Join our Insider for member-only resources and benefits.

Membership

Blog

The GDPR Is Coming – But Will It Help or Harm Your Recruiting?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, so this article and the opinions expressed herein are solely mine. They are based on the things I learned about the GDPR and are solely for informational purposes.

If you’re a recruiter or involved in talent acquisition, you need to be concerned about the GDPR, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

One thing is certain: When it goes into effect, the GDPR is going to be the biggest shakeup in the history of online privacy regulations.

Starting May 25, 2018, the EU will enforce a set of regulations designed to protect European citizens’ personal data. It will affect all companies that deal with personal data — recruiters especially. Of course, even non-EU-based companies will still have to comply.

GDPR was designed as a replacement for the current Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. It has the purpose of reconciling country-specific and sometimes conflicting European data privacy laws. Most importantly, it aims at changing the way organizations operating in the EU, or those collecting personal data from the EU’s citizens, approach data privacy. It also provides a harmonization of the data protection regulations throughout the EU, thereby making it easier for American companies to comply.

This regulation is aimed at empowering EU citizens regarding their personal data through tighter regulations. In simpler terms, it means that it will now be unlawful to use an EU citizen’s data without his or her explicit consent.

It is mandatory for organizations that are processing the personal data of EU residents across the globe. Failing to comply could result in severe penalties of up to 4 percent of worldwide turnover.

How will GDPR impact recruitment?

Many in the recruitment industry fear that this coming regulation will disrupt candidate data collection and management. Even though their fears may be justified with its hefty, non-compliance fines, GDPR will undeniably bring candidate privacy and the candidate experience to a whole new level — a game changer for personal data processing.

In today’s job market, the recruitment industry earns its bread through the processing of candidate’s personal data. In fact, any successful recruitment is crowned by super personal data management and optimization, an avenue to be analytical and strategic in acquiring top talent.

The recruitment industry relies on personal data to learn more about potential hires through their various social media profiles, online resume databases, records of employment, applications, and tests. They utilize a substantial wealth of data by sorting information into trends and narrowing down the talent pool.

GDPR certainly has the potential to make or break the recruitment industry through its personal data usage, and with fines up to €20 million (euros) or 4 percent of global turnover, compliance by every recruiter and HR department will be of the utmost importance.

Therefore, come May 28, it is important to understand the ways GDPR will redefine the recruitment industry. Here are a few ways in which it will do so.

1 – Consent will become king

Consent is one of the fundamental aspects of GDPR. Recruiting agencies and HR managers will now need to obtain consent from their candidates for every usage of their personal data.

Recruiters will need to request consent from every candidate in an easily accessible and intelligible form, a form that will contain the purpose of processing the candidate’s data.

Yes, people will have to know in emphatically plain terms what you want to use their data’s for. A thousand pages of Terms & Conditions will not do anymore, and neither will pre-ticked checkboxes.  

Consent is only valid if actively given by the candidates. Scooping data personal data from social media will not cut it either.

2. Consent must be clear and explicit

Currently, you may have a less-than-perfect way of informing your candidates about how you collect, handle, and store their personal data. Under GDPR, you are required to ask for explicit consent, clarify how you will use individual candidate’s data, and make sure that the data remains secure.

Additionally, you should enable candidates to access and review their data anytime the like, ask for updates of their data, and even allow for full erasure upon request. Candidates will have the “right to be forgotten or right to erasure,” meaning that candidates can request for their data to be erased when it is no longer necessary for the original purpose.

This right will create an interesting situation for companies and applicant tracking systems (ATS).

Candidates will be able to apply to a role, fail miserably during the interview, and be rejected because they are not company fit, but after they receive the rejection from the company, they could easily use their “right to be forgotten,” and company needs to erase everything.

The candidate could then reapply after few months, and the company will not have any information from the previous interview. Alternatively, the candidate could reach out to a recruiter in some other location, and that recruiter will not be able to find any information in the ATS.

I am also interested in the situation when a candidate will ask a company to erase all the data that company has secured. The company will need to remove the data from its ATS, sourcing tools that it is using, LinkedIn, AIs, and so on.

However, you can turn these tough requirements into new strengths that will help you serve your candidates better and improve their trust and loyalty.

On your company website or social media, make sure your candidates agree to everything you do with their data and do not forget to store that information. This process might mean changing sign-up forms or the checkout processes.

3. Be gone all unsolicited job posts!

Recruiters will no longer be able to send emails to users who have not opted into their mailing list. Initially, recruiters and HR staff must be aware of who is currently in their database to avoid getting hit with penalties.

Even if you are certain your company does not send emails to anyone within the EU, it is safer to double check this and be certain. Just one single email sent to an unwilling EU candidate could leave your recruitment brand in hot water.

4. There will be fines for non-compliance

The approach towards fines is two-tiered, and it is quite intimidating. Fines can be imposed based on a list of points that include the nature, gravity, and duration of the infringement.

The maximum fines can go up to 4 percent of the company’s annual global turnover or €20 million (euros), whichever is higher. Other infringements could attract fines of up to 2 percent of the annual worldwide turnover or €10 million euros), whichever is greater.

GDPR will improve the candidate experience

It is encouraging to look at the implications of GDPR as a recruitment opportunity — а chance to better the candidate experience. This way, you will not see compliance as a strenuous task to be completed. Rather, with each step in the compliance process, you might instead keep the candidate as your focal point.

“How can I use GDPR to improve candidate experience throughout the recruitment process?” you ask. Here are a few processes.

Use portability to your advantage

An aspect of GDPR that is rarely mentioned is data portability. Recruiters will need to provide all the personal data they have on a candidate when requested in a portable format. The GDPR demands that each candidate has the right to transfer their data anywhere the prefer.

Data portability can surely be turned into a recruiting benefit. Through GDPR compliance, your agency becomes ready to receive portable data transferred from a competitor, giving you the data histories of your new candidates so you can better serve them from the start of your new relationship.

I’m not sure if we are going to see the possibility to export our complete profiles on LinkedIn or if we will be able to transfer it to the competitor site, but it will be interesting to see how the big companies will deal with this requirement.

As a recruiter, you may be forced to create data assets that enable data portability; however, whatever technical methods you choose to use, the result will be a more agile and future-proof system. Even if no one ultimately wishes to transport their data, setting aside room for fool-proof portability will keep your candidates satisfied.

In regards to portability, recruiters need to be conscious of data sharing. You need to choose the entities with whom you choose to share your candidate’s personal data with very carefully because a slip-up might dictate the end of your recruitment business.

Upgrade recruiting systems and software

Preparations for GDPR may force you to upgrade recruitment software and systems that are obsolete or about to become so.

This update may strain your budget in the short term, but in the end, your recruitment will reap the benefits. Quite probably, your upgrade will bring along plenty of ways to offer new solutions and services that benefit you and your candidates

The upgrade will enable you to serve candidates better, respond to their requests, engage them in the ways the prefer, and pinpoint their needs in one moment. As well as GDPR compliance, a renewed system will bring up-to-date progress to hiring.

Use ironclad data storage

Check out how your company is storing candidate personal data and ensure that the methods being used are ironclad. Data security should be taken with the utmost importance because a slight slip could spell doom.

Therefore, ensure everyone who handles personal data within your organization understands what GDPR entails. Most times, recruiters and HR personnel rely on third parties to handle their personal data. Verify that these services are already GDPR compliant, or at the very least, that they will be by May 2018.

Take note: The transition process of system and security upgrades should be fairly smooth for small-scale recruiters. However, it can quickly get tricky in a larger recruiting establishment where a great deal personal data is handled in many complex ways.

Empower your candidates with transparency

You can empower your candidates by showing them that they truly have ownership of their personal data. In this context, if a competitor is vague and obscure, but your recruiting agency is transparent and empowering, it is obvious which one of you will outshine in the eyes of the candidate.

Each step you take to be compliant, including all the improvements you make to the security of personal data, helps you build trust with your candidates. Communicating your compliance enables you to emphasize your trustworthiness, and reliability is the basis of all lasting recruitment relationships.

By implementing GDPR, your candidate experience may climb higher than ever before.

GDPR will bring big changes to recruitment

Although the upcoming GDPR will grant a comprehensive and enhanced set of fundamental rights to job seekers and candidates, recruiters can also take advantage of the change.

Successful recruiters are used to changes. In fact, they have a knack for seeking new possibilities and smarter solutions to better the lives for their clients and candidates. Therefore, recruiters, as personal data controllers and processors, will need to take bold steps to maintain compliance with the GDPR.

If you excel in GDPR, you will reap the resulting benefits from empowering your candidates, seeking only data that is needed directly from the source, and leveraging it to build better, long-term relationships through better recruiting.

GDPR will bring many new challenges and new job opportunities, especially for 28,000 new DPOs required under GDPR in Europe alone, based on research by iapp.org. On the other hand, many companies will be negatively affected by it. GDPR is a complicated legislation, but it is all about our personal data.

The bottom line, for everyone, is pretty obvious: Let’s hope that the GDPR will bring more good than harm.

