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What Industries Had the Highest Turnover Last Year? This Is What LinkedIn Says

If you’re looking for timely turnover and hiring trends, it helps if you have a half billion users interested in turnover and hiring to draw your insights from.

So it goes with LinkedIn, it’s 500 million plus users, and the company’s latest report on which roles, industries and sectors have the highest turnover rates.

The numbers are either surprising, disappointing, or what you might have expected, depending where you’re coming from.

According to LinkedIn:

Tech companies (software, not hardware) had the most turnover over the last year with a 13.2 percent rate. This marks the first time in years that tech has taken the “top” spot.

Retail — a historically high-churn sector — follows closely behind at 13.0 percent, while media/entertainment (11.5 percent), professional services (11.5 percent), and government/education/non-profit (11.2 percent) round out the top five. Over the last few years, these sectors have consistently seen the highest turnover rates.”

Tech software saw the highest turnover

Excluding the obvious question — why would anyone possibly combine areas as different as government, education and non-profit into a single job category, as LinkedIn does here  — I wonder why this report seems to characterize 13 percent as a high turnover rate, especially for a category like retail which is known for fairly rapid turnover.

Alas, you won’t find the answer to THAT in this report.

However, there is a lot of interesting information that you will find, and here are the key highlights:

  • In 2017, the technology software sector saw the highest talent turnover rate, ahead of retail, media and professional services.
  • Roles such as UX designer (23.3 percent), data analysts (21.7 percent) and software engineers (21.7 percent) lead the industry in terms of turnover in the tech industry.
  • Employees in the Retail & Consumer sector are turning over at high rates, with industries such as restaurants (17.2 percent), retail (16.2 percent), and sporting goods (14.8 percent) leading the way.
  • With media and entertainment, newspapers (13.3 percent), online media (13.2 percent), and sports (13.2 percent) are all neck-and-neck in terms of what industries are driving the turnover rates.

I found the more interesting part of the LinkedIn report was the “why,” as in why people are leaving their jobs. That cuts to the heart of workplace culture, engagement, and employee satisfaction, and is always a pretty interesting subject to dig into.

Turnover can be “positive” or “negative”

It also speaks to one thing you always have to remember when talking about the turnover rate — it’s not really about how many people are leaving, but rather, whether your rate is “positive” (less than stellar performers are departing) or “negative” (when your best people decide to leave).

As my friend Dr. John Sullivan put it in a post on Monster Canada:

The term “turnover rate” is a bad metric, and using it on its own is superfluous. Its major flaw is that it does nothing to tell me whether the turnover is a positive or negative event. If I am losing 20 percent of the people I consider top performers, then the turnover is definitely negative, but if the majority of the people leaving are bottom performers, then a high turnover rate is positive. …

Ultimately, turnover rate for top performers should be as close to zero as you can get it, and turnover among the bottom 25 percent of your organization should be maximized to the extent that replacement is feasible. If you have a well-honed recruiting function that can handle your organizational growth as well as replacing 25 percent of your organization each year, then shoot for 25 percent. However, if like most organizations, that number scares you, shoot for a smaller number no less than 10 percent.”

Top reasons that people leave their jobs

The LinkedIn report surveyed over 10,000 people who recently changed jobs to see why they left, and that’s a significant sample size. Here are the Top 5 reasons they listed:

  1. I was concerned about the lack of opportunities for advancement — 45 percent;
  2. I was unsatisfied with the leadership of senior management — 41 percent;
  3. I was unsatisfied with the work environment/culture — 36 percent.
  4. I wanted more challenging work — 36 percent;
  5. I was unsatisfied with the compensation/benefits — 34 percent.

Final thoughts

LinkedIn’s summary of their report notes that:

Turnover can be from a healthy, increasingly competitive industry, like tech, or one that’s rapidly changing, like retail. But even when there’s turnover for all the right reasons, attrition poses real challenges to TA and HR teams.”

Yes, turnover can have a huge impact on an organization’s entire talent acquisition food chain, and it takes an organization-wide approach to manage it properly — even if the turnover is more positive than negative.

And the LinkedIn report makes this final point that’s worth considering:

Turnover isn’t bad by nature, but it’s obviously costly when your most valuable people leave. By paying attention to why employees leave and appealing to what they care about most, HR pros can retain talent more effectively and recruiters can replace those who do leave.”

Yes, retaining the best and then recruiting the best for those who do choose to leave is the name of the game. But given the shockingly bad candidate experience numbers we have all become numb to, it’s clear that a great many organizations need to do a helluva lot more if they truly want to retain, and recruit, the very best.

Methodology

Turnover rates are drawn from LinkedIn’s member data and reflect a 12-month rolling period. It’s calculated by taking the number of people who left their company in a given population (e.g., the retail sector, the restaurant industry, or data analysts), then dividing that number by the average amount of people in that given population. We consider people as leaving their jobs if they provide an end-date for their position at a company (not counting people who add a subsequent position within the same company).

We’ve excluded contractors and other non-full-time-employees (e.g., interns, students, etc.), along with any positions that start and end on the same date. The attrition estimates here may be slightly below actual attrition, due to a possible lag between the time someone leaves a company and when they update their LinkedIn profile to reflect that departure.

Insight From #HRTX: Some Recruiting Issues Seem to Never, Ever Get Solved

We’ve had two #HRTX events this year — one at Brazen’s offices in Arlington, VA and one in Dallas, TX sponsored by the good people at Monster — and look, let’s begin with the positive here.

There has been a ton of great insights and conversations, and all of it very good.

But, here’s something that needs a little more discussion: If you’ve been in the talent acquisition/recruiting space for a while and have attended conferences for some time, why does it seem like the same problems persist year-after-year?

For example, why is candidate experience not improving drastically when you consider all the solutions and software suites on the market geared towards it? Why are we closer to a “war ON talent” rather than a “war FOR talent?”

Why aren’t the problems getting better at scale?

“We’ve always done it that way”

These are some of the most fatal words in business, and probably the largest reason why it takes certain concepts a while to phase/age out, even if most people executing on those concepts know they’re not working.

Change is hard. It’s maybe not as hard as we assume it to be, but it’s really difficult for a lot of people.

Consider the challenges of the individual level around change. Now consider an organization with even 1,000 people — which isn’t really that big — where it’s much harder to get 1,000 people with different priorities and commitments marching in the same direction.

Sometimes, the status quo is desirable.

TA being housed within HR

This is a problem at some level. Although the perception is changing gradually with concepts like People Analytics and more forward-thinking HR leaders, most people currently running businesses came up in an era where HR:

  • (A) Didn’t have any revenue responsibilities; and,
  • (B) Was largely focused on compliance.

