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The Week That Was 5.5.17: Yello, Hibob, Gmail, Amazon, Forbes, Statista

Every Friday in case you missed it, ‘The Week That Was” is your recruiting rundown. All you need to know about anything that matters is new in recruiting. We go out to the interwebs and gather interesting and insightful recruiting news we will interest you. This week we got mello, said hi to Bob, went phishing, studied ageism, and found the GOAT of Recruiting firms. 

Word of the Week:

Horseshitedness – Trying to cover up your bias by saying a candidate is not a good culture fit.

Tweet of the Week:

 

 

Mello Yello: Yello Survey Becomes Guidebook to Millennial and Gen Z Hungry Recruiters

With graduation on the horizon, a new crop of talented millennials and their generation Z successors will be entering the workforce. Yet recruiters have some work to do to attract this new generation to their company. Talent recruiting software company Yello, today announced the release of their second annual Yello Recruiting Study. The study shows recruiters a path to attracting this new generation of top talent. Click here to read the entire article.

 

What about Bob?: HR and employee benefits platform Hibob raises $17.5M led by U.S.-based Battery Ventures

Hibob, an HR and employee benefits platform for small to medium-sized businesses, has raised $17.5 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is U.S. VC firm Battery Ventures, with participation from Arbor Ventures, and Fidelity’s Eight Roads Ventures. Existing backer Bessemer Venture Partners also joined the round, which brings total funding for the U.K. and Israel-based startup to $25 million.

Launched last year, Hibob has built what it describes as a cloud-based HR and benefits platform to help businesses manage and engage with their employees. The software includes all of the day-to-day HR admin tools you’d expect, but also places a lot more emphasis on employee engagement, with a bottom-up approach to the formation and support of employee ‘clubs’ or interest groups. Click here to read the entire article.

 

Gone Fishing: Up to 1 Million Gmail Users Affected in Massive Phishing Attack

A sophisticated scam against Gmail users on Wednesday afternoon may have affected as many as 1 million people, Google suggested in a statement late Wednesday night.

“We realize people are concerned about their Google accounts, and we’re now able to give a fuller explanation after further investigation,” Google said in a statement emailed by its communications team. “We have taken action to protect users against an email spam campaign impersonating Google Docs, which affected fewer than 0.1 percent of Gmail users.”

Google’s characterization is somewhat misleading, however, given the massive scale of its business. Gmail said it had more than 1 billion monthly active users last year. So if “fewer than 0.1 percent” of its users were affected by Wednesday’s phishing scam, that implies somewhere around 1 million users were affected. Click here to read the entire article.

The 80’s called. They want their Job Posting Back:  Amazon posts biased job description.

In March, a software consultant in Seattle received a job posting for a development engineer position at a large local tech company. The email came from an outside recruiter. Most of it was normal, but in the final line, something stood out: Applicants, it read, should have a minimum five years of experience and “less than 20 years of experience.”

The consultant had never seen anything like maximum experience on a posting before. It struck him as overtly ageist. Representatives from the Seattle Office of Civil Rights and the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agree.

The company with the opening? Amazon. Click here to read the entire article.

 

Simply the Best: America’s Best Recruiting Firm’s

If you speak with startup founders or large-company CEOs, they’ll probably tell you that hiring good people is their biggest challenge. It’s no wonder there are thousands of recruiting firms in the U.S., all vying to help companies get talent in the door. But which recruiters are the most well-respected?

Forbes worked with analytics firm Statista to compile two lists of America’s best recruiting firms. The first set ranks 250 executive search firms, defined as companies that place executives in positions with at least $100,000 in annual pay. The second ranks 250 professional search firms, which place employees in roles with less than $100,000 in annual income. Click here to read the entire article.

 

Deans Corner: Send Your Email to SMS

Ever want to send an Email to someone’s Cell Phone? Watch the video below where Dean Dacosta shows us how we can do this with Chrome Extension, Send Your Email to SMS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Joker: Workplace Morale, Unlimited PTO, and The Best Damn Employee Job Description Ever

Workplace Morale is the highest it’s ever been.

