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The Five Most Watched RecruitingDaily Webinars

Here’s the definition of “Knowledge:” Facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

At RecruitingDaily, which includes RecruitingBlogs, RecruitingTools, and several other sites, we pride ourself for spreading up-to-date recruiting sourcing and HR tech knowledge. And, knowledge is power.

Of course, we understand that it’s difficult to attend every webinar as it’s happening. That’s why we record all webinars and showcase them on our YouTube page. In fact, there are over 100 to choose from. Make sure you go to our YouTube page and subscribe to get the latest tips and tricks as well as the webinar and RecruitingLive recordings.

In the meantime, here are our five (5) most popular webinars:

1. Boolean 101: Five Easy Steps to Finding More Candidates

Presented by John Childs

The Boolean 101 search method is the foundation of any smart recruiter’s skillset.

But although we’re beginning to move from creating overly complex Boolean strings with multiple modifiers and operators to having a platform build them for us with the push of a button (with at least a 50 percent sourcing success rate, in most cases), and because machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming affordable and accessible talent acquisition solutions, none of these things are actually a sustainable, scalable strategy for recruiting success.

2. 15 Sourcing Tools To Save You Thousands

Presented by Dean Da Costa

Dean Da Costa presents a journey of recruiting tools, tips, and hacks. This webinar cuts through the fluff. Dean brings his favorite sourcing tools to uncover and scrape hidden resumes.  He also finds profiles and contacts of people you did not know exist.

In this webinar,  Dean gives live demos of tools that will map out a direct link into the power of LinkedIn Recruiter.  You don’t even need a license.

3. How To Use The New LinkedIn Custom Search Engine

Presented by Ryan Leary

We’ve had more than thousands of downloads since we began launching our new search engine. This webinar is a 30-minute workshop session dedicated to using the new LinkedIn CSE. These are real results, not hypotheticals based on the eight (8) power searches.

4. 11 Power Boolean Searches PLUS 7 Must-Have Sourcing Tools Every Recruiter Needs

Presented by Ryan Leary

Cut through the fluff and get the top 11 Power Boolean Searches we have to uncover hidden resumes, profiles, and contacts of people you did not know exist. This is a fast-paced 45-minute learning session with real searches, and real examples with a side of “no sales.”

5. Building an Incredible Employer Brand that Attracts Top Talent by Glassdoor for Employers

Presented by Alicia Garibaldi

Watch this webinar sponsored by Glassdoor where we explored:

  • 10 ways to start improving your employer brand today;
  • How to measure and monitor your employer brand over time;
  • How to use talent analytics to improve your branding strategy;
  • How to attract Millennial job seekers by going mobile with your brand;
  • Fun ways to engage employees as brand ambassadors.

Please go now and subscribe to our YouTube page. You will be glad you did.

Editor’s Note: There were some videos that I did not add because although popular, the technology is now outdated or no longer available.

 

No Doubt About It: Employee Referrals Are Still the Best Source of New Hires

Last summer, RecruitingDaily contributor Alan Henshaw asked a great question: Why don’t organizations develop more  creative ways for rewarding employees who make candidate referrals?

It’s a great question, because in my book, even an imperfect referral program is usually a better recruitment tool than just about anything else you can come up with.

How much better is it? Fast Company magazine recently wrote about how Ernst & Young may need to hire upwards of 15,000 people in the next year. E&J knows about the power of referral, and back in 2010, reported that they made up nearly 30 percent of the company’s hires.

But now, with so much more pressure to hire, Ernst & Young is counting on referrals to be the source of half  — yes, 50 percent — of its hiring needs. That’s a huge number that most organizations can only dream of.

Here’s why referrals really work well

Dan Black, Ernst & Young’s recruiting leader for the Americas, is very specific about why employee referrals are such a strong source of hire for them:

Referral candidates perform better and stay longer. In fact, external research has shown that referred workers are up to 30 percent less likely to quit and have substantially better performance on high-impact metrics. Other studies indicate that even so-called “weak” connections are likely to lead to placement and better job outcomes.”

And E&J is putting some big money behind their referral program; they paid out more than $8 million in referral bonuses during the 2016 fiscal year. That’s a significant number, and it shows that the organization is clearly focused on getting the right people on board — and is willing to pay what it needs to in order to get that done.

But as we all know, referral programs aren’t perfect. Liz Ryan wrote about this in Forbes, and she made this point:

An employee referral program is a flame-y idea. When I say “flame-y,” I mean that a successful employee referral program has a lot to do with trust and good feeling. There are mechanical aspects to the program, of course, but they are less important than the less measurable but more high-impact factors in your program’s success.

Simply stated, if the employees don’t feel good about the place, they’re not going to subject to their friends to the environment. What kind of friend does that?”

One way you can game your recruiting system

Here’s my take: You always make better hires when you can learn more about the candidates (aka, potential employees) and referrals from your current employee base is really the best way to do that.

Yes, referrals are always a great way to get new employees who will be a good fit with your workforce. As my good friend Gerry Crispin, who annually publishes the Career XRoads Source of Hire report, said about referrals back in 2013:

Referrals are one way U.S. candidates can game the system no matter what other source they rely on to find and apply for jobs. In the U.S., a referred candidate must be considered by a recruiter and Applicant Tracking Systems and other technologies help to both highlight and prioritize candidates who enter this way.

Candidates are learning this from career coaches. Networking is now much easier due to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Anyone can easily find a connection who went to same school, same industry, etc., so social changes it again.”

If you aren’t leveraging employee referrals to the fullest, you’re probably short-changing your company’s recruiting efforts. When it comes right down to it, referrals simply can’t be beat for delivering high quality candidates that can improve the overall quality of your workforce.

If you aren’t getting at least 25-35 percent of your hires this way, you’re simply hurting your organization and ensuring that your recruiting will be a lot more costly, and time-consuming, in the months and years to come.

7 Tools​ ​That​ Can ​Help​ ​You​ ​Recruit​ ​More​ ​Diverse​ ​Candidates

We all know that diversity in the workplace is extremely important. People with different cultural backgrounds, age groups, gender, opinions, and experience make the team stronger and more efficient.

We also know that diversity at workplace starts from the way we recruit. Simply put, the less bias we include in our hiring process, the more diverse ​candidates — and employees — ​we ​end ​up ​with.

Luckily, there are plenty of tools that are focusing on diversity recruitment and its different approaches like diverse candidate sourcing, blind auditioning, skill-based reviewing, unbiased job ad descriptions, etc. We’ve put together this  overview of seven (7) smart tools can really that ​help ​you ​recruit ​a more ​diverse ​workforce:

1.​ ​Hundred5​ ​-​ ​A skill-based​ ​blind​ ​hiring​ ​tool

Want a powerful skill-based blind hiring tool that replaces biased resume screening with unbiased short skills challenges?

With Hundred5, the employer starts the hiring process with a quick challenge to screen candidates’ basic job skills and any other questions related to the open position. The system then evaluates each and every answer and gives the employer a list of diverse candidates based on their scores, without ever looking at factors like age, gender, ethnicity, education, race etc.

This approach guarantees that the recruitment decision-making is based solely on applicant’s job related skills, and all unconscious bias that usually creeps into the resume reviewing step is being completely removed from the hiring ​process.

The tool also offers a wide range of test templates & sample questions, customizable job posting pages to attract more diverse candidates, automated follow-up emails to speed up the communication with the applicants, and performance insights about your job posting.

2.​ ​Blendoor​ ​-​ ​Merit-based​ ​blind​ ​recruiting​ ​app

Blendoor is a mobile job matching app that is hiding applicant’s data that isn’t relevant, and highlighting data that is.

The app captures candidate data from your existing applicant tracking systems and/or online job boards, including EEO demographic data to enable talent pipeline analytics based on race, gender, LGBT, veteran, and disabled identities. Candidate profiles are then “blendorized,”  meaning they are being displayed without name, photo, ​or ​dates ​to ​reduce ​unconscious ​bias ​and ​help ​you ​make ​an ​honest ​hiring ​decision.