This is the crux of the “HR doesn’t have a seat at the table” discussion. “The table,” in that context, is about things that make money — and HR doesn’t generate any revenue. Because talent acquisition resides in HR, effective changes to TA fall by the wayside because true decision-makers need to rush to other meetings more directly about financials.

Not enough collaboration across solutions

In a nutshell, this is why we created HRTX. People in recruiting and Talent Acquisition need to be talking to each other in real life, not just on LinkedIn or Facebook.

By some measure, face-to-face communication is 34x more powerful than digital communication. That was the design: share challenges, discuss, propose solutions, point colleagues towards solutions already in existence.

How software is being sold

We’ve had some great subject matter experts — you can also call them “vendors,” yes — at HRTX events, and it’s always fun to see how they position their solution within the market.

But we’ve also been to bigger trade shows and seen that many HR tech solutions get sold from either:

  • Relationship selling (“I’ll take you out for drinks”);
  • A list of product features.

Both approaches are noble and have been used in sales for decades, if not longer. So that’s good. But what’s lacking is a value-driven approach. In a value-driven approach, the road map looks like this:

  • You have this problem.
  • Here’s how we solve it.
  • Let’s continue to work on customizations and how to make this relationship successful.

When value-based selling declines, a lot of times software that could have been productive for a TA team becomes “shelf-ware,” meaning they don’t use it and don’t incorporate it into their pre-existing workflows. This is a shame both for the TA team and the software company, as it’s doubtful they’ll get a renewal on that deal.

We need to navigate to a place of value-driven selling, not simply a list of features.

Where the decision-makers reside

Even someone who owns TA in an organization may not be able to impact as much change immediately as they’d like, because of the “seat at the table” discussion mentioned above. It would be helpful for TA leaders to define their organizational value in bottom-line terms, potentially around:

  • People Analytics (data on people’s ties to revenue generation and what a successful hire actually looks like);
  • Cost data on turnover and engagement;
  • Cost data on compliance failures; and,
  • Differences between A-Players and others in terms of productivity and output.

Many business leaders are admittedly still comfortable looking at presentations and spreadsheets and having someone explain that, “These numbers mean this.” That isn’t happening enough from the TA suite.

We need harder numbers in front of the main executives, so that they understand “Oh, OK, these correlate together in this way…” Then decisions will likely come faster.

What else would you add?

Do you think HR/recruiting/TA is changing faster than ever?

If so, let us know. And if not, what are some of your theories about “why not?”

Next up: #HRTX heads to Boston

There are six (6) more #HRTX events this year, and our next #HRTX 2018 event will be in Boston at 9 am on Thursday April 12, 2018 at Bullhorn Inc..

In the world of talent acquisition, we understand better than most that time is a precious commodity. So, we invite you to join us for a morning full of learning next month in Boston, a morning that we know will be of immense value. We’ll have you back in your office that afternoon so you can finish up your day with actionable experience.

In other words, it’s worthwhile to attend — and you can tell your boss we said so.

If you’re a recruiter, or know someone in Boston who is and within a reasonable travel distance, you definitely should consider joining us in April.

RecruitingDaily Presents: #HRTX Boston 2018

Where: Bullhorn, Inc., 100 Summer St, Boston, MA 02110
When: Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 9:00 am

To sign up: Click here for more information.

Inside Proofy.io With Dean DaCosta

We love our email verification recruiting tools as an essential part of our stack. Determining if a list of emails is fully valid and deliverable saves a ton of time, money and a lot of headaches.  Dean DaCosta took an inside look into Proofy.io.

So what is Proofy.io?

Proofy.io is a fairly new email checking tool that is low-cost and simple to use. Proofy.io allows a user enhance list verifiability and ROI by ensuring email addresses are valid. The screen load on the site can be slow at times but with its low cost and effective verification makes it a good choice for those looking for an effective verification tool.

Flexible Email Verification Suited To Your Needs

When you sign up for the service, you must use a work email which is not ideal. After you signup, however, you get 50 free emails to check. If you need more than 50 email checks, they have low-cost plans that are flexible and fit a lot of needs.

With Proofy you pay for how many checks you need. For $3 you can get 500 email checks, $10 gets you 2500 emails, $22 gets 7500 and $37 gets 15,000. If your needs are even higher than this, they have a nice tool on their pricing page that allows you adjust the number of emails and see the cost.

Proofy.io allows you to verify email two ways, 1) by single verification or 2) list verifying. Using the list verifying feature is useful and allows you to drag and drop up to 50,000 emails at a time.

One thing to note is that when you verify emails numerous times, each time counts towards you allotted checks. This is again not ideal since most services like this differ in that when you check the same email twice it doesn’t count toward your total.

The dashboard feature allows you to see your total verifies in your account either by day, week or month in visual form. However, the dashboard can’t really be trusted to show the verifies correctly in Dean’s test below. After checking an email six times, three of them came back as risky. This was not reflected in the dashboard.  ~Noel

This newer service ins improving functionality but it is a low-cost, low-flow option for those who are looking to verify emails with some ease.

 

And now Dean’s inside look:

Dean DaCosta

 

Dean 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.

 

The 90/10 Rule of Networking, or the Story of Desert Pete

Did you know that 72 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot?

You may not have heard that stat before but you probably have heard of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. The 80/20 rule basically says that 80 percent of your success comes from 20 percent of your efforts.

I would like to introduce my own rule of thumb to the world of statistical abstraction. I call it, very originally, the 90/10 rule.

My 90/10 rule was something I first started thinking about when I was an agency recruiter, back when I was conducting 8 to 12 in person interviews.

Why you need to follow the 90/10 rule

I was speaking to people that wanted to, or needed to, change jobs. When people are looking for a job they realize that they need a network, however, by the time they realize they need a network it is too late to develop one.

So, I began to coach people, and what I started to coach them on is how you need to spend 90 percent of your time on your job and 10 percent of your time on your career. To be clear, I am NOT saying that you should spend 10 percent of your time looking for a job.

What I am saying is that you should spend 10 percent of your time on your career. That means, among other things, reading, attending conferences, attending networking events, and volunteering.

Remember: The time to build your network is BEFORE you need it.

I would like to speak a brief moment on networking. Building an actual network is one of the most valuable things you can do from your career but you have to do it right.  And, you can learn a lot about networking from the tale of Desert Pete.

Networking and the story of Desert Pete

For those not familiar with the story, Desert Pete was lost in a desert and dying of thirst when he found an old water pump. Next to the pump  there was water in a a jar full of water, because old water pumps had to be primed before they would pump water.

