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Employer Branding As A Strategic Approach To Long Term Talent Acquisition

Building a long-term image in the minds of passive candidates

Employer Branding (EB) is a key component of any integrated talent acquisition strategy; it is both a long-term strategic solution (laying the foundation and building a long-term image in the minds of passive candidates—your ultimate target) as well as an employee retention strategy for current employees. A compelling EVP/Employee Value Proposition (integrated and aligned with your onboarding, HR offerings, professional development, company culture, brand message, brand ambassador program and “Best Place to Work” awards honors), can be very valuable in the talent hunt and serve as a strategic approach in the war for top talent in 2018 and beyond. And, it can pay hiring dividends.

“56% and 54% increases in total completed applications via the Career website”

While I worked at Monsanto, the global Ag bio-tech giant based, I learned that you can position your Employer Brand messaging & EVP in your: offer letters, new hire on-boarding & welcome emails, radio commercials (sponsor a 30 minute local FM/AM radio program), video commercials, marketing materials (US & Global), town halls, internal news announcements, benefits’ newsletters, recruiting toolboxes (for use by far-flung staff away from your corporate headquarters), external/internal career websites, and internet job postings, campus events and flyers, table tents, and trade booth displays, etc.

Here is a quick (new idea): consider creating a graphic image-driven “Electronic EVP” as I did this year, for use inside your organization–displayed on your in-house company TV screens, computer monitors & or on large screen building monitors. You can also circulate it via internally via email broadcasts.

“the Employer Brand Program can be used to provide a roadmap and code of behavior for existing Employees”

You can even “push the envelope” and incorporate elements of Employment Branding into your performance appraisal system for existing employees and staff. For example, consider this: why not measure employees on what positive “image building/improving activities” on behalf of the company they have engaged in over the course of a review period, such as: volunteerism work, community good deeds, student tutoring, food kitchen volunteer work, etc.? Additionally, the Employer Brand Program can be used to provide a roadmap and code of behavior for existing Employees. It could inform, educate and indoctrinate new entrants into the company culture and provide an explicit set of norms and behavior. And it can also help your Recruiting.

In my Employer Branding career, I have worked on: 1.) creating large global (worldwide) EVPs and Employer Brand Programs (both inside the US and in a foreign world region offshore location; 2.) large US nationally focused EVPs and Employer Brand Programs; 3.) small regional focused EVPs and Employer Brand Programs for several firms that draw their talent pools from a single American state—all of these “Branding efforts” I led, supported and enhanced my firm’s talent attraction hiring campaigns. I merged my Branding knowledge with the Recruiting experiences I had in 1996 with Lockheed Martin and then Unext.com/Cardean Learning, to use Employer Branding both as a Strategic and Tactical strategy for HR and Talent Acquisition. So then, what did it do for Recruiting results, you ask?—plenty!

Here are some significant and impactful “Recruiting” KPIs from my Employment Branding Program:

  • 56% and 54% increases in total completed applications via the Career website two years running;
  • greater employee engagement as measured by internal surveys and
  • increased in a Diverse number of applicants, women etc.

Don’t miss an opportunity to use EB as a long-term strategic talent acquisition solution; get started today planting those long-term “seeds” for attracting the right people to your organization.

Listen To Recruiting and Talent Leaders

Earlier this month, we got together for one of our HRTX unconference events in downtown Dallas. It was actually among the best-attended ever, so that’s fun — and hey, if you’re in the general New England area, we’re doing one in Boston at the offices of Bullhorn on April 12th.

I initially sat down to write about the thoughts of our subject matter experts (SkillScout, WCN, GR8People, Monster, and RolePoint). While they had some fantastic views on the industry, it ultimately became a little too narrow. So instead, this post is going to recap some of the best “quick hits” regarding quotes or advice from the practitioners at the Dallas event. Glean what you can.

Talent Acquisition Leaders Were Talking About:

The best candidates are not necessarily at career fairs: This came from our university recruiting track, which happens at each HRTX event. Several sourcers noted that frequently, the people you actually want wouldn’t attend the official events, so you need a different way to get at their attention — be it LinkedIn, other job boards, or threads within sites like Reddit.

What are the REAL job requirements? This came up a lot and speaks to the idea of confusion between hiring managers and talent acquisition. Many TA professionals in the room said they’re often presented with 12-18 bullet points with no sense of priority or context. Which of the 12 bullet points matter the most? Which matters the least? They aren’t told that, and they need to be.

Are females better managers? This has increasingly been the finding in major research. While the attendance in Dallas was about 60-40 female, this came up a lot — even from the males. There was an increasing sense that recruiting females, especially into conventional tech roles, was crucial because you can ultimately advance them — and they end up being better managers than men. While you can argue that men also possess empathy, females probably have empathy in more significant quantities (generally speaking) — and more empathy has been shown to have ties to the bottom line, so maybe this argument has a good deal of validity.

Have your current employees download their LinkedIn contacts for an easier referral process: If you need to know how to export your LinkedIn contacts, here you go. If employees download it as Excel/Google Sheets and then yellow-highlight the names to reach out to and forward the sheet to the recruiter, it can save a ton of time on sourcing.  Or use a great tool, as we had that tech at the event to look at a la RolePoint.

Quotable Wisdom:

“Diversity is being asked to the dance. Inclusivity is being asked to dance:” 

~This was probably the best quote of the Dallas event

 

“You work in sourcing. It doesn’t mean you’re a sorcerer.”  ~This was probably #2

 

Job Descriptions, ATS Systems, and Good Service:

How do you word your job descriptions? A few participants in Dallas cited this stat to us — when men see a job description, they need to feel a 25% potential match in terms of the wording, what’s being described, etc. Women need to feel a 70% match to consider applying. It’s relatively well-documented that many job descriptions contain some form of gender bias, so re-wording your JDs away from “tech bro” speak is a good play.

Have we reached peak ATS? This was originally going to be the focus of this post because many of the SMEs spoke to us about it. One interesting concept: from a sales perspective, many HR Tech vendors view X-company or software suite as a competitor, right? But then they learn that a major enterprise company uses their suite and the competitor in different business units, and, in fact, they often need the two to integrate. “It makes sales really confusing,” one subject matter expert told us, “because you want to be able to highlight we can do this and they can’t do this, but you can’t highlight it because the company you’re talking to needs to believe both of you can do everything because they’re using both of you.” Our man Steve Levy has estimated that there are “about 140” ATS on the market. Back in April 2017, we ranked 100 of ‘em. Have we reached “peak ATS” or “peak TA software?” Potentially — and at the very least, it’s an interesting thought.

White glove service: This was interesting concerning how often it came up — meaning the idea that talent acquisition should frame itself more around customer experience/service for the candidate. One recruiter told us, “You need to be thinking in terms of a luxury hotel concierge when you’re dealing with top candidates.” This is good news, especially since some of the original consultants who created the term “war for talent” now call it a “war on talent.” Customer experience is reshaping how businesses think about what they do (thanks Amazon!), and that mindset needs to reach TA too.

That’s a sample of the observations that came out of recruiter and subject matter expert discussions at HRTX Dallas.  At the coming events (Boston, Atlanta, etc.), we’re going to end the morning with a series of standardized questions and blog those out to paint a picture of “Atlanta TA professionals are discussing/worried about…” Fun times. Hope to see you at a future event.

 

Time to Disrupt Recruiting Fees?

If technology is helping recruiting, then why are recruiting fees the same?

Picture it: New York City. 1992. Hazy autumn afternoon, Wall Street.

Mr. Carl, Esq., has had another row with his mistress, the Upper Eastside temptress, Adaline.  Except this time, they wouldn’t make up.  Ever. She’d thrown her Calvin Klein heel through his signed Patrick Nagel original.  It was OVER. 

The fallout was almost immediate. The gossip was relentless.  Adaline was a widely-adored ingenue with multiple suitors.  And Carl’s spurned, soon to be ex-wife, was a decade older, but equally as popular. Carl’s firm lost three great accountants that week.  All of them quit to go work for some up-and-comer named Mr. Bloomberg, a man who Carl thought to be a total loser.