3.​ ​Entelo​ ​Diversity​ ​-​ ​helps​ ​you​ ​find​ ​diverse​ ​candidates

Entelo Diversity is a recruiting platform with an algorithm that helps companies search candidates from underrepresented groups.

The recruiters specify who they want to target (based on skills, gender or ethnic group), and the tool then sifts through social media profiles and other online data to gather clues about candidate’s gender, ethnicity, or military experience. This information is then layered on top of candidate’s qualifications and ​skills, ​ensuring ​that ​hiring ​practices ​aren’t ​discriminatory.

4.​ ​Textio​ ​-​ ​ ​A tool​ ​for​ ​less​ ​gender-biased​ ​job​ ​descriptions

Textio is a augmented writing tool that helps you write unbiased job postings.

The tool utilizes machine learning to analyze how gender-biased your job description is, and helps predict if the posting will be popular among qualified job seekers. It also analyzes the language in real-time and ​offer ​tips ​for ​improving ​your ​writing.

5.​ ​Gapjumpers​ ​-​ ​A platform​ ​for​ ​blind​ ​auditions

Gapjumpers is a platform for employers to conduct blind auditions in hiring.

Instead of allowing background details, such as a candidate’s education, from getting in the way of hiring a strong candidate, employers will ask candidates to provide anonymous answers to questions about the roles they’re hiring for.

After candidates have submitted their answers (they usually have a few days to submit their application), GapJumpers ranks the best applications for each position. From there on, hiring managers can set up interviews and ​start ​the ​hiring ​process, ​ensuring ​the ​first ​hiring ​decision ​is ​based ​on ​candidates’ ​skills.

6.​ ​Talent​ ​Sonar​ ​ ​-​ ​Diverse​ ​job​ ​postings​ ​&​ ​blind​ ​resume​ ​reviews

Talent Sonar is a recruiting software created to remove unconscious bias in the hiring process. It helps hiring managers develop job postings that will attract a wide range of diverse candidates from both genders, and structure job interviews that focus on the candidate’s specific qualifications.

Once the resumes start coming in, the tool hides applicants’ names, gender, and other personal identifiers to encourage employer to focus on ​the ​most ​relevant ​criteria ​for ​job ​success.

7.​ ​Roikoi​ ​-​ ​Finding​ ​diverse​ ​candidates​ ​through​ ​employee​ ​referrals

ROIKOI is a referral-based diversity recruiting platform helping companies identify and find great people through employee referrals.

It surfaces diverse candidates who are pre-screened for talent, fit, and probability to join a company. The tool then helps to prioritize outreach to these candidates. It also helps recruiters hide personal identifiers for new candidates, like names and photos, so that these factors wouldn’t influence hiring decisions.

What 1,000 LinkedIn Invitations Taught Me About Connecting With Candidates

Believe it or not, LinkedIn is still one of the best professional networking sites that you can find on the Internet.

Yes it has some flaws, but it’s the place to meet with industry experts, business partners, and to stay in contact with your former colleagues. It is also a great place where students can start conversations with CEOs of international companies.

If you are an active LinkedIn user then you send and receive LinkedIn invitations every week. We interact with colleagues, our friends, business partners, recruiters, or potential candidates.

LinkedIn says, “We recommend only inviting people you know and trust because first-degree connections are given access to the primary email address on your account.” Still, many of the invitations many on LinkedIn receive are from total strangers we have never met, and, there is a good chance that we will never meet most of them in real life.

For some reason these people still want to have us in their LinkedIn network. They could have various reasons for that, and I was curious what their reasons were. So I decided to perform a small test to understand how people are accepting LinkedIn invitations, especially why they are sending invitations to people they’ve never met.

LinkedIn Test

I split the test into two parts. The first part of that test included the invites I sent, and I tracked how people reacted to the messages that I sent to them. The second part focused on the invites I had received. I got more invites than I sent for this test. So I split the thousands of invites — 200 sent and 800 received.

First Part

I contacted people with different roles and from locations that I would like to add to my network. Even though I was running a test, I always chose people that I would like to have in my network. This is important, because I don’t take building my network as some popularity contest so I always try to be selective.

My approach included sending 100 invites without any note. I sent 50 sent to recruiters, and 50 were sent to other people. Here is what happened:

  • 43 of the 50 invites sent to the recruiters were accepted;
  • 21 of the 50 invites sent to other professionals were accepted.

I also sent 100 invites to others that had a personal note. The first 50 invited got a basic template message, but the other 50 invites got a message I personalized and tailored to them based on their LinkedIn profile and experience. Here are the results of this experience:

  • 38 from 50 template invites I sent were accepted;
  • 44 of 50 invites with the personal notes tailored to the specific person were accepted.

Second part

For the 800 invitations I received, I focused on these factors:

  • If it they included a note, and, what was in this note;
  • If I accepted the invitation when the person contacted me with the small note or any other message.
  • If the person visited my profile before he or she sent me the invitation.

I accepted 388 invitations from the 800 I received during that test. I also tried to reach out to most of these people in this test with a small note in reply to them.

Why did I approach these people? The answer is pretty simple: they have some reason to connect me and I wanted to know what the reason was. What was the trigger for them to send me the invitation? Was it something that I did, I posted, or that I wrote? Or, did they just want to know who am I?

I waited 24 to 48 hours after I accepted their invitation in order to give them the opportunity to reach me first. Some 27 did so, and 21 of them were business proposals or job offers while six just sent a thank-you note when I accepted their invite.

And what about the 361 others? After 48 hours, I contacted them and sent a simple message (and many other variants of this message):

Hi,

Thanks for your LinkedIn invite. I am curious about why you sent me this invitation. Is there anything I can do for you, or you are just expanding your network on LinkedIn? 🙂

Best Regards,

Jan

I probably missed a few out of the 361 people, but I tried to reach everybody. In the end, 132 people responded and told me the reason why they added me, and what the trigger was. This gave me interesting feedback because I was able to understand what I had done to bring my profile to their attention.

The most common reason – 67 percent – was “I am just expanding my network of contacts.” The rest had other reasons like: they would like to follow my updates, or they had questions about craft or sourcing games and other things.

And what about the other 229 people? I hope they will reply one day. A few people surprised me, because I considered them to be top-notch recruiters, but when I contacted them there was radio silence. I expected these contacts to reply almost immediately or within 24 hours.

Visit the profile of the person you are trying to add 

How many people visited my profile before they sent me an invitation on LinkedIn? Of the 800 people in my test, only 114 had checked my profile before they sent me an invitation.

That means only 14 percent of them visited my profile before they sent the invitation. That’s a pretty small number.

I think that most of the invitations I got came from the LinkedIn mobile app. That’s why so many lacked a personal note. LinkedIn also has the option to send invites to hundreds of people “you may know” with just one click.

It’s easy to hit the blue button to send the invite on the LinkedIn mobile app, and you don’t have to write a note. But, if you would like to increase the chance that your invite will be accepted, be sure to add the note.

And if you would like to follow somebody and get updates, it’s better to click “Follow” on their profile instead of just adding them.

Reasons for rejecting LinkedIn invites

Adding people to your network is easy; the only thing to do is to click “Accept.” But you need to think about the quality of your network.

Networking on LinkedIn is not similar to the Pokémon game; you don’t need to catch them all. Target people who can bring value to you and to your network.

I also counted the number of invitations I did not accept (the reasons are below). Of the 800 invites I got, 773 lacked a personal note. Only 3.38 percent of the invitations came with a personal note.

Here are a few of the reasons why I did NOT accept a LinkedIn invitation:

  • If the profile photo had a logo instead of a face.
  • If the profile was fake or had no information at all.
  • If the first message was, “Please accept, we have consultants available.”
  • If the invite was from a person who listed their current employer as “Confidential” (this gives you almost 100 percent certainty that I wouldn’t be accepting).
  • If there was no message at all, and the invite came from a person working in a completely different field and location (it’s about quality of network; there is no need to have four construction workers from Uruguay if you are living on opposite side of world and you are hiring IT people).
  • If you are claiming you have a business proposal, and in your profile you mentioned that you are from Nigeria and working as a banker or you are a prince.