6 Keys to Making a Catchy, Compelling Recruitment Video

diversity hiring videoPeople love watching videos online. In fact, online video now accounts for 69 percent of all internet traffic, and 55 percent of people watch online videos every single day.

For recruiters, there’s an even more important statistic to consider: More than 50 percent of businesses that use video see a decrease in the time it takes to a fill a position, and almost half experienced an improved cost per hire.

Recruitment videos are now seen as an engaging way to tell your organization’s brand message. They complement job postings by giving candidates a reason to work for the company beyond the compensation and benefits they could get. Videos, after all, let others see your organization, your company culture, and office atmosphere in a way that words and static pictures cannot convey.

Here are a few tips to help you produce an effective recruitment video.

1. Define your goals

To start you off, think of your target audience, the image you want to create, and the actions you want the viewer to take after watching your film.

Do you want to attract potential employees who are of similar caliber and complementing personalities to your existing staff? Do you want to enhance the way your company is perceived? Or, do you want to encourage the audience to share the video with their friends?

These three things will help you define what you want to achieve with your video before you even start filming.

As an example, this video from Humana included information about how people can apply to work at their company if the video might be embedded on other websites that aren’t their own.

2. Consider the equipment

You can choose to hire a professional videographer to do the recording for you, but you can also make use of what you have.

As Rob Humphrey wrote on the LinkedIn Talent Blog and shown on their instructional video:

[All] you really need for shooting your recruitment video is a recent smartphone (pretty much any recent smartphone can shoot high enough video quality for the web). And to edit, your laptop likely already has all the software you need.”

He also adds that for the sound recording, you have to make sure that you have a quiet spot to capture people’s voices or use an extra phone or device to get a clearer audio.

3. Highlight what makes you unique

The most effective recruitment videos showcase the factors that make the company unique. This could be features of the office itself; maybe you have an open-plan office that almost looks like Starbucks, a designated nap room, or a relaxing break area with freshly-brewed coffee throughout the day.

If from a visual perspective there’s nothing particularly different or interesting happening in your office space compared to others, you may want to look at other areas the company may be exceptional.

A good example of this is how this recruitment video from BambooHR that’s focused not on the office and the 9-5 day-to-day lives of employees at the company, but on what their current staff can do outside of work. It communicates that the organization prioritizes a healthy work-life balance.

Another way that your company may be unique is your current employees and the positive work environment that they create. Getting your existing staff to tell personal work stories is the most genuine and best way to attract ideal candidates.

4. Feature people from different points in their careers

Humphrey recommends choosing a wide range of subjects when shooting a recruitment video. While the CEO or other executives can, of course, be featured on the video, it’s also very important to interview staff at different levels.

From interns who have been with the company for over a month to the senior programmer who has been with the team for seven (7) years, candidates viewing the video can find someone they can relate to and trust.

In case you want to focus on a specific group of individuals, you may find inspiration from this Starbucks recruitment video. The producers appear to have focused on interns to appeal to prospective candidates who are still early in their careers. Doing so gives them a better opportunity at connecting with their target audience.

5. Conduct interviews in a conversational way

As the first few seconds of the LinkedIn instructional has shown, video clips of people spouting vague corporate buzzwords like “employer of choice” or “corporate integrity” probably won’t help you acquire more talent.

When interviewing employees, it’s all about asking the right questions — as if you were trying to make conversation with anybody.

Here are some questions LinkedIn’s Rob Humphrey recommends starting off with:

  • Why they joined the company;
  • What do they enjoy about working there;
  • What would they tell a friend considering working with company.

Responses to these are often great for the final cut, as they show potential employees if the company is a good fit for them.

In this recruitment video by Vimeo, they talked to a number of employees working in different areas in the company and gave the audience a fresh, engaging way to learn more about what it’s like to be part of the organization.

6. Record humans being humans

The entire point of making a video is to show, not tell. Even if the video is interview-based, it doesn’t necessarily have to be just talking heads.

Make sure to record shots of everything that the employees are talking about — from serving customers, working at their respective desks, presenting to co-workers, or making coffee in the office kitchen. While editing the video, show these shots while running the audio from the interview.

For example, this Zendesk recruitment video shows the many images that say, “This is Zendesk.” While there wasn’t necessarily interviews in this video, the narrator discussed and showed the things about their company and office culture that communicate what employees most likely love about working with the organization.

Videos are a powerful way to tell stories and can be an excellent tool to enhance your HR strategy. A recruitment video can showcase your company culture, your hard-working staff, and what they enjoy the most being a part of the organization.

As you film your own video, be sure to define your goals ahead of time. Also, consider the equipment you’ll need, highlight what’s unique about the company, feature staff by engaging them in a conversational interview, and record them doing their activities in the office.

In the end, this can help you ensure that the video you produce is both engaging and complementary to your online job postings.

Bursting The Bubble: Does Silicon Valley Still Matter?

I’m headed west next month to keynote at Lever’s Talent Innovation Summit. Last year’s Summit was kickass, and I’m intrigued to see how they continue to evolve and innovate both their products and the conference model. But whatever I think of Lever, it’s no secret that I’ve long hated the San Francisco area. These reasons, of course, extend beyond the more obvious, superficial stuff.

While I have a sincere and deep-seated animosity for Giants and Golden State Warrior fans, streets that perpetually reek of urine and the gratuitous usage of the word hella, the real reason I dislike NoCal is that it’s one of the most insular, provincial and out of touch places on the planet.

The bubble surrounding Silicon Valley isn’t limited to ridiculous valuations on ridiculous startups, but rather, to the prevalent mindset of a place that’s too busy worrying about what’s happening along Sand Hill Road or South of Market to take a step back and realize what’s going on in the rest of the world.

And, if you look past the peninsula of Ghirardelli, Google and geeks, you’ll see a growing distaste and distrust for a place that has become, in the popular imagination, the real world version of the Capitol in the Hunger Games.

It seems relatively obvious, the Bay Area city-state plays a similar role in dominating the rest of the planet for the explicit purpose of economic exploitation.

Catching Fire: The “Don’t Be Evil” Empire Strikes Back.

The Cloud casts a long shadow, and the Silicon Valley Empire has spread its tentacles to even the most remote corners of the world, from rural India to sub-Saharan Africa.

Those in the Capitol, of course, see this as altruistic, a way of connecting the world and its people in ways they’ve never before dreamed of.  Those in the Districts, conversely, view this intrusion with justifiable suspicion, understanding, to some degree, that they’re being exploited by tech’s global behemoths, even if they can’t explicate exactly why, or how, these companies are using them or their data.

They implicitly understand the tradeoff of convenience for privacy, and most gladly make that trade; after all, since the wealth generated by companies like Google and Facebook is concentrated in some sort of mythical metonym, they never see the inequalities that Silicon Valley’s global economic ascendency has created.

This is good, for as much as Silicon Valley likes to commoditize the word “revolutionary,” there’s an entirely different type of revolution going on.

The rest of the world is not only challenging the long undisputed hegemony of the Bay Area within the technology industry, it’s actually slowly beginning to lose ground to the forgotten flyover states and far-flung foreign outposts Silicon Valley has long considered colonized.

If you take a look at trends in tech, however, you see that the real disruption is happening not as a Bay Area buzzword, but rather, to the very foundations upon which Silicon Valley was built. Business as usual there, it seems, is anything but.

Of course, to really see the dramatic changes undermining Silicon Valley that are already underway, you have to first be willing to go outside the bubble from San Jose to Santa Clara.

Sure, you could go to China – the world’s largest (and most insular) technology market to see firsthand the Sinification of Silicon Valley and what’s going on in its most formidable foreign competitor.

Or, you could go to India, to see how smart phones and data plans are transforming thousands of years of tradition, ending millennia of isolation, creating economic mobility, democratizing access and increasing interconnectivity in ways this developing nation could have foreseen only a decade or so ago.  

But really, the best way to take a look at this tech trend is by looking at a market that’s equally foreign to most Silicon Valley denizens, emerging and established alike: the rest of the United States.

The roadmap for the future of technology, it seems, is pointed squarely at flyover country, y’all.

Populist Culture: The New Geography of Technology.

Politicians and pundits have long touted the fact that there are two Americas, but fundamentally, the bifurcation between “Red States” and “Blue States” has less to do with partisanship and more to do with economics.

The dividing line that’s probably the most pervasive, if not the most prominent in our national discourse and dialogue, is between the America of Industry and the America of Innovation.

The former is often ascribed to Red States, and the latter to Blue, but by no means is this canonical or even correlated – industry happens in both the Rust Belt and the Coasts (in fact, California also is the largest manufacturing state in the nation as well as the top agricultural producer, both staples of the Industrial economy).

More and to the point, Innovation doesn’t only happen in the highly concentrated pockets of knowledge workers in places like San Francisco or Seattle; increasingly, it’s happening in traditional strongholds of Industry.

While the traditional narrative is that cities in “flyover country” are largely on the decline due to the stagnation of middle class wages and the death of blue color jobs at the hands of offshoring and automation, the innovation economy’s shift from Sand Hill Road and Stanford has been a boon to industry, too.