The water next to the pump was not water for drinking, but, water to prime the pump. Desert Pete, like the travelers before and after him, was mightily temped to forget about priming the pump immediately drink the water.

In the story says, Pete says:

Well, I found that jar and I tell ya nothin’ was ever prettier to my eye And I was tempted strong to drink it, ’cause that pump looked mighty dry.

But the note went on have faith my friend, there’s water down below. You’ve got to give until you get — I’m the one who ought to know.

So I poured in the jar and I started pumpin’ and I heard a beautiful sound, of water bubblin’ and splashin’ up outta that hole in the ground.

I took off my shoes and I drunk my fill of that cool refreshing treat I thank the Lord and thank the pump and I thank old Desert Pete.”

Networking is about more than just finding a job

Networking is not about going to a meeting and handing out your card. But, networking IS taking a few moments after you’ve had to let a candidate know that you can’t move forward with them to let them know you would like to introduce them to a recruiting contact of yours that might have a job for them.

To build a true network you have to prime the pump. Building a true network means providing something of value to someone who has no immediate ability to compensate you.

Also, to be clear, networking is not just about finding a job.

Over time I have developed a network of professionals that work in many different fields. There are people I know I  can call and ask technical questions to when I don’t know the answer. People in my network provide me with candidates for my open jobs.

My network has opened doors for me in my career that there is no way I could have opened myself.

Glen Cathey recently spoke at SourceCon again. Instead of giving a talk about all of the shiny new sourcing tools available, he spoke about the power of social engineering. He spoke of not only the necessity but the power of being a human and not a “zombie recruiter.” The science of Social Engineering is a playbook on how to build an effective network.

Pass along the wisdom

I would recommend investing 10 percent of your time not only building your network, but in reading good articles, attending conferences, and making connections among your peers. And, I would like to one up the Desert Pete analogy in the hope of making a larger point.

We live on a small blue oasis in the enormous cosmic desert of space. Make it a point to pass on the wisdom of Desert Pete,  Take all you need, but make sure you leave enough water for the next person who comes along behind you to prime the pump.

Be as much of an advocate of yourself as you are your candidates and remember.
You’ve got to prime the pump, you must have faith and believe.
You’ve got to give of yourself ‘fore you’re worthy to receive.
Drink all the water you can hold, wash your face, cool your feet.
But leave the bottle full for others, thank you kindly,

–– Desert Pete

3 Radical Steps to Help You Become a Recruiting Rebel

Have you ever been to a wedding and sat there thinking to yourself, “I give this marriage six months at most. What a shame they’ve spent all this money on something that will never last.”

Well, the same thought crosses my mind when I see the wrong person hired for a job. I think to myself, “What a waste of time and money; what a shame they didn’t get it right.”

And it’s not just the cost of recruiting that worries me, it’s the cost of the employee becoming disengaged, which Gallup describes as someone who is “unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to co-workers.” Sounds exactly what happens after the “honeymoon” is over when you hire the wrong person, doesn’t it?

And as far as the cost of this, according to Gallup the cost of an actively disengaged employee is $3,400 for every $10,000 of salary, so for an employee making $50,000 annually this would cost the company $17,000 a year. Get it wrong for 10 employees earning $50,000 a year, and the cost is almost $200,000. Ouch!

3 steps to help get recruitment right

So what can you do to get recruitment right, and not waste your precious time and your company’s precious money?

How can you recruit employees who’ll have the perfect marriage with your organization, whether it’s for one year or five years, being engaged and thus productive throughout the entire relationship?

To answer this, let me share three radical steps that break the rules of traditional recruitment practices, and are performed by some of the engagement rebels we interviewed for our new book, Build it: The Rebel Playbook for Employee Engagement.

  1. Obsess about the job ads and think only about the handful of characteristics that separate good candidates from exceptional ones. Focus sharply on the “deal breakers,” the ones you can’t live without and will truly make someone shine in the role. Also remember that assessing skills and qualities is hard, so remove everything you could live without.

  2. Go to extreme lengths to present the organization honestly. Go overboard in showing your organization’s nuances and flaws, and highlight things that could put people off, doing this humbly and with no vanity. Many people will be put off about applying – and that’s good, because they wouldn’t have ended up successful and engaged anyway. But, those that remain will run through walls to come and work for you.

  3. Don’t settle for someone who has the skills and ability to do the job, but doesn’t understand and commit to living your company values. If you hire people who don’t respect and commit to your values, they’re going to ruin it for everyone else and give you an inauthentic culture where you write one thing on the wall but everyone does something else.

Are you hiring people with “good ethical fiber?”

In an interview with Wade Roush at Xconomy, Dropcam’s CEO Greg Duffy said:

Our No. 1 hiring policy is our ‘no assholes‘ policy. I’ve found through my short time in the industry that there are lots of smart people in a place like Silicon Valley, and some of them are friendly, and some of the best people are not friendly and are not team players.

Many companies hire them. We do not. We artificially restrict the number of people we can hire by hiring people that we think have good ethical fiber. And we think that goes to how we treat our customers.”

So there you go — three (3 ) great ways to help you take your first step towards being a recruitment rebel and to get recruitment right.

I wish you all the best in challenging the status in how you recruit, and I can’t wait to hear what you do to successfully hire, engage and retain the “right” people in your organization.

Are you hiring more for culture or employer brand?

In the last decade or so, we’ve had a lot more research and thought leadership emerge around topics like employer branding, internal culture, candidate experience, and the like. “Brand” isn’t a new concept by any means — we’ve been discussing brand as long as we’ve had companies — but as new topics arise around the idea of brand, there are new considerations for the talent acquisition lifecycle.

The easiest place to begin this discussion is to understand what “culture” and “employer brand” are. These definitions will vary depending on who you ask, but for our money, employer brand is an extension of internal culture. It’s essentially your internal culture being shared with external stakeholders. We’re at a time now in talent acquisition history where Glassdoor is getting lengthy profiles in The New Yorker, so this idea of an internal culture being transparently projected outward has gained a lot of steam in even just the last 5-10 years.

This all begs the question: should a hire be driven by employer brand or fit with the internal culture? Both? Neither and simply skill sets?

First: TA and marketing need to learn from each other

The silos we tend to fret about not interacting are sales, IT, etc. — but HR and talent acquisition really need to be aligned with marketing. Both sides should be learning from each other.

Typically, the corporate brand in terms of messaging is controlled by marketing (but the employer brand is shaped by TA). The marketplace responds to both brands, and TA/marketing need to be speaking to each other about what’s being said out there.

When the employer brand and the corporate brand don’t align, that means word of mouth — the biggest driver of so much in business — has taken a hit somewhere, usually because of:

  • Poor candidate experience
  • Product or service delivery issues

In either case, you’re now a less attractive place to work. There goes your quality candidate selection.