Talk about taking “ish” to all things “serious”.  Lets start with the idea that Workplace morale is not your strongest notch in the bedpost. In 2017 it’s more important to be PC than intelligent.  God forbid our Facebook live video isn’t up to par or we eat a meal that actually HAS gluten in it (say it ain’t so!).  God forbid we use the word God!!  When did “real” life become so full of judgement that we, as a society,  actually forgot to, well live?  

I digress.

Remember the class clown?  The first grade kid with his fart jokes – the 12th grader with a boner joke that he not dare say too loudly because it would have made even the likes of Gilbert Gottfried blush with embarrassment?  Who didn’t love those guys?  Who’s the funniest person you work with today?  If you were asked to list the funniest, nicest, cheeriest, person you worked with – could you?  Does that person still exist in today’s world of PC, gluten-free office (and life) rhetoric? It seems that even today, every office still has someone that fills this role. It is an Archetype of the Modern Era. The Richmeister for the 2000s.

Remember the 80’s?

The phrase ‘work smarter not harder’ no longer applies today.  Everyone is working harder, longer (that’s what she said).  Salaries aren’t on the rise like they once were.  Remember the 80s? When the economy was thriving and jobs fell from the sky and situations like the ones at Uber or the State Department weren’t overwhelming the day’s headlines? 

 Take those situations and couple them with the middle aged men who continue to spread their malaise and depression into the workplace (and everywhere else) and what do we have in 2017?  Shit stew.

Ain’t no free lunch gonna make my day.

So does anyone actually LIKE work? Seems like no one likes working except the workaholics with no life, like us. (Ok maybe it’s JUST me but I feel better when there’s a group). It’s called ‘work’ for a reason.  If

it weren’t something we didn’t enjoy we’d call it ‘Super-Duper Happy Fun Time’.  However, you’re not required to hate your job.  It’s not illegal to enjoy heading into the office.  Why do we look at the person who smiles throughout their workday with disgust?  Happy employees make better employees – right?  

Your employer is spending their time and money on you.  Today’s workplace (in most cases) is very employee focused. In the kingdom we so call, employer branding we are told that we (the people) are the most important asset the company has. From slides, to foosball, quiet room and safe spaces it’s all about you.

Let’s cut to the chase, there is no amount of free lunches, unlimited PTO or nap pods that can make up for your daily drudgery. These distractions are designed to keep you in the office away from the light of day and of course the greener grass on the other side at your nearest neighborhood competitor.

Sorry folks, the reality, is that the only other place this works is called prison.

The bottom line is that a happy group of people work smarter, work better together and are more productive. That has a direct effect on the company’s bottom line, making money for its employees and shareholders.           

Rather than keep it in this paragraph form, we felt a Job Description would do a better job of describing what the Jester should be doing. Past performance indicates future performance.  So, here it goes…

The best damn job description ever

Large firm seeking Morale Manager

Can you name the top rated comedian’s for each decade from 1960 to present. Can name 3-5 comedians from 1900-1960. The Marx Brothers only count once, you don’t get 4 points for them.

This individual must be able to recognize the negative effects the average workday can have on employees.  Role will require (but not be limited to): joke telling, meme sharing and speaking truth to power (think Jester). If you can successfully nail the above questions, this career move may be for you.

Job Title:       Office Jester, Merry Maker, and General Do-Gooder

Reports to:    No-one and Anyone they prefer

ABC Corporation is looking for an office Jester to help facilitate humor, gaiety, and meaningless conversations inducing stress relief. Although this position is to facilitate jocularity, we are taking this position very seriously, and there is a list of qualifications that we would like to see to make this role successful for both you and the ABC Corporation.

