized recommendations based both on your past shopping history and the context of other users. It’s now a personalized experience. You buy more. They make more money. They have an entire careers page at Amazon for personalization. That is not a coincidence.
Continue reading “Personalized comms need to be the norm in recruiting and employee experience”
Let me cue this up for you with a section of this article:
I think we miss a huge opportunity in networking when the people who care about us and love us and want to see us succeed can’t verbalize in one to two sentences what we do so that they can be out there looking for opportunities for us.
This is a little bit more complex and nuanced of an issue than people are sometimes willing to admit, so let me break this down for you into simpler chunks if I can.
We’re also about to enter the arena where families get together, and uncles/aunts you barely know will ask you what you do anyway. Can you answer? Can anyone? And if you’re a recruiter, isn’t it your job to be educating peeps you meet on how to explain what they do, so that your brethren in other industries aren’t run in circles by candidates?
BTW, funny story on aunts/uncles not knowing what you do: last Thanksgiving I had dinner with one uncle, and he said, “How long you been in Texas now? About six months?”
“Four years.”
Anyway, onward.
Continue reading “Recruiters should be training people they meet on how to explain what they do”
You probably know by now that SAP acquired Qualtrics for $8B essentially at the end of last weekend. Qualtrics had an IPO planned where the valuation was expected to be $5-6B, so SAP basically entered with an extra $2B (no big whoop, right?) and got their acquisition. Here’s the essence of how SAP apparently feels about it:
“Yes, we did pay a handsome price, but it’s well-deserved,” SAP CEO Bill McDermott told Fortune late Sunday. According to McDermott, the acquisition presents a new category for SAP, and is not an integration play. That’s why Qualtrics will stay an independent company, with its headquarters and management intact. (Former SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard stayed on board for just about a year post-acquisition, while Steve Singh, ex-CEO of Concur, left less than three years after selling his company to the enterprise giant.)
This was SAP’s second-biggest acquisition ever — the first being Concur — and obviously they also grabbed SuccessFactors about seven-eight years ago at this point. Qualtrics claims to be a lot of different things, but its core functionality is as a measurement tool, especially around employees.
Now look at the broader landscape: SurveyMonkey had an 18% revenue increase in its first quarter as a public company, and Glint was acquired by LinkedIn for $400M. Seems like the clear market signal on employee measurement is: “We’ve been talking about engagement in fluffy terms for 5 years. Can we put some numbers behind it that executives can look at? We’ll pay you for that!”
What does that mean for recruiting, though?
Continue reading “Measurement is what makes you money in HR right now”
“Hire three top performers, pay ’em like 8, and get the results of 10.”
That quote is from this podcast interview, and, well, the actual quote would be:
I always tell my clients, hire three rock stars, pay them like eight, and you get the result of 10.
I changed “rock stars” because it’s a term of deification I’ve never understood. A lot of rock stars are drug-addled messes who destroy hotel rooms and female self-worth in equal measure. Why do we associate that with “good employees?” It’s kind of the same how “viral” usually means “a bunch of people got sick” but somehow in the social media era, it’s a good thing? Semantics are confusing.
Anyway, this quote is good for a couple of reasons.
Continue reading “Here’s a new approach to working with compensation for different roles”
You can do the best job ever as a recruiter. Slay it. Kill all your numbers. Get all the A-Players in your market — and other markets. But even if you’re out there consistently putting the bar up, you’ll be seen as a crappy recruiter over time if your new hires keep entering the organization, getting no recognition, and leaving sometime in the first 18 months. Eventually, as you reach out to new candidates, they’ll have heard from their friends that your placements often end up in frustration.
Now your personal brand is suffering.
Why does this happen? Because for as much money as we put into recruiting, we don’t put the same amount of thought and context into the next steps: on boarding, better management, and working to recognize and reward employees.
And listen, I totally understand that not every organization is a bank. Not everyone can be a VP. Not everyone can get promoted every year and have the high-ass salary. I get all that. But there are other ways you can reward people and recognize them for their accomplishments. One simple way, mentioned by my colleague at RD Ted Bauer, is simply to acknowledge what’s happening in their lives.
And yes, there are reward and recognition suites out there, software-wise. Reward Gateway is one example, and we’ve previously looked at some of their approaches to improve both recruiting and engagement. There are other solutions on the market too. We’ve done some work with Namely and some of the others on this list in the past. Solutions are definitely out there.
But it all begins with, well, caring.
As Uber gears up towards it’s IPO (initial public offering), it is seemingly on a quest to become the Amazon of services, having expanded beyond ride-hailing to freight hauling, food delivery, and electric scooters. Uber Works will let companies recruit short-term workers such as security guards and waiters for events, the Financial Times reports.