NOTE: I would like to apologize to the banker from Nigeria (with a fake photo) and the Nigerian prince that sent me their invitations that I didn’t accept. I hope you understand why I did not hit the “Accept” button; plus, I already sent money to a Nigerian astronaut lost in space who needs $3 million to get home.

If you are planning to offer me new life insurance, a passive income opportunity, or add my email to your spam list, just mention that in the note. Because this will save both of us time.

Final thoughts

I’m always trying to reach people that I can add to my network, and I expect the same from my new contacts. If your invitation is accepted, don’t be a stranger. Try to reach people after you add them. Just message them with few words like, “I like your post, article, etc.”

Sometimes the simple message could start an interesting discussion, and it will definitely help you to stand out from others on LinkedIn. No one is an island of knowledge, so it’s always good to share ideas and discuss points of view.

If you are part of my network, I hope we’re going to interact more. As a recruiter, I like to network with people because they are the ultimate source of inspiration for me. And if we are connected, you can contact me anytime and maybe even turn this connection into a dialogue.

Networking is important because it also opens up opportunities and it’s the people you actually know who will help to advance your career.

What are your reasons for not accepting all your LinkedIn invitations? Let me know in the comments!

Want to Hire More Millennials? Don’t Be the Punch Line to a Recruiting Joke

Sometimes, I find some really interesting stuff on LinkedIn’s Premium Career Group, and sometimes, it may even be the punchline to a recruiting joke.

Here’s a recent (and amusing) example that I saw posted a few weeks ago. It’s a pretty good commentary —

Millennial Tip: Do you need experience with telephone interviews?

Post your resume on CareerBuilder. You will receive dozens of calls from Aflac, State Farm, and Farmer’s Insurance recruiters. They will offer you a low base salary (sometimes $0) and commissions. It makes for good practice!

Insurance companies, and everyone else, want Millennials

Some of the comments to this were as instructive as the post itself.

Here are a few that jumped out at me:

  • “Great, great idea! I don’t turn down target practice either!”
  • “Its true. I already got a message from both Aflac and State Farm.“
  • “I would say it’s practice on how to politely decline an interview, but not actual practice on how to interview for a non sales role.”
  • “I’m holding my sides in over here...”

One of the undercurrents to all this is how in demand Millennials are with insurance companies. Well, of course you say — Millennials are in demand pretty much everywhere today given that they’re not only young but also because they are the largest generation now in our workforce.

Old and getting older

Insurance companies have a particular problem they are trying to solve — their workforce is old and getting older. And, not only are they rapidly aging.  Research from The Allen James Companies, Inc. bears this out:

  • 50 percent of insurance professionals are retiring in the next 10-15 years.
  • 60 percent of insurance professionals are over the age of 45.
  • By 2025, 75 percent of the workforce will be Millennials, and the insurance industry need to start winning that talent now.

Last year, PwC’s top issues annual report had this telling comment, as reported in Insurance Journal:

Commercial insurers – like many other kinds of insurers – have an aging workforce and are facing an impending talent crunch. Automation cannot replace the qualitative judgment that is necessary for effective underwriting. Therefore, it is vital for insurers to develop a performance-driven culture that enables the recruitment, development, and retention of younger underwriting talent.”

A big industry problem to overcome

The authors of the PwC report also added this sobering comment:

Most U.S. employers are woefully unprepared for the business realities of an aging workforce and face a potentially massive loss of skilled, knowledgeable workers. Companies that effectively recruit, train and develop dedicated future staff and leaders will differentiate themselves and set themselves up for success into the future.”

Well, bombarding Millennials who post their resume on job boards (like CareerBuilder) with calls for interviews followed up by low-ball job offers isn’t a good way the attract the best and brightest. Yes, this IS the punchline to a really bad recruiting joke.

Plus, the insurance industry has a big problem and it’s hard to overcome. You know what it is — they’re boring, hardly sexy, and more closely identified with a Millennial worker’s grandparents or great-grandparents than with a career choice today.

Back in 2014, NPR’s Morning Edition had a segment titled Insurance Industry Is Hiring, But Millennials Don’t Seem to Be Interested.  During the segment, one of the hosts pointed out that, “The industry’s problem is that Millennials don’t even consider insurance as a potential career. Many think of it as boring or don’t know much about it.”

They also pointed out that, according to one industry survey, just 4 percent of Millennials interviewed were interested in insurance is a career.

More than a recruiting joke

So, what is an old and boring industry to do if they want to become younger, more relevant and seen as an attractive career choice for up-and-coming young workers? One idea from an industry executive is to pitch Millennials on developing a “focused specialty” where they can quickly become experts in a niche area because, “Once they develop that expertise, they will have job security for life because there is always a need for specialists.”

That’s one good way to do it, but there are probably a lot more approaches that are targeted and that can appeal to the Millennial need to have a good career path AND an ability to make a difference.

Unfortunately, the approach that some big insurers are taking (and as lampooned on the LinkedIn Premium Career Group) is EXACTLY the wrong way to win friends and influence young Millennials.

No, it’s really more of the punchline to a recruiting joke than a serious and thoughtful recruiting strategy. I wonder how long it will take companies like Aflac, State Farm, and Farmer’s Insurance to figure that out.

The Five: Things You Need to Know About the hiQ vs LinkedIn Lawsuit

hiq v linkedinBy now you have heard of the hiQ vs. LinkedIn case.

The TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) version is this: Startup hiQ Labs scrapes data from public LinkedIn profiles to determine if an employee is going to quit. In May 2017, LinkedIn sent hiQ a cease and desist letter demanding that they stop scraping data because it violates the federal anti-hacking law.

In June hiQ filed their own lawsuit against LinkedIn stating that LinkedIn was unfairly blocking them from public information because they were creating a tool similar to what hiQ has developed. Mark Weidick, hiQ Labs CEO, said, “LinkedIn is trying to illegally force out a smaller competitor so that they can have the business for themselves, plain and simple.”

On August 1, U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen agreed with hiQ Labs and granted a preliminary injunction because LinkedIn was violating antitrust laws. LinkedIn, of course, is appealing.

At first glance, it looked like David beat Goliath. This small startup that launched in 2012 was able to beat the almighty untouchable LinkedIn. Recruiters everywhere began cheering, and startups were toasting each other.

Finally, it seems, LinkedIn would be unable to block apps and extensions that LinkedIn continues to block from accessing the information used to find candidates. However, you may need to put your glasses of champagne away. Here are the five things you need to know about the hiQ v LinkedIn case.

hiq v linkedin1. A Preliminary Injunction is Not a Final Ruling

A preliminary injunction is a court order that can stop a party from doing something prior to the trial on the merits (i.e., stop selling a trademarked product or patented item). In this case, hiQ wanted to keep scraping data from LinkedIn until there is a real trial and a final judgment is made.

What Judge Chen decided was not that companies should be allowed to scrape public data from any site it wants, rather “The court concludes that based on the record presented, the balance of hardships tips sharply in hiQ’s favor,” the judge wrote.

2. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), originally passed in 1986, is the primary law that was built to protect us from cybercrime and fraud on the Internet. Moreover, it is confusing as hell.

When it first came out, it was to add a layer of security for mega computers to be hacked. Think War Games. As it relates to the hiQ v LinkedIn case, the debate seems to be around “authorized access.”

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value.”

So if the information is public, isn’t the user giving us authorization to the information? Is it exceeding authorized access if a bot is used to scrape information?

Judge Chen stated that, “The Court is doubtful that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act may be invoked by LinkedIn to punish hiQ for accessing publicly available data.”