Qualifications:   

  • Totally capable of never taking one’s self seriously, able to laugh at your own mistakes
  • Consistently able to make others laugh based on clean but relevant humor
  • Emotionally Empathetic on a group and individual level
  • Can tell the story of when they were most embarrassed, without being embarrassed
  • Could tell the Aristocrats joke better than Gilbert Gottfried but understands how to convey it in an office
  • Must own this mask. Also, acceptable: A Wizard Outfit or Slim Goodbody Suit, will supply the hat
  • Has seen Trading Places, Coming to America and the Golden Child and loves them all

Preferred but not necessary:

  • BA or Higher in Sociology or Psychology
  • Clown school education, like the above degrees
  • Yoga or Mindfulness Leadership Certification

8 Underwhelming But Mandatory Long Term Goals for this role:

  1. You are the meme maker. Send one meme every Friday reflecting on the week
  2. Share one viral video, again entertaining but thoughtful, every Wednesday’s are raunchy days. Get creative.
  3. Open Office Hours for when someone needs to shoot the breeze, needs a smile or just has to take a load off
  4. Establish one voluntary Yoga or Mindfulness session, 1 hr per week
  5. One office Fun Day per month, such as Silly Hat Day
  6. One unique office outing per month preferably team building based
  7. Open mic lunch where people could see if they could out joke you
  8. One day a month we should have a theme day of how you should talk, i.e. Talk like a pirate day

 

Conclusion:

Yes, this may seem outrageous – the overall point is not a laughing matter (see what I did there?).  It’s been proven that a happy workplace is a productive one.  Employees that are happily engaged in their environment increase productivity by 12%!  Imagine that.

 

About the authors

Derek Zeller draws from over 16 years in the recruiting industry. The last 11 years he has been involved with federal government recruiting specializing within the cleared Intel space under OFCCP compliance. He is currently serves as Technical Recruiting Lead at Comscore.

Jeff Newman has been a full life cycle recruiter for over 17 years. He has never limited myself to one industry or one skill set. His staffing philosophy is simple: Interview to hire as opposed to looking for reasons not to hire and to speak with each person instead of simply pushing paper.

Talent: Should you try before you buy?

Weebly’s hiring practices (as described in the Business Insider article located here) are used to prompt the discussion on what indicators companies should use (and how they should use them) in their hiring practices. I don’t know any detail on Weebly’s hiring process beyond the aforementioned article. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a happy Weebly customer using their product for multiple websites in my household.

A recent article by Business Insider highlighting Weebly’s hiring approach reminds me of the age-old question:

How do you reliably hire the best talent for your business?

According to Schmidt and Hunter’s foundational 1998 article on The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology, the single most reliable indicator of job performance is work sample tests (54%). Considering the single most reliable indicator of future job performance is only slightly more accurate than a coin flip, it’s no surprise companies continue searching for ways to hire in the most accurate way possible.

Weebly’s approach seems to be one of the latest attempts to de-risk the hiring process, similar to “temp-to-perm” hiring or probationary periods. If their process is effective for them, all the powerWeebly Hiring to them, but there are, as Business Insider alludes to in the article, some challenges with the approach.

The first challenge is successfully headhunting passive candidates. Very few, if any, candidates would walk away from their job for a trial week (even if it’s paid) for the potential of employment in a new role. The Business Insider article does mention that Weebly supports an alternative schedule for circumstances where a candidate has a current job but doesn’t go into any detail.

The accommodation of employed candidates introduces the second potential challenge. Without knowing the detail of how the alternative schedule process works for evaluating currently employed candidates, there is a risk that disparate impact is introduced into the hiring process because unemployed candidates might go through more rigorous evaluation or vice versa.

The last challenge to consider is the message the trial week sends to a prospective hire. Some might see it as an opportunity to fully evaluate Weebly (which it certainly is) but others may see it as a lack of confidence in Weebly’s ability to confidently select talent, uncertainty about the candidate, or an unnecessary roadblock in the hiring process. For positions where there is a tight supply but high demand (e.g. engineers, designers, etc.), this might be enough friction in the hiring process for candidates to self-select out of the process with Weebly to pursue opportunities with other companies. This, of course, might be another beneficial “filter” for Weebly, but perhaps not.

In the end, I have to assume Weebly, like most other businesses, is looking for effective ways to reliably hire the best talent for its business. As Schmidt and Hunter’s article clearly shows, there is no silver bullet indicator to reliably predict job performance. Instead, the prudent move is to employ multiple indicators to significantly increase the likelihood of selecting the best talent. Employing a week-long case study might introduce more challenges than benefits, but the idea of a case study should be a cornerstone in any hiring process. Combining a case study with structured interviews, assessments, and reference checks, a company can create a highly reliable candidate selection process but also mitigate most, if not all, of the potential challenges listed above.

