We had a good time down in “that 404 that ATL” on Thursday, May 3rd. The discussions were flowing pretty nicely, so I’d estimate 3-4 posts on RD will emerge from the day. This is the first. We’re going to give a couple of specific examples of employee referral program ideas that might work for you.
Continue reading “HRTX Atlanta: Examples of employee referral programs”
Planet of the Apes. King Kong. Gorillas in the Mist. Dunston Checks In. Bedtime for Bonzo. George of the Jungle. Every Which Way but Loose.
The list of great ape movies (pun Intended) goes on and on and on.
Movies about monkeys often take wild and different turns — much like our day-to-day work does, actually. In fact, Dan Rust — who wrote the book Workplace Poker — once actually equated work to “chimp rape.” Um.
How we deal with the flinging of, well, you know what is supposed to be what separates us from our opposable-thumbed furry friends.
Well, it is SUPPOSED to, anyway.
From research experiments to B-Movies, from Ape Astronauts to subjects of songs, our primate partners have so much to teach us about life, about sourcing and recruiting and about more mature ways to throw excrement.
Perhaps.
So, without further ado, here’s a few things we can learn from the Primates of the Wild Jungle to help us in our Urban Jungle.
Continue reading “Monkeys can admittedly teach us a lot about sourcing and TA”
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Remind you of your budgeting process?
Most Talent Acquisition (TA) teams have long suffered the consequences of working with unrealistic budgets, yet it’s still a tough pattern to break. And while budget season is months away, why not take steps now to make your budget work for you throughout the year?
Continue reading “How can talent acquisition budgeting be a better process?”
The gig economy is here to stay, and in many ways, it’s amazing.
Whenever I’m in Atlanta, I get BBQ delivered right to my door. And I never rent a car anymore because a driver is never more than 5 minutes away. Walmart and Amazon have taken personal service a step further, rolling out programs to deliver packages into your home and to put your groceries away in your fridge. These services sound great, but we’re increasingly putting our safety into the hands of someone we don’t know. That can be a huge risk, and it’s why criminal background checks are more important than ever – from both a customer and a business perspective.
According to recent news, more than 120 Uber and Lyft drivers are reported to have sexually assaulted passengers. Could these crimes have been avoided? Uber and Lyft do run criminal background checks on their employees – they’d be crazy not to. But the fact is, in today’s world, when the way we buy and sell goods puts people we don’t know into our homes and into the driver’s seat, we need to be smart and thorough in the types of criminal background screening that we do. Here’s what First Advantage recommends to our potential gig economy customers:
Let me give you an example. Say that John Doe applies to become a Rideshare driver. John just moved to Big City from Small Town, and he’s looking to get hired ASAP. Rideshare runs a background screen that only includes the criminal history listed for his current address. Nothing comes up, and due to inconsistency in how records are transmitted and stored from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, Rideshare might never learn about the three assaults John committed just a few years ago in Small Town.
First Advantage’s recommended approach for gig economy hiring is thorough, but it’s thorough for a reason. The fact is, it isn’t just your brand reputation you’re putting at risk; it’s the safety of your customers. And shouldn’t that be the most important thing? When it comes to gig economy hiring, we need to be smart when it comes to due diligence and criminal background checks. As the old saying goes: Trust, but verify. For a complete look at criminal records searches for U.S. employers, click here to download our comprehensive guide.
I’m sure some organizations already do this, but in terms of me, my friends, my family and people that email me about work stuff, it’s not normative.
Look, the hiring process is legitimately broken. I think we all somewhat know that, even if we don’t admit it. We claim to hire from “a sense of purpose.” We don’t. The war for talent became the war on talent.
A lot of the issue here is the actual hiring manager, i.e. the person who will be your eventual boss (in all likelihood). You absolutely need to understand one concept about work to realize why hiring sucks so badly: work is about control.
It has nothing to do with productivity, getting the best person, etc. It has to do with “I own this and that makes me relevant.” A lot of hiring managers, who are often middle managers, think this way.
Continue reading “Shouldn’t the team hire a candidate, as opposed to the manager?”
Images of robots overtaking the world are often associated with automation and artificial intelligence – an army of machinery battling against humanity for supremacy. These robots work seamlessly together as they seek to eradicate our species.
It’s a scary thought, but truthfully, it’s also not a particularly intelligent one. There will be no rise of the robots without nefarious humans facilitating it for their own ends, and equating the ubiquity of automation with some sort of robot apocalypse belies precious little understanding of how technology works.