No one was answering his newspaper ads for help. And it was almost corporate filing season. Desperate, Carl thumbed through the white pages and found Mr. Anderson, Professional Headhunter.

Mr. Anderson had been working the street for the last 25 years. He was an active member of the chamber of commerce, a long-time Freemason, and head of the local Toastmasters club. Mr. Anderson knew everyone.

He went to every networking event, wedding, funeral, and graduation. He spent years building his valuable personal network, with methodically sent birthday cards, and regularly-scheduled “catch-up” coffees and dinners.  If anyone could find Carl’s firm an accountant, it was Mr. Anderson. 

“Well, who do you have?” Carl barked into the phone.

Mr. Anderson was calm. “Nice to hear from you Carl, I was expecting your call. I’ll take care of it.” He hung up and dove into his famed Rolodex.

The price was 20% for the first years’ annual salary. But it was worth it.  Mr. Anderson’s years and years of in-person networking meant he could get the job done and done quickly. 

Fast-forward to 2018.

Times have changed. Technology has changed. The role of the headhunter has changed. But, some things have not changed, not one bit.  And one of them is the fees.  So…why hasn’t price changed with the times? I’m here to tell you that it’s time we all stopped pretending that those agency staffing fees from the 90’s make any sense in today’s world.

As of today, 2018, quality firms with talented recruiters use roughly the following metrics to fill a position open with a passive employee (someone currently employed elsewhere who is not actively looking for work).

  • Source and reach out to about 100 candidates
  • Hear back from about 25 candidates
  • Speak to about 15 candidates
  • Get about 10 resumes
  • Submit about 5 candidates
  • Hiring Manager will interview 3 candidates and
  • Offer the position to 1 candidate.

In total, sourcing for one role might take a good recruiter about three business days. Then they’ll submit to the client, facilitate interviews and on a very good day, deliver an accepted offer.

This recruiter does not need to personally know or even have ever met any of these candidates. They can use LinkedIn recruiter’s Boolean strings to find exactly who they want, with what skills, in what city the position is located. With the click of a button, they can narrow down the search to a particular college graduation range, or degree program.

And, candidates don’t care where the job opportunity comes from. If they like it, they’ll interview. Personal network be damned.

So if the amount of preparation and the amount of work involved in filling a role has so dramatically decreased, we all really are fools to think that 20% is still a reasonable fee to pay.

Staffing firms know this because they only have to pay the recruiters, (you know–the people who are actually doing the work) between 10%-30% of the fee they collect. So…the rest of the money? Where is that going?

Have you checked stock prices for the big agencies lately?

I’m just saying; they’re not too shabby. CEO, C-Suite and management pay isn’t too bad either.  In fact, the profit margins of these firms are downright ridiculous. But for how long? How long until clients stop buying it? If you ask me, not for very much longer.

The recruiting industry fees are a dinosaur and those 20% fees? They should be looking over their shoulder for an asteroid.

Google Moves From Search to Sourcing as Hire by Google Launches Candidate Discovery

Hire by Google - RecruitingDaily.com

Where does Hire by Google fit in?

One of the foundational premises of talent sourcing lies in the fact that traditional search engines are notoriously bad at searching for individual people and profiles, particularly as they relate to jobs.

If you’re looking for something, search engines are great. If you’re looking for someone, obviously, there are a few inherent limitations to even the most sophisticated search algorithms.

Search results generally tend to reward “authority,” which works for measuring the relative influence of websites based on a myriad of factors like external backlinks, keyword density and referral traffic. This is why Wikipedia almost inevitably comes up at the top of the organic results for almost every search involving a place or thing.

Not so a person, for whom the concept of relative authority is much more difficult to rank. Results favor a number of different platforms, such as Twitter streams embedded directly in results and the prevalence of LinkedIn profiles at the top of most organic vanity searches, or publishers.

Names return largely based on the prominence of the platform on which information is published rather than the relative social influence or authority of the person’s name you’re actually searching for.

Additionally, there’s no deduplication for names (yet), meaning that unless you’re in the minority of those of us online with distinct names (for example, I’m one of like 8 Matt Charneys in the US – which sucks for them), which obviously only exacerbates the issue of relevant results for talent-based searches.

There are obvious workarounds to these limitations, of course – which is why tactics, like building multiple modifier Boolean strings or performing X-Ray searches, continue to be a viable skillset in sourcing, albeit archaic pretty much everywhere else.

More recently, the rise of “profile aggregators” such as HiringSolved or Entelo, which help overcome some of these historical obstacles (and the lack of even rudimentary native search functionality in most core talent systems) by more or less using public results (read: pages indexed by search engines) and “Deep Web” open records to populate dynamic profiles of passive talent and provide results stack ranked by relevance.

The proliferation of point solutions purporting to offer a consolidated candidate view from internal systems, external social networks and overall online footprint (both professional and personal) and their success selling into talent functions only underscores the inherent inability of traditional search methodologies to return relevant recruiting results.

A few of these actually explicitly market themselves as being the “Google for Talent,” which is both an appealing moniker as well as a stark reminder that while it’s good at a great many things, Google has never been great at returning relevant results for actual people as opposed to places, things, locations or, really, any other field of human endeavor.

This capability gap has not only given rise to an entire category designed to effectively bridge its search limitations in terms of profile aggregation and federated search from a systems perspective, but also, to an increasingly expanding ecosystem of extensions for Chrome – a browser which is, one might argue, the sourcing tool with the biggest overall market share, given its near ubiquity in the sourcing function.

Recruiting related Chrome extensions, of course, have become a cottage industry in their own right, from “free” (if you think data is worthless, in which case, you’re wrong) extensions like Lusha and Prophet to fully supported, firewalled Chrome extensions developed by enterprise ATS and HCM vendors. For evidence of Chrome’s mainstream adoption in TA, look at the Chrome extensions offered not only by emerging, agile providers like SmartRecruiters, Lever or Greenhouse but also, by the likes of Workday, Oracle HCM, and ADP.

These same vendors, who are normally so cutthroat and competitive, have not only almost unilaterally built applications (and effectively, the data they generate) for Google via Chrome, but also tout their proprietary apps as proof that they’re “mobile friendly” – even when many are not – apps that are engineered for Android, published on Google’s platform and distributed exclusively via the Google Store.

This should serve as sufficient proof that these formerly cutting-edge capabilities have become pretty passe at this point – and more than enough evidence that Google is currently viewed as an ally, not adversary, in the proverbial “war for talent” (and sourcing spend) by the existing vendor ecosystem – even after its entrance into the ATS market with its Google Hire offering last year.

Hire by Google - RecruitingDaily.com

 

Google’s Dedicated Sourcing Tool

Today’s announcement that Google is effectively dipping its toes into building a dedicated sourcing tool may serve as the catalyst for changing that general attitude. In a blog post by Omar Eduardo Fernandez, product manager for Hire by Google, the company announced the launch of what they are calling “candidate discovery functionality,” which, according to the company, will allow recruiters and hiring managers the ability to:

  • Find qualified candidates immediately upon opening a job. The first step in filling a role should be checking who you already know that fits the job criteria. Candidate discovery creates a prioritized list of past candidates based on how their profile matches to the title, job description and location.
  • Use a search capability that understands what they are looking for. Candidate discovery understands the intent of what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for. It takes a search phrase like “sales manager Bay Area” and immediately understands the skills and experiences relevant to that job title, as well as which cities are part of the Bay Area. That means the search results will include candidates with sales management skills even if their past job titles are not an exact keyword match.  
  • Easily search by previous interactions with candidates. Hire lets recruiters search and filter based on the previous interactions with the candidate—such as the type of interview feedback they received or whether you extended them an offer before. Candidates with positive feedback will rank higher in search results than those without, and candidates who received an offer in the past but declined it will rank higher than those who were previously rejected.