Bryce Murray Red BullBryce Murray is a veteran of both in-house and agency recruiting. He serves as the VP of talent acquisition at Red Bull and as managing director of the Talent Acquisition Group, an executive search firm he founded. You can reach to him on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

An Open Letter to Recruiters     

I love recruiting. Where else can you have the opportunity to simultaneously love AND hate so many people at the same time? Lately, recruiting as an industry is getting a bad rap. There’s some truth to what people say: In the staffing/free agent world, recruiters can be mercenaries, choosing dollars over building a great candidate experience. In corporate roles, it’s easy to see why recruiters are called lazy, inside the box thinkers. Don’t be offended; I don’t mean YOU. But we have to know that it’s a perception held by many.

What I want to bring to your attention are a few everyday words and phrases that a lot of us use without thinking. We can’t change recruiting culture overnight, but we CAN stop saying these things, things that I think undercut what we do and feed other people’s perceptions of our jobs.

The War on Talent:

Anyone reading this fought in a war? I didn’t. But I served in the Army reserves, know a few veterans, and I study history as a hobby. Every time I see this idiotic phrase I want to slap someone. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT WAR IS? How are we comparing our competition over a limited talent pool to what’s happening in Syria? To what happened at Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, Nagasaki, and thousands of other places? Whenever I see this phrase used, I immediately classify the person using it as intellectually lazy.

Thought Leader:

Pretentious much? If it IS to be used, let someone else say it ABOUT you. As in, “Boy, that Elon Musk is a THOUGHT LEADER in a wide variety of fields.” Are you Elon Musk? Me either. I have nothing against calling yourself a subject matter expert (or SME), but again, let someone else say it ABOUT you the first time. See also: “Disrupter.”

Temps:

This one drove me crazy back when I was in staffing. I know it’s human nature to shorten words for expediency, but c’mon, it’s demeaning. Especially when they’re right THERE in front of you. I call them temporary workers, or temporaries, or even contract workers. When I know them, I try to call them by their name. It’s a small thing, but why shouldn’t there be dignity in every job?

Ninja:

With one big exception (the folks over at Social Talent, who truly own it) this is a word that just needs to go away. There’s a job on LI right now called “Time Ninja.” Yeah, they’re looking for a time/attendance HR coordinator. SO NINJA LIKE!

Gig Economy:

Because, you know, going to work is just like being an aspiring musician. You can be creative! Express yourself artistically! Starve because you’re not making enough money and get sick because you don’t have any healthcare!

Okay, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Let me reiterate my love of recruiting and say that I respect and value the 90% of us who get it, who do it for the right reasons, who CARE. Now it’s over to you: Am I way off here? Did I miss anything? What words or phrases are YOU sick of?

Thanks for taking my call, I’ll hang up and listen. (mic drop)

 

About our Author: Paul Miller has been in recruiting for 20+ years, working in staffing and as a consultant for Monster.com. He is currently the Director of Talent Acquisition for Goodwill of North Georgia. You can reach him on LinkedIn by clicking here.

 

 

Product Review: Elucify

I want to show you an amazing tool and believe it or not; it is not a Chrome Extension. The tool is Elucify. This is a completely free site that gives free access to their database so you can find contact information. The reason they can do this free is they are completely crowdsourced. All of the people who part of the Elucify “Community” contributes to their contact database. In order for you to enjoy the benefits of Elucify, you have to signup using your Outlook account or work Gmail.

How Elucify Finds Contact Information

There are two ways to use this tool; ‘Lead Lookup’ and ‘List Finder.’ With Lead Lookup, you enter the company name you are targeting, and it will immediately find: LinkedIn profiles, names, emails, job titles as well as email accuracy.  With List Finder, you are able to, with the help of filters, narrow it down to a more granular level. For example, use this to using things like company size, industry, Job titles, and decision makers.