This is because the jobs traditionally clustered in San Jose and San Francisco, jobs like software engineers and programmers, developers and product managers, are no longer confined specifically to the “technology” sector. Because of the profound changes technology has made on all industries and sectors, so too have all industries and sectors developed their own tech capabilities.

The tech hiring gains in sectors like retail (whose demand for tech talent rose 7.5% over the last 5 years), banking (up 2%) and even manufacturing (1.7%) grew at a faster clip than traditional technology and software companies, whose demand for coders and programmers grew only 1% over the past 5 years – a rate that lags behind overall job creation across all sectors (3.4%) since 2012.

Bye, The Bay.

One of the reasons the “war for talent” has become such a hyped and hyperbolized phenomenon in Silicon Valley is that companies clustered there are paying a premium for the finite supply of skilled tech professionals in the area.

In fact, employers in San Francisco pay an average of around $113k for tech jobs; compare this to the 81k employers in Detroit are paying for the exact same positions, and you’ll see why staying in Silicon Valley makes little to no business sense.

This may be one reason why Detroit has seen tech employment rise .8% YoY, surpassing San Francisco’s .6% growth. Of course, economics tells us demand follows supply, and staying in Silicon Valley makes even less sense for workers than employers.

The average cost of a 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco has skyrocketed to $3,720 a month or $44,640 a year; compare this to Nashville, which, according to Bloomberg, has seen the highest rate of growth of tech industry jobs in the US in the last 5 years at 46.8%.

In Nashville, you can currently get a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath, 2500 square foot apartment in the heart of the city – and still end up saving around $600 on the price of a studio South of Market.

In fact, adjusted for cost of living, the average programmer making $130k a year in San Francisco would have an adjusted salary of only $73k against the median cost of living across the US. Which, let’s agree, isn’t a whole heck of a lot for some of the most highly skilled, in demand talent pools in the country.

Compare this to Washington, DC and Austin, which round out the top 5 markets for tech talent in the country, where the adjusted income for that same programmer works out to around 90k a year, and Silicon Valley looks even less attractive for employees, base compensation be damned.

Of course, there are often a litany of perks offered by Bay Area tech companies to remain competitive when attracting top talent, but let’s face it – pretty much every employee would opt for a 20% increase in salary over these idiotic inducements. You’d have to get a whole hell of a lot of free dry cleaning and eat pretty much every meal at the company cafeteria to even come close to purchasing parity, period.

When attracting, engaging and hiring skilled tech talent, the statistics also suggest that fully 40% of developers and programmers who make a move list “higher salary” as their primary reason for making a move, versus only 10% who cite benefits as their primary motivator.

No wonder over 2 in 5 tech professionals currently working for San Jose or San Francisco based employers are either open to or currently pursuing relocation to other markets, according to a recent survey, a full 15% higher than second place Boston.

The majority of Bay Area respondents, however, were motivated by cost of living, where their New England counterparts were primarily motivated by wanting to move away from where they went to school, which makes sense.

A Cold Day in Hella: Bursting the Silicon Valley Bubble.

In another poll, 68% of tech professionals reported that working in Silicon Valley was “not important” to their career aspirations and job search. Another 20% said they would not consider opportunities in the Bay Area. This is hella bad news for a market that’s already suffering from a pretty massive brain drain.

While the tech industry has traditionally coalesced in Silicon Valley, its position as a talent magnet is currently in jeopardy. The primary reason it’s become a metonym for the entire industry has been its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest minds, and proximity has not only bred familiarity, but some of the history’s most innovative and disruptive breakthroughs, from semiconductors to social media.

Silicon Valley has long had the luxury of focusing its attention almost exclusively on developing transformative technologies and building companies.

But increasingly, the tech industry must confront a more formidable – and mostly unknown – new competitor: the rest of the world. And for now, it looks a lot like that bubble may be about to burst.

For more on this, and to get my take on what Silicon Valley needs to do about it, hella fast, register for the live stream of Lever’s Talent Innovation Summit on September 19th. And if you’re stuck paying Silicon Valley rent, you really should show up in person.

Use the discount code CHARNEY when you check out to get a 10% discount and a consolatory blunt after my keynote. Because with legalization, at least California still has one thing still going for it. And how bout those Giants?

Editor’s Note: RecruitingDaily was compensated for this post. But you probably figured that out by now. Although, TBH, it really didn’t have any impact on the content whatsoever, we just figured we’d throw a disclaimer in there since we try to be like, a legit news site and stuff. That, and the FTC is coming down hard on disclosure rules, and we really can’t afford that fine.

No Surprise: Half of U.S. Workers Feel They Just Have a Job, Not a Career

This shouldn’t come as a big surprise: A lot of Americans workers aren’t all that happy on the job, and according to a new survey, more than half of them believe they have a job — just not a career.

The latest national survey by CareerBuilder found that 55 percent of workers feel they are employed but that it’s simply not a career, and 38 percent of those workers also say that they’re likely to change jobs sometime during the remainder of 2017.

In addition, and perhaps even more damning, 1 in 4 American workers (28 percent) say they hate or simply tolerate their job, staying with it only because of bills, proximity to home, and the need for insurance.

Numbers like that should make everyone rethink all the happy talk about the national unemployment rate.

“Unfortunately, more than half of workers feel they have just a job, not a career, and … when workers don’t enjoy what they are doing, they are more inclined to pursue other options,” said Rosemary Haefner, Chief HR Officer at CareerBuilder, in a press release about the survey.

She added: “There are many routes for (workers) to take as the U.S. continues to add jobs. Arming themselves with what employers are looking for will help job seekers stand out from the competition — ultimately landing a new opportunity that will be more personally rewarding for them.”

The national survey, which was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder from May 24 to June 16, 2017, included representative samples of 2,369 full-time employers and 3,462 full-time U.S. workers across industries and company sizes in the private sector.

References can make or break a candidate

Here are some of the other findings from the survey:

  • Recruiters say customized resumes can make a difference. Approximately a third of employers (32 percent) review resumes for less than one minute, but 49 percent say they would pay more attention to job applications with a resume customized for their open position.
  • References can make or break a job candidate. More than half of employers (51 percent) say that a candidate’s reference has not given positive feedback about the candidate, and 54 percent have changed their mind about a candidate after speaking with a reference.
  • It helps when candidates tout their online profiles. A whopping 70 percent of employers use social media to screen candidates —  and 57 percent of employers say they are less likely to interview a candidate they can’t find online.
  • Untruths on resumes can kill a candidate’s job chances. More than half of employers (55 percent) have caught a lie on a resume, and nearly 4 in 10 (39 percent) have caught someone providing a fake reference.
  • Interview prep is important and usually the last big step in landing the job. Nearly 6 out of 10 employers (59 percent) said asking good questions in the interview is important to them when considering a candidate for a job, and 48 percent said it was important for candidates to come to an interview prepared with ideas.

Screwy ways candidates try to make an impression

One thing that CareerBuilder included with the survey data was examples that hiring managers gave of unusual tactics job seekers used to stand out. These are interesting because they show just how far candidates will go to make an impression and separate themselves from the job hunting pack.

  • Candidate gave the hiring manager a baseball that read: “This is my best pitch of why you should hire me.”
  • Candidate sent the hiring manager daisies with a note that said “Pick me, pick me.”
  • Candidate brought their mother to the interview as an in-person character reference.
  • Candidate developed a whole website dedicated to the hiring manager, asking to be hired.
  • Candidate hugged the hiring manager when introduced instead of shaking hands (Editor’s note – clearly, this candidate has been listening too much to Tim Sackett).
  • Candidate got up from interview and started waiting on customers because the business got busy.
  • Hiring manager had a candidate volunteer to work at the business for a month before submitting an application to show that she was able to do the job.
  • Candidate sent a Christmas card every year for three years.
  • Candidate sent a cake with their resume printed on it.

Are you getting your workers on a career track?

Here’s my take: This survey not only points out how vulnerable our own workforces are today, but also how much everyone else’s is, too. In other words, if you can retain your own staff, it shouldn’t be that hard recruiting for the positions that you do have open up.

It also makes it clear that people today — and this is particularly true for Millennials — draw a sharp distinction between a job and a career. For most people, jobs come and go, but a career is something that you work on and build up to over time.

Want your employees to stay? Then you need to make sure they feel they have a clear and sustainable career path with you, or at a minimum, that whatever it is they are doing for you is helping them with their long-term career goals.

This is easier said than done, I know, but that’s what you get when you have the largest part of the workforce believing that employers don’t really have any loyalty to them — and that they shouldn’t have any, either.

The Short Term View of AI and Recruiting? Don’t Worry, Be Happy

If you’re like me, you may have been wondering about all the commotion surrounding AI and how it will impact your job.

Opinions range from “move along, nothing to see here” to “you’re going to be unemployed and the AI that takes your place is going to pay taxes.” So, I set out to get to the bottom of the issue.

I interviewed a number of industry experts and AI developers to get a solid understanding of what artificial intelligence really is, what it can and can’t do, and what is the near term and far term impact on recruiting.