What Google Candidate Discovery Means

While the release is fairly short and self-explanatory, its implications are considerably more complex than the announcement would suggest. The first is that this feature means that, effectively, Google has created a native search functionality that’s profile, not keyword, based –  and one that’s specific to the talent acquisition function.

Hire by Google - RecruitingDaily.com

In fact, this product seems to be offering a set of capabilities – that is, the ability to natively search previous candidate interactions and to automatically suggest results from a company’s existing candidate database when a job is opened to instantly uncover any low hanging fruit (a best practice too few companies have made a canonical part of sourcing) and the ability to stack rank those results by relative success in (fully searchable) recruiting related interactions – that traditional ATS and HCM providers have long neglected.

That is, as much as recruiters intuitively agree on the importance of keeping silver medalists engaged and embracing the mentality that a candidate can be right, even if it’s not right now, there’s really not a systematic way to do this that can be standardized across a talent organization or enterprise at scale.

On existing systems, that’s mostly because of either Draconian end-user permissions and credentialing (why candidates have to create a username and password to apply for jobs), in which any notes on req related activity that might actually exist are effectively either archived when that req is filled, or because these systems of engagement weren’t designed to recognize those proverbial previous ‘silver medalists’ from any other unsuccessful applicant in the system.

Which is a pretty big fail, when you think about it.

Furthermore, the utilizing machine learning, NLP (as evidenced by the semantic and keyword clustering capabilities outlined in the second bullet) and, most importantly, “intent” for recruiters and hiring managers when it comes to sourcing. This would indicate that Google is making a concerted effort to continue to iterate and refine its recruiting related products – and, likely, its consumer-facing Google for Jobs offering.

While Hire by Google was significant because its launch marked the first time Google was entering the recruiting market, this potential category killer has so far failed to make any real noise in the market. This is because it (wisely) limited its ATS offering to existing Google Cloud customers, a largely down-market customer base with little to no existing overlap with most HR Tech providers and their enterprise ambitions.

Furthermore, when Hire by Google launched, the company positioned it as a reconfiguration of its existing product line, essentially mirroring what many of its Google Cloud customers were already doing with Google products independently to help manage their recruiting function.

“If you think about the activities happening in Google apps – from emailing candidates in Gmail to scheduling interviews in Google Calendar to using Google Hangouts for video interviewing – you see every part of the recruiting process except for an optimized ATS experience. Today, people have to jump between tools and apps, and have no real way to capture the recruiting process in a centralized or cohesive manner,” Google told RecruitingDaily at the time.

The existence of this machine learning instance, or, in their words, “search capability to understand what you’re looking for,” suggests that this functionality was, in fact, developed independently and by a dedicated team of programmers, since this semantic skills searching capability exists nowhere else within the Google Cloud offering and isn’t the easiest feature to develop, from a product perspective. The ability to search for individual people or professional profiles wouldn’t just benefit Google Cloud, obviously, but the entire company.

By training an algorithm to recognize how sourcers and employers search for candidates and correlating that data with a ton of historical insight into recruiter screening and selection behaviors, Google has a pretty ideal scenario to make their core search experience more “people friendly,” in terms of results.

Hire by Google - RecruitingDaily.com

 

The Hire by Google Product Team

In a previous briefing with RecruitingDaily, Hire by Google internal leaders confirmed that Google in fact not only had created an internal product team (with, apparently, a more robust roadmap than most imagined) specifically dedicated to building out the Hire by Google offering, but that they were increasing those resources (or, “internal investment,” to use their preferred phrase).

While Hire by Google will continue only to be available to Google Cloud customers – which constitute, as a Google rep points out, a pretty significant market with around 4 million captive potential clients – but indicated that could change at some point in future. The company refuses to speculate on when, if ever, that future may happen, which means traditional HR Tech vendors can rest easy, for now.

But if (and when) Google makes a full-on play in recruiting – and building internal capabilities in terms of creating an independent LOB complete with its own sales support, dedicated developers and fully aligned leadership would indicate that day may be neigh – the way we source candidates may never look quite the same.

Of course, with Google’s acquisition of Tempo, our go-to repository for GIFs, yesterday, the future of recruitment marketing may never look the same, either (one can only hope). One day later, product demos already don’t – so make sure to check out the .GIFs Google provided of their new candidate discovery product, or click here to read the company’s official announcement.

Three Ways to Diversify Your Executive Search Services

When headhunting firms consider expanding their services beyond traditional executive search and selection, collaboration becomes key to their success. Most executive search firms maintain a central database to help them successfully manage all of their separate but cohesive offerings. Technology is vital in not only keeping the firm’s activities transparent but also helps their consultants avoid embarrassing toe-stepping with their existing contracts and relationships.

Here are some ways your search firm can diversify your recruitment specialties and make the best use of your technology.

1. Strategize where you can offer additional expertise beyond executive search

Figure out where you can support your clients beyond traditional executive search. Reach out to the clients you have good relationships with and ask for their input. Are they focusing on diversity and inclusion strategies this year? Have they considered doing a companywide assessment? What key executives did they lose last year? Did they have a succession plan for those executives?

“Our new business practice lines (diversity training and coaching) were born out of some uncomfortable discussions with clients”

Jeff Harris, Managing Partner of Harris Search Associates explains: “Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions, challenge the historical ways of doing things and be prepared for difficult and uncomfortable discussions that challenge your way of thinking.  Our new business practice lines (diversity training and coaching) were born out of some uncomfortable discussions with clients. We then undertook the necessary steps to add talented individuals who provided diversity of thought, experience; and, our new business practice areas began to take off.”

“We created a separate leadership solutions company called NuBrick Partners,” explains Bob Clarke, CEO of Furst Group. “This company is staffed with experts in their field rather than extending the services offered by a search consultant.  Just because one makes a good search consultant doesn’t mean that they are a solid strategic leadership partner.  We actively sought out the advice of our clients to see how we could better serve them and then we created our new organization around those needs.”

Look at the search needing to be filled and participate in more holistic conversations around how this role fits within the team, what their current strategy is and what it needs to be. From those conversations come opportunities for you to bring value to your client by providing new solutions. Every client has unique needs and this technique is a great way to hopefully parlay an executive search into a future opportunity.

2. Invest in your team

Make sure you have the appropriate leadership consultants managing the separate aspects of the business. When it comes to leadership, development and diversity programs, your team should have specific expertise in areas such as:

  • Industrial/Organizational Psychology
  • Executive assessment
  • Executive team performance
  • Change management
  • Leadership and board development
  • Organizational culture (especially with mergers & acquisitions)

“Creating a communication plan before and after conducting an assessment is crucial to a successful outcome. If the objectives and expectations of the executive assessment are not set, there is a high risk of confusion and uncertainty,” explains Nairouz Bader of Envision Partnership. “Furthermore, if assessed executives are not promoted post-evaluation, the result could be turnover rather than retention, as the assumption often is that not getting a positive career move means a negative one is on the way. My advice is to follow the objectives of the executive assessment, especially the developmental ones.”

Historically, certain industries have been slow to adapt to external consulting when it comes to coaching.  But once you’re able to prove there is a need, the demand will follow. For example, you could tie the increased tenure of candidates to the ongoing coaching and development opportunities they receive as part of their employment. You could also track the success mentoring emerging leaders from under-represented groups provides the organization.

3. Utilize technology to market additional services to clients

Recruitment teams have become more diligent about sharing, classifying and maintaining data to better support their clients and make the most out of every opportunity. This can include tracking what content they participated in, what reports their clients contributed to or what check-in call the search consultant needs to make.

Many of our clients are using workflows within their databases that include ‘triggered’ follow-up tasks like these:

Your firm completes a search and places a candidate, the database automatically creates a follow-up task to check-in to see how the candidate is doing three months later, check in to see if they are interested in executive coaching, if their employer is interested in a companywide assessment, or simply needs another position filled, etc.

You recruit a candidate and they end up moving into a role where they require your services and become your client. A follow up “trigger” can remind you to find out if the client is open to doing a companywide assessment, open to a coaching opportunity or even simply remind you to evaluate them as a candidate for board membership in the future.