First of all, you can’t fear both automation and artificial intelligence as the same concept. They’re wildly different.
Automation is about better managing or eliminating repetitive processes. It’s a question of resource allocation.
Artificial intelligence is leveraging things like bots, intelligent assistants, NLP, machine learning, and predictive analytics to inform business decisions. It is transformative and future-shaping.
When people talk of human subservience to machines, they’re thinking about AI gone off the deep end, making decisions with ethical implications but seemingly without the ability to differentiate right from wrong.
Can that impact recruitment, specifically? At this point, no.
That sort of AI is future-state. But automation certainly can impact the recruiting industry, and it already has.
Continue reading “Let’s break down the myths on “how automation will gut talent acquisition””
This much we’ve always known: the moment a candidate clicks on a job post, their interaction with a potential employer begins. Now the recruitment team is on the clock.
Overall unemployment in the U.S. right now is fairly low, and most talent acquisition professionals — whether they’re front-line or executives — will tell you the market is very competitive, especially around urban areas and tech roles.
We’ve talked a lot about candidate engagement in the last few years. Many organizations aren’t quite “there” yet in terms of consistent delivery of said engagement, but all should be trying.
Continue reading “Are bots going to make candidates love you like XO?”
Candidates spend countless hours worrying about their resumes. Second-guessing, improving and tweaking anything they can to improve their chances and impress recruiters/hiring managers. When recruiters are scanning resumes, they know exactly what they are looking for…and what they *aren’t* looking for (see- Does Your Resume Pass The 6 Second Review?).
Besides looking for relevant experience, recruiters are looking for reasons to exclude you from consideration. That’s an undeniable fact.
Recruiters practice “Resume Cryptography,” cracking the hidden meanings in resumes and LinkedIn profiles.
If you are unemployed or currently consulting/temping, and looking for a permanent opportunity, working with a recruiter can be tricky. Typically, if you are not working in a permanent role, recruiters will mostly only consider you for temporary roles. Finding quality temporary employees is difficult and recruiters like to build a solid bench of available candidates. Employers are also hesitant to hire candidates through recruiters on a permanent basis. Want recruiters to consider you for permanent roles? Make sure your LinkedIn profile and resume portrays you as a permanent candidate and not an available temp. Here are some words/phrases to avoid:
Will those words/phrases help you find temporary work? Absolutely…when recruiters are looking for consultants, they need to know who is available for their clients NOW.
But if any of those words are on your resume or LinkedIn profile, recruiters and hiring managers see that as a code. To some recruiters, those words mean “Not Able To Be Permanently Placed.”
If you are currently a Property Accountant on a temporary basis, your current role should not be listed as Temporary Property Accountant. All a recruiter will notice is *ALERT*TEMPORARY*ALERT*
You might be performing the same duties as your permanent Property Accountant co-worker — hell, you probably are. So don’t sell your experience short by throwing up your own red flag.
The same can be said for Consulting on a resume. Ask any recruiter what they think when they see “Consulting” on a resume. Within 0.5 seconds the answer will be a unanimous “Unemployed.”
Even if you are legitimately consulting with a company, the word “consulting” translates to “unemployed.” It shouldn’t necessarily be that way, but honestly, it is.
Be specific with your experience. If you have been consulting with various companies, list the companies. Prove that you have been working — because recruiters assume otherwise.
Why else should companies be listed? Because recruiters search profiles and resume databases for specific companies while searching for client jobs. *NOTE* This does NOT hold true for all companies. If you are temping at Company X thru Agency C, do not list Agency C on your resume. Don’t flag yourself as a temp. Just name the client, not the agency.
“But Adam, what if I was a consultant by choice? What if I wanted the flexibility of picking assignments, changing clients, etc.?” I suggest that you create an LLC or DBA, name it, and then put that on your resume/profile. To a recruiter/hiring manager, there is a huge difference when comparing candidates when the experiences is listed:
Consultant, 2016-Present
and
Corporate Accounting Services LLC, 2016-Present
First impressions are everything, and if a recruiter is (lazily) flipping through resumes, “Consultant” might be discarded or placed in the back-up pile, but “Corporate Accounting Services LLC” WILL be followed up on. Why?
Because lazy recruiters and hiring managers feel that if someone was “good enough” for a permanent job, they wouldn’t be consulting/temping…reasons be damned.