The very first thing I had to get my head around was the concept of artificial intelligence itself.

Like many nerds of my generation I grew up watching the android Lieutenant Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. For those of you not familiar with the show, Data is an Android powered by a powerful and complex AI.  

AI: Artificial, but not intelligent

A more scientific approach to artificial would be to use what is known as the “Turing test.”  

The idea is simple: You have ask a question that the AI or the human answers. If you can’t tell the difference between the human and the AI, then the AI is said to have passed the test.

While some chatbots have fooled 1 in 3 people during five minute controlled tests, I think it is fair to say that no AI to date has passed the Turing test.  

Michael Beygelman, CEO of Joberate, said of AI, “it is artificial but it isn’t intelligent.” That isn’t a slight, but an observation. We have yet to create a true AI. However, that is a headline to watch for, because it will be a major tipping point not only for our industry, but for the entire economy.

So, what actually is AI and what can it do? More importantly, why should we care? 

Let’s start with this: The tools that are sold under the artificial intelligence umbrella fall into three (3) basic categories:

  1. Chatbots;
  2. AI assisted searches; and,
  3. Automated Assistants.

Chatbots

Chatbots are designed to do several different things. The first and most obvious is that they interact with prospective candidates that wish to apply to your company.

They engage in what is called a natural language interaction. The idea is to have the chatbot ask the questions needed to complete a job application.

This is a much needed update to our current methods of applying for jobs online. That sounds cool enough, but what got my attention was that according to Gerry Crispin, Co-Founder of CareerXroads, companies that have used AI chatbots get conversion ratios as high as 90 percent.  

The other things that an AI chatbot can do, that isn’t as obvious, is that it can screen candidates in near real time.

Once the application is completed, the AI can engage the candidate and ask if they would like to interview for the position. The chatbot will then present the candidate with questions they can answer with text, or in some cases, even create a video.  

The AI will analyze the answers and even evaluate the video. If the prospect passes the qualifying questions, the AI can schedule the interview by asking the candidate to select a time that is available based on the recruiter’s calendar. The other statistic I found interesting was that 70 percent of the candidates who completed the application also completed the AI interview.

I understand that you don’t need more unqualified applicants, but that isn’t the end of what artificial intelligence can do.

AI works best when dealing with hundreds of candidates

As Aaron Matos, CEO of Recruiting.com, explained to me, clients that have deployed his AI “Olivia” have been able to eliminate 70 to 80 percent of unqualified candidates before they even make it to a recruiter.

Artificial intelligence is more than an old school decision tree. It’s able to “learn” and adapt. Based on new information and feedback from recruiters, it’s able to improve its matching and screening. Max Armbruster, CEO of Talkpush, said, “The best value is when you are dealing with hundreds of candidates.”  

I have had over 100 people apply to a single job posting before. I know that when I had 25, 30 or 40 or more requisitions, it becomes impossible to review all of the resumes of applicants. No one knows how many great hires are missed because their resume is buried somewhere inside of an ATS.  

That leads me to the next thing that artificial intelligence can do for you — it can help eliminate the dreaded resume black hole.

Pim Bemelmans, Director at XORBOT said, “We are working to eliminate the black hole of recruiting and make sure that every candidate that applies at least gets reviewed and gets appropriate feedback.”   

Max Armbruster may have said it best when he told me,

The great hope is to have a recruitment experience which is less likely to suffer from human error, confirmation bias, racial bias, and bad habits in general — but breaking through those isn’t intuitive.”  

Ironically it may be an AI that brings humanity back to recruiting.

AI assisted searches

The second application for AI is in search. I spoke with Ninh Tran, COO of Hiretual, to learn more about how it works. He told me,

The efficiency of our sourcing AI is about three-quarters of the best sourcer in the world right now. You can improve AI to (make it) better than a human, but it becomes increasingly difficult to get better because there are diminishing returns. The solution is saving people time. It is supposed to make your life easier. “  

At first, I was skeptical about that claim, but then I remembered the 2017 SourceCon sourcing challenge. Brilent’s AI-based talent recruitment software came in 3rd place in the competition. Now, it didn’t conduct outreach to prospects as that was not part of this challenge, but it is an impressive result given the competition it faced.

The other interesting thing I discovered was the amount of contact information that these new tools are able to uncover. It is an important step for sourcing technology if we are ever going to break our addiction to LinkedIn’s InMail.

AI or augmented search or whatever you decide to call it is here and it is viable. Based on my conversations, I would say that it is going to be most useful to those recruiting in the IT space, but as more and more digital information becomes available, I can only assume that it will improve its performance in other areas as well.

Automated Assistants

The final application of AI is one that I didn’t consider originally. A recruiting AI can help you automate some of your routine work.

Gerry Crispin shared with me a story about a company that was using an AI assistant. Using the AI, they were able to get the requisition approval process from four (4) days down to 1 minute, 45 seconds.  

Scheduling is also something that the AI assistant is able to help with. Setting up phone screens no longer needs to take several emails or involve an episode of phone tag. The AI will allow the candidate to select a time when they are available and schedule themselves for the interview when you are available.   

I did not hear of an AI being used for interview feedback or for offer letter generation, but I assume that it is only a matter of time before those functions are augmented with some sort of AI as well. These may seem like small matters, but if you can automate some of these actions and take a few days off the time to fill rate, this becomes a tool worth considering.

So what is the short term impact of artificial intelligence on recruiting?

The answer: AI is a useful tool for companies that receive a large number of applicants and genuinely want to improve the candidate experience.

Yes, AI may bring humanity back to recruiting

The ability to screen hundreds of candidates in minutes is new to the industry. Interaction with an AI has driven conversion rates as high as 90 percent. When a video interview is offered, over 70 percent of people that had completed an application also completed a video interview. The AI was then able to stack rank the applicants for the recruiter to review. Additionally, the AI is available 24/7 to answer questions that the applicant might have.  

Ironically, it may be artificial intelligence that brings humanity back into recruiting and makes the resume “black hole” a thing of the past.

For those of you who struggle to find niche talent, an AI augmented search can be a good tool to use. At present, it doesn’t help you with outreach so you really need to punch up your messaging before you will see the results of better searches. That said, there is an advantage if you have the ability to uncover talent that your competition might not be able to find.  

An AI assistant will be valuable to those companies that have established processes and do high volume recruitment. The value is that it can help you take days off your time to fill rate once someone is already in the funnel.

The value of cutting three days off time to fill is relatively low for one req, but what if you could take three days of the time to fill for 1,000 reqs?

What would that be worth?  

Something recruiters need to pay attention to

Something else to consider: Short term, you aren’t out of a job unless you work in coordination. The tools are really designed at this point the help us get more hires and better hires in less time.

That is music to the ears of any leader in Talent Acquisition. However the longer term prospects are more difficult to judge, and I had a wide variety of answers when I asked about the long term impact of AI on recruiting.  

So in the long term, are we out of a job or is there really nothing to worry about?

Here’s what Gerry Crispin said:

Long term, 80 percent of recruiters will not be needed, but 20 percent will elevate their game to decision and strategy and the remainder will go do something else.”  

I don’t know how long long term is, but when I hear someone like Gerry make a statement like that, I’m definitely going to pay attention. It’s safe to say that this isn’t like some of the other recruiting fads that have come and gone.

This is something we are ALL going to have to pay close attention to.

Here’s one last bit of advice on the subject from Ninh Tran, COO of Hiretual:

It is going to be humans partnering with technology to make things simpler and faster. If you don’t embrace it that is fine, but if there is a person that wants to keep their competitive advantage for years to come, becoming a new technology adaptor is the way to go.”    

Hiring Volunteers? It Can Be as Challenging as Hiring Employees

Does your business or organization collaborate with volunteers to serve customers or handle other key functions? Particularly for most non-profit organizations, volunteers are essential.

Many organizations make the mistake of thinking that, since volunteer positions are unpaid, there is no need to run criminal background checks or go through other vetting processes when bringing new volunteers on board.

7 questions you should be asking potential volunteers

Here’s something to keep in mind: The truth is that a volunteer is a representative of your brand just as much as an employee.

Many volunteers have important responsibilities from collecting money to working with children or the elderly. As is the case when hiring employees, allowing the wrong volunteer to work on behalf of your brand can lead to theft, embezzlement, workplace violence, abuse, and other costly problems.

To avoid PR nightmares and potential lawsuits, it’s important to screen your volunteers carefully.

To help you separate qualified volunteers from the people you don’t want to represent your brand, here are seven (7) questions to incorporate into the volunteer screening process.

1. Will you consent to a background check?

Be formal about your volunteer screening process. Run background checks on your volunteers, especially those working with money or vulnerable groups like kids and people with a disability.

You don’t have to go quite as in-depth with your checks as you would for a full-time employee.

For instance, you probably aren’t requiring your volunteers to have certain college degrees or professional certifications, which means that you can skip the verification checks. However, criminal history and sex offender checks should absolutely be part of your volunteer screening process.

2. Have you volunteered in the past?

Learn about a candidate’s volunteer experience. Someone who has a long history of volunteer work will likely be easier to incorporate into your mission than someone who hasn’t.