You email your firm’s thought leadership to a client. This could be an industry report, white paper or even another client’s interview. The database can activate a trigger to schedule a call with them to do a general check-in and see if they need anything.

Successful executive search firms are not focused on selling additional services, they are focused on being recognized as trusted advisors. If your firm is looking to diversify its services, you need to focus on your client base. What are their pain points and what are the problems their organization needs to be solved? Take the time to capture and track the relationships and history of your clients and candidates. That proprietary information is vital when diversifying your executive search services and developing your firm’s opportunities.

Cluen develops recruitment software that helps strategic recruitment teams all over the world nurture important relationships, track historical search assignment data, and win new business.

Recruitment Startups to Watch: Unleash 2018

Recruitment Startups to Watch_ Unleash 2018

 

 

Last week Unleash came to London, and as usual for me, the most exciting part of the show is the start-up part of the conference. What cool new recruiting tools are out there? Most of them have their roots outside the US, although several have offices in the US now.

Now this isn’t a prediction of their success since I just look at the product and we all know marketing and sales plays an enormous role in the success of a firm, but these start-ups I loved the most.

Recruiting Tool Start-Ups

RoboRecruiter.ai

Robo Recruiter won this year’s start-up competition, and as far as I’m concerned, it was thoroughly deserved. Their product taps into what I’ve long considered being the most undervalued and underutilized resource in any (major) company: the resumes in your ATS. They are the silver medallists, the people that just didn’t make it. If in Sports we’d discard all our silver medallists right away most Olympic champions would have never been. Robo Recruiter built a chatbot to keep talent engaged and, if your ATS allows it, their resumes updated at the same time. And of course, if sourcing (even from your database) just isn’t in your natural process, it encourages your existing talent pool to apply to open jobs if they tell the chatbot they might be open for a new job. Robo Recruiter helps you utilize your most underused recruitment asset: the candidates that already said they were interested in your company by using smart chatbot technology.

PocketRecruiter.com

Pocket Recruiter has a straightforward promise. Give them your open vacancies, and they will give you a list of candidates. By extracting keywords and essential data with a smart matching technology, they build a profile, and they use boolean search to bring back matching profiles. They do this both internally, from your ATS, as well as from external sources such as Linkedin, Monster, CareerBuilder, you name it. By selecting profiles, the algorithm improves for the specific search, basically like an external sourcer works, it’s just an algorithm now.

It might seem pretty basic, but that’s their strength as far as I’m concerned. It just automates the process humans do, without the bias, eliminating time-consuming actions so a recruiter can do where he or she adds the most value: engaging with the candidate.

Candidate.ID

With Robo Recruiter we make sure our silver medallists in the ATS are up-to-date and still engaged. With Pocket Recruiter, we get a list that fits our current vacancy best. Candidate.ID helps you then select who to call first by giving you a list of whois now most engaged with both your company as well as who seems to be most interested in a job.  They do this by tracking a candidates activity on your website.  If you have an administrative assistant job opening and your ATS has 20 good candidates based on their resumes. Who do you call first? Who will be open for a change? All of them applied last time when you hired the person that’s leaving now.

Candidate.ID tracks their activity, their responses to your e-mails or if you are using RoboRecruiter the actions taken in the chat. Also, based on their behavior, did they watch your most recent video? Did they look at a job opening? Candidate.ID gives each candidate a score on how likely he or she is open for a job at your company. This provides a priority list of who’s most likely to be open for your call. It saves time in calling suitable, but not interested, candidates. If you have a set of people suited for the position based on their resume, it helps you prioritize your workflow based on their interest in a job at your company.

Virtub.io

As people that read my earlier articles know, I’m passionate about better selection. Selection based not on a resume alone but on actual testing and data. Virtubio does this. The company is similar to the American company HR Avatar (https://www.hravatar.com), except in price. Since I have not used both extensively, I cannot comment on the quality of the tests. What Virtubio does is create work like games and test your actions and reactions in these games. If you get a lot of jobs to do, can you prioritize? How fast do you do all these jobs? How good is your working memory, if you are told something at minute 5 and asked about it at minute 15, do you still remember? It’s a gamified combination of both cognitive skills as well as psychometrics and your work attitude. Do you cut corners when it comes to integrity?  How is your customer orientation and self-reflection?

I love all test based pre-selection tools, and I believe for different jobs and even different companies, various tools are most suitable. Virtubio is another one in this field that offers a different experience by testing strengths and weaknesses.

RobotVera

Robot Vera is a Russian robot that helps companies both find as well as pre-select candidates by phone. Yes, you are reading this correctly, it calls the candidate directly.  It can also answer candidate questions. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s far from a human-like interaction yet, but it can help in both inbound as well as outbound calls.

At Unleash I was fortunate enough to talk to a recruiter from a Russian client. She told me they hire 6.000 people a year of which 40% are unqualified to work. Basically factory workers and truck drivers. In Russia these jobs don’t require a resume, why should they, and so applying is done by phone. For every vacancy hundreds to thousands of people call. This company screens these people with just three questions. Do they have the right drivers license? Do they have enough work experience driving trucks of this size (they don’t hire people that only just have their license)? And are you willing to travel to the factory location? Robot Vera asks these questions and collects the data, sends it to a back-end system.  Based on these qualification questions the recruiters can now spend their time only on suited candidates.

They also offer an outbound calling system that goes through all the job boards matching your vacancy based on your requirements. First, it compares CV’s and makes sure a person only gets called once, since most resumes are listed over ten times in Russia. It then calls the people up and asks them if they are interested in working at your company and for this specific job. If so it askes when would be a good time to be called. By doing this, it generates several things. First of all a list of interested candidates and a time to call him or her, so a recruiter doesn’t waste time talking to voice mail. Next, it generates information about your employer brand.

I’ve tested the Robot Vera in English, and it’s English is good, but not as good as it’s Russian probably is yet. Since in Russian you can have an interactive conversation, adjusting new questions to the answers and in English the interview is non-interactive. It’s 100% scripted, and it has fixed questions that a candidate needs to answer. I did test the application, and the transcription of the phone interview was over 90% accurate. One of the mistakes was my name, Bas was turned into Boss. To be fair when I worked in London half my colleagues made that mistake also and my coffee at Starbucks also always has Boss on it.

My central question on this technology is the adoption of applicants. Will they consider it fresh and innovative or will it be perceived as not personal and arrogant? In the case of volume recruitment with basic phone screenings, that’s not as much a problem and the technology can be very useful.

VCV.AI

VCV is focused on screening candidates and having a robot take over most of the hiring process. This might sound like science fiction and not personal, but when I think of all the people that never hear back after an application or are rejected without even having a chance to say anything, it might actually make recruiting more human.

They screen CV’s based on a profile and select all those matching the requirements. From this VCV contacts the candidate and asks them what method of intake they prefer, a chatbot or a phone call. Sometimes the chatbot can move on to a phone call. Based on the selection questions of the phone call, they move on to schedule a video interview. The video interview isn’t just the interview; it has facial recognition in it as well.  Currently, it only shows the emotions a candidate has during the interview, is he or she nervous or annoyed for example. They are working on implementing psychometrics based on micro expressions so that you can get a psychometric profile as well.

The video interviews can then be sent to the hiring manager who can decide who to offer the job or invite for a face-to-face interview. Their client list is impressive, and they say they can be used for all entry and mid-level jobs, but personally, I think they would currently be best suited for volume recruiting.

ResourcingInsight.com

Resourcing Insight is an entirely different type of recruitment tech start-up to watch than the ones mentioned above. They make the data in your ATS, and other HR systems, visible and actionable. They create insights from data and present them to you in a dashboard you can actually use. So they mainly do what CruncHR (https://www.crunchrapps.com/) does, but for the HR/recruitment departments with less budget. Don’t get me wrong, I love CruncHR and those guys to fantastic stuff and create a lot of value, but they also cost a lot of money.