  • Names
  • LinkedIn Profiles
  • Emails
  • Job Titles

Additionally, it will let you know how confident With List Finder, you can, with the help of filters, narrow it down to a more granular level using things like company size, and decision makers. You then have the ability to create a CSV file.

Some additional benefits of using Elucify are:

  • Access to 2M contacts at 170k companies
  • Unlimited company searches
  • Advanced company information
  • 100 bulk lead exports per week

In summary, if you cannot use Chrome Extensions and you need to find candidate info, this is a great tool. Click here to get a chance to test it for yourself. In the meantime, take a look at my video to see how I use Elucify.

 

 

 

Find COntact InformationAbout our Author: Dean Da Costa is a highly experienced and decorated recruiter, sourcer, and manager with deep skills and experience in HR, project management, training & process improvement.

Dean is best known for his work in the highly specialized secured clearance and mobile arenas, where he has been a top performing recruiter and sourcer.  Dean’s keen insight and the creation of innovative tools and processes for enhancing and changing staffing have established Dean as one of the top authorities in sourcing and recruiting. Connect with Dean at LinkedIn or follow @DeanDaCosta on Twitter.

 

Culture Fit: The Basics

 

Corporate CultureWhen I was new to the workforce, having fewer than 5 years experience in anything other than school and research consulting for nonprofits in the Balkans, it was hard to understand what company culture should be and what would fit with me. For us “Millennials” we were just looking for a way to pay back our college debt, and I wasn’t at all focused on the idea that maybe the recruiting process should be more of a reciprocal relationship rather than one giving the power to the employer. I just wanted to be hired! I wanted to grow my skill set and see what I could do in the position for which I had applied.

 

Obviously, looking back that was a pretty big mistake. I now know one of the first questions when thinking about joining a company is: Does the company’s culture fit with who you and what you want to do?

 

Yeah, sure. But what about perspectives of the company?

 

Take a look at Uber; an example of an organization whose company culture is being dragged through the dirt for some very valid reasons. A company that had so much going for it is now crumbling in front of our eyes largely due to issues around their company and leadership culture. Susan J. Fowler’s damning blog post on her experiences with the toxic masculine culture of the company continues to be widely shared and caused Uber’s senior executives to release statements on how they will seek to change the apparent horrific sexism in the company. Further, even more recently, an engineer from Uber committed suicide and the employee’s widow is blaming Uber’s culture.
It can be easy to say “Just don’t be an Uber,” but, of course, developing your idea of your company’s culture can be difficult.

 

Do you even know what you want?

 

First step in creating a work culture that doesn’t suck is simply coming to terms with what you’re looking to be about. What type of culture do you want to be known for? And, what culture do you want your employees to be like?

This is something you and your team have to decide. It has to come from the company and not just the CEO. You work as a group. You will continue to work as a group. And, you should decide how your culture should be as a group.

 

What does a positive company culture look like?

The internet has a bunch of lists you can find on what a “positive” company culture should be. All of which are no-brainers. However, as I’m sure you know that this is easier said than done. For the most part, I’d say that a positive company culture is one that enables employees to be themselves and to thrive in their positions, that in turn will at the same time provide solid company company culture basicsgrowth.

As Steve Levy put it, “[c]ulture is a beast that engulfs everything in its path. It’s Love, it’s Hate, and all other emotions mixed together. Sometimes it regurgitates, sometimes it’s satiated. And sometimes it simply stagnates…” In fact, they argue that it’s “evolving.”

 

There is no one secret formula to developing a positive culture. However, you’ll learn fast the pitfalls that lie ahead when it comes to what works and what doesn’t work.

 

A company’s culture is also full of diversity. Actual diversity.

 

On another note, I also see a correlation between diversity and inclusion and company culture. If your company is made up of a diverse and inclusive workforce, ideas and the quality of employee performance should be on the rise.

 

Belinda Parmar and her company the Empathy Business have created a nifty index showing companies that are what they describe as more “empathetic”; the criteria for the index were developed by Parmar and her team. The index highlights that those companies known for better work cultures (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc.) also generate the most profit.