He went on to say, “Broad interpretation of the CFAA invoked by LinkedIn, if adopted, could profoundly impact open access to the Internet, a result that Congress could not have intended when it enacted the CFAA over three decades ago.”

hiq v linkedin3. LinkedIn Wants to ‘Protect’ Your Data So They Can Own It

As it stands as of press time for this article, if you create a public LinkedIn profile, companies can access your information and use it for what it wants. LinkedIn’s argument in the case was that by scraping their public data, it was in violation of their user privacy agreement. Judge Chen called BS since they already share the data with third-party companies.

For now, it appears LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, wants to “protect” you by deciding on your behalf who should have access to your data. “If LinkedIn’s view of the law is correct, nothing would prevent Facebook from barring hiQ in the same way LinkedIn has,” said Chen.

Think of how many companies would go into bankruptcy if companies like Google, Facebook, and other social sites barred them from accessing public user information.

4. Most Artificial Intelligence (AI) Relies on Public Data

There is no question that for AI to work, it needs data; a lot of it. The hardest part of AI is finding the best data set. That is why many companies depend on publicly shared data. For the most part, no harm is done.

For example, if you use an app that tells you how much the average cost is at a restaurant, it can use menus that have been made public to get you the right information. It can use that same information to let you know how much you should charge for spaghetti at your restaurant.

In the most basic terms, that is AI. Without public info, the best-case scenario would have to sign a contract with all restaurants to get the information. Worst case, they would have to guess.

5. This is a Really, Really Important Case

The outcome of this case means more than just the impact on hiQ. It will affect who owns OUR data and what they can do with it. It will determine what “authorized access” means.

Most importantly, it will set a standard for the entire Internet, and everyone who relies on data to get their job done. No matter who wins the actual case, the outcome will be a game changer.

Want to Keep One Step Ahead? You Better Get Serious About Talent on Demand

Recently I’ve heard more and more of my fellow Talent Acquisition experts refer to something called “Talent on Demand.”

At first, it sounded like another buzzword to me, or some fashionable concept you could use to differentiate yourself from the masses. When I started to investigate the ideas behind it however, the term started to make a lot more sense.

Let’s face it – top tech talent is scarce. Every tech recruiter knows this and we are constantly looking for new ways and tools to find the best talent. Some even call recruiting in this industry a “war for talent.”

The problem of finding talent is becoming even more prevalent when other industries, such as finance and the industrial sector, are increasingly hiring developers to meet digitalization requirements.

Talent on Demand keeps you one step ahead

So, how can we keep attracting the best people? Looking more closely into the concept of Talent on Demand is where we find the answer.

As a recruiter, wouldn’t you just love to have a ready pool of qualified and engaged candidates at hand all the time, to reached out to when you need? That’s what Talent on Demand is all about.

Having that kind of talent pool, or “fan base,” requires long-term commitment from your company and from your as a recruiter. However, once you have made the decision to commit, the investment and effort pretty quickly pays off.

To help you get started on the right path, here are some tips based on how we at Tuxera have made Talent on Demand work.

1. Define your target group

The purpose of a talent community is not to collect as many random talents as possible. In order to derive value from your talent pool, you need to be define your target group.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a community is “a unified body of individuals such as the people with common interests living in a particular area or within a larger society.” In other words, you should be able to identify those common characteristics or interests your talent community members share as well as the specific characteristics your company needs.

Once you grow your talent pool over time, you can start defining your talent community even more precisely by forming targeted segments for communities with shared interests in, for example, software sales, for marketing, for engineering, and so on.

2. Select the right channels

Once you have identified your target talent, you need to identify the best ways — the best channels — to reach out to them.

These channels can consist of, for example, relevant on line forums, events, publications, or tech communities. You also need to bear in mind that different target groups are active in different forums, so having a clearly defined target group helps.

For example, people interested in software sales might be active in LinkedIn communities relevant to their interest, whereas software developers prefer communities like Stack Overflow. One of the easiest ways to make sure you have selected the right channels is asking the employees in your company which communities they are part of or which channels they follow themselves.

3. Commit to your talent community

A thriving talent community cannot be built overnight. Ideally, adding talents to your community is a normal part of your daily hiring practices and you would add talents whenever a relevant one comes along.

These talents can be, for example, candidates who did really well in your searches for particular positions, but were not selected for one reason or another. They can also be candidates who have not applied to any of your open positions and are not actively looking to change jobs (so-called passive candidates), but are interested in what your company is doing and keeping in touch.

You can start building your talent community by asking candidates who were part of your hiring processes, but not selected, if they want to be included. Based on our experience, candidates are typically happy to accept the invitation. You can also invite passive candidates to join your community through a signup form on your website, or by marketing the opportunity to candidates you have sourced directly.

Also, make sure you add employee referrals to the talent community. This is not only a very good way of keeping track of them, but you can also build a more meaningful, long-term relationship with them.

4. Define an engagement strategy that adds value

There is no point in having a community if there is no engagement between the community members. In fact, I would not call a static pool of candidates a talent community at all.

When you make a decision to start building a talent community, you also need to decide on your engagement strategy. Or in simpler words, how you aim to keep the community members engaged and provide a return value to them for participating.

For recruiting teams, this may mean acquiring new skills, as one needs to act as a community manager.

What does adding value to your community mean in practice? It means providing content that your target group will find useful. For developer talents it could mean your developers write about the technologies your company specializes in or introducing them to your R&D projects.

For sales and marketing talents it might mean your sales director discussing new business ventures or new products. This also means you need to engage your internal stakeholders, such as the hiring managers in providing and sharing content for the talent community members.

Additionally, no matter the talent, people are interested in learning more about your company culture, your values, what your employees (their potential future colleagues) are like, and the kind of opportunities your company offers. All of this can be offered to the community through a simple newsletter or other regular updates.

You can even take things one step further and invite your talent community members to meet ups or hackathons. Or why not even offer them special discounts on your company’s products to strengthen the engagement even more.

5. Make sure you have the right tools

Needless to say, you need good tools in order to manage your talent community effectively.

The easiest way to do this is by leveraging your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) because this is a tool you are mostly likely using on a daily basis to manage your candidates.

Fortunately, there are already some ATSs available with the features you need to manage your talent community even at scale. These features include, for example, a place to collect your talent community members, forming relevant groups, sending out customized communications, setting up targeted nurture campaigns, sending personalized messages at scale, tracking candidate activity, and giving the community members themselves a chance to contribute.

Final thoughts

In a world where good talent is in high demand, we need to reinvent the ways we attract and engage with talent.

Developing a talent community is a step forward in engaging with relevant talent in a more meaningful way and establishing long-term relationships with your potential future hires. It is a fundamental shift from traditional recruitment practices to a culture of talent care, talent satisfaction, and talent engagement.

This is ultimately the essence of Talent on Demand. Once your talent community is a part of your normal day-to-day recruitment practices, you will always have a pool of candidates which you already have an active relationship with. Plus, they will also have a positive image of your company from this relationship.

When you don’t have to start each of your hiring processes from scratch, you should see a shorter time-to-hire, an increased quality of hire, improved conversion rates, and improved candidate satisfaction.

When talent communities and Talent on Demand becomes the norm, you will be far ahead of your competition – but you need to get started today.

Hey HR! Data Analytics Doesn’t Need to be Rocket Science

I’ve written before about HR metrics and People Analytics (that’s a form of HR analytics), but for now I want to spend one second — well, one paragraph — on the overall idea of HR data analytics.

Now, I’m a relatively smart person but I’ve never led any HR studies or anything, so let me turn this one over to someone smarter than me.

That would be John Boudreau, who is research director t the University of Southern California’s Center for Effective Organizations. He wrote a recent blog post for the Harvard Business Review about how People Analytics needs to be more user-friendly:

A good case in point is whether HR systems actually educate business leaders about the quality of their human capital decisions. We asked this question in the Lawler-Boudreau survey and consistently found that HR leaders rate this outcome of their HR and analytics systems lowest (about 2.5 on a 5-point scale). Yet higher ratings on this item are consistently associated with a stronger HR role in strategy, greater HR functional effectiveness, and higher organizational performance.

Educating leaders about the quality of their human capital decisions emerges as one of the most potent improvement opportunities in every survey we have conducted over the past 10 years.”