Resourcing Insight takes the data from your applications, mainly your ATS, and presents it in a visually attractive dashboard so with one look you can visualize things like the time to hire, by the department. Or the gender balance in applicants and hires by the department.  Or the number of agency hires by the department. All the data that is already in your ATS but is very hard to get out of the ATS and present to your line management. They build it into a dashboard UI that updates every month or quarter, depending on your wishes.

 

Trinsly Email Communication Tool With Dean Dacosta

Today we have a different yet important tool to take a look at, a brand-new email communication tool called Trinsly. If you’ve ever had to send email campaigns to possible recruits, you know how much of a pain it can be to switch back and forth between their profile and the email application. This tool solves that problem.

This simple, easy to use tool sits in your browser and allows you to send emails straight from the social website window you are sourcing in. Once you have a contact’s social media profile opened up on your screen you simply click on the Trinsly button to pop open a window in the browser. From here, you can compose and set up your email all while staying on the profile with the information you need in front of you. No more switching back and forth.

The name and company will populate automatically in the email composition window so you don’t have to add it.   Then you can choose what to say.  If you go directly to the Trinsly website, you can create different templates to use for email campaigns. It allows for different stage templates so following up on contacts has never been easier. Templates can be created for Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 emails and schedule them to automatically send at the time of your choosing. It is a great set it and forget it email tool. There is also a dashboard that lets you see what email campaigns you have going on with how many contacts have had emails sent to them.

You, of course, need to have a Gmail, Outlook 365 or similar web-based email to get started.

Summary:

  • Go to your favorite social media website (Linkedin, Github, Facebook etc)
  • Grab the email from your favorite email finder tool
  • Open Trinsly and select an email campaign from a template you have created in the same social media window
  • Select how many stages you want to send and that is it!

–Noel Cocca

Now here is Dean’s inside look:

 

 

Dean DaCostaDean Da Costa is best known for his work in the highly specialized secured clearance and mobile arenas, where he has been a top performing recruiter and sourcer.  Dean’s keen insight and creation of innovative tools and processes for enhancing and changing staffing have established Dean as one of the top authorities in sourcing and recruiting.

Connect with Dean at LinkedIn or follow @DeanDaCosta on Twitter.

Virtual Reality in Recruiting: Insights From HRTX

One of the more interesting things we heard at our event HRTX (HRTech Experience) Dallas came from the track on college recruiting.  It was interesting in part because it ostensibly had nothing to do with college recruiting. And it was also about applying a hot new(ish) tech to an area very few are thinking of in relation to that tech.

You already know where we’re going from the headline, so let’s get up in it.

Virtual reality in recruiting: Can it work?

Let’s address the cost elephant in the room first: this won’t work for small businesses and even mid-sized businesses right now. The process is likely too expensive, and they will have other priorities in terms of spending money. Some that really care about their hiring process and culture could try to embrace it, however.

Now we move to the “how.”

It would work like this: offer candidates a virtual reality tour of the organization, including —

  • Different offices
  • Plants/facilities
  • A typical meeting (** assuming your meetings are functional **)
  • A standard day on the job

This is employer branding at its most direct. You are giving candidates a live look into how your organization actually functions and runs on a daily basis. It’s almost a video version of reading Glassdoor reviews. This can be incredibly powerful as a differentiator for your recruiting process. Everyone has the mission-driven language and the kegerator/Foosball reference, right? But not everyone has virtual reality videos showing what it’s really like.

Is anyone doing this so far?

Of course — but again, it tends to be larger organizations right now.

Jet.com, owned by Wal-Mart, uses VR heavily in its recruiting:

The initiative, which Jet first rolled out in 2015, involves a full VR experience created by design studio Helios Interactive that allows prospective candidates to get a snapshot feel for the company’s workspace and culture. From sitting in on a meeting with CEO Marc Lore to enjoying the joys of Jet’s happy hour and company band – along with some games (see above) – the immersive video simulates the experience of visiting Jet’s Hoboken office without the airfare.

That last point is an important cost measure, too — who wants to fly hundreds of candidates in every year? While an “IRL” meeting is important, obviously, you can save on travel budget with VR and you are able to have a deeper initial screen to make sure those interviews are of higher value.  

The United States Navy has been utilizing VR at localized events and doubled engagement with new recruits:

General Mills took a different approach in some respects: they realized the allure of cool tech gear like a VR headset would help them stand out at recruiting events, so they created a virtual tour of their Minneapolis HQ (which is available on YouTube, actually) and started bringing headsets to college recruiting events. The response was stellar in terms of attracting more booth attention.

The bigger lesson here

Too often, tech develops in the bigger, revenue-facing departments of a company (Sales, Operations, etc.) and then comes to HR and talent acquisition much later. We should stop that cycle.

If the tech is there and it’s available, recruiting needs to be using it as early as possible.

Because having the best people is the biggest differentiator.

So yes, we want to apply virtual reality to training our in the field workers, and that’s perfectly logical and should be done.

But virtual reality also needs to come to TA, just like automation is (and will more), machine learning is (and will), etc.

HR can’t be on the back side of the tech adoption curve going forward. It needs to be near the middle or front. That’s a path to that “seat at the table.”

 

Top Reason Startups Fail: Not Finding the Right Talent

23% of startups fail because of an inadequate team

A recent study published by CB Insight indicates several common reasons that startups fail. The first and second are not surprising:  42% of startups close because they found no market for their products and 29% because they ran out of money. But the most solvable reason is the third:  23% of startups fail because of an inadequate team. Obviously, these companies didn’t put the right people in place to do the job that needed doing.

Entrepreneurs set up a company, develop a fantastic product which the market is waiting for, raise funding, and yet, one out of four startups fail because the team was not suited for the tremendous challenges entrepreneurs and startups face. So even while the 3rd most common reason startups fail can be attributed to not having the right team in place, the first two reasons can also be partially attributed to having the wrong people executing those tasks.

I’d estimate the No. 1 reason startups fail is either completely or partially attributed to not having the right people

As someone who’s been involved in high-tech startups and the recruitment business for more than 20 years, I’d estimate the No. 1 reason startups fail is either entirely or partially attributed to not having the right people. Perhaps entrepreneurs are ashamed to admit they failed, personally unable to put the right team in place.  Why is this happening so often? Here is what usually happens.

The Story of Johnny and Jake

Johnny and Jake, who worked as software engineers at the same company came up with a brilliant idea. They shared the idea with Mary. Then the group brought in Tom, the only one they knew with an understanding of sales and marketing. The entrepreneurial nucleus is ready to go to battle.

The group prepares a business plan and an investor deck with the aim to raise money. The technology development is easy. After all, the team members have technological experience from previous jobs. When things start happening, they have to recruit a team to execute on their plan. They need more programmers, product managers, sales and marketing professionals and pretty soon they will need someone to head up their new office.

So far there was no problem recruiting new people. Johnny brought Susan, and she brought Andrew. A year has passed, and our startup has 20 people.  It’s evolved into a small empire ready to conquer the world. But something begins to crack. Bill, who was the brilliant programmer at Jake’s previous company, finds it difficult to work with Jake’s team. His attitude is negative and getting toxic. Mary was a really good product manager, but ever since the company hired a VP of Product, she finds it difficult to cooperate with his new process.  And worst of all, Tom, who is one of the company’s founders and its main sales guy, does not deliver anything close to scalable results. The company needs a much more experienced VP of Sales and a far more advanced distribution strategy.

This story repeats itself again and again in thousands of startups. In some cases, the entrepreneurs succeed to overcome these common difficulties and bear the hefty price of losing momentum and opportunity, and in many cases, this situation disintegrates the delicate human and cultural fabric that is so vital for startups to succeed.

What can be done to prevent these situations? The short answer is that any company, especially startups, must have a realistic understanding of their limitations as well as a thought-out strategy for recruiting key employees. A successful process requires the CEO’s attention and involvement as the main task of building a successful company.

The company must decide on the ideal mix of people in the company, one that will help create an ideal culture that engenders a sense of purpose and drives the team to work hard and stay, even in times of crisis.