 

CHRO of LinkedIn, Pat Waldors, who is speaking at HR Tech World in San Francisco on June 14 and 15, believes that a sense of belonging is vital in maintaining a welcoming, inclusive workforce. And this concept works because just like empathy, which I know may sound a bit crass, this is what keeps employees engaged, dedicated, and finding meaning in what they do; they keep talent wanting to work with you.

A couple of years back, Laszlo Bock, who was then Google’s SVP of People Operations told an interviewer from Bloomberg that there are two key ways to ensure employees don’t just quit: 1) “The quality of the people they work with” and 2) “The feeling that the work they do is meaningful.” This again circles back to what type of people you are recruiting and how you are treating your employees.  No one said creating and maintaining a good company culture would be easy, but it is all interconnected.

 

company culture basics HRNGo forth and make your company culture great again…

 

At the end of the day, an organization’s culture is what drives it forward and sustains it. If you have a crap culture then no one wants to work for you, and no one will give a damn about leaving for a workplace that has a better, more engaging culture.

Crafting a positive culture takes time, and it’s only through reflection that you and your team can collectively decide what that really is for your company.

 

Alex Cooper HRN Alex Cooper is the Content Specialist for HRN, organizer of HR Tech World Shows. He edits and manages the HRN Blog, where he writes on the intersections of tech, work, and society. Alex received his B.A. from The College of William and Mary and his M.A. from the Central European University. You can follow him @wgacooper.

For tickets to what will be the first HR Tech World event in the United States go HERE

 

 

ACGT: The DNA of a Tech Recruiter with @levyrecruits

If you ask people where the money is in Agency recruiting, tech is where it is at. Well sure because tech jobs are the most difficult to fill and in the highest demand. We on RecruitingTools wrote a complete series on how to be a tech recruiter. This week, we are going to get the always quotable Steve Levy’s take on what it takes to be a top IT Recruiter. Make sure to register so that you can be part of the conversation. What are the building blocks for the IT Recruiter? Steve Levy says they are:

  • (A)cumen [real knowledge about the role and talent communities]
  • (C)hrome [extensions]
  • (G)uile [you have to think like a techie to catch a techie]
  • (T)enacity [because it’s a friggin’ jungle out there]…

Here is the ultimate technical recruiting paradox: we have too much information but not enough information to find the people we need to fill roles. Technical recruiters are given the job description but most have no idea what the words mean nor possess an understanding of talent landscapes.

Tom Leung, CEO of Seattle-based Poachable stated, “There are certain job functions where the battle for talent is just ruthless. If you’re a Seattle company looking for a mobile developer right now, it may take you six to 12 months to find someone.” So where do we start?

How about you start by joining me and Steve Friday, May 5th 2017 for RecruitingLive. They are always fun and with Steve Levy live, you never know what you are going to get. I wonder if he will break into song again…

The Five: Chrome Extensions for Sourcers We Wish We Knew About Earlier

The Five is a regular column where we will be looking at the five top technologies to solve common recruiting problems. 

You have too much work to do – we want to help you take some of that plate. With the latest bunch of Chrome extensions we found, you will wonder why you ever worked so hard. Your mind will be blown. Within this list, you will find candidate information you never thought of looking for and customize an email for them. From there, you can track the email to see when it was opened. From there you can send video instructions for how to apply,  or where to find info about your company. All this and it can be done from a simple easy drop down list so you can verify this information straight from your desk/lap top. I am usualy a bit more verbose, but I am very excited. Let’s get started:

Accompany for Gmail:

The tagline for this product is ” The Executives Best Friend.” But, it could just as easily be called, “A Recruiters Best Friend” as well. This Chrome Extension is a game changer for recruiters. And you are going to look so cool when you start using it. It gives you all that stuff we want from the other social contact finders and then gives you a dossier of information so that you have all the information you could possibly want about a persin in one place. How it works is, it takes information from your Gmail contacts. For example, email, contacts, social, professional feeds, and calendars. From there it builds a comprehensive database of all the relevant information to all the people most who are most important to a person’s professional social graph. It does more than I can even describe. It is in beta and it is free but worth a million bucks for the knowledge you can and for the embarrassment you can save yourself from. You have to try this – seriously.