You can also ask for references from previous volunteer managers depending on the nature of the role and the level of responsibility involved.

3. What attracted you to this volunteer opportunity?

Just because someone is a prolific volunteer doesn’t mean they are the right fit for your team. You should look for someone who is passionate about your organization and the work you do.

When you are filling a full-time job within your organization, you likely give preference to people who clearly really want this job instead of just wanting a job. The same should be true for your volunteer searches. Particularly for non-profits, finding someone who is “devoted to the cause” is a must.

4. What are your interests or skills?

Organizations take a lot of time outlining the skills and experience they want from a potential applicant for a full-time job. Few companies put the same effort into outlining descriptions for volunteers, which means that you will likely get candidates with very different specialties.

You are seeking a volunteer who will add something that your team doesn’t have already, whether it’s a specialized role or an extra set of hands. Asking about a person’s interests or skills will help you envision what that person will bring to the volunteer role.

5. What is your schedule like?

Just because you aren’t planning to pay someone doesn’t mean that you have zero expectations about when they will be available. An important thing to remember is that volunteers have lives and schedules of their own and few are planning to devote full-time or even part-time hours to your cause.

Asking about availability is a must. High school students are typically great volunteers because they have a lot of enthusiasm and are looking to build out their resumes, but they also have school, sports, after-school activities, and part-time jobs. Seniors are another popular volunteer group, but they also have prior commitments and routines.

My new job board
My New Job Board!

If some of your volunteer candidates work full-time, then they are probably only available on evenings and weekends.

Many organizations don’t think to ask about scheduling and availability because they are used to interviewing people for full-time positions in which the hours are implied. For volunteer positions, asking scheduling questions is one of the most important parts of the application or interview.

6. How long do you foresee being involved with us?

It’s possible that your organization only needs a volunteer for a few weeks or months. However, many organizations that use volunteers either utilize them on an ongoing basis or require their help seasonally.

For instance, your business might need volunteers every Christmas to set up a “Santa’s Workshop” for the kids, or you might need volunteers in the summer for a film festival that your nonprofit helps to sponsor.

Either way, it’s reasonable to ask about a person’s long-term volunteer plans. If you are looking for someone who can become a regular part of your volunteer rotation or who will be able to come back and help for multiple seasons in a row, then you should factor that expectation into your interview process.

7. Do you have any questions for me?

At the end of every volunteer interview, you should open the floor up for questions.

Every volunteer opportunity is a bit different, so it’s important for your candidates to understand the parameters of the role they are seeking. Some volunteer roles involve specific functions while others come with the expectation that the person who takes on the role will be able to juggle multiple responsibilities depending on what is needed.

Based on the questions your candidate asks and how they react to your answers, you can get a good idea if the person is ready and able to take on the role.

Some organizations believe that filling volunteer roles is as easy as letting any applicant sign up online. In most cases, the volunteer screening process needs to be more extensive and more formal to serve its purpose.

While you might not have to put as much effort into vetting your volunteers as you do in screening and hiring full-time employees, your volunteer screening process should be cut from the same cloth.

A well thought-out application, a conversation-driven interview, and a consistent background check policy will go a long way toward helping you find the kind of passionate, motivated, and trustworthy volunteers that you want as representatives as your organization.

A Modern Day Snipe Hunt: Today’s Insane Push to Hire a “Purple Squirrel”

There’s a good reason why no one ever finds that elusive “purple squirrel” when they’re recruiting for a job.

It’s because 999 times out of a thousand, they don’t exist.

Here’s the best definition of a “purple squirrel” I’ve seen. It comes from the good folks over at Urban Dictionary, and it seems to ring true:

For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a “Purple Squirrel” —  not in nature and not in the job market. It is a metaphor used by recruiters to identify the unrealistic expectations of a client company.

The happy exception is when a perfect candidate, with exactly the right qualifications and experience, is actually found for a job opening. That person would then be referred to as a “Purple Squirrel.”

But every human being is flawed, and even if the candidate has all the requirements, i.e. IS a Purple Squirrel, they might not even get a phone screening.

Thus, even one recruiter’s Purple Squirrel can be “just another disqualified candidate” to the client company. …”

Job postings that seem impossible for anyone to match

I bring this up because I recently got together with an old friend who works in the automotive industry, and we somehow got to talking about Edmunds.com. He mentioned that Edmunds had been looking for a new editor-in-chief for over a year, and when I expressed surprise at that, my friend said, “well, take a look at their job description. Nobody can possibly meet all the requirements. They’re looking for a unicorn or a purple squirrel.”

So, I went and looked at the Edmunds posting for their editor-in-chief job, and guess what? My friend is absolutely right.

Now, I know I could find some really good candidates for that job, and in fact, I know people who would be great for it. But my friend had the right analysis. Nobody could possibly meet ALL the requirements Edmunds is demanding.

When companies do this, it usually means one of two things:

  1. They don’t really want to fill the job but are advertising for it anyway in case a reasonably priced  “purple squirrel” happens to come their way; or,
  2. They’re complete delusional and unrealistic in what is reasonably needed to be successful at the job.

As someone who has worked a lot of places, and been recruited and hired on a couple of occasions through a search firm, I know that are always secondary skills that companies would like you to have that may not be listed on your own menu of skills and accomplishments.

In my case, I usually managed to “step up” on the infrequent occasions when those were needed, and often when I did, I found I was better at them than I thought.

But that’s not we’re talking about here, and in case you think that this Edmunds job post is some sort of aberration, think again because I’m seeing posts like this from all sorts of companies when I get my weekly feed from LinkedIn.

Take a look at this one from Apple for a communications writer. Or, this one from Crackle for a Director of Integrated Content. Or The Outcast Agency job post for  VP of Business Strategy. Or, even this one for an Editorial Manager at Pottery Barn Kids & Teens.

These are just a few I found but I’ve been seeing more and more job ads like this in the past few months. I wish we would have fewer of the ones that seem to be looking for Superman or Wonder Woman, or have a list of skills and competencies they want that are a mile long, and more like this one from Tesla listing some pretty reasonable requirements for a Communications Manager.

Purple squirrels and the search for perfection

Here’s my take: there are way too many companies/recruiters/talent managers who seem to be looking for the “perfect” candidate, or that elusive “purple squirrel,” when it’s clear that there are a number of good people applying who could successfully do the job. Sadly, and all too often, they get little real consideration when they apply.

In the futile hunt for perfection, they’re missing out on a lot of people who are pretty solid.

If anything, I think the hunt for the “purple squirrel” is worse today than back 2013 when my old friend and colleague Lance Haun wrote this for the Harvard Business Review:

Purple squirrels are the trophies of the talent acquisition world. Everyone has a story about how they almost gave up a search until something happened that changed their fortunes. Being a former recruiter myself, I’m pretty proud of my purple squirrel moments, too.

For every purple squirrel hire out there though, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of open, unfilled job openings. Look at the career pages of some of the largest companies. Some of the best places to work in the tech industry like Google and Microsoft have hundreds of job openings that have been there for four, five and six months or more. They aren’t the only ones by a long shot. Hiring managers and recruiters keep them open hoping that one day, they’ll get a notification of the perfect new applicant.

Too often, that candidate never materializes. If the purple squirrel doesn’t show, you’ve spent money and time on a fruitless endeavor. …

I’m not suggesting you go the other direction and hire whomever you want, no matter the consequence. It is time, however, to think much more strategically about purple squirrels and the pursuit of perfect candidates everywhere.”

A modern day snipe hunt

Lance is right. The “pursuit of perfect candidates everywhere” is nothing more than a modern day snipe hunt for both recruiters and candidates alike.

Yes, no one ever finds that elusive “purple squirrel” when they’re recruiting for a job because 999 times out of a thousand, they don’t exist.

Those odds may seem a whole lot better than this week’s PowerBall, but trust me, not by that much.

Need More Candidates? Use Amazon!

 

Use Amazon to Find Candidates

 

Want to find a Cat Rambo mousepad, a replica of Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand, or a  snuggly narwhal onesie for lounging in your livingroom? All are perfectly good uses of our favorite eCommerce megastore, Amazon. But for recruiters, rather than turn to Amazon, we usually turn to those ‘normal’ talent pools like Github, LinkedIn, and Indeed searching for the candidate who we want to ‘buy’ into our vision of “the next big career move”. In many instances, these are all great store fronts with lackluster customer service and loss of remnant inventory. All perfectly logical sites to go find candidates, right? But are candidates actually engaged with those sites?

Can I Have 10 Minutes?

Users spend less than 8 minutes on LinkedIn, less than 7 minutes on Github and Twitter, less than 5 minutes on Indeed, and … surprisingly, they spend less than 1 minute a day in their Gmail. We know that the time people are spending on Facebook dwarfs all these by comparison.

But where else are they spending all that time? Well, we’re spending almost 10 minutes a day on Amazon. And that’s more time than people are spending on Google.

What about using Amazon for recruitment?