Houston, we seem to have the nutshell problem.

Data analytics: Say it loud and say it proud…

Data is literally meaningless if it’s just collected. That just means you have data, which means people have more work to do trying to scrub/analyze it. Everyone is throwing themselves on the cross about their “added responsibilities.”

Data scientists are being hired at 4.5 times your salary — but it’s all trees falling in forests.

Remember that data is only relevant IF it affects decision-making in some way, and if it’s presented to executives in a way they can understand. This is why we need “data translators.”

Why is this seemingly rocket science?

Executives (aka, “decision-makers”) at companies have been using specific vocabulary (buzzwords and acronyms) for decades to to describe what they do. If HR terms don’t match with those terms, they will probably care less because their incentives and day-to-day schedules are tied to their terms, not whatever vocabulary that HR uses.

Let me give you an example: If you teach an executive to think of talent sourcing as a supply chain, it will have greater business impact. The executive probably knows and can conceptualize a supply chain. He will “get” it. But if you go to him with lots of HR terminology, he likely will not care or dismiss it because it’s not close enough to his “power core” of concepts.

Now, the easiest way around this is to have decision-makers who are adaptable and care to learn more about the business. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t call that normative. When you’ve worked at a place X-time and spent Y-time of that in one silo/division, you get pretty focused up on those terms.

Back to this HR data analytics pull quote above

Here’s your main takeaway, again from John Boudreau’s HBR blog post:

Whatever HR analytics or system you use, it needs to be tied to decision-makers having more info, easier to access info, and making better decisions.”

Otherwise it’s basically being done in a vacuum. The HR data analytics are nearly worthless.

Let’s use a common HR metric example here: employee turnover.

I realize very few companies actually use exit interviews, and the ones that do are usually pretty half-assed, so often the “data” you can glean here isn’t great. But here’s what you need:

  • Costs of hiring/recruiting at different salary bands;
  • Costs of onboarding at different salary bands;
  • Turnover by department per quarter (and annually);
  • Turnover by specific manager per quarter (and annually);
  • Differences in these costs — i.e. what are specific managers and departments costing the company through turnover?
  • Net promoter scores
  • Any exit interview insights you have gathered;

None of this data is hiding anywhere. It should all be HR data analytics that people can access relatively easily. We’re not talking brain surgery here.

So now what?

Now put together the data and here’s what it shows:

  • People leave at this clip (whatever it is) …
  • ... And it costs us this much money when they do …
  • … so if 10 percent fewer people left, we’d save.
  • And, here are some other solutions/ideas.

Now you’re talking money, and executives probably will care more. You’ll get their attention, and you’re turning HR analytics into their language. Believe me, it’s way more beneficial than trying to jam traditional HR methodology at them.

I hate to break it to you, but most really won’t care much about HR speak.

Bringing it all together on HR data analytics

Here’s what you need to do to make this all happen:

  • Collect data that appears relevant (you can test over time if it actually is);
  • Organize/sort the data in ways that relate to cost and the bottom line; and,
  • Present what you’ve learned in ways, and with vocabulary, that are amenable to the decision-makers.

This is lots of work, but only three (3) big steps. Unfortunately I’m sure most HR/operations guys running HR will break this into 271 process steps, run everyone in circles, present a report that the executives all check their email throughout, and in the end, nothing will happen.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way!

HR data analytics CAN work. It can help you retain more employees and help you build a better workforce. What it requires is just a little big picture thinking — and some come-to-Jesus moments about your workplace data.

3 Ways for Website Owners to Earn More Revenue

If you own a website in the recruitment and jobs marketplace industry, there are a variety of ways to leverage your page traffic into revenue. From site ads to sponsorships, partnerships with brands can bring meaningful content to your audience and drive engagement.

ZipRecruiter, a leading online job board, offers three unique ways to earn income through their ZipRecruiter Publisher Program. The program is absolutely free to join and enables you to earn unlimited revenue.

ZipSearch

ZipSearch is an easy-to-install integration that brings a constant, fresh feed of ZipRecruiter jobs directly to your website. Visitors to your site can search for jobs in any industry and apply to relevant listings. Jobs range from small business jobs to enterprise positions, with thousands of new jobs uploaded to the marketplace each day. Website owners maintain control of the branding and appearance of the search page and earn revenue when their audience interacts with job listings.

ZipAlerts

ZipAlerts differs from ZipSearch in that job listings are delivered directly to your audience’s inboxes through targeted job alert emails. ZipRecruiter can manage your email program for absolutely no cost, delivering open job listings complemented by your branding. Email content is optimized with every user click, so your email audience sees only the most relevant listings. ZipAlerts is continuously tested and improved to increase your earning potential.

ZipPost

If you own a website in the job marketplace industry, business owners and recruiters are already on your site. With ZipPost, refer relevant traffic to a co-branded job posting page and earn revenue when hiring companies make a ZipRecruiter job listing. ZipRecruiter provides the tools and support you need to sell job postings.

No matter where your website sits in the job marketplace industry, ZipRecruiter makes it easy to monetize your traffic and unlock unlimited earning potential. The three unique programs can be customized to match your branding specifications and delivery preferences.

Editors note: This article is sponsored by ZipRecruiter, if you haven’t already noticed.

How Cognitive Systems Can Help Drive Talent Transformation

Today, companies in most industries are striving to reinvent themselves and become digital organizations. This has become a necessary move for staying relevant.

But what many HR leaders don’t quite realize is that for this reinvention to be truly successful, it must be accompanied by a shift in the way they think about talent, process, tools, and structure.

For example, what are the jobs and skills they need to become market leaders, and, does the company’s existing employee pool possess those capabilities? How can human resources assess know who is going to be successful in a new and previously unknown job? How do they map current team skills to what the company will need going forward?

In short, HR professionals need to develop a new talent strategy.

The issue most of them face is that the HR technology and processes they have been using were designed for a different era  — and they won’t help them manage the transformation successfully.

Cognitive computing can help solve many of these problems.

What is cognitive computing and how can it help?

The unique capabilities of cognitive systems enable a very different approach to talent management – one that meets the challenges of today’s workforce, benefiting both the organization and its employees.

A cognitive system can enhance your competitive advantage significantly. For example:

  • It helps you scale your best thinkers and best performers with new insights.
  • It can continually learn and reason from its interaction with humans, from information and data, from online interactions and from its environment.
  • The deep and broad knowledge base that results is always up to date.

In the HR world, this capability is critical for keeping up with the constantly changing policies and new regulations, among others.

Business leaders already recognize the benefits of cognitive technologies; in particular, their “ability to dramatically scale human expertise in a cost-effective manner, significantly improve business decision-making processes, and produce deeper, sounder business insights.” And a study showed that 89 percent of companies that are early adopters of cognitive systems are more profitable and more innovative than their industry peers.

Cognitive HR solutions can enhance the accuracy and quality of HR services, as they build on existing HR technology and processes – including core HR platforms – making talent acquisition very precise, improving employee experience, and reducing costs.

Cognitive systems for talent acquisition

To hire people who are the best fit for a job — and likely to be successful at it — HR first needs a process to help identify success profiles for key jobs in various job families.

A cognitive system builds these success profiles by benchmarking the key competencies, skills, traits and behaviors of high performers in the role. It also keeps updating these profiles as roles evolve.

This removes bias and guesswork on the part of recruiters.

A cognitive system can sort through large numbers of resumes and profiles and match candidates against the success profiles, enabling the recruiter to find the best match and the candidate most likely to succeed, and to make faster and far better informed decisions. The tool can also prioritize each open job requisition, helping recruiters focus on the area they can have the most impact – filling the most crucial roles and hiring the right candidate.

All these capabilities help companies create a skills-based system with a focus on competencies that assesses candidates on existing skills as well as personality, behavior, fit and pre-disposition to learn.

Helping to build your candidate experience

Another critical aspect today is the candidate and employee experience.