How do you define your culture to candidates?

Much is going to happen via word of mouth — people talking to former colleagues, looking at Glassdoor, messages on LinkedIn — but there are other ways.

  1. Know your culture and what will work there: Every workplace has water cooler discussions.  What’s happening in those discussions? What is being said? Those discussions are a huge part of your culture. If you tap into the veteran employees who have been successful and have a role in those conversations, you’ll better understand what works for your culture. For example; maybe one department really needs more people with the ability to work independently. Maybe every team could use those with a greater ability to change. While some of these characteristics are admittedly harder to screen and track for, you need to know what works with your culture before you take any additional steps.
  2. Video job descriptions: This still isn’t at scale, but it’s increasingly in play. Create a video so that candidates can see your physical spaces and hear interviews with those close to the team they’d potentially be joining. Of course, this is a project between marketing and TA. It’s a polished end product. But if it accurately shows your culture, it will draw in candidates who feel they’d be a fit.
  3. Develop internal stakeholders: Coach up your current people on how to discuss and define the culture when they talk to former colleagues, new people at trade shows, new people at networking events, etc.
  4. Internally, make elements of your culture more objective: “Culture” can inherently be subjective. When elements are subjective in a business, true decision-makers tend to care less. They want objective elements; businesses are run on data and numbers. Try to make elements of culture more objective simply so others can look at “the culture numbers” and understand what they mean and how they impact hiring (and the bottom line through hiring and retention numbers). 

What happens when there’s a match between culture and brand?

Higher self-selection in the form of “I want to work there.” And what does that typically lead to? Higher retention and higher performance.

This is sometimes considered a controversial statement, and by no means are we knocking marriage here, but to some people, their job is more important than their marriage or their lifestyle — simply because of the amount of time and effort they will spend on/for that organization.

As a result, people want to know what they are getting into. Just like they’d research purchasing a car or a TV, they will research working with you through various channels. And when that brand-culture fit is there, that’s the sweet spot to drive performance and retention once they’re an employee.

How can we develop talent acquisition towards this brand-culture fit?

A few suggestions:

  • Make sure they work with marketing more: This was described above.
  • Make sure TA understands cultural fit elements early in the hiring process: This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to use a cultural assessment pre-interview; we’d actually recommend against that. Top of funnel stages will still be largely skills-driven, but recruiters need to understand the culture of the team they’re bringing someone onto.
  • Constantly discuss diversity of person and thought: When a company gets too hung up on what their culture is, they can fall into a trap where they only go for that type of person — which creates homogenous workforces that are likely prime for disruption because of a lack of new ideas. You need physical diversity but also cognitive diversity, and recruiters need to always keep that top of mind.
  • Don’t loop out TA at the hiring stage: Consider a true end-to-end candidate lifecycle situation, whereby there is data on each hire going deep into retention/eventual departure, and that data is tied back to the specific recruiter. And in that vein…
  • … incentive structures: What if one recruiter is so adept at finding culture-brand fits that his hires have an average retention of 8-10 years with high levels of productivity? Shouldn’t that recruiter be eligible for some type of bonus or extra incentive as a result of that performance? Extrinsic motivators remain powerful. Reward the best in TA at understanding the need for fit.
  • Have a baseball mentality: I talked recently about some of these issues with Noel Cocca, CEO of RecruitingDaily. Noel is a big baseball fan, including coaching Little League in Connecticut for many years. One thing he brought up: certain baseball players, like a Gary Carter or Reggie Jackson, hit .260 for their career and made the Hall of Fame? Now, yes, they had other skills. But a .260 average means you fail 7.5 times out of 10, roughly. And you still make the Hall of Fame. More in recruiting need to think this way: just because a candidate isn’t perfect for the open req in front of you doesn’t mean they couldn’t be great somewhere else, or even lead this team someday. This is why transparency is so important. Don’t let candidates fall into black holes. Be open with them. Explain what happened with roles. If they are right but not right now, they could still be a huge asset in the future. Remember: culture evolves. Business models change, teams change, etc. The “right cultural fit” at Moment A might be totally different at Moment B. You will miss and you can still be a Hall of Fame TA professional.

 

Continue the discussion: Do you think of hiring more in terms of brand or culture fit? Contact Amanda on Twitter @AmandaPCole and Noel @noelcocca.

10 Things Candidates Do to Create a Big First Impression

Whether it takes 7 seconds or 17 minutes to make a first impression, people always seem astonished at what idiosyncrasy causes the gut reaction.

Recruiters know this: That reaction may be positive or negative, but it pays to know how others perceive you.

After more than 30 years of personal coaching and studying the topics of interpersonal skills, body language, interviewing, and career advancement, these issues are mentioned most frequently as those that make someone memorable — typically for negative reasons.

Of course, there’s always the outlier — the person who interprets the habit or trait positively.

So to be complete, I’ve listed both potential reactions or the first impression below — the positive and the negative. Take your pick:

1 – The “EST” Habit

Routinely “top” every comment someone else makes with one of your own. You have the “best” job, the “funniest” story, the “fastest laptop,” the “easiest” process for managing remote contractors.

  • The positive reaction: The most competent person in the room.
  • The negative reaction: A blowhard — typically bragging without reason.

2 – Limp Body Language

Sauntering walk. Slumped shoulders. Small, limp gestures. Blank facial expression.

  • Positive reaction: Non-threatening or intimidating.
  • Negative reaction: Low energy. Slow (physically and mentally). Low self-esteem.

3 – Boisterous laughter

Habitually loud, unrestrained laughter at almost any happening except for the gravest situation.

  • Positive reaction: Jovial, pleasant person.
  • Negative reaction: Moronic behavior; trying to attract attention and knows no better way to do it.

4 – Entering a room flamboyantly

Arrives noisily in such a way that your entrance immediately attracts attention — with loud greetings, an entourage of people or things accompanying you, or extraordinarily late with profuse apologies to everyone.

  • Positive reaction: Must be a confident, take-charge person.
  • Negative reaction: A very self-absorbed, insincere person

5 – Verbosity

Talking incessantly about whatever topic is at hand — whether adding substantive or trivial comments.

  • Positive reaction: Entertaining.
  • Negative reaction: Nervous; can’t figure out what’s important and what’s not. First impression is boring.

6 – Nodding continually as others speak

Does it in meetings, in conversations, during lectures.

  • Positive reaction: A pleasant, agreeable person.
  • Negative reaction: Doesn’t this person have any opinions or ideas of their own?

7 – Writing in fragmented spurts

Writes emails that read like stream-of-consciousness thoughts — sentence fragments, missing details — that leave readers guessing at what’s “between the lines.”