Amazon has billions of users who throwing money at content and a bigly engaged audience. This huge user base doesn’t just spectate. Amazon made $29B last year off of this untapped marketplace for candidates. That’s 23% more than we spent there in 2015.

As recruiters, we spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, yet Amazon is a social channel that recruiters pay little attention to find and connect with candidates, but maybe it’s time to change that. Remember that I call it a social channel — because just like those 3 stooges of social media, there is a cavalcade of commentary and snark to work through.

Use Amazon to Find Candidates

How to Get Started.

Amazon’s enormous user base lends itself to a few specific recruitment tactics. And it’s free. And I like free.It starts with knowing your community or the community that you want to recruit candidates from and then place in that same community. Let’s say that you are recruiting for Nurses, and specifically Urology nurses.

When doing a Google search, the search for a  ‘Urology Nurse may look like this:

Use Amazon to Find Candidates

With a 183 million visitors per day, Amazon has a pulse of what is interesting to these types of nurses Going to the search bar, we can type in “urology nurse”. Do you ever wonder what books nurses read? Or who writes the books they read? Or what gets read the most?

Use Amazon to Find Candidates

 

By change the sort by drop down, we can quickly see which books are reviewed the most, or we can scroll down the left-hand side of the page to see popular authors in the field.

Use Amazon to Find Candidates

 

Let’s go into one of those books and see what people are saying about it. Looking at the comments section on Review of Hemodialysis for Nurses and Dialysis Personnel, we are quick to discover people by name who read the book and find email addresses of people who left reviews.

 

Use Amazon to Find Candidates

 

If we click into one of the names, we get a shopper profile! It’s like magic. I would love to see what your results are. Please let me know in the comments below how you are using Amazon to recruit top candidates.

About our Author: Brian Fink:

As a member of Relus’ recruiting team, Brian Fink focuses on driving talent towards opportunity. Eager to help stretch the professional capabilities of everyone he works with, he’s helping startups grow and successfully scale their IT, Recruiting, Big Data, Product, and Executive Leadership teams. An active keynote speaker and commentator, Fink thrives on discovery and building a better recruiting mousetrap.   Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @TheBrianFink.

Recruiting Is Broken. That’s Why We Need to Develop Our Own Talent

Recruiting is broken. It’s a deeply flawed talent system.

According to a recent survey by Deloitte, the majority of human resources professionals agree with this statement.

The current state of recruiting is not meeting the demands of a 21st Century workplace because it doesn’t effectively build relationships or develop people. It lacks a human component.

Under this model, it’s focuses solely on acquiring talent to fill a role. It doesn’t respond to people as human beings, and it doesn’t meet the needs of today’s global and technology driven marketplace, which is evolving at light speed.

This mind set hemorrhages time, money and people. It also damages the company’s brand for future talent acquisition success.

A need to implement coaching programs

Deloitte’s 2014 report on human capital revealed there is a need to replace the “rank and yank” system with “coaching and development.”

It’s vital to successfully developing a 21st Century talent pool in an environment where knowledge doubles every year and “skills have a half-life of 2.5 to 5 years.”

It means human resources need to start implementing programs that truly develop talent in terms of both hard and soft skills. Human resources must implement effective coaching programs.

The new market demands adaptability, flexibility and investment to develop talent from acquisition to growth and engagement to retention.

Or maybe not, as numerous mass layoffs and studio closures demonstrate, it is sometimes necessary to just purge the pool (the broken system), which creates new challenges for those laid-off to learn how to thrive.

The bottom line is this: technology companies need to adapt to a new mindset to remain nimble, and pivot as their needs shift to onboarding and to continuously develop appropriate talent at all levels.

Adapting for a global workforce

The impact of the global workforce is a force that will also have substantial impact on human capital development.

Today’s global marketplace is not confined by geography. Trans-national corporations are not limited to national borders to source talent.

In the U.S., many people are not prepared for future jobs, and countries such as India, Romania, and the Philippines have a larger, more relevant talent pool.

The transition into a truly global workforce will have a major disruptive effect on labor and economies. Technology will also have a huge disruptive impact and eliminate the need for many jobs while creating new positions.”

Recruiting the best and brightest

In the coming years, organizations will continue to diversify their workforce. As a result, there will be an increasing demand for coaching and training specifically around the nuanced differences between communication styles and cultural expectations of different demographics.

Such cultural sensitivity training ensures departments and team members are able to work well together. It is an essential component of the human capital development model.

Not only are our workplace needs changing, attitudes toward work have also radically changed in the last five years, which is highlighted by the Millennials coming of age.

Millennials will comprise 75 percent of the workplace by 2025. Research reveals they want their work to be meaningful and creative. They also want to run their own businesses. They are not looking for a job; they are looking for a dynamic experience.

If companies want to recruit the best and the brightest, they will need to create work cultures that support these desires. These changes in what people seek in their career further reveals how badly the talent management system is broken.

If the recruitment process is a big turn off, this talent pool will walk away from negotiations. Their attitude is life is too short to be miserable.

Human capital (aka, talent) development

Human capital development focuses on the entire talent program. Beginning with a thoughtful and integrated talent acquisition to coaching employees on the job, this model addresses the process of developing people instead of just hiring, firing and enforcing policies.

The new approach has to meet the needs of a dynamic and flexible workforce as well as real time labor demands.

As positions evolve (perhaps to extinction), there will be a pressure to quickly develop talent for the emerging roles in a company. Organizations will have to expand not only their coaching strategies and programs, but also their education offerings to maintain a capable relevant workforce.

Talent procurement with an emphasis on coaching develops human capital to create the next generation of leaders.”

Today’s complex environment requires more emphasis on coaching talent — be they contracted or full time, to meet the demands and needs of business. The talent procurement business is evolving in light years. It’s now all about human capital development.

Yes, recruiting is broken; welcome to the new world of talent. This training process has to be constant, fast and efficient to keep the workforce current and continue moving the organization FORWARD.

Recruiting Designers? Introducing Scout by Dribbble.

Scout By DribbleOut of all of the places to find designers online, Dribbble is one of the most popular. Dribbble is an invite-only community where members share small screenshots (shots) that show their work, process, and current projects. Recently, they launched a product called Scout by Dribbble. For $199 a month, you can find, contact, and hire top design talent by location and skill. Zack Onisko, Dribbble’s CEO said:

 

“Scout is a tool geared towards hiring managers. If hiring managers are looking for illustrators in Berlin, it’s pretty easy to show them illustrators currently in Berlin. Our goal for expanding the search was to make sure we also captured the illustrator who may not currently live in Berlin, but would really like to live and work there if the right opportunity came along. We wanted designers to be able to show that to potential employers and I wanted potential employers to know about that additional pool of talent.”

Not everyone is as excited about this as we may be:

 

Okay. I think Dann Petty, who wrote the article above may have a point. However, for recruiters, $199 per month for unlimited access is super inexpensive. If you wanted to search for designers on Monster.com, you have to pay $575 per month. And that is only for 100 resume views. If you want to purchase Linkedin Recruiter, it can cost close to $8K per month.

I think this is a smart move for Dribbble. Not only does it widen its audience to a new market, but it will also help designers get jobs based on their merit, not just a well-worded resume.

Don’t Ban The Box. Ban Criminal Background Checks, Instead.

There is a myth that’s been perpetuated in our perpetual prison state that the purpose of incarceration is rehabilitation. The term “debt to society” has become ingrained in our vernacular as a shibboleth for sentencing; inherent is the notion that this debt can, in fact, be repaid. But the fact is, if society is the creditor, our terms are so onerous that they make payday loans seem innocuous.

No Matter Where I Go.

Once someone is convicted of a felony, of course (and in many cases, even just a minor misdemeanor), then they are effectively disenfranchised and marginalized in perpetuity, no matter what the circumstances or even charges were that lead to their conviction.

We can agree, surely, that insider trading is a far less heinous and infinitely more forgivable crime than Murder One or pederasty, and yet, for all intents and purposes, we make little distinction between the two post facto.

A conviction is a conviction, and while sentencing might drastically differ in respect to the seriousness of each offense, once you join the tens of millions of Americans defined almost exclusively by their status as convicted criminals. And largely, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

Nowhere is that more true than in the recruiting and hiring process.

 

While companies may have different value propositions, processes and positions within talent acquisition, the only real consistent element of the recruiting process across industries, roles and geographies is that pretty much every candidate must undergo a criminal background check in order to get hired.

And if a candidate doesn’t come back completely clean, well, it’s almost always a nonstarter, regardless of position fit, experience or skills.

That candidate, suffice to say, will no longer be considered, even if – as is often the case – an offer has already been made. It’s literally the only condition on most every conditional offer extended, and it is the only factor which unconditionally negates them.

Most companies have some verbiage on an application that asks if the candidate has ever been convicted of a felony (or, often, placed on diversion as is mandated by required FDIC disclosures).

This is inevitably accompanied by some verbiage that says “checking yes will not automatically disqualify you from consideration” or some equally ambiguous disclaimer, but let’s face it – both the candidate and employer know that’s a flat out lie.

Even if there’s no policy in place prohibiting the hiring of someone with a criminal record, the chances of an employer actually moving forward with a candidate with a less than perfect past are virtually non existent.