Candidates prefer companies where the hiring and employee experience takes into account their skills, needs, aspirations and cultural fit. Cognitive systems can help provide a memorable candidate experience.

Research has shown that people satisfied with their candidate experiences are 38 percent more likely to accept a job offer. And candidates who have a positive experience are twice as likely to want to become a customer of the hiring organization as those who had a poor candidate experience.

The virtual assistant features of cognitive computing can provide a high-touch candidate experience. Rather than the candidate having to search, the system recommends roles and openings that are potential matches, and later help ensure smooth and seamless onboarding, helping accelerate the new hire’s time to productivity.

Employee engagement and buy-in is crucial for successful talent transformation.

Cognitive technology helps you listen to the collective “employee voice” of your people through census and pulse surveys, as well as see what they are saying on social media platforms and forums. It can then analyze responses and act fast on insights so you know what your employees think and feel – and can act upon this knowledge.

Helping employees with career growth

Cognitive systems can also help employees with their career growth by assessing their skills and aspirations and recommending a possible career path. Although research has shown that growth and development opportunities comprise a big driver of engagement, many companies typically tend to invest in training more for succession planning or organizational performance than on individual career progression.

Cognitive systems offer the ability to extend career pathing to each employee.

  • For the individual, cognitive technology offers personalized and engaging learning options, anticipation of learning needs, and timely content that help them in their chosen career path while aligning to organizational goals.
  • Cognitive computing and predictive analytics can give the company an understanding of the system’s performance and how it can perform better, and enable a more guided approach towards customized training recommendations.
  • It can also help determine the right path to support internal mobility of employees to other roles in the company.

Employees who are most engaged with their organizations have been proven to be five times less likely to be searching for a new job. If they perceive that they can grow and evolve along with the company and build a solid career, it will motivate them to stay and actively support the transformation.

The accelerating rate of change in business, the economy, and society has challenged both businesses and HR to adopt new rules for leading, organizing, motivating, managing, and engaging the 21st-century workforce.

Not only do cognitive systems help drive this, but they are creating an exciting new partnership between humans and technology that will augment, scale and accelerate human expertise. The potential advantages of people and systems being able to build on each other’s thinking, identify specific areas of improvement, and take informed decisions based on data rather than gut feel are myriad.

The best part is this: All of the cognitive solutions discussed here are already available in the market, in use by early adopters and showing robust results. It’s up to companies to harness the potential of cognitive solutions to drive their talent transformation and achieve business success.

Understanding Job Board Performance: Executive Overview

Madgex Benchmarking Report

Tell me if this conversation sounds familiar: “Our job board is not flexible. Our brand is not being represented and our target job seekers are not being reached. We lack usability, our conversion rates are subpar, I can’t track anything of value. I can’t even share a great article to potential applicants.”

Don’t worry I wasn’t eavesdropping on your last call, I just happen to know the space a bit more than the average joe, maybe too much. Anyhow, one of our partners recently released their 2017 Job Board Industry Benchmarking report, which if I am being honest is one of the most impactful reports this year and one of the first-ever purely data driven job board industry bench-marking reports.

The report contains information beneficial to two parties: job board owners and recruiters. The total data set looked at over 220 million job views (of 23 million+ jobs posted) and over 2 billion — yes, billion — job alert emails sent.

With such a sizeable dataset, you can use the averages and benchmarks to begin confidently assessing your own performance as a job board manager. Do any of your numbers need to drastically change in the next 12 months? You can use this report to compare key metrics to the rest of the industry and understand how your job board is performing in relation to the competition.

Recruiters should pay attention to where applicants are coming from and the  important behavioural signs they are displaying,  such as the increasing multi-screen approach – identify in one location, apply in another – that is becoming more and more common. The report will also help you understand the metrics that make up a top performing job board. This knowledge will only help you choose a job board that is most likely to bring you the best source of candidates.

Benchmarks

First, a note on conversions: this report focuses on conversion numbers because traffic volume and number of views can vary significantly depending on the type of job board – from large-scale generalist job boards with millions of sessions a month, to niche sites focused on providing jobs for a very defined, and relatively small, audience. It’s important to understand the differences between the two types of job board – especially for recruiters – as they can deliver very different types of candidate.

Comparing total unique users or total job views is less helpful than examining the conversion statistics to see how job boards are turning those visitors into candidates and delivering results for their advertisers. Those conversion averages are the key metrics against which we can judge performance across the job board market.

The average ratio of applications to job views  is 12.8%, which is a growth of 1.3% YoY.

The average number of job views per application was 35, although some sites within the data set had as few as two views  per application.

The average number of applications per vacancy (APV) was 6. – One top performer had an APV of over 70, but it’s important to remember the difference between generalist and niche job boards here; a niche job board is far more likely to have a much lower APV than a generalist board.

Application split  by channel:

If your specific numbers are different than this, remember that the above represents averages, as do all the numbers before that. But if you operate a job board and your numbers are drastically different in any category (a high APV or most applicants coming from paid search, for example), it’s helpful to think about why that might be and if it’s worth adjusting your marketing focus.

Similarly, consider the application rate by channel:

You might get a lot of traffic from one traffic source, such as direct visitors, where the application rate is low but a small proportion of traffic from referrals where the application rate is higher. This knowledge can help you decide where to focus your attention when developing traffic channels for your job board.

Job seekers are increasingly using job boards to research jobs but then applying directly with the employer — external applications (where the candidate is redirected to an external site) now make up 56% of the market, with online applications constituting 43%. Online declined 4% in the past year, while external rose 4%.

This trend shift has shifted other numbers too: for example, the average session duration per visit is now 2.5 minutes, which is 17 seconds down from last year. The number of pages viewed per session is 3.5, which is also a decrease (of 14%) from 2016.

On average, 9% of resumes on a job board are hidden from recruiters.

The Email Benchmarks

The average percentage of traffic from job alert emails (we analyzed over 2 billion) that converted to an application was 13%.  Overall, jobs via email accounted for 15% of overall applications — but the top performer in that data set received 46% of their applications from job alert emails.

Devices

The average percentages of visitors becoming applicants by device looked like this:

Mobile has increased, but this still suggests mobile functionality in job applications can be improved — or it might indicate the job is viewed on mobile first, then ultimately applied to on desktop. That could also speak to poor mobile UX in the hiring space, however.

Conclusion

A common meme/trope of business in recent years has been “In (name of some deity) we trust, but all others must bring data.” If your organization truly is becoming more analytically-focused (often the case), then understanding benchmark trends around job board usage by candidates is essential. The numbers above can give you a good understanding of where you need to be relative to specific role, and what numbers you should be trying to improve. If you have specific questions about the report or potential conclusions relative to your job spec, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

More about Madgex

As a talent acquisition professional, you’re attempting to attract top talent, maintain interest in the position and ensure that the company is being represented and marketed in the best way possible.  It can be very challenging to get exactly right. Luckily, Madgex can help you in all the areas discussed in this article.  Click here to download your own copy of the report for a full overview of all the stats available and head over to Madgex to see how their products can help you.

 

Do You Have the Right Email? Use this E-Mail Validation Cheat Sheet.

Even with all the social media tools available, recruiters usually opt to send an email as their first method of contact.

With all of the Chrome Extensions available, finding an email is relatively easy. But validating emails is not a step most recruiters take. And unfortunately, without validation, you will never know if a candidate is not responding because they are not interested, or if they just never got the email.

Let’s start with finding emails. We’ll use John Smith as our test candidate.

You have identified the perfect candidate, John Smith, on LinkedIn. You have his bio and name for the companies he has worked for, but what you don’t have is his email address. So, how do you find out what his work email is? Here is one way to search for a valid email address.

Email Verification1 – Find the Company Domain Name

A company’s name is not always their domain name. For example, American Airlines’ domain name is “AA.com.”

Another point to consider is that not every company is a .com. It could be .io, .co or .org. So your first step is to identify the proper domain name. Fortunately, most companies on LinkedIn will have a profile page identifying their domain name.