Chrome Extensions for Sourcers

Gorgias Templates:

We all want to reply to the emails we get from candidates. But there is only so many hours in a day. I get it.Gorgias is a handy free extension for Chrome that lets you create custom templates to use in any email app. The best part is you can customize these templates with the recipient’s name.  So if you want to reply to an application or resume what was submitted, you can create a template like ‘Hi [Sender’s first name], thanks for sending your resume and add it to your message with a simple keyboard shortcut.

 

Screencastify:

Every once in a while we have to teach our candidates, how to use something. Instead of them telling them every time, with Screencastify, you can make a simple video and send it to them. Screencastify lets you take a recording of your screen actions straight from your browser. Need to show a candidate how to set up for a video interview or where to take a pre-employment test? This extension will save you a ton of time. And of course, it is free.

 

RocketBolt:

Know when emails are opened and links are clicked with RocketBolt’s FREE email tracking for Gmail.

RocketBolt is a Free and Small Google Chrome Plugin for tracking emails sent and receive in Gmail. Once the plugin is installed in your Chrome Browser it will help you see when your email are opened and links are clicked.

Black Menu for Google

Black Menu for Chrome puts  Google Search, Google+, Translate, Maps, Play, YouTube, News, Gmail, Drive and Calendar in one simple attractive drop-down menu. As a bonus, when you hover your cursor over any of these items, you get an interactive window for using them. For example, mouse over Search and you’ve got a Google Search field ready for your terms. Mouse over Gmail and you’ll see your inbox, where you can read and respond to messages, compose new ones, and even access your search filters. Major time saver.

 

The Week That Was 4.28.17 Glassdoor, CareerBuilder, ThisWay

Every Friday in case you missed it, ‘The Week That Was” is your weekly news update for recruiters. AKA All you need to know about anything that matters in recruiting. We go out to the interwebs and gather interesting and insightful recruiting news we will interest you. This week we learn people still discriminate, it is time to get your degree, HR burnout is a real thing, and ThisWay is gettin’ paper and how to make sure your stack ain’t whack. 

Phrase of the Week:

Career Limiting Brisket – When you’re at a business meal, and you order WAY too much food (kind of on accident), giving the appearance that you’re wasteful, frivolous, and care nothing about those who are less fortunate.

Did you hear what Dan said in that meeting? That was some serious Career Limiting Brisket.

Tweet of the Week: 

 

Srsly, This is Still a Thing: Lessons Learned in Social Media, Recruiting, and Discrimination

Employers have been getting hit big recently for negligent hiring, according to attorney Lester Rosen, founder and CEO Employment Screening Resources. He presented how to successfully use social media for recruiting or background screening during Day 1 of the SHRM Talent Management Conference and Exposition in Chicago.

“Social media allows employers to look under the hood to who a candidate really is,” said Rosen. “But if you use it incorrectly, there’s a world of privacy and discrimination problems that could arise,” Rosen said employers need to be aware of TMI — too much information — while using social media for recruiting.

According to a 2016 survey by SHRM, 56 percent of organizations said a job candidate’s online profile can’t indicate work-related performance. “Social media should not be a tool that allows you to stop someone from getting to the interview stage because you found information that’s not a valid predictor of job performance,” said Rosen. Click here to read more.

 

 

Gettin’ Paper: ThisWay Global launches $7m funding round ahead of Silicon Valley bow

ThisWay Global, a software platform powered by machine learning for the recruitment industry, has launched its A-round fundraising in the US. The round will seek to raise more than $7 million from international investors experienced in HR tech, software, marketplaces and Artificial Intelligence.

This series follows a $2m fundraise by the UK business in Europe last year and has been triggered by significant customer demand. The cash will be used to expand sales and operations and develop further innovation to address the fatigue of hiring and finding a job. The funds will support the company as it expands its offering, focused on serving HR tech companies and internal human resource departments through its US, UK and European operations.