Never Leave Me Alone.

There have been efforts, largely unsuccessful, to ban this box, but in many cases, this wouldn’t really matter even if this legislation were adopted. Any gap in employment caused by incarceration has to be explained; any flexibility needed to meet often onerous conditions of parole would have to be disclosed.

This is really a lose-lose for candidates, because even if they somehow evade these questions in a screen or opt out of disclosing this stuff during the hiring process, they’ll still get flagged and disqualified during the background check process.

If they’re honest and upfront, they won’t make it that far.

And so, the cycle continues, inevitably raising recidivism and perpetuating the cycle of poverty and economic immobility that create the exact conditions under which most people commit crime.

They largely do so because they are left with no choice but to break the law, and that’s not saying they have to rob banks or commit stick ups to get enough cash to survive (particularly since many states also disqualify those with convictions from receiving social aid like welfare or EBT, effectively taking away the only “safety net” in existence).

Most, in fact, turn to the underground economy as a result of the lack of access to formal markets – predominantly, this involves growing, selling or distributing drugs, which is the cause of almost half of all convictions in the US in the first place (48.6%, to be precise).

But it’s the only money to be made when you can’t make any money, even if most involved in the trade would prefer not to be involved in a business that’s criminalized, violent and dangerous for even the smallest of small time dealers.

Same goes for guns, forgery, fraud or any of the other (less common) ways that exist to make money off market.

Even Uber disqualifies candidates with criminal records from being “partners,” so the proverbial gig economy is closed off, too. There is no way to get your side hustle on when you’re a convicted felon, so you have to get involved in a hustle that’s probably criminalized.

The only option many have for employment is to get temp jobs – inherently, ones without benefits, stability or opportunities for professional growth and development – through agencies specializing in filling menial jobs and manual labor on an ad hoc basis.

Many of these agencies, rather than doing so out of some sort of altruism, only hire felons because the risk is negated by the reward of being able to collect up to half of the money that worker makes from the client, paying the worker directly only after deducting a high percentage of their wages for doing nothing more than helping them find a job they don’t really want in the first place.

This, for some reason, is legal – an ironic contradiction that’s not lost on the workers they’re hustling (and, objectively, exploiting).

Even the most reliable workers at these thankless temp jobs, the highest performers and the most motivated, are rewarded by being fired every 89 days, then immediately rehired, so the staffing firm can avoid having to classify them as full time employees and pay the associated taxes and benefits they deserve.

This accounting trick doesn’t account for the fact these practices often lead to these marginalized workers finally opting out of this last ditch option and back into a path that leads right back to prison.

Or, of course, they can also turn to begging, vagrancy and homelessness after all employment options have been exhausted. Then, we tell them to get a job and wonder, indignantly, why they’re entitled to the handouts they’re asking for.

The Next Episode.

Here’s the thing- it’s not that convicted felons are lazy or unwilling to work. Those people are mostly on federal disability, which, again, felons are not eligible for even applying for.

At best, a disability entitles them to “compassionate release,” a shortening of their incarceration that really only serves to push them out of a system where they at least have guaranteed access to the healthcare. Ironically, inmates are the only Americans who are Constitutionally guaranteed healthcare, but that’s where the guarantees end for most.

Because when their debt to society is finally paid, most quickly learn that their freedom still comes at a tremendous cost, and the interest rate for time served will continue to crush them for the rest of their lives, in most cases.

If employers truly cared about social responsibility, if diversity was more than a compliance issue or inclusion was more than just a branding buzzword, and we really wanted the drive, dedication and passion so many job descriptions and career sites say they’re looking for in an ideal hire, then a felony conviction would be a non0issue for recruiting, if not an asset.

But by refusing to hire those candidates with criminal records, we prove again and again that employers are guilty of the same sort of discrimination and bias that EOE/AA regulations were established to eliminate.

For whatever reason, though, while its anathema (and illegal) to categorically deny employment to anyone who is a visible minority, served in the military (where society somehow owes a debt to them, as the killing is condoned) or had a disability, it is perfectly legal – and established practice – to refuse to hire anyone with a felony conviction, under any circumstance.

This policy does more harm to more people than any non-violent offense that any felon could commit. But while it’s a crime, really, it violates no laws.

Unlike, say, someone who has served a prison term for the possession of marijuana, which in many jurisdictions remains a felony offense (talk about Reefer Madness).

But rules are rules, and without them, arbitrary and unjust though they may be, society would cease to function, and HR would cease to exist.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not only socially unjust, but it’s also bad business – and when it comes to recruiting and hiring, that’s really the bottom line.

Has LinkedIn Found the Missing Link? Welcome LinkedIn Video

Besides being social networks, what does Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all have in common? Video! And now you can add LinkedIn to the list of video sharing platform. Any mobile user, on Android and IOS phones, have the ability to upload or film native videos. And it is truly easy. But here is the question. Why would anyone on a business site want to record and upload a video?

Since pre-Microsoft acquisition, LinkedIn has tried to become more ‘trendy.’ A little more ‘relevant.’ Starting back in 2015, we saw the transition Linkedin started looking less and less like a business site and more and more like Facebook. CEO Jeff Weiner described the change like this:

“There’s going to be an evolution from a little bit of everything to what matters most to you professionally.”

But what we all have seen this year is that Linkedin is making major changes. they want to be more of a social network.  So back to the question. Why would anyone want to use video on LinkedIn?

“…text cannot capture the work,” said Pete Davies, a group product manager at the LinkedIn. But when you can record those kinds of jobs, he added, “we find they make for stunning visuals.”

Potentially, this is a great branding tool. Both for users and business. Use it to record what is going on in the office. Perhaps you can record natively an event you are attending. For whatever reason you want to share video content, LinkedIn just doesn’t want you to have to go to another site to do so.

Unfortunately, don’t leave Facebook just yet. So far LinkedIn video does not have live streaming capability but I am sure that is what is next.

How does it Work?

In the LinkedIn mobile app, find the share box for (iOS) or the post button on Android phones. Tap on the video icon. Now, you can record a video to post now or upload any video you already have on your phone.

As a bonus, with LinkedIn video, you can get data about who is looking at your video, where they live, how many views you have and receive comments. It is very easy. The video below shows my first foray into LinkedIn video. Sure it is “neat.” The answer we don’t know yet is, will users see this as a benefit or more of a social destraction.

 

How Social is your Social Recruiting?

According to Statista there will be 2.6 billion users of social networking sites by 2018. But not all social networking sites are created equal.

If you ask the average recruiter what social networks they recruit on, more than likely you will hear LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. And while they are definitely powerhouses in the space, if they are the only sites that you regularly look at, you could be missing out on a lot of valuable candidates.

Find your Tribe

You don’t have to be active on ALL the social media sites out there. That would be impossible. What you can do, however, is to take the time to find out what sites will produce the very best candidates. Here are some websites that are popular with the general public but overlooked as a resource for recruiters.

Reddit

Known as the “Front Page of the Internet,” Reddit is a site where users, aka Redditors, share links, information, stories, and news. Visitors then can “upvote” or “downvote” on what is posted. That way, you can have an idea on what other Redditors find to be the most newsworthy.

To keep things organized, people then create moderated “subreddits” to share more specific information around a topic. For example, a subreddit under the category “Funny” is — /r/animalslookingatfood.

Let’s say you are a recruiter based in New York that does recruiting in the accounting industry. With Reddit, you can find groups like — /r/Accounting or:

NY_Tax_Professionals

r/AskNYC

/r/NYCjobs/

I need to warn you that to use Reddit, you have to be VERY disciplined. It’s very easy to just get sucked in. You can be recruiting one minute, and the next minute, left unchecked, you could be looking at pictures of the world’s most beautiful turtle. (That actually happened to me while writing this article.)

Medium

Medium is a publishing platform that is an alternative to traditional blogging sites. It even helps make the novice content creator look professional. As a bonus they use HUMANS! Yes, similarly to Reddit, they use humans to promote the best content.

For recruiters, Medium makes sense because of its search capabilities. For example, if you are looking for Home Care Nurses, in the search box you simply type “Home Care Nurse.” The results you get are stories, publications, tags, and PEOPLE all associated with Home Care Nurses.

Inevitably, it will give you more results to find more talent.

Github

Billed as the world’s leading software development site, GitHub primarily allows developers to host and review code, manage software, and generally build out products among millions of their peers. As a recruiter, you can use the search bar to query excellent developers as well.

For example, if you need a coder skilled in Javascript and based in NYC, you can enter “language: javascript location: new york city” in the search bar and filter the search results accordingly. SignalHire actually now has a Chrome extension that works with GitHub and allows you to scrape contact information for developers from the site. It also works on LinkedIn and other sites; try it for free here.

Niche Social Sites

Everyone knows that the Internet is an endless sea of information. That’s why we are seeing so many niche websites – a site tailored for a very specific audience. Here are some that may help as you recruit:

Nurses:

Data Science and Analytics

Sales Professionals

Web Developers

Diverse Candidates

Social RecruitingBuild Relationships

To truly stand out in social media groups, it’s not enough to just join. You must build relationships, and start by asking questions.