The company needs to decide on its short and long-term hiring strategies. It needs to determine what will be developed internally and what can be outsourced. This decision will impact the number and type of people it hires. The company must decide on the ideal mix of people in the company, one that will help create an ideal culture that engenders a sense of purpose and drives the team to work hard and stay, even in times of crisis.  Some employees may be capable of meeting their goals in the first year but not beyond. Others may seem overqualified (I hate this term) but can help the company as it grows. And sometimes good people just get bored and need to find another opportunity for everyone’s benefit.

These are serious challenges that not all entrepreneurs know how to cope with. As the pressure grows (and it does), personnel problems start to haunt managers, and they are more likely to make hiring mistakes like hiring the wrong people for the wrong task or not hiring anyone at all.

Even after a strategy is formulated, the plan is not done. The company must create a structured process for recruiting personnel that can be implemented and measured so that success can be determined and people involved can be held accountable. Budget and resources must be allocated to make the process work. Department managers must decide what happens when hiring is not going as planned. No business can execute on its plan without a great team in place, period.

I meet companies that are unable to recruit employees for crucial roles for months, sometimes even a year or more. Conversely, I see companies that continue to improve their hiring process relentlessly and now understand how to make fantastic hires, even in a tight talent market.

When a job goes unfilled, then something is wrong in the hiring process. Either the process is wrong, the expectations are unrealistic, or no one is being held accountable for the lack of results.

The standard argument which goes “there are no good candidates in the market” does not hold water.  Good companies recruit excellent people and build winning teams because they make hiring an accountable process internally.

How Can Q&A Help Employers and Candidates in Recruiting

Candidate recruitment has undergone enormous changes in the past decade, driven largely by a shift toward Internet-based recruitment strategies. Most of these changes are positive, resulting in a more dynamic interaction between job seekers and potential employers. By creating this level of transparency and communication, hiring managers and job candidates can get the information they need to know whether the other party is the right fit for their wants and needs.  This ultimately maximizes satisfaction within the interview process and more likely than not provides a positive recruitment outcome.

But there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the way today’s job candidates and hiring managers communicate. Because if you think about it, aside from a few short emails, sometimes a phone conversation and the standard in-person interview, candidates and hiring managers have very little opportunity to interact and get insights from each other.

it would be a game changer if a job hunter were to be able to ask a company any question and get a real answer

One model of communication that could make a huge difference is Q&A style communication. In other words, it would be a game changer if a job hunter were to be able to ask a company any question (perhaps that they were afraid to ask in your normal application or interview setting) and get a real answer to it from either the hiring manager or some other company representative.

Let’s look even further into at how Q&A communication can break some of the barrier challenges that hiring manager face.

The Recruiting Equation: Barriers to Attracting the Talent You Need

On its face, the goal of a new employee recruitment effort is simple: attract a top candidate who the company can retain for the long term. However, many variables go into the recruiting equation: the pool of applicants, ability to convert job ad views into applications, geographic considerations, salary, employer brand management, availability of attractive growth opportunities for employees, and many more. This makes it challenging for HR professionals to identify and recruit candidates who are exceptionally matched for the position, and, more importantly, enthusiastic about working for your organization.

The traditional model of candidate recruitment doesn’t do employers or job candidates many favors. After slogging through a pile of applications, employers invite a short list of candidates for an interview. Much of this interview time is spent with applicants trying to get more information about a company, while employers try to judge candidate fit. This wasted effort could be avoided with better pre-interview communication between employers and job candidates. Online review platforms and Q&A-style communication can promote a better fit between an employer’s recruiting goals and an applicant’s career aspirations.

How Q&A-Style Communication Affects Recruitment

Does a review from an employee from 3 years ago really reflect what’s going on at the company now?

Online employer review sites generate buzz because of their ability to provide a window into a company’s workplace culture. Current and former employees provide feedback about an organization’s work culture, including salary, benefits, leadership opportunities, commitment to work-life balance, and teamwork. This information helps applicants, who can get a feel for an organization before they submit an application.

However, these review sites are limited by the static nature of the reviews. Does a review from an employee from 3 years ago really reflect what’s going on at the company now? Additionally, reviews may or may not address the concerns of specific applicants. That’s where Q&A-style communication can revolutionize the recruiting process.

Consider the following advantages of Q&A-style communication platforms for employers and potential applicants:

  • Be Better at Engaging Applicants  A Q&A-style platform allows employers to put their best foot forward, providing an engaging “face” of the company before the applicant ever interacts with an actual person. This provides a huge advantage for companies to set themselves apart from other organizations as more open, engaged, and employee-focused. Promote your brand by highlighting unique aspects of your company culture.
  • Address Unanswered Questions  From an applicant’s side, Q&A-style communication is a game changer. This allows someone who is possibly interested in working for your organization to get answers to their most pressing questions. Respond quickly to queries to show that your company is committed to good communication.
  • Obtain Outside Feedback  The beauty of a Q&A platform is that prospective employees can get feedback from the organization itself as well as from current or past employees who have written reviews. That improves the authenticity of the feedback, helping applicants feel sure that they are receiving an accurate picture of the company.
  • Convert Interested Job Seekers Into Committed Applicants  Developing a dynamic conversation with a casually interested job seeker is the best way to convert that interest into a legitimate application. Thus, Q&A-style communication makes it easier to attract talented employees.
  • Learn How Job Seekers Make Decisions  By up-voting particularly thoughtful responses, potential applicants provide information to employers about the factors that concern them most. Use this opportunity to adjust your marketing strategy to highlight aspects of company culture that resonate most and commit to changing weaker areas.

The Q&A-style conversation can revolutionize communication between employers and job candidates. And fortunately for those focused on recruiting right at this very moment and into the future, new features such as kununu’s Question and Answer platform are breathing new life into the recruitment process that has long been overdue. At the end of the day, that benefits both sides: applicants get interviews at companies they are excited to work for, and employers get a pool of applicants who are already enthusiastic about the fit.

Apply By Game

A resume tells me what you have done, for whom and how long. It doesn’t tell me the two most important things that will predict your success in the job I’m hiring you for: how well you did and under what circumstances. A resume is a terrible selection tool, yet it’s the best one we’ve got. Until now that is.

Apply By Game

In recent years several tools have been introduced to the recruitment market that has far better predictive value than a resume. One of those, the one with the best-documented results, is the Talentpitch by Harver. This tool reduces attrition at contact centers from more than 100% to less than 20% per year and increased overall performance by actually testing all applicants on the skills they need to to be a great contact center agent. In the process, as a byproduct, they fixed labor market discrimination because they now actually show someone’s talent instead of relying on the bias of a recruiter when reading a resume.

This tool reduces attrition at contact centers from more than 100% to less than 20% per year

Several start-ups have jumped onto this trend and developed tools that are open to all types of candidates. Two of those I’ve recently tested. One is the Dutch company PlaytoWork that focusses on Dutch medium educated people, probably best compared with community college students. The other one is Knack, an American company that focusses bachelor and master graduates for the US market, although they are opening up to different markets. These tools let candidates play games and gather both competencies as well as psychometric traits in the process, building a valuable profile for recruiters.

Data Gathering

gathers thousands of data points about your behavior at millisecond intervals during your gameplay

In order to explain the potential, these tools have for recruiters I do need to explain some things about the working of the apps. Knack lets you play three games. One looks like Angry Birds, the other one like Cooking Fever, you need to serve the right dishes to customers quickly, and the third one like Linedoku where you need to make tunnels and pipes fit by turning and adjusting tiles. Knack gathers thousands of data points about your behavior at millisecond intervals during your gameplay. Based on these data points they build a profile. Play to Work has a somewhat less sophisticated, but probably more robust, a measurement where they measure your behavior in a more traditional way by asking questions and they have a simpler game where they measure certain skills, like speed, precision, and multi-tasking abilities. These data points regarding a candidate are used to build profiles and match the profiles to vacancies.