  • Positive reaction: Must be a terribly busy person forced into an unfocused situation.
  • Negative reaction: They must be illiterate.

8 – Overpowering handshake

Either crushing the other person’s hand in a painful grip, or, maneuvering the handclasp so that your own hand is always on top.

  • Positive reaction: Powerful person.
  • Negative reaction: A manipulator; trying to impress.

9 – Jewelry

Wears odd jewelry that distracts rather than compliments personal assets and clothing.

  • Positive reaction: A risk-taker.
  • Negative reaction: Big attention-seeker, a rebel.

10 – Improper grammar

Subject-verb disagreement. Misused words. Awkward sentence construction.

  • Positive reaction: Obviously speaks multiple languages, and this is not his or her native tongue.
  • Negative reaction: Uneducated, native speaker of the language. Why is he or she unwilling to learn?

Is That Candidate Not Responding to Your Social Media Pitch Because They’ve Gone to the Great Beyond?

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” – the graffiti artist Bansky

During a recent webinar I was part of, there was a discussion about online profiles and connections on the typical social media accounts out there, and the speaker made an interesting comment that caught a lot of people off guard.

In fact, a friend of mine and a curator of content sent me an IM saying “did he just say that?” The comment was not something I think this person meant to facilitate any sort of malicious way, or for shock value. No, they were simply pointing something out that was a reality.

The comment was this: “I know 10 people on LinkedIn that are dead!”

What happens to our digital footprint?

Let that sink in kids. The possibility is not that much of a far off reality, although it is true that at some point we are all going to depart the mortal coil and end up wherever we are going.

What is the point to all of this you ask?

Well, we are now more connected to each other in the virtual world than ever before. I do not have phone numbers of friends in their 20’s as they prefer using IM on Facebook to contact each other. It’s weird for me but I adapt, and I always seem to be able to do that.

I digress though, in getting to my actual point.

Connections are great and people are communicating online almost more than they do in a personal fashion. I have friends all over the world who, without the use of the Internet and its tools, I would not be able to keep in touch with, talk with, and learn about.

Yes, that is great and all, but when the time comes that I’m no longer here, what will happen to the digital footprint I left behind?

It’s not like there is a hotline you can call at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., that knows that I have passed on, and why would they care? Who would want that task, anyway? It would be terribly depressing for me to contact these sites to say “please erase my friend (or family member, or companion, or my child).”

I have lost many people that were dear to me and, and as I grow older, I’m sure that I will lose more. It’s the cycle of life.

Sad reminders from social media

A few months ago, I got a notice from Facebook that my dear friend and father figure’s birthday was that day. I lost him a year before. That was a scar that was once again torn open by Facebook and I’m still remembering that gone.

I am not alone in this sentiment by any stretch of the imagination. I get the memorial pages that some people put up in order to remember friends and loved ones, but those come down eventually once the grieving process is completed, if it ever can really be fully done.

I know I miss many friends and connections, and I have my traditions to not forget them but sometimes to have a drink with them even though they are not with me anymore. However, I don’t need AI to remind me of those losses, and nor should anyone, really.

There are a ton of fake profiles out there, and yet, are they all fake? After the incident that popped up of seeing the notice about my late father figure “Pop” Perry, I contacted his kids, as they are all family to me, to tell them that they should take his profile down. Problem was, no one knew what to do.

I’m all for privacy, but there should be someone out there you trust enough to have that information, probably the curator of your will, or perhaps, a trusted family member. I have a friend that I have known over 30 years who has mine, but who has yours?

Thinking about connections that are gone

The digital age is exciting and still young and new, but like all new things that look so magical, there will be unknown consequences and issues that we have not seen before. As we, the digital society, start leaving this world, we should think about this — especially my generation and the one ahead of me.

I am not trying to be a Grim Reaper here, but there are, at times, the thinking that maybe the reason that great job candidate is not getting back to me is because they are simply not here anymore.

#truestory

Is This a Fix for Hiring and Labor Market Discrimination?

Labor market discrimination is rampant.

Every research that’s done, at least here in the Netherlands where I live, tells the same story. And even though the Netherlands is very egalitarian, open, and multi-cultural, our unconscious bias when it comes to selecting candidates makes all the difference.

Ethnic discrimination

Earlier this year, research from several different universities showed that even criminals convicted of violent crimes have a bigger chance of getting invited to a job interview than someone named Mohamed or Abdul with a perfect record. For their research, they send out exact replicas of cover letters and resumes where people with “white” names admitted in their cover letters to different types of crimes.

People that admitted to having served time for violent crimes got invited to an interview 28 percent of the time, whereas migrants with no criminal record only got invited 9 percent of the time.”

Age discrimination

Last year, a Dutch Ph.D. student analyzed 440,000 resumes (he had access to all the anonymous resumes from one ATS provider that has hundreds of clients in all kinds of markets) and had an algorithm make correlations.

After teaching the algorithm the human behavior (he knew who got invited to an interview and who eventually got hired) he let the algorithm select from the second part of the sample. Guess wha happened? The algorithm was 80 percent correct when selecting based only on a resume.

The biggest correlation the algorithm found in human behavior when selecting candidates was age.”

Testing and data is the solution

Recently, I came across some really interesting data from Harver.

For those who do not know Harver, they build pre-selection testing for contact centers and retail sales staff. Basically, they let their applicants play a game, and during this game, they measure the quality of the candidate for the specific job.

So for contact center applicants, they measure, among other things, the ear-hand coordination, spelling ability, and about 20 more relevant skills for the job. Every candidate gets scored on several different aspects of the job, resulting in a total “fit for the job” score based on testing.

Many of their clients don’t even ask for a resume anymore since it has no predictive value whatsoever and the test scores have lowered attrition at many of their contact center clients from over 100 percent to less than 20 percent a year.

They recently did an analysis of 130,000 Dutch applicants from whom they knew who was hired. The divided these candidates into two different groups: “native” and “migrant-background” based on the first names of the applicants. This is basically the same way a recruiter looks at a resume.

Guess what? The results were staggering:

  • Of all the native applicants, 22.585 percent were hired.
  • Of all the migrant-background applicants, 22.505 percent were hired.

Hiring on abilities, not on biases

These results were not correlated with the actual scores from the test, but since most of Harver’s clients reply mainly on the test scores, it’s safe to assume they all scored well. The very small difference (0.08 percent) in the percentage of hires this shows that hiring based on testing and data rids the recruiter of his/her unconscious bias.

Replacing a resume with actual test scores and data about the quality of the candidate seems to rid us of unconscious bias.”