Ask members what they wish a recruiter would do when approaching them. Find out what is most important to them when looking for a position. More importantly, ask people about the work that they do so that you can vet candidates properly.

Also, be passionate and get excited about the candidates that you search for. True relationships occur when you are passionate about the people you engage with. Of course, you cannot fake passion; it has to be authentic.

Lastly, talk to the people you connect with. You don’t have to get into deep conversations, but a simple message like, “Hi. Thanks for sharing such great content on LinkedIn. I find it really helpful” works well. Don’t make it about you.

The most important part about using social media sites for recruiting is to make sure that you are truly social. Spend the time to research what sites are going to help you to be successful.

And one more thing: the more sites that you can reach out on, the better chance you’ll have to find THE perfect candidate for the job.

Editor’s Note: This post was sponsored by SignalHire, and RecruitingDaily received compensation for publishing this post. One last little bit of disclaimer (thanks, lawyers): this post does not constitute an endorsement of SignalHire on behalf of RecruitingDaily, but we’re convinced they are doing some interesting stuff.

About the Author: Jackye Clayton is an Editor here at RecruitingDaily. Follow her on Twitter @JackyeClayton or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Is HR Ready (and Willing) to Adapt to All the Tech Changes in Recruitment?

From self-driving vehicles to smart appliances at home, recent and upcoming technological advancements and changes promise to make our lives easier, more efficient, and more cost-effective.

For businesses, innovation needs to be harnessed to automate repetitive, labor-intensive tasks, gain more from fewer investments in time and money, and reduce costly human errors.

The HR industry is no exception to this, with the development of employee management automation and the multitude of technological changes designed to improve practically every aspect of recruitment processes.

However, as the automated capabilities of these technologies steadily improve, HR professionals need to know how to adapt to the onslaught of these recruitment innovations.

Here are a few ways anyone in the recruitment field can adapt to technological changes that will change our work and lives:

1 – Don’t worry about losing your job

One of the benefits of being updated with technological advances in the recruitment field is that you learn that machines are not about to drive you into employment. Instead, they’ll be taking away boring, repeatable, programmable tasks in your processes while your job will simply evolve into more of a relationship management role between the company and the candidates.

Additionally, LinkedIn reports that 56 percent of recruiters said that their hiring volume would increase in 2017, but only 26 percent of them expect the size of their recruiting teams to increase.

If your team is one these time and people-constraint recruiting departments, you should probably be among the first to welcome these technological changes.

2 – Identify problem areas in your recruitment process

Technology is meant to solve problems.

Before you adopt or get management buy-in for any new technologies, it’s good to start by identifying any challenges your recruitment department is experiencing. By doing so, you can later pinpoint how new HR tech can improve your existing processes.

To start you off, here are some problems faced by many recruiters today:

  • Resume screening — Screening resumes might be exhausting for you because you receive too many unqualified applications, there are not enough people on the team, or there’s simply insufficient time to screen them all. Some 75 percent of resumes are unqualified, making manual resume screening one of the most inefficient parts of the recruitment process.
  • Lack of response to candidates — You may also be among the number of companies who can’t respond to every single applicant. According to a CareerBuilder survey, 58 percent of job seekers have a negative perception of a company they don’t hear back from after submitting an application.
  • Unconscious biases — While unknown to them, a common obstacle that actually hinders recruiters from attracting the right talent is bias. Every person has biases, of course, but for recruiters, the consequence of bias can be costly: they may be dissuading women from applying because of job description wording or focusing more on gender, race, and age instead of actual skills.

3 – Look into available technologies

Once you’ve identified problems in your recruitment process, it’s time to read up on potential solutions, i.e. technology. In the three examples listed above, there are some existing technology that could help:

  • Machine learning for automated resume screening — Machine learning (ML) is a computer program or algorithm that can teach itself by analyzing data and continuously learning to increase the accuracy of its recommended solutions. In applicant tracking systems, machine learning is being integrated to analyze job descriptions and the database of resumes, so the system learns which candidates get hired and which ones don’t. Afterward, it applies the knowledge it learned about the experience, skills, and other credentials of successful hires for screening candidates for new openings.
  • AI chatbots for candidate engagement — Artificial intelligence (AI) is a machine that can mimic human abilities such as problem-solving and planning. AI chatbots can be programmed to improve the candidate experience through immediate engagement. The chatbot can interact with candidates in real time by answering inquiries about the job and the company, asking pre-qualification questions, and providing updates and next-steps.
  • AI for automated screening and natural language processing — Some recruitment platforms now exist to gather skills data instead of identifiable information such as gender, race, and age, and uses that information to match the employer’s requirements. Moreover, you can now find natural language processing software to analyze job descriptions and identify potentially-biased language (e.g. “masculine” words like ambitious and dominate). Several HR tools and technologies currently exist to solve problems in candidate management, screening, applicant tracking, and more. Aside from learning about them, however, what matters more is the ability to match the right tech to address the needs of your recruitment team.

4 – Get management buy-in

Getting manager or executive buy-in for new technologies is all about “framing the issue.”

As Susan Ashford and James Detert wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “An issue’s place on your organization’s list of priorities depends heavily on how you package the idea. A new technological development might seem like techie trivia until you explain how it supports a strategic goal.”

In your case, you need to tailor your pitch in a way that discusses how the technology you want can improve your department’s productivity and processes.

For example, acquiring AI chatbot solution will enable you to increase your responsiveness to candidates and thereby, enhancing the candidate experience, as well as the perception of your organization to non-employees.

Once management sees how your initiative fits into the big picture, they will become more willing to allocate resources to it.

As we are on the verge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it’s imperative for professionals to learn about and take advantage of the technological changes that are causing a disruption their industry.

For human resources professionals, this means staying updated with innovations in AI and machine learning that can improve applicant tracking, screening, and candidate engagement and management, among others.

However, they also need to start being proponents of HR tech and tools that can address recruitment problems in their respective organizations to thrive in this wave of technological changes.

The Five: Interview Mistakes That You Need to Stop Making Today

Finding the right people to hire isn’t easy. But interviewing day after day can be a pretty mundane task. To add to that, you get pressure from hiring managers to hurry up and find candidates. Furthermore, you are working on multiple positions.  Once you add all of that together, it is easy to see why mistakes happen during the interview process. Here are five mistakes to look out for when interviewing candidates.

Interview Mistakes1. Thinking Your ‘Friend’ is the Best Candidate

Often when interviewing a candidate, you meet someone you just click with. You feel like you have known them forever. You start dreaming of how fun meetings and company happy hours will be in this candidate is hired. All of that is great, but it does not make them qualified for the job. The hope is that you find a candidate that not only would be a good hang but will be able to do the best job for your company.

2. Mistrusting Pre-Hire Assessment Results

One of the reasons that companies use pre-hire tests is because they seem to be able to measure things humans can’t. People can only use their best guess. Pre-hire tests are backed by science. So what happens when you find a candidate that you want to hire but the pre-assessment test results all reveal they are not a good fit? The answer is easy. Don’t interview the candidate. You will be wasting your time and the hiring manager’s time.

3. Moving Too Quickly

Sometimes, especially with hard to fit jobs, your instinct is to submit the first person who meets most of the qualifications to the hiring manager. Of course, you have pressure from the hiring manager to send them candidates quickly. But if you submit the resume of an applicant who does not meet all of the requirements, just to meet your metrics,  it will just make you look like you don’t know how to recruit. Don’t settle. Take the time to find the candidate you need and send only the best to the hiring manager.

Interview Mistakes4. Asking the Wrong Behavioral Questions

During the course of an interview, you will ask behavioral questions to try to get a feel for how a candidate reacts to various work situations. Don’t make the mistake of asking questions about how they would do something rather than how they did do something. For example:

  • How would you handle a difficult co-worker? = WRONG
  • Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult person. = RIGHT
  • Give an example of how you set goals. = WRONG
  • Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you achieved it. = RIGHT

Listen carefully to how a candidate answers the questions. Are they telling you how it should happen or how it did happen?

5. Talking Too Much

Since recruiters have to talk to several potential candidates a day, the gift of gab is a must. But if you talk too much, that gift can get in the way of finding the right candidate. Furthermore, it can destroy the candidate experience. Of course, you want to tell the candidate about the company, the role you are hiring for etc. But in order to see if a candidate is a good fit, you have to get them talking. If you talk too much, after the interview, you won’t know if they are a good candidate or not.

In conclusion, while it may not seem like it, the recruiter is one of the most important roles at a company. It is important to take your time. Slow down a bit relax… Time’s up – now go find some candidates!

About Recruiting Daily

With over 100K strong in our network, RecruitingDaily.com is part of the RecruitingDaily.com, LLC family of Recruiting and HR communities.

Our goal is to provide information that is meaningful. Without compromise, our community comes first.

Learn more

Explore
Help & Support
Follow Us

© 2025 Recruiting Daily. All rights reserved.   |   Terms of Use   |   Privacy Policy

Loading...