Another great way to find this out is to use Blockspring. This is a data services company that connects spreadsheets to any web service. There is a Blockspring template you can use that, once populated with company names, will automatically search for company pages and domain names. Click here to try it for yourself.

2 – Find the Correct Email Structure

The most common email structures are:

  • firstinitiallastname@company.com
  • lastname@company.com
  • firstnamelastname@company.com
  • lastname@company.com
  • firstname_lastname@company.com
  • firstinitial_lastname@company.com
  • firstnamelastinitial@company.com
  • firstname@company.com

Email Verification3 – Verify the Email

The next step would be to do a search to see if the email you are trying matches up to the person you are looking for.

Tools like Email Checker, and MailTester will allow you to enter an email and see if the email is valid. To make sure that the email that you have validated is for the right person, cross reference it by entering it into LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Also, you can do a simple Google search using Boolean such as “John Smith” @companyname.com.

The methodology above works if you are just checking a few emails. But if you are trying to check dozens or hundreds of emails, you should use a bulk email tool. NeverBounce, Bulk Email Checker, and HuBuCo are all examples of tools that can verify hundreds of emails at a time.

The tips listed above really are showing you the long way to see if an email is valid or not. In other words, they help you to find out if the email is real. But, there are several things that you have to take into consideration.

Email VerificationCatch-All Email Accounts

A catch-all email account is set up to receive all messages that are sent to an incorrect email address for a domain.

For example, you have three email addresses set up for companyname.com — [email protected], sales@ companyname.com, and [email protected]. Companies often set up [email protected] as a catch-all email account. Then, any email messages sent to [email protected] (or any invalid email address), are sent to the catch-all account ([email protected]).

So, although you may have validated an email address, that does not mean it actually got delivered to the person it was intended to go to.

Spam Filters

You can have the right email address, but based on your email content it may still end up in a spam filter. According to an article on ReturnPath.com, only 79 percent of permissioned email marketing messages reached consumer’s inboxes, according to a recent study conducted by global data solutions provider Return Path. The rest were delivered to spam folders or weren’t delivered at all.

Here are some tips to keep your emails out of the spam box.

  1. Don’t use “Spammy” Language —  But really, this is the most common reason that emails are going into someone’s spam box. Avoid using phrases like, “to whom it may concern,” “click here,” “dear recipient,” “cash,” or “make more money.”
  2. Include a Plain Text Version of Your Email — Plain Text means sending an email with no formatting options such as bold, underlines, italics, graphics, or other layout options.
  3. You are Too Excited!!!! Or Are You? — Believe it or not, if you use an exclamation point and a question mark in your subject line, it will get flagged by a spam filter.
  4. Get Your Domain Verified — Have you ever heard of SPF, DKIM, or DMARC? These are the acronyms represent entities where you can authenticate your domain, which will help your email from going into spam filters.

It is difficult to argue, such actions are not easy and laborious work and require considerable effort and time. If you are sufficiently advanced in optimizing your hiring process, verification can be simplified with the help of turnkey solutions of recruiting software.

For example, some email aggregators, extensions and TA platforms use the built-in verification system. It helps to check all emails that are issued by one candidate in search for validity with one click – to separate valid, invalid and catch-all. Some services do not issue invalid ones at all and mark valid and catch-all emails in different colors, leaving the choice of sending for the sourcer.

Other aggregators mark emails with a percentage that shows the probability of delivery. However, in most cases, such services are paid and everyone chooses by himself to save money or to optimize time.

Fortunately, a straightforward solution that can help. SignalHire is a Talent Acquisition Platform with the DB of 220M candidates profiles with their 100% valid contact details guaranteed by real time email verification and validation. It is equipped with a complete package of ATS features for collaboration with the whole recruitment team, from small companies to large enterprises. Also, to find candidate emails and phone numbers in a single click, just download SignalHire Chrome Extension and use it with your favorite social network.

There is never enough time in the day. Don’t waste time sending emails that are going to bounce. Take the time to validate emails and you will have a better response rate — and more starts.  Give SignalHire a try today and get 50 contact requests for FREE.

Here is a video by Dean DaCosta showing how he uses SignalHire.

Editor’s Note: This post was sponsored by SignalHire, and RecruitingDaily received compensation for publishing this post. Now that we’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, we’d like to clarify that they don’t compensate us for liking a product. We liked it on our own. First published July 25, 2017 updated October 11, 2017.

 

Quit ​Focusing on Resumes​! ​You’re ​Better Off Hiring​ ​for​ ​Skills

As harsh as it may sound, resumes are nothing more than words on paper.

They all look more or less the same. Some candidates try to stand out by using a more colorful CV template or by adding their photo, but when examining the language used on resumes, they all tend to include the same keywords — “collaborative,” “detail oriented,” “strong leadership skills,” “teamwork” — whatever is needed to grab the recruiter’s attention and fill in the boxes required for the open position.

Resumes are meant to give employers a brief overview of an applicant’s previous experience, as well as background information like a college degree, age, origin, and location. However, they frequently contain only half-truths or even outright untruths.

Since a resume is the only real way for applicants to leave a good impression of themselves and get their golden ticket to the next interview round, candidates try to paint as positive an image of themselves as possible. This means they tend to leave out the negatives in their past work experience, like the actual reason for leaving their previous company, KPIs about their past performance, mistakes they’ve made, etc.

And the result? When starting the recruitment process by collecting applicants’ resumes and cover letters, recruiters end up with a bunch of incomparable papers full of powerful keywords, hard-to-confirm facts, and unneeded background information.

But how can resumes actually help the employer to decide who to hire if all CVs look the same and tell nothing about a candidate’s actual job skills? More importantly, how much do the cultural and biological factors seen on resumes — like ethnicity, gender, age and name — actually play a role when deciding who to invite to the next round?

The​ ​truth​ ​about​ ​unconscious​ ​bias​ when reviewing resumes

Whether we want it or not, we all engage in  unconscious bias during the resume review phase. That’s because:

  • We’re human and we tend to choose people similar to us in terms of culture and background.
  • We often make false assumptions and pre-judgements based on the information we see on a paper in front of us.
  • We favor applicants who use the same language that we would use on a resume.
  • We even contact applicants with white-sounding names 74 percent more often than the ones with ethnic-sounding names, if we ourselves have a white skin color.

To eliminate human bias, we’ve started to use tools that scan resumes and look for the “right” keywords. It’s helpful as it doesn’t let our personal pre-judgments creep in, but at the end of the day, this approach still doesn’t give us the best candidates — it only gives us a short list of candidates who managed to include as many correct keywords as possible in their resume.

So, what’s the best way to make hiring less biased?

The answer: Use “blind hiring” techniques like removing the name, age, gender, information about previous work experience and college degrees from the hiring process.

In other words, you exclude​ ​resumes​ ​from​ ​the hiring​ ​process,​ ​and​ ​instead,​ ​hire​ ​based​ ​on​ ​an applicant’s​ ​job​ ​skills.

Starting​ ​the​​ ​process​ ​by​ ​screening​ ​job​ ​skills

Currently, the majority of companies run skills tests in the latter part of the recruitment process. But that just means the skills tests will help them choose between the last few candidates, because their main decision on who to invite to the interview phase is still based on biased resumes.

There are many benefits of replacing the resume collection phase with a short skills test, the main​ ​reason​ ​being​ ​the​ ​reduction​ ​of​ ​cognitive​ ​bias.​ We all want to hire people who have the skills for the job, not just people who are good resume writers.

Starting the recruiting with a short pre-employment test helps to give all candidates an equal opportunity to show their job skills without anyone needing to worry that their background, age, name or any other factor might affect their application.

Skills testing also gives the recruiter a better understanding of applicant’s strengths and weaknesses — something that is impossible to see on a resume. Doing this makes both the employer and the employee more prepared for future cooperation. Employers can better plan tasks among the team, and the employees can see what they need to do to improve to become the best at what they do.