Quick story – A woman I know is currently temping on an open-ended assignment. She is only looking for permanent roles. Her resume and profile say that she is currently temping. 3 different recruiting agencies contacted her for the same available role. 1 agency said it was temporary, 1 agency said it was temporary “with a chance of perm” (FYI – don’t get me started on “chance of perm.” Anything has a “chance of anything.” Either its temp or temp to perm. Just be up front and honest), and 1 agency said it was a permanent opening. Guess which agency she went with? The one that recognized her skillset and desire for a perm job. The others saw the word “temp” on her resume and started to salivate about those sweet sweet billable hours. Here’s a live look-in at a temporary recruiter-
“I see here that your resume says you are temping?”
Age discrimination is real. I am not saying it is common practice, nor am I saying that recruiters are more guilty of it than direct clients/hiring managers. And I can say unequivocally that I don’t give two damns about age. Good recruiters put forward the best candidates for the position.
But yes, it exists.
I feel that older candidates overthink the resume situation, trying to spin the age into a positive for people that may view it as a negative. Please know that the recruiters and hiring managers that do discriminate based on age see right through the spin. In fact, they look for it.
“But I graduated college in 1977. If a recruiter sees that, they will automatically discount me.”
Not necessarily.
Different industries value different depths of experience. If you put the year, at least you have a chance of being judged on what you actually bring to the table. If you try to play it cute and take the year off, ie “How will they know how old I am if I don’t put the year I graduated?” recruiters automatically sniff that out.
No date = old.
And they may just assume you graduated in 1963. 1977 isn’t looking too shabby now, is it?
Just put the date so the recruiter doesn’t actually assume older. And always list education last on the resume. If an employer *is* discriminating, don’t make it easy on them. Make them look at your experience first as opposed to looking at your degree year (or lack thereof) and passing.
On a related note, if a degree doesn’t have a graduation year, some recruiters get particularly sluthy when trying to figure out the age. They look at your email address. *Insert AOL email address joke here* Here is an example: [email protected] is a legit looking email address. But if the email address is [email protected] and if the recruiter is trying to figure out your age, they might assume good ol’ Firstname was born in 1949. So maybe for job searching purposes have a nice bland numberless email. You might think I am being paranoid, but why leave these things to chance?
Be careful not to put skills or experiences that date you. Let’s leave Windows 3.0, Internet Explorer, and Word 2002 off of the skills section. You want potential employers to see your software experience as up-to-date AND recent…not as an operating system wiki.
If you are unsure as to which computer skills to list, just base it on the job you are applying for. And if you don’t have the software skills listed on the job description, you probably aren’t the background you are looking for.
Over the years, companies change names. Whether it be due to merger, sale, whatever, the company that you once worked for may currently have a new name. List the name of the company as it stands now.
Any recruiter that notices an old/legacy company name knows they are dealing with an older individual.
If you don’t feel comfortable listing just the “new” company name, feel free to list the “new” company name and then fka “old company name.”
For example, don’t say that you worked for Peat Marwick…say that you worked for KPMG or KPMG fka Peat Marwick.
Finally, recruiters look for certain words and phrases to sniff out older workers. Any time you put “X+” to describe your years of experience, they are always going to go figure out exactly what the “+” stands for. Not because they don’t trust you, but because they want to know the actual number SINCE YOU BROUGHT IT UP.
If you graduated in 1980, Don’t just say 15+ or 20+ years experience. That’s…that’s a huge plus. At that point why not just say 5+ years? In fact, don’t bring up years of experience at all. They have your resume and can see your years of experience. Only bring up years of experience in a cover letter to mirror the job description you are applying to to show you match the qualifications. So if it says 10+ years of cost accounting experience, feel free to mention that you do, in fact, have 10+ years of cost accounting experience (30…but who’s counting?). Other words and phrases to avoid include “seasoned,” “mature,” “experienced,” “wealth of knowledge,” “time-tested,” and “well-versed.”
Oh, I almost forgot. Please don’t list a fax number.
Looking for a job is hard. Don’t give recruiters and hiring managers a reason to eliminate you from contention. Limit the red flags. Recruiters look for the red flags…don’t go waving them in their faces. Focus on what you will bring to the table…focus on the job descriptions you are applying for. They want 5+ years? You have 5+ years….no reason to mention it’s actually 30.
They want 2+ years recent budgeting experience? You have 2+ years…no reason to mention it is with 6 companies via 3 temporary staffing firms.
Don’t screen yourself out. Know the language clues and cues recruiters look for.