The future of recruitment is in getting away from the resume. This is a future is much more inclusive that actually selects candidates on their abilities instead of our biases about their abilities.

Hey Recruiters — Here’s Why Interns Are Worth Another Look

The labor market is as tight as ever since the Great Recession began back in 2007.

  • Unemployment is at a record low 4.1 percent;
  • Highly skilled workers are in short supply, but big in demand; and,
  • The oldest members of the workforce – mostly Baby Boomers – are retiring.

These conditions have left employers feverishly looking for qualified candidates to recruit, hire and retain, and they’re upping the ante to do it.

Some companies are willing to raise wages to attract talent. Others are offering employees one-time bonuses and stock awards, expanding their benefits portfolios, and pouring more money into 401(k)s with windfalls from the new tax bill.

But what they could be doing instead is looking for more pools of talent, specifically, the least costly of them all — interns.

Students at the high school and college levels often find internships rewarding. The chance to get hands-on work experience, academic credit and a possible job offer after graduation counter-balances the lack of pay. In fact, career advisers agree that getting seen by an employer can be the best route to a job.

Whether to pay, or not to pay? 

Who would have thought that an 11th Century work arrangement like an internship would be central to a 21st Century debate?

Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor decided that all interns must be paid at least the federal minimum wage plus overtime to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The department also came up with a six-point set of criteria for employers hiring interns to meet.

Some of DOL’s concerns at that time were:

  • For-profit companies were using interns for free labor;
  • Companies were replacing paid employees with unpaid interns;
  • Interns weren’t being supervised in an academic capacity; and,
  • Many interns were assigned drudgery work.

Although some companies might have been violating federal and state wage and hour laws, the sweeping change stood to penalize both companies and interns who benefited from the relationship.

In January 2018, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta announced a rollback of the rule and its six-point criteria. Under the revised rule, for-profit employers must still pay interns for their work. However, in some cases, interns and students might not be classified as employees under the FLSA and therefore aren’t required to be paid.

A new test to determine if an intern is an employee

A seven-point “primary beneficiary test, used by the courts, will determine whether an intern is an employee. The test is designed to uncover who benefits most from the internship, the employer or the intern, and what both parties understand about the relationship’s terms.

According to the Labor Department, the Courts have identified the following seven factors as part of the test:

  1. The extent to which the intern and the employer clearly understand that there is no expectation of compensation. Any promise of compensation, express or implied, suggests that the intern is an employee—and vice versa.
  2. The extent to which the internship provides training that would be similar to that which would be given in an educational environment, including the clinical and other hands-on training provided by educational institutions.
  3. The extent to which the internship is tied to the intern’s formal education program by integrated coursework or the receipt of academic credit.
  4. The extent to which the internship accommodates the intern’s academic commitments by corresponding to the academic calendar.
  5. The extent to which the internship’s duration is limited to the period in which the internship provides the intern with beneficial learning.
  6. The extent to which the intern’s work complements, rather than displaces, the work of paid employees while providing significant educational benefits to the intern.
  7. The extent to which the intern and the employer understand that the internship is conducted without entitlement to a paid job at the conclusion of the internship.

As the Labor Department Fact Sheet notes,

“Courts have described the ‘primary beneficiary test’ as a flexible test, and no single factor is determinative. Accordingly, whether an intern or student is an employee under the FLSA necessarily depends on the unique circumstances of each case.”

A long history worth preserving

Internships have a long history dating back to Medieval times. The term “intern” originated in the medical community.

By World War I, “intern” referred to a doctor who had a medical degree but no license to practice. The term now applies to broader categories of workers, but the idea is the same; interns might have diplomas or degrees, but they need hands-on experience to succeed in their field.

Some very famous, highly successful people have been interns, including Bill Gates, Spike Lee, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Brooke Shields. They’re all described as having “worked their way” up into interesting professions.

Will these high-profile people inspire emerging generations to become interns – paid or unpaid? Many young adults want a “foot in the door,” but for some, internships turn out to be “go for” jobs with no real learning opportunities.

The question of pay resurfaces when young people from low-income backgrounds feel that they can’t afford to take any job – no matter how great or how grueling – that doesn’t pay.

What recruiters and employers can do

Companies must first comply with wage and hour laws when recruiting and hiring interns, because penalties for noncompliance can be steep. Companies also can try to make internships as productive as possible by:

  • Making learning the focus of the internship;
  • Mixing meaningful work assignments that align with interns’ goals with more mundane tasks;
  • Paying low- and middle-income interns a wage, if possible;
  • Partnering with schools to provide interns with professional development; and,
  • Identifying exceptional interns as potential hires.

Remembering How Social Media Has Upended Recruiting and Talent Acquisition

During my Talent Acquisition career, I have seen how recruitment has undergone transformative change over the years, from a time when recruiting was driven by print advertisements in the late 1990s to now where a social media job opening can be globally circulated and distributed across a breadth of platforms at dizzying speeds.

Yes, we need to remember how the rapid rise of social media has changed the face of hiring. Social media is now used to automate, publicize, distribute, and circulate job openings around the global at the speed of a click.

It’s easy to forget this sometimes, but today, all employees have access to your openings (via the web) and can readily take to many social media platforms to help you recruit as well as publicize your company’s favorable work environment, benefits, culture, work-life balance, and more.

How social media has dramatically changed recruiting

Speed, and your use of social media as a recruiting vehicle (for securing top talent in the ongoing “war for talent“) are the now common currencies, not to mention your organization’s reputation, culture, and image among your employees – who are, of course,  incredibly active on social media.

Social media has dramatically altered the recruiting life cycle — from job postings to job offers through onboarding. Think about the recent “old days” of the very late 1990s when I took my recent MBA degree and began leading a Corporate Staffing function at Lockheed.

Applicants, at that time, were developed from (and hiring was driven by), print advertisements in newspapers, magazines and industry periodicals. Applicants found out about corporate job openings from newspapers and magazines. These ads were not only expensive (depending on the location and the prestige of the newspaper or magazine) but they had a limited reach, just covering the immediate target circulation area of the publication.

They also had a limited shelf life as well. Also, composing exciting job ads and compelling ad copy, as well as submitting all the edits and re-writes back and forth with your designated advertising firm, was very time consuming. Additionally, you also were faced with hard deadlines (and unalterable press deadlines) from the newspapers for their Sunday editions or their job section editions.

In the U.S., for example, if you wanted your job ad to reach a national audience, you needed the distribution and circulation power of a national newspaper, such as The Wall Street Journal, which was a terribly expensive choice in those days by the way).

Applicants back then only found out about openings, if you subscribed to a specific newspaper in a specific city, or you had friends or relatives who lived in a particular city and they told you about a job opening. Access to information was restricted.