Skill​s ​testing​ ​is​ ​also​ ​honest.​ Having a well-known company name on a resume helps the candidate stick out and look “special,” but it doesn’t tell the employer anything about how the person actually performed in that company. For example, a person who has previously worked in a small foreign startup might be a lot smarter, brighter and more skillful than a person who has worked for Google or Facebook.

Instead of trying to compare applicants based on their college degrees or work experience, skills testing compares results of actual tests that employers have built themselves.

Final thoughts

Basing hiring decisions on an applicant’s actual job-related skills and knowledge removes the bias from the recruitment process. And, it gives ALL candidates an equal opportunity to apply for a job.

Most importantly, it helps employers hire strong, skillful candidates with confidence. They will immediately be able to see the strengths — and weaknesses — of the candidate, and both parties will have a better understanding of what areas to focus on as they hire moving ahead.

Your Passive Recruiting Strategy? It’s Probably a Joke — If You Have One at All

Before we get started, here are a couple of quick definitions up front about passive and active candidates:

  • Passive Candidates — They’re not necessarily ready yet to change jobs yet, but might be kicking tires and could be swayed.
  • Active Candidates — People who are absolutely sick and tired of their ass clown boss, or recently laid off (etc.), so they need a job post-haste.

The “strategy” — insofar as anything within hiring and recruiting HAS a strategy — for active candidates is pretty obvious.

You post jobs, pray the right people apply to those jobs, and then change nothing about your process for six to 10 years even though huge chunks of it are clearly not working. Keep collecting those checks every two weeks, though. Oh, and constantly discuss “needing to fill the seat now” (as opposed to getting the best person) and “the apparent skills gap” (an excuse middle managers hide behind for not owning their part of the process).

Candidate strategy? What strategy?

OK, so what’s the “strategy” for passive candidates then? Seems there isn’t much of one

Check out this stat from Smashfly:

The problem is that once they get candidates to opt in, they fail to send them anything of value. Get ready to have your mind blown — Of the organizations that captured candidate information for job alerts or a talent network, 48 percent of them never sent an email to them after confirmation. Yes, 48 percent!!!!!!!!

OK,  so you land on a website and the place looks interesting. You give your email for “future job alerts” even though you kind of assume it’s BS and you’ll never be emailed. Well, in one of two instances, you’d be right, because 48 percent of companies never send an email to the people populating those lists.

Ha. What? Why even bother to collect those email addresses, then? Just to tell someone up the chain you did it?

What a joke.

The whole thing kind of reminds me of “We’ll keep your resume on file!” Oh really, will you? You probably won’t…

Some real talk on the hiring process (if you have a second)

It’s a flaming bag of crap that alienates the best candidates with 27-screen applicant tracking systems no person with remote intelligence would ever fill out in full. Most people get white-collar jobs in one of a few ways:

  • Complete luck;
  • They know someone;
  • Their parents know someone or are rich;
  • A former boss poaches them from somewhere else; or,
  • Prayer.

There’s very little science or data to hiring. That’s changing, yes — but that’s happening slower than we want to think. It’s still largely a subjective cluster-mess and will likely remain that way another decade or so.

What about the passive candidates, though?

The real talk should be this: Very few companies have a passive candidates strategy. Here’s why: It’s more important for people in HR to tell everyone how busy they are than actually do anything. (This applies to most departments, actually.) If you’re drowning with current applicants as is, who has time to worry about passive candidates? There are seats to fill!

The reality is this — if companies got smart and automated top-of-funnel hiring (AI, chatbots, etc.), the recruiters would have more time for relationship development and working on what to do about passive candidates. But most recruiters realize that once top-of-funnel hiring is automated, they’ll be out of a job. The company won’t suddenly say “Hey, what about these passive candidates?“candidate experience

So instead, recruiters constantly remind everyone how slammed they are to underscore their own relevancy and keep a job. In the process, no one even remotely thinks about passive candidates. Gotta keep my eye on the ball, Sam! Headcount to backfill!

The big buzzword in this space is “employer branding,” but don’t even get me going on that crap. The problem with employer branding is simple: companies try to manage it like a campaign, but it’s not that. It’s what people in the real world say about your processes and managers.

If you have a culture of jerks and a**holes, you have a bad employer brand even if you artfully managed some stupid campaign about how you “change the world.” Passive candidates won’t care because every Glassdoor review says Marty Middle Manager cracks the whip harder than a Fifty Shades porn parody. (Wait, isn’t 50 Shades already porn?)

What is a better way to approach passive candidates?

Here are a few ideas:

  • When they sign up for emails, actually send them emails.
  • Send your recruiters out to different types of networking events to build relationships.
  • Use LinkedIn wisely, as opposed to that spammy InMail crap.
  • Have a one-sheet ready about the benefits of considering your company, even if you’re super happy elsewhere.
  • Don’t let your ATS be a candidate black hole; actually communicate with candidates so they’ll care about you later.
  • Give a damn about them.
  • Realize they often are better than active candidates (60-70 percent of applications for an open job don’t meet qualifications).

Anything else you’d add on finding and (buzzword alert) “nurturing” those passive candidates?

Recruiting Grudge Match: Who Wins When It’s Humans vs. Machines?

It’s an image that you often see in movies or read in books – humans battling machines or robots, in digital warfare that often signals the apocalypse or the dawn of a new age.

But, it’s a fictional image that could never replay itself in the real world – or could it?

Even if it could, apply that same image to the workforce and you’d get a totally different outcome — like machines quickly overtaking jobs as robots feverishly work in factories to assemble the latest technology.

But what’s the human-versus-machine scenario like in recruiting? Does the rise of the machines overhaul an industry inextricably tied to human nature, or can humans and automation work symbiotically to generate overall productivity?

Humans versus machines in the fight to revolutionize the recruiting industry is one of the most disruptive trends in staffing. According to research from Bullhorn:

  • About 67 percent of recruiting professionals believe automation will help the human workforce and not demolish it;
  • Alternatively, 33 percent of respondents said they plan to replace talent with technology to lower prices so they can build the most efficient businesses possible.

Who ultimately wins the fight in recruiting? Will humans prevail and use the machines to their fullest advantage, or will the machines overtake humans and eliminate their jobs?

Here’s how the “battle of humans versus machines” shapes up in recruiting – and who comes out on top in the end.

In corner No. 1 — The Humans

Humans possess the innate ability to develop and form relationships with other individuals – something that humans were born to do. This is through their strong sense of emotional intelligence that allows them to skillfully – and correctly – move conversations forward in the precise tone with the right amount of empathy.

Combined with their knowledge of the labor market, humans – or recruiting professionals – are equipped with the mastery of the craft of conversation to deepen their engagements with candidates and clients, which can help them grow their businesses.

Humans can draw on their past conversations and previous experiences with candidates and clients to understand their hiring requirements. The essence of growing relationships is a remarkable human characteristic that will always have an impact in relationship-driven businesses such as staffing.

In Corner No. 2 — The Machines

Machines have the power of programming so they can be instrumental in automating routine or daily tasks.

In recruiting, these can include non-value-adding ones such as scheduling, screening, data entry, and following up, which essentially free up recruiters’ time to focus on more strategic initiatives such as relationship building. Machines can alleviate the administrative burden that’s currently placed on most recruiting professionals.

Imagine a world where machines could screen a pool of 50 applicants, identify the Top 5 candidates, and schedule interviews for recruiters – all during the night so a recruiter doesn’t have to waste any time doing so in the morning.

Machines can automatically remind recruiters of certain tasks, effortlessly increasing their productivity and efficiency in their day-to-day work.

Who’s the real Winner?

In the end, humans will win because of their aptitude to cultivate relationships, which is crucial in business. While machines can certainly answer commands from humans and supplement their workloads, they don’t have the skills to advance strategic dialogues the same way humans can hold engaging discussions.

Though machines have the processing ability to expeditiously complete work, they can’t replace humans because they don’t have enough knowledge to progress conversations in meaningful ways.

Leveraging machines, recruiting professionals can become even better at their jobs and can win against their competition by placing the best talent in the best opportunities in the quick amount of time.