Vacancy Matching

Knack gives candidate feedback about your best competencies and the type of jobs that match his or her skill set. I’m imaginative and innovative, culturally aware, seeking knowledge and self-starting among others. With my skill set, I should consider jobs like software developer, lawyer, research director, entrepreneur, management consultant and teacher in the sectors of start-ups and cybersecurity. The skill set I think some former colleagues would argue is far from perfect and as far as jobs go I’d say about 50% correct. The weakness of the system is they don’t know anything about your knowledge, only your competencies, and character traits. Play to Work does ask a candidate about his level of education, a field of study and location.

Recruiters can add vacancies to the system and let them be matched to candidates. In the case of Play to Work, a candidate is shown vacancies he or she can apply to. Knack lets a match be made both ways, a candidate in shown vacancies (with a match rating), but the recruiter also sees candidates that match the profile.

Although a lot of scientific research has been done into the assessment of people by gaming, very little research has been done as to what traits make someone good in specific jobs or sectors.

Potential Risk

In the matching lies the potential risk of these tools. Although a lot of scientific research has been done into the assessment of people by gaming, very little research has been done as to what traits make someone good in specific jobs or sectors.

Knack matches the skills of a candidate with the traits requested in vacancies. This is a flawed method as far as I’m concerned because of two reasons. First, we’re assuming a recruiter or hiring manager knows the skills that make the difference between average and exceptional. Usually, they don’t, they are just looking at copies of themselves since they consider themselves the best there is. The second reason is the interpretation of these requested skills. There is a big difference in the necessary creativity between a programmer and a designer, but in both vacancies, we see the required competence creative.

Both Knack, as well as Play to Work, let the recruiter decide on the requested skills necessary for a vacancy, and I question the competence of a recruiter to select those. Not because recruiters are bad, but because humans are flawed by nature because of our natural bias. The best way to eliminate that bias, of course, is by asking your best performers to play the game and use their results in selecting the competencies needed to be a good performer.

Conclusion

We’ve talked about job boards 2.0 for ages. I think we might see a glimpse of what they will look like with these new apps. Gaming, and other, assessment tools that are fun for candidates and provide valuable insights into both the competencies as well as the character of a candidate for the recruiter. The challenge now is to figure out what competencies and character make someone excel at your company in a specific job.

 

 

Meet Ralphy, Your New AI Talent Acquisition Partner

Artificial Intelligence, robotics process automation (RPA) and machine learning are changing the face of HR bringing cognitive technologies that will transform the candidate experience and leverage talent acquisition efficiency and effectiveness.

Executives expect cognitive technologies to transform their companies and change the face of HR with technology that can reduce error biases, better predictions, discover patterns and augment or replace human judgment in talent acquisition processes to attract top talent. According to 2017 Deloitte State of Cognitive Survey, “Eighty-three percent of respondents said their companies have already achieved either moderate or substantial benefits from their work with these technologies”.

With revenues from AI expected to reach $59.8 billion by 2025, according to a report by Tractica, this task-reducing technology can and will make changes in the hiring and recruiting practices in the near future. For instance, RPA can automate repetitive, rules-based processes usually performed by people sitting in front of computers. By interacting with applications just as humans would, software robots can open email attachments, complete e-forms, record and re-key data, and perform other tasks that mimic human action

According to Forrester, 47% percent of executives surveyed believe that by 2020, digital will have an impact on more than half their sales. We see how digital has transformed healthcare, retail, transportation, and security. Now HR in on the stage: could the AI talent acquisition bots be the new business partners?

AI Talent Acquisition transformation

There are many artificial intelligence companies that are taking the lead in this process providing solutions that would help talent acquisition for sourcing (Textio), interviewing (MontageTalent), onboarding (Talla), coaching (mobile Coach), social recognition (growBot), and assessments (Hirevue).

AI is already enhancing talent acquisition, giving support in resume screening, candidate sourcing, ATS mining, while reducing “unconscious bias” in the selection process. Chatbots are interacting with candidates, answering FAQ’s about the position, asking screening questions about qualifications, interviewing and scheduling pre-interviews, via email, text message and social media. According to Leanne Wong, MC Partners –“behavioral and situational interview assessments will leverage AI and predictive analytics to capture both quantitative and qualitative data to ensure the right match”. Industry experts estimate 100% of sourcing and screening phases can be automated.

However, chatbots are not designed to replace Humans. Instead, a key contribution of chatbots is the ability to process multiple data sources (including your ATS system) to find and assess candidates’ qualifications, make recommendations and provide shortlist potential candidates that fit best for the role. This is a great advantage since it allows to speed-up activities, create consistency and effectiveness in talent acquisition.

According to Sjoerd Gehring, VP Talent Acquisition & Employee Experience Johnson & Johnson, the company uses data science to improve their talent pipeline. “Textio helps recruiting teams to write better job descriptions with very actionable and tangible data”. Unilever is using HireVue to find top talent faster with video Intelligence and machine learning. Inc is using X.AI to schedule meetings smarter and faster.

Another example that caught my attention was the Virtual Reality (VR) experience that the British Army is using as a recruitment tool. Designed by Visualise, and tested on the Samsung Gear VR headset, this cutting-edge approach gave a 66% boost to their recruitment applications. VR is a powerful recruiting tool that will allow organizations to fully immerse potential candidates into some real-life work situations, communicate their culture, projects but also offer them virtual tours of their offices, and get them to experience on how is to work for your company. This way, it’s easier for candidates to realize whether they fit themselves working in such an environment.

However, there are some challenges that AI brings to HR Teams to name a few, HR re-organization, skills assessment, job losses and change management. This new journey for HR involves to assess current capabilities and create a plan that embraces artificial intelligence in HR transaction work to let talent acquisition teams and other HR functions to deliver faster solutions using technology to create sustainable value.

HR AI: Creating the business case

AI implies to make an investment and assess team skills, job design, processes, and HR capability to design and implement AI HR strategy. This technology is expensive and may need to create the right partnerships across your organization to convince your CEO and C-Suite executive to make an investment in HR instead of marketing (to improve customer relations) or operations (to improve operational excellence). However, I think there is an opportunity within the HR profession to build the business case and assess what are the impacts and potential efficiencies — and therefore cost savings — in the long run, and how they are linked to business strategy.

Furthermore, the idea of technology can be intimidating for people and perhaps some organizations. Hence a so a clear change management strategy and communication are critical pillars to align the organization and engage stakeholders. This transformation involves to focus on reskilling people, assess structure, work, and workplace. CHROs and senior HR leaders to create the HR framework to consider all the aspects described above to implement an HR strategy supported by AI technologies

Bottom line is that HR is changing with AI technology that can deliver and enhance better candidate and employee experience. Recruitment practices will need to be redesign to define the role of the bots and talent specialists.  AI is not our enemy it is our “buddy” and will make our work easier and faster while also helping HR to make better decisions and achieve results faster. Keep in mind that we are not replacing the “Human Component” in HR, HR is adapting to this 4th industrial revolution where customers, clients, and candidates are connection 24/7.

How do you feel about using AI and VR recruitment chatbots?

 

Are You Targeting Younger Workers in Social Media Job Ads? You May be Going Too Far

Workers of all ages bring value to an organization. Regardless of your own current age, you too were once a job-searching 20-something, and may very well be a 60-something hoping to remain employed and/or looking for a new role.

Picture an intern. Chances are it’s someone filled with optimism, drive and willingness to get the job done. They are likely to want to learn the ropes and make connections. While lacking experience, your intern has a desire to understand the ins and outs of the business. They go above and beyond to stand out.

Is the person you’re picturing a 20-something fresh out of school? Probably, but hold that thought. The worker you’re picturing may actually be significantly older.

Remember Robert De Niro in the movie The Intern? Older workers are hustling at all workplace skill levels these days, as the number of U.S. adults ages 65 and older working at least part-time is at its highest level in 55 years.

These older workers make up nearly 20 percent of that total age group, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And whether it’s for personal reasons or financial necessity, these workers are ready to learn and grow or share their deep expertise and mentor others.

Unfortunately, they may not be getting a fair shake when it comes to recruitment advertising. This is especially true on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, as a recent report from The New York Times and ProPublica found that these sites may be purposely excluding mature workers from emerging opportunities with the targeting capabilities of their online job ads.