4 big ways that recruiting has changed

Employees of your organization (that is, non-recruiters) did not easily have easy access to your job openings and therefore were limited in their ability to refer candidates — thus severely limiting your ability to leverage your recruiting efforts. Employees were also limited in their ability to publicize your company’s favorable workplace culture, and that also constricted your recruiting reach and leverage.

Well, as we now know all too well, social media has dramatically changed all of this. You now have an unlimited horizon for your Talent Acquisition and recruiting strategies. Here are four big ways that recruiting has changed:

  1. When a recruiter now designs a recruiting strategy for filling a given position, they have a vast array of choices and channels to post, tweet, lists, circulate and distribute job openings.
  2. Also, employees can be used to help leverage the recruiting reach. For instance, your employees who are on Twitter and Facebook can inform followers and members of their networks about your openings.
  3. Additionally, employees can share (for better or worse, hopefully for the better) their opinions and attitudes about your organization and whether or not it is a desirable place for candidates to apply.
  4. Lastly, vendors have continually designed and improved software which automates the sharing and posting of your jobs to numerous social media sites while interfacing with your Applicant Tracking  System (ATS) — again at the click of a button. And, almost all of these platforms have mobile capabilities with social media sites.

Are you and your recruiting efforts falling behind?

In a word, social media has increased your Talent Acquisition efficiency and effectiveness by a huge margin, providing you with an unlimited reach for worldwide candidates 24/7 and 365 days a year. It is also more cost effective on a per candidate and cost per hire basis.

Remember back to those expensive ads we used to run in the Tuesday job section of The Wall Street Journal with a limited reach and limited shelf life? Now consider how inexpensive it is today to publicize, by just tweeting out a job new opening from your company’s Twitter page and driving all the interested candidates to your career website and your ATS.

It’s pretty stunning, and amazing to think about not only how much recruiting has changed but how much more efficient and wide-reaching social media has made all of us in Talent Acquisition.

Yes, it’s pretty clear now in 2018 that if you are not maximizing the incredible power and reach of influence of social media to run your Talent Acquisition and recruiting function, you are falling behind and will surely lose out in the ongoing “war for talent.”

5 Steps to Using RPO to Make Your Recruiters More Effective

After long consideration, you have decided to engage in a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) partnership.

There were probably a few events or challenges that pushed your company to decide an RPO was the best next course of action. A highly candidate-driven market, rapidly emerging recruitment technologies, or a lack of internal resources could all be catalysts for enlisting the help of an RPO.

No matter the reason, implementation is probably the next looming hurdle.

While we can assure you the right partnership will benefit your talent acquisition team (and budget), this quick 5-step process will help you plan for RPO success while training your recruiters for amazingly improved efficiency.

1 – Lead with strategic discovery

The right RPO partnership will be able to integrate into your organization even if you’re not exactly aware of all the gaps that need filling or processes that need updating. However, for the most effective partnership, your organization should do a little self-reflection.

Even better, the introspection might prove invaluable even when evaluating RPO prospects.

When starting self-discovery, consider questions like:

  • What are your obvious recruitment gaps?
  • What challenges are creating obstacles?
  • What industry-specific knowledge is required to successfully source and hire talent?
  • Have your recruiters mentioned specific and recurring challenges in their process?
  • What processes or strategies are working time and time again? What isn’t?
  • Do you have any resources that will help the RPO team better understand your brand or candidate experience?
  • What are your non-negotiables?

Bottom line: RPO partnerships should integrate into your organization’s established company values and culture. This groundwork ensures that happens by granting your recruiting team the chance to provide input. It’s also a great time to consider specific strategies behind previously used tactics.

2 – Find missed opportunities

This is quite possibly one of the most beneficial parts of partnering with an RPO. Even a well-established and successful recruitment team suffers from missed opportunities.

The list of potential oversights can include anything from overlooking passive candidate engagement practices to underdeveloping the applicant/candidate experience. In either and all cases, these missed opportunities can mean big repercussions for talent acquisition.

Invite your RPO partner to look into each process as it stands, and don’t hide perceived blemishes. It might not be fun to explain things like diversity or inclusion problems, but that is the most surefire way to collaborate on solutions.

The RPO will uncover the issues and obstacles anyway. It can be difficult to remember that though you are outsourcing the process, you aren’t losing the security of an internal program. Optimal recruiter efficiency starts with an honest dive into your recruitment problems.

Bottom line: Outsourcing doesn’t mean a loss of internal security, and hiding problems is doing your team a disservice. Recruiter efficiency depends on critical reviews of your process, so hiding blemishes will only prolong a successful recruitment strategy development. Plus, a good RPO is going to find the skeletons anyway.

3 – Focus on connections, not spending

First and foremost, companies turn to RPO providers for saving resources and boosting the budget.

Recruiters are often the first point of contact for your company in the eyes of job seekers and candidates. Unfortunately, the little things and countless administrative tasks can leave your recruitment team and hiring managers more than a little overwhelmed.

Applications may go unreviewed or unanswered, interviews might be unorganized and the candidate experience suffers. With the small, time consuming tasks taken care of, your recruitment team can focus on building a healthy process and friendly experience.

Maybe you won’t hire every interested applicant, but you will give every applicant the time and attention they deserve, ultimately supporting a positive employer brand.

In addition, recruitment budgeting houses a lot of variables. Within a year, recruiting needs might fluctuate so greatly that mispredicting busy seasons may be one of the most costly mistakes made. RPO allows companies the room needed to overcome the unpredictable and scale without expensive repercussions.

Bottom line: RPO provides support to your existing recruitment resources, opportunity for better attention to candidates and scalability. This reallocation will grant more time to develop those long standing processes and strategies that will improve your company’s talent acquisition. If independence and a totally internal recruiting process is your future plan, this support will grant the freedom to work toward that.

4 – Capitalize on development

As mentioned, the RPO provider will lower or eliminate some of the time-consuming and menial tasks usually bogging your recruiting team down. However, there is additional value in the advice and best practices insight your provider can offer.

RPO providers know the market, helping you to correctly and efficiently fill vacancies with the right compensation.

More importantly, they have insight into what each specific candidate pool expects and demands, as well as the latest on where the market or industry is heading. They will use that knowledge in combination with your culture to guide your resources and training in a way that either supports a long-term partnership, or develops an in-house approach you can manage independently in the future.

Bottom line: From specialized market and industry knowledge to an expertise in traditional and emerging recruitment trends, using an RPO means having access to a powerful resource.

5 – Remain open minded about your RPO

Whether it’s a recommendation for new technology and tools or a new approach to employer branding communication, your RPO partner might have a few wave-creating suggestions.