While not necessarily attacking the bread and butter of staffing agencies, Uber is committing to doing more than some on-demand workforce companies such as TaskRabbit; instead of offering an extra pair of hands to consumers to help with house cleaning or building flat-packed furniture, Uber Works is pitched as a business-to-business service. As a business-to-business service, the company which transformed the global taxi industry is now taking aim at Uber-izing side hustles.
As the ride-hail company has quietly been developing a new short-term staffing business to expand its “on-demand” model into additional types of temporary work, what is to suggest that it stop with banquet servers, taxi drivers, or security guards? After all, Uber can argue its model, a model where self-employed people decide when they want to work via an app, provides workers with greater flexibility, and that workers have spoken favorably of the set-up in surveys. Such an augmentation of their existing on-demand businesses could help further inflate the company’s valuation, especially as Uber prepares for a rumored IPO.
Uber Works could become another potential source of income for the millions of drivers who are contracted by Uber; they can already supplement or replace their driving by taking jobs with Uber Eats, the company’s on-demand food-delivery service. It could also provide a fresh angle for critics who claim the company misclassified its drivers as independent contractors, denying them benefits like health insurance and minimum wage.
Side-hustles such as the ones Uber already operates and optimizes are one thing, but could they be an untapped opportunity for businesses who wish to maximize margins and reduce the necessities of employee benefits? Could they allow businesses to instantly scale up and scale down depending upon the amount of work or labor needed?
As the company gears up for its initial public offering next year, Uber is clearly trying to diversify its business. In the last year, Uber double-downed on multi-modal transportation with the acquisition and deployment of JUMP bike-share. In the last month, Uber deployed electric scooters in Santa Monica, Calif.
So why not disrupt the staffing agency model?
Conceivably, Uber Works would use its algorithm to book the most qualified workers available within minutes for waiters or bartenders to pitch in at the last minute for an evening of work, or those algorithms could optimize much more.
Consider the echoes of workers who are placed by staffing agencies into these mostly low-wage jobs. Sometimes placed for a day or a week, but even months or years, after millions of full-time positions, were shed when the Great Recession began a decade ago, the U.S. economy is rebounding, in part, on the backs of temp workers who have helped to fill in the gaps.
And it’s at a rate suggesting they are not only increasing — but are increasingly permanent.
“This is absolutely the new frontier in the American labor force,” said Keith Cunningham-Parmeter, a labor and employment law professor at Willamette University in Oregon, who has studied how companies such as Amazon and Uber employ people.
These workers represent the backbone of the U.S. workforce, holding an integral role in the country’s ever-evolving, on-demand economy — and whose precariousness has left them vulnerable to a system of exploitation and abuse, advocates say.
Think about how Amazon, IKEA, and others utilize this on-demand labor. They are hired in temporary roles alongside full-timers, boxing up online orders, putting together car parts, making the flimsy aluminum trays sold in dollar stores or whatever else is needed in a pinch.
But… it’s not just limited to low-wage jobs.
An NPR story from earlier this year talked about how a law firm set up a futuristic model for how to get legal work done. It relied heavily on new kinds of work arrangements. Lawyers, or rather contractors are hired by the hour started in groups of 30 to 80. Take a look at LinkedIn, and you’ll see attorneys who work at the same firm for decades, but not in this model. Tenure might last a few days for the workers there today.
The division is a kind of like a processing center, using artificial intelligence tools and cheaper lawyers to speed up the handling of routine tasks, such as sorting and tagging documents. That frees other lawyers to focus on more high-end work, much the same way that Uber’s algorithms route the most efficient or optimal route to get to a rider.
If this can happen to lawyers and attorneys, it’s emblematic of the kind of contract work expanding into every corner of the economy. Machines are siphoning off basic tasks, and temporary workers allow flexibility to size up and down. In the legal field, there are online platforms that match freelance lawyers with clients. It’s like dating profiles, but with customer reviews and billing assistance. The legal job market, in other words, is fragmenting, and with it, its workforce.
If Uber and Amazon can optimize their temporary employee needs to scale up and down for low-wage jobs, and if traditionally higher wage jobs can be siphoned off and optimized as well.
After the Great Recession, the temp worker industry snapped back with the rest of the economy — to more than 3 million workers in July of 2018, according to federal labor data compiled by the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. That was a net gain of 481,400 jobs.
Some studies indicate that freelancing, independent contracting and temp work are on the rise, although most Americans still hold traditional, full-time employment. In July, “temporary help services” workers made up just over 2 percent of all non-farm jobs in the country, federal data show.