Checklists are boring. Same goes for email checklists. They inherently stifle and limit creativity. They seem like an unnecessary distraction to the real work that I need to do.
I felt that way for years. Then, a few years back, my boss told me to make a checklist before I reached out to a candidate. It eliminated a ton of mistakes. It forced me to completely re-evaluate some of my processes.
Weirdly, I then got interested in checklists. You may have seen this deep dive in The New Yorker years ago, but a doctor at Johns Hopkins — Peter Provonost — implemented a simple five-point intensive care checklist that ultimately saved over 1,500 lives.
This cold email outreach checklist won’t save 1,500 lives, no — but it will save time and effort, and those are crucial to the recruiting function. Nothing on here is rocket science, either; but it’s valuable to have it in one place and think through it. It’s also all based on our data.
At recruiterflow, we analyzed over 50,000 cold emails sent to prospective candidates over a three-month span. On average, an email where the first name is mentioned in the subject line gets 16% better open rates.
Our data suggested that hiring manager/founder/CXO emails got 29% better response rates compared to emails sent by recruiters.
Smart people have great bullsh** detectors that get triggered if your pitch is littered with vanity metrics.
Let your pitch contain the impact you’ve made: the number of happy customers, revenue, or just plain number of users. Sell the Org. Don’t clutter it up. 170 was the magic number in our data for effectiveness in terms of open and response.
Our data suggest that follow up emails get 3x the responses of the first email. (Makes sense around timing issues, etc.) And good news: you can completely automate this with tools like Yesware or Recruiterflow.
It is easy to fall into the trap of the first-person perspective. With each word that you write, you need to be conscious of the fact that the person receiving the email doesn’t care what you want or need. Your email needs to appeal to them and make it easy to act on. Our golden data ratio is 3-to-1 or higher for “you/your” in terms of open rate.
Time to think like a marketer.
My favorite call to action is to jump on a short, 15-minute call.
I like it because it’s a logical economic tradeoff: 15 minutes isn’t that much time, and the candidate isn’t yet invested in your company or the role. He/she can trade 15 minutes.
Don’t ever ask your passive prospects to go and apply on a careers page or, even worse, solve a take-home test. I tried that once. It failed miserably.
What other elements have you added to your own checklists? Let me know in the comments.
This isn’t going to be rocket science, but maybe it will resonate.
Most companies do exit interviews, right? When someone has already decided to take another opportunity or outright quit because they can’t take the bullshit anymore?
Seems to me (and/or any reasonable person) that an “exit” interview would be too late.
The person already basically out the door completely.
What about an entry interview?
Hmm.
Turns out Adam Grant has my back on this!
Continue reading “Exit interviews feel meaningless. What about ENTRY interviews?”
With a growing list of responsibilities and a dynamic hiring environment, the role of the recruiter is perhaps one of the fastest-changing roles in the business world.
What are some of the biggest trends that have completely shifted the way recruiters need to do their job? What’s driving all this change?
In this post, we’ll explore the what’s behind the transition and provide insights on how recruiters can capitalize on these trends. Let’s dive in.
1) Talent Acquisition is Becoming More Complicated
As the economy rebounds and startups and high-growth companies continue to receive funding, we will continue to see growth in the number of open roles. At the same time, there are more candidates in market — five generations of workers, to be exact. With more people looking for jobs, it’s trickier than ever to find the right candidate.
To navigate this complex job market, recruiters need to devote more time to sourcing and evaluating candidates. They need to be efficient and consolidate the amount of time they spend on the tactics, like interview scheduling.
This is why many talent acquisition teams are turning to candidate engagement tools to automate these processes with artificial intelligence. In fact, a recent study by Deloitte shows that 41% of HR leaders say they have fully implemented or made important progress in artificial intelligence technologies. Not only do these tools help recruiters become more productive, but they also support talent acquisition efforts by eliminating human error and providing more consistent communication for candidates. This improves the candidate experience overall and provides a competitive advantage to companies who want to make a great first impression with top candidates.
2) A Greater Focus on Metrics
HR has been trying for a “seat at the table” with executives for decades. It might start to finally happen as HR leaders show tangible business value through metrics.
We’re seeing more accountability in talent acquisition teams by them having their own business metrics, such as cost-per-hire, time-in-pipeline, employee retention, and performance for the candidates they hire. One challenge of this new metrics-focused approach is that many who entered talent acquisition entered for the “people” element of it. They’re not necessarily “data people,” but they’re being asked to be.