The process could leave your recruitment team a little uncomfortable, but disruption and innovation are what lead to better strategies and efficiency. With clearly explained goals and non-negotiables, these ideas should still be aligned to your organization and might solve long standing challenges.

Bottom Line: Don’t be afraid of change. An RPO might be a little uncomfortable in the beginning, but once all the dust settles, your company should be left with a more efficient, budget-friendly recruitment strategy that finds the right hires. Do be sure to explain the RPO process and goals with your established in-house recruitment team so there is no confusion on their importance.

What are your experiences with RPO? Was your team left with ah-ha moments or a laundry list of horror stories? Tell us all about it on our Twitter or Facebook.

It’s Nice to Be a Best Place to Work, But Most Recruiters Toil for the Other 90%

Every recruiter would like to say they are sourcing for a Best Place to Work organization.

It’s a great opening line to most candidates, and a good conversation starter. You know what I’m talking about — it’s the “We have been a best place to work for the past three years” line.

It doesn’t matter if it is the annual Fortune magazine Best Companies to Work For, or a regional “Best Place” list; being able to say you are on one of those lists creates an impression — even when it is not always deserved.

I have worked for two businesses that have made major lists.

One was questionably deserving, and outside of a good PTO policy and the ability to flex from home, it was anything but a Best Place business, although it was also far from the worst. But, we milked our award for a couple of years when recruiting new candidates. It was worth the cost of the application, for sure.

Recruiting when you’re NOT a “Best Place to Work”

But what about the 90 percent of businesses and workplaces that don’t make a “Best Place” list?

A few may be deserving and a few just don’t care. That leaves a lot of organizations in the runner-up category, and maybe, just maybe, at the bottom of the barrel, too. I worked for one organization that could have won a Worst Place to Work award. They also paid very well, so I took comfort and solitude in my pay check every two weeks.

If you’re a recruiting executive, you must compensate when you’re not a “Best Place” and maybe even a “Bad Place” to work. Outwardly, folks don’t always like to admit they work for a bad place. For recruiting teams, there is a balance between being honest and spinning a conversation, and, being totally honest when recruiting for a difficult environment.

Occasionally, a recruiter will just call it as they see it.

I went on an interview a few years back for a head of HR role at a major retailer. The recruiter told me that it was a tough place to work — long hours, highly political, and lots of yellers and screamers. But she also said this: If you can make an impact for the better, you will be a hero.

4 keys for recruiters to focus on

That’s the mark of a smart recruiter, because she was honest AND posed the career opportunity at the same time.

If you’re a recruiter faced with the daunting task of filling positions at a less then “Best Place to Work” organization, here are a few things to lean on as you’re wooing candidates:

  1. Focus on the mission of the organization and point to the value created by the work. When I worked for a Charter School with some challenges, we always went back to student success and outcomes as a selling point.
  2. Point out the opportunity to learn from the challenges.
  3. Focus on the notion that they can build skills by working in a challenging environment. This is another selling point because sometimes, extra work and opportunities are created by the workplace problems.
  4. Making internal changes for the better, especially for mid to senior level folks, is another benefit to pitch when recruiting them.

Even “Best Places” have their challenges

If you’re an applicant, make sure you do your due diligence and don’t ignore the warning signs.

If you’re a recruiter, make sure you give a balanced picture by pointing out challenges and shortcomings.

Yes, even the very best companies have their issues.

And always remember: most places are not the “Best” — even if they think they are.

How to Reach Passive Candidates Using Facebook Ads: Audience Targeting

Facebook is one of the most powerful digital platforms in the world.

With a user population bigger than China, you might say it is a pretty important part of the digital marketing economy.

So far in this video series, I have shared with your insights on making sure your recruitment advertising has context in your passive candidates’ day, and, the power of the right headline and image in connecting with candidates.

The importance of audience targeting for passive candidates

Now, Part 3 dives into the next — and the most critically important factor — in how you target your audience.

Thanks for following this brief video series. Please check out parts 1 and 2:

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Miss #TalentNet in Austin

I remember a session at a SHRM national conference more years ago then I’d like to remember – so long ago, in fact, I actually went to a session on Millennials thinking I might learn something.

I was young and dumb; what can I say?

The speaker asked everyone to stand, then asked attendees to sit when he called out their ages. Being a SHRM conference, I think when he started at 40 he likely knocked out about half the room, but eventually, as most of the room was long ago seated and he was hovering in the mid 20s, it became like some sort of carnival game.

And sure enough, I “won’’ – I was the youngest person in the room, by two years. In short, the best years of my life were spent at SHRM conferences.

There’s a reassuring thought. But I remember the presenter telling me, “enjoy this day – someday you’ll look back and wish you could be the youngest person in the room again.” The audience chuckled knowingly.

I had no idea what they were talking about.

How I figured things out

It took TalentNet for me to figure it out. I mean this, of course, as the highest of compliments. It’s just, that for all the recruiting shows in all the world, it’s the one that’s really been the most recurring and consistent part of what’s often a crazy conference calendar.

Which means that it’s a pretty convenient reference point for that arc of growing up, from the youngest person in a room (and there to learn about Millennials, of my own accord, nonetheless) into like, an old dude.

This year marks a decade – a friggin decade – since I went to my first #TalentNet at the PepsiCo headquarters in good ole’ Plano – also my first real time in Texas. I had met this guy, Craig Fisher, in Chicago at HREvolution, a seminal event for those of us of a certain age, I suppose.

The first interaction I had with him was on an elevator. He introduced himself as “Fishdogs on Twitter,” and looked at me shocked when he realized I had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Fast forward five years, and around 10 #TalentNet events later. I’m getting sick of LA and itching to try life out somewhere else. After one of the spring events, held at the JC Penny World Headquarters, I stuck around to go out with Craig on his infamous pontoon boat.

It was an absolutely perfect day – and the one where Craig worked on closing me on the idea of giving Dallas a try. I did. Five years later, Craig is not only one of my closest friends – and neighbors, for heaven’s sake – but he’s also my boss.

It’s a crazy world sometimes.

It’s a life changing event

And the fact is, without #TalentNet, I wouldn’t live in Texas. I would never have gotten married. I probably wouldn’t have my job at Allegis Global Solutions, and I’m pretty certain that if I had to stay in LA, I could never have afforded to take this random gig that came up at RecruitingDaily right after I moved to Dallas.

So, I’m not saying #TalentNet could change your life. But it changed mine.

Sign up today. Or live to regret what might have been. Tell you this: I’ll never miss another #TalentNet. You shouldn’t, either: http://TalentNet Live.com