What is noteworthy remains the prevalence of such temp workers across a range of industries. No longer are they merely office workers answering phones — they’re packing boxes and operating machinery in warehouses, and employed as security guards, janitors, and nursing assistants. A 2016 study by Harvard and Princeton researchers dug into federal employment numbers and found something striking: “94 percent of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work,” which includes temp workers, on-call workers, independent contractors, and freelancers.
A recent NPR/Marist poll finds that 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. Within a decade, contractors and freelancers could make up half of the American workforce. Workers across all industries and at all professional levels will be touched by the movement toward independent work — one without the constraints, or benefits, of full-time employment.
Currently, 1 in 5 workers is a contract worker, the poll shows. According to economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, the percentage of people engaged in “alternative work arrangements.” Freelancers, contractors, on-call workers, and temp agency workers grew from 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015. Their report found that almost all, or 94 percent, of net jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs.
If there ever was a business case in Uber spreading from ride-hailing to staffing agency, it’s this state of impermanence. Add to it statistics from American Staffing Association, which represents many of the country’s 20,000 staffing and recruiting companies, says that about one-third of workers are eventually offered some type of permanent position by a client. But a 2017 report by the advocacy group the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative says that four out of five workers never saw a temp job lead to being directly hired.
As Uber reportedly heads for an IPO, its food delivery arm is now valued by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs at a hefty $20 billion, and at just three years old, it’s expected to become profitable before the ride-sharing service (which is valued at an estimated $120 billion altogether) does. It will serve 70% of the U.S. by the end of the year, targeting smaller cities and suburbs for expansion.
The considerable amount of customer data Uber Eats collects from its estimated 8 million-plus users (Uber does not break out the number of users of its food delivery service from users of its ride-share service) means that it has unique insight into what kinds of foods are rising in popularity, and it’s capitalizing on that knowledge to expand its business.
By uncovering opportunities actually leveraging big data, Uber is using its economy of scale to influence both the restaurant and hospitality space while simultaneously continues to work on unprofitable self-driving technology. And it signals something even more radical. Uber isn’t afraid to disrupt their own business.
“Being a brand ambassador is the entire point of recruiting, and done well, its entire competitive advantage.” – Matt Charney, Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions
For most candidates, the initial interview with recruiters and/or hiring managers is their first real impression of the organization – and, as we all know, first impressions matter. Four out of five jobseekers believe candidate experience is an indicator of how much a company values its people, while 72% of candidates would want to talk to a recruiter or hiring manager before applying (CareerBuilder, 2017).
It is well known poor candidate experience costs an organization potentially high-performing employees, not only in the present round of hiring but in the longer term. 95% of jobseekers reject offers due to a negative impression of the organization (CareerBuilder, 2014), while 58% would not apply to the organization in the future (IBM, 2017). By creating a suboptimal experience in
even one round of hiring, organizations risk reducing their pool of good candidates in the long term.
Consumers, likewise, have more choices available to them than ever before. They no longer expect products and services to merely provide high quality for a reasonable price, but to engage them, inspire them, and align with their values.
Candidates are consumers, as are the people in their social networks:
25% of job seekers stop purchasing products or services from a company following a poor candidate experience (Ph.Attraction, 2016);
58% will criticize an organization they do not trust to a friend or colleague (Edelman 2015 Trust Barometer);
60% of people rely primarily on recommendations from family/friends when selecting a product or service (Deloitte, 2014).
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of consumers refuse to buy products and services from a company they do not trust (Edelman 2015 Trust Barometer).
These statistics mean potentially a company with a poor recruitment process would not only face substantial issues in the long term but also lose substantial revenue as a result of negative brand perception. This, in turn, makes attracting the best candidates even more resource-intensive – 69% of people indicate they would not accept a job offer from a company with a bad reputation, even if they were presently unemployed (Allegis Group Services Study, 2012).
Your Recruiters have the closest communication with people outside the company, more so even than sales representatives – it is essential for CEOs and hiring managers to recognize the recruitment process is a crucial component of their overall PR and marketing strategy.
Yet, despite that fact, in many organizations training on customer experience, reviews of customer satisfaction metrics and investment in customer journey mapping normally doesn’t touch the recruitment team- a team considered just ‘part of HR’.
Organizations also commit enormous resources to PR and marketing, employing in-house or third-party specialists to get the job done right.
Recruitment should be no different.
If recruiters are brand ambassadors, they are hiring managers, especially senior managers and CEOs, not the ultimate communicators of an organization’s brand? They have intimate knowledge of their product, and the vision behind it; communicating this to employees is part of their job. Why add a recruitment specialist to the mix?