Our advice to HR leaders? Help recruiters gain the knowledge they need to be more data-centric. Encourage recruiters to attend workshops or conferences to learn more about analytics. Another option: Let them attend analytics classes at local universities. Have senior members of the talent acquisition team, or those better with data running and analysis, serve as mentors to those with less experience around data.
Explain what data means, how it’s calculated, and how executives like to see the data presented. Give context for why this metrics matter and how they impact broader corporate initiatives. With better knowledge of how analytics work and how they communicate the value recruiters bring, you’ll soon see recruiters embracing metrics all on their own.
3) The Rise of Strategic Responsibilities
Until recently, a recruiter’s day was filled with tactical tasks related to talent acquisition. While that hasn’t gone away, companies also want recruiters to own strategic programs around onboarding, employer branding, and employee retention.
The reality of any job is that new roles and responsibilities are always being added or shifted. Recruiters need to do their best with evolving responsibilities and prioritize according to the overall company strategy. For example, Trello does “Coffee Talks” every Friday during which the team can be exposed to the overall company strategy, how different departments are working within it, and who’s doing what. It helps each team better understand their part of the equation and offers clarity on what the most important programs are. Consider launching a similar practice at your company to help your team stay in the loop.
4) More Focus on Diversity & Inclusion
Awareness around diversity and inclusion is growing, especially with recent events like the #MeToo movement. There’s no way around it: These issues need to be reflected in your company’s values, as they are an increasingly important aspect of talent acquisition and employer branding. It’s not just the right thing to do — it’s also a competitive advantage. Diversity and inclusion attracts candidates. According to Glassdoor, 67% of job seekers want to work for diverse companies. Additionally, a broader set of perspectives leads to more innovation and better overall company performance.
Just launching diversity and inclusion efforts at your company? Collecting employee feedback is a good place to start. Survey employees about your company’s performance in these areas. The feedback can be applied to the hiring process to ensure a consistent and fair experience for every candidate and employee.
5) HR Tech is Exploding
Even just five years ago, the HR tech market was basically only benefits software suites and applicant tracking systems. Since then, the market has expanded to include suites for retention, engagement, candidate communication, candidate rediscovery, automation, and more. Artificial intelligence, which gives machines the ability to perform “human-like” tasks and powers automation, is one of the fastest-growing areas of HR tech.
There’s a lot of choice in HR tech. That’s a good thing, but choice can also be overwhelming. To avoid the mistake of investing in the wrong software, gather as much information as you can from both your team and the vendor before committing. Here are a few questions you’ll want to use to guide the conversation:
The HR and recruiting landscape is almost unrecognizable from a decade ago. An evolving job market and broader set of responsibilities are putting more and more pressure on recruiters. To navigate this complex landscape, it’s important for HR teams to embrace cultural shifts like diversity and inclusion and to empower their teams the data and technology they need to be successful.
About Alex, An AI-Powered Assistant
Alex, My Ally’s AI Recruiting Assistant, ensures that candidates have the best interview experience possible by automatically scheduling interviews and moving them through the pipeline with minimal delay. Want to learn more? Request a demo today.
This post was sponsored by My Ally
Actually, let’s just lead with the top 15:
1. Keller Williams Realty
2. Coldwell Banker
3. Cisco
4. Kaiser Permanente
5. Google
6. Capital One
7. Century 21
8. NIKE
9. Northrop Grumman
10. Pfizer Inc.
11. American Express
12. Fidelity Investments
13. Dell
14. Lockheed Martin
15. Johnson & Johnson
Do you like millennials?
Hate them?
Turns out that your opinion doesn’t matter all that much.
Continue reading “A 28-Year-Old Software Engineer Will Decide the Future of Your Organization”
Can we select job candidates based on their brains?
Continue reading “Can we select candidates based on their brains?”
It is a truth universally acknowledged that most onboarding programs — the process of bringing a new employee into a company — absolutely suck lead paint. Here are some stats backing that up. It’s always amazing to me that people look at terrible “employee engagement” numbers — 15% globally, son!— and don’t realize how it’s tied to crap onboarding.
If you come into an organization and you have no idea of your role, the mission, your manager’s deliverables, the culture, etc. in the beginning … eventually, why would you care anymore?
The short answer to that question is “They pay you and can fire you, so you have to care.”
True, true.
Is that the best answer to that question? No.
Continue reading “A post-divorce dream can save your onboarding program (really)”
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