Major companies like Amazon, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, UPS and even Facebook itself were found to be allegedly using job ads on social media to subtly exclude older workers and engage in age discrimination.

Age discrimination in the digital age

How did we end up here?

It all starts with the soaring popularity of social media. With that rise has come an immense opportunity for recruiters like us to reach more talent; Facebook alone has more than 2 billion active monthly users. To not use it would be downright detrimental.

Next, the ad targeting capabilities of social media sites are incredibly effective. But, when you’re serving up job ads to specific age groups with these tools, though, the ethics are grayer.

For example, Facebook data targeting allows companies to serve a job ad to only 25-36 year olds that live in specific area. This is intentionally — and potentially illegally — excluding millions of qualified applicants.

In addition to a huge online population and sophisticated targeting, some companies aren’t subtle about going after young, and presumably, technologically savvy talent.

They have been found to use dog whistles (words that appear to mean one thing to the general population but have a different meaning for a targeted part of the audience) like –“digital native” in their recruitment advertising to target young workers. In doing so, they’re not even giving older workers a shot; digital didn’t even exist as a format when some older workers were born, so it’s clearly impossible for them to be a “digital native. 

How recruiters can leverage social media and avoid bias

In terms of specific legal implications, ProPublica reports that they’re unsure just how the courts will rule on these social media age discrimination issues.

As recruiters, though, we have an obligation to ensure we always follow fair and legal practices. This means balancing the client or hiring manager’s hiring requirements and the massive popularity of social media advertising, while remaining committed to unbiased hiring.

Here are few ways to ensure you’re getting the job done fairly and legally:

1. Educate clients

It’s your responsibility to inform clients of the potential legal ramifications that may come from misused social media job ads.

Sean Gilligan, Chief of Staff at Harvey Nash USA shares that his team’s practice is to “educate clients to ensure they are aware of the labor laws and understand what is and isn’t discriminatory.”

Jay Clawson, Director of Operations at BelFlex, agrees, “As the experts in our industry, we have to be transparent with our clients and if we see a possible discrimination issue we must speak up.”

Sometimes, this may mean even turning away a potential client who is comfortable skirting legal hiring requirements as it pertains to age discrimination. As Clawson put it, “If we feel a client is not going to provide an opportunity to everyone, then we will not do business with them. We want partners in our industry and not just transactions.”

2. Cast a wide net and target correctly

When used correctly as part of a larger recruitment strategy, and combined with organic tactics like company pages, video, and engagement, social media ads can be incredibly helpful assets to finding top talent. And targeting across various platforms and sites has value, when it’s done in conjunction with, not instead of, casting a wide net.

To promote unbiased hiring, social job ads should only play a part in your recruitment mix, not the starring role.

Here’s how Jenifer Lambert, VP of Sales and Marketing at TERRA Staffing, put it:

I want the widest possible audience to know about job opportunities. In the current recruiting climate, excluding anyone or any demographic from hearing about a job opportunity is not only illegal, it’s foolish.

The intention behind the targeting is what really matters. If the reason for the targeting is to exclude, you’re making a huge mistake and violating the law.”

Jay Clawson agrees that biased targeting can result when companies are too focused on a specific age segment or just one social media site. His company, BelFlex, uses a cross platform approach to push jobs to social media channels. And for Facebook in particular, Clawson recommends keeping the default age targeting of 18-65 plus when creating job ads because, “Facebook has become a social media platform for the older generation and can be utilized to attract those candidates.”

3. Actively encourage hiring older AND younger workers 

It’s been proven time and time again that diverse teams, whether they be diverse in age, race, gender, orientation or different backgrounds, are beneficial to productivity and business outcomes.

Sean Gilligan adds that it’s essential for recruiters to “actually show” clients “that the best teams are created when people with varying backgrounds, generations, genders, skill sets, and years of experience are combined.”

Companies should be taking steps to attract workers of all ages, and as recruiters, we should encourage this and avoid age discrimination.

For example, specific benefits can be promoted in recruitment efforts that appeal to workers both young and old. Maybe it’s paid family leave for new parents or for caregivers who are taking care of an ailing parent or spouse. Or perhaps it’s offering more remote work options. Flexibility is intrinsically popular with young workers, but older workers who may travel to different parts of the country to visit children and/or have caregiving responsibilities, may equally appreciate the value.

It’s about hiring the best – regardless of their age

As we see headlines about more companies using job ads to target by age, we should all take a step back to consider the ethical, moral and legal implications of doing this.

Workers of all ages bring value to an organization. Regardless of your own current age, you too were once a job-searching 20-something, and may very well be a 60-something hoping to remain employed and/or looking for a new role.

The old adage of “treat those the way you want to be treated” really does stand the test of time. And while the jury’s still out on how social media job ad targeting and age discrimination will play out in the legal sphere, it’s our responsibility to consider the best people for the role. Regardless of their age.

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Recruiting at It’s Best Is a Delicate Dance Between HR and Line Managers

Here’s something I always try to keep in mind as an HR professional: Hiring is a shared company responsibility — aka, a delicate dance —  and it works best when the Line Manager and HR have a co-equal balance in staffing the organization.

During my initial meetings with an internal Line Manager with an open requisition, we talk about a number of important things, including:

  • The job description;
  • Shared responsibilities (HR vs. the Line Manager);
  • The position;
  • Skills required to execute the essential functions of the position;
  • A profile of the ideal candidate;
  • Diversity issues;
  • Innovative sourcing strategies (both internal and external); and,
  • Possible behavioral interview questions.

A delicate dance: HR’s approach vs. the Line Manager approach

This meeting agenda leads to another discussion about the delicate dance that comes down to this:

What does the Line Manager want from HR in the hiring process? Or to put it differently, what can a job candidate expect from an HR interview vs. a Line Manager interview?

Typically, Line Managers want their recruiters to creatively source and deliver exceptional candidates (within budgetary requirements, of course) and “suss out” the best candidates.

This is what HR needs to figure out:

  • The candidate’s motivation (i.e., why is the candidate interested in this position;
  • Why they want to make a move, why our company, and what are they looking for?;
  • Determine the candidate’s “Fit” factor (as in cultural “Fit”);
  • The candidate’s salary expectations;
  • The candidate’s environmental requirements (i.e., what type of company environment do they work best in);
  • Their leadership potential;
  • Their capacity to work in a team;
  • Any upside potential they may have;
  • Etc, etc, etc.

Obviously, HR also needs to:

  • Create a short list of candidates;
  • Coordinate the candidates’ schedules, arrange travel (handle expenses reimbursements), and schedule the job interviews either on site or via Hirevu, or Skype or another video platform;
  • Decline unsuitable candidates;
  • Handle reference and background checks;
  • Draft the offer letters;
  • Help sell and “close” the candidate, and obviously be the primary point of communication and contact for the candidate; and,
  • “Onboard” the new hire.

What the Line Manager needs to focus on

Overall, HR should be primarily responsible (although shared with the Line Manager) is for the social media strategy, the interview/candidate experience, and the company’s employment brand execution.

But Line Managers carry a heavy responsibility, too. They need to:

  • Select the resume/candidates to be interviewed;
  • Evaluate the candidate’s technical skills and knowledge;
  • Assess the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses;
  • Determine if the candidate is an ideal “Fit” for their department and team;
  • “Sell” the department and company to the candidate as an ideal place to work; and,
  • Lay out a coherent career path and training/development program.

The Line Manager should also work with HR and the compensation professionals on the salary offer, as well as assume a major role in the new hire’s “onboarding” experience.

In other words, Line Managers are the ultimate Hiring Managers and are critical in the hiring process — and don’t forget, they are HR’s No. 1 client group!

Yes, you need to always keep in mind that hiring is a shared company responsibility. It’s a delicate dance, and it all works best when the Line Manager and HR have a co-equal balance in staffing the organization.

And you know what? I have been incredibly lucky in my staffing career to work for companies where this was the case.