The answer is simple – hiring managers already have a job: they are managers! A specialist knowledge of recruitment takes time to develop, and a properly conducted candidate experience is a time-intensive and sophisticated process.
Hiring managers may respect the importance of good candidate experience – 82% say they do – but do they necessarily have the time, and expertise, to implement it?
28% of candidates reject job offers because they felt interviews acted unprofessionally (CareerBuilder, 2017);
61% of employees say new job realities differ from expectations set during the interview process (Glassdoor survey, May 2013)
60% of candidates quit job applications due to excessive length or complexity (CareerBuilder)
Organizations lose 20 percent of candidates after waiting just three days to schedule an interview (HRTechnologist)
61% of employees say new job realities differ from expectations set during the interview process. (Glassdoor survey, May 2013)
72% of hiring managers believe they provide clear job descriptions, but only 36% of candidates agree (WorkPlaceTrends).
Hiring managers are not themselves experts in recruitment. As such, a solid partnership with a professional recruitment team- in-house or outsourced-, is vital to a successful recruitment strategy. A recruitment specialist is able to manage aspects such as process design & assessment methodology, ensuring a swift-moving, well-oiled, consistent experience for all candidates, whether or not they ultimately become employees.
The best candidate experience emerges from an effective working partnership between hiring managers, who are experts in their product, their needs, and their company culture, and recruiters, who are experts in job marketing, candidate sourcing, assessment, and the hiring process. What can hiring managers do to ensure this partnership is a success?
Communication is key. How much time will you invest in covering an empty chair because you haven’t found the right person on time, or worse still managing someone you have hired who turns out to be a bad fit? A lot is the normal answer to those questions. That investment in 45 minutes to have a proper briefing call with the recruiter responsible for finding and helping you select your new hire is a valuable outlay of your time.
Recruiters must have clear guidelines on the requirements of the role, and any particular skills, experiences, or traits to focus on. They should be briefed on the existing culture which the new employee will be joining, and any potential mismatches or contraindications to look out for. The recruiter’s sourcing of candidates can only be as good as the information they are given. It is also vital for hiring managers to respond as quickly as possible with feedback on recommended candidates. With the right information, recruiters can help construct a clear, informative, and engaging job ad, based on best practices.
This is not, however, a one-way street. Professional recruiters are not the equivalent of a drive-thru order machine where you just holler your order and then pick up your meal, treating them as such will mean a hiring manager loses out on valuable insights into their process. A professional recruiter is likely to have a broad view of what is happening in the wider business and may be able to help in painting a picture not just of what someone needs to be successful in the role but also to operate at the level they are being hired at into the business.
Recruiters will often also come with insights from previous hiring processes and even from exit interviews with employees who have left about what will and won’t work. Finally, recruiters also have deep knowledge of what job seekers in your specific niche of the labor market are looking for, failing to take time to listen to their advice may mean you end up with a struggle to attract the right people.
Consistent interview presence from hiring managers is also important. Changes to scheduling should be kept to a minimum, and communicated as early as possible. To ensure a fair and consistent experience for all candidates, the hiring manager and recruiter should agree on the level of involvement of the manager at each stage of the process. For the same reason, a recruiter can advise on an appropriate structure for the interview, keeping questions for candidates, and responses to their questions, consistent.
A third crucial role played by recruiters, and one especially important to branding is of an impartial arbiter. They recognize an interview is both an evaluation, and a sales pitch. Hiring managers are driven to find the best candidate for their needs; candidates are driven to find the best role for their needs. The recruiter’s position between the two gives them an objective vantage point and helps ensure both hiring manager and candidate come away from the experience with a clear idea of whether their respective expectations have been met.
In the ideal partnership, at the appropriate point in the recruitment process, the hiring manager will be able to further promote the company’s brand by providing additional, personal insights into the advertised role and the culture of their organization. However, this can only happen in the context of the fundamental requirements for a fair, thorough, and positive candidate experience having been met! If a candidate feels undervalued, dismissed, ignored, or insulted at any point in the recruitment process, that becomes your brand, as far as the person is concerned. No amount of evangelizing will rescue the candidate’s opinion, and, as we have seen, they will share their experience with other potential candidates, and with consumers in general.
What all these recommendations add up to can be expressed in one simple phrase: invest in expert recruiters!
Whether this means financially, in hiring or subcontracting the most skilled people, or by spending time working with them to ensure you are communicating your needs effectively, it the one investment hiring managers can make which is guaranteed to make a good return.
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