 

 

Animal House: 74 Percent of Employers Say They Plan to Hire Recent College Graduates This Year, According to Annual CareerBuilder Survey

Now that spring is officially here, college students all over the U.S. are getting their caps and gowns prepared for graduation.  According to a new survey from CareerBuilder, 74 percent of employers say they plan to hire recent college graduates this year, up from 67 percent last year and the highest outlook since 2007. Half (50 percent) plan to offer recent college graduates higher pay than last year (compared to 37 percent last year), and 39 percent of employers hiring recent college graduates this year will pay a starting salary of $50,000 or more (compared to 27 percent last year). Click here to read complete article.

 

 

This Girl is On Fire: How to Avoid HR Pro Burnout During Peak Hiring Times

For human resources departments, getting through a peak hiring season can feel like running a mental marathon. Without the right preparation, it’s easy to fall behind.

HR departments under time-sensitive workloads are in a tight spot. If you’re not actively trying to prevent burnout, you’re risking its consequences: fatigue, detachment, and general feelings of incompetence. But like marathon runners, you and your team can adopt burnout-prevention tactics to ramp up efficiency and avoid mental exhaustion. Read how to get your groove back by clicking here.

Glassdoor logo (PRNewsfoto/Glassdoor)

I’m Feeling Myself: Glassdoor Unveils A New Look & Feel

Modern. Engaging. Refreshed. Today, Glassdoor unveiled a new logo and branding.

Now visitors to Glassdoor around the world, on desktop and mobile, will see a dynamic presence, improved site functionality and will still have access to millions of jobs. “With our refreshed brand, we aim to better connect with our audience so that in turn people can better connect to a job that fits their life,” said Moody Glasgow, Glassdoor chief marketing officer. “To us, this isn’t just a new logo or an updated color – this new design is part of our promise to create an engaging and valuable experience for all those we aim to help.“ Click here to read more.

ICYMI:

Watch this week’s webinar, “HR Tech: Time To Stack Up” below!

 

Running Your ATS Off

If you ever played sports you know that there are many different drills that teach you the skills needed for different parts of the game.  However, there is one fundamental skill that nearly every professional sport requires, and it is running.  It is, as they say, one of “the basics.”

Pure running has evolved from the days of the 490 B.C. original Greek marathon—where Pheidippides raced 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce a battle victory and then fell dead from exhaustion—into “mud runs” and “glow in the dark runs” and so on.  Running has moved from purely a test of endurance into an experience.  Today people run from obstacle to obstacle and look forward to the excitement of finding out what happens next.  Running now is more of a story, more of a process than an event.  Truth be told it doesn’t matter if you are running through the mud, or covered in glow in the dark paint or running to proclaim victory from Marathon, in a running race you need to run.

Shoes are your ATSRunning is to sports what searching an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is to recruiting.  Our approach to the modern ATS has moved from a marathon-style, single system functionality to more of a mud-run mentality.  The monotony of searching an ATS has been augmented in different ways with different capacities.  Today, using an ATS, recruiters can post a job to their Facebook, monitor their Twitter and text prospects directly.  However, the core value of an ATS is still searching for resumes.

Back when people still had to run from Marathon to deliver the news of the day, when we didn’t have an  ATS we had file folders or am I the only one who remembers them? Aside from papercuts, the problem was that we never really had enough in our file folders.  So after we went through our file folders we started to cold call.  By cold calling I mean we went old school cold calling.  We attempted to get past the operator so that we could identify who worked at what job in that company.

In response to our pain over the last 10 years, the market has invented all kinds of ways to find prospective candidates.  We now have aggregators; Indeed and LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and a seemingly never ending line of niche job boards and shiny new AIs to help us identify new talent.

Around these pillars, new supplemental tools such as Contactout, Lusha, Prophet and Hunter have been created to help us find email addresses and phone numbers to contact the people we discover from these sources.

And what have we been doing with all of the resumes and contact information we have been acquiring with our technology over the years?  Well, we stored it in our ATS of course!

So that brings us back to the ATS.  Like in fashion, all that was once old is new again, with a twist.  In contrast to older ATS systems many of us first became familiar with, the modern ATS usually contains tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of resumes.  Much of what you pay thousands of dollars to find from internet sources can be found for free on the resumes that are already in your ATS.Running Your ATS Off

I know, I’m basically telling you to eat your broccoli, or drink more water, or get 8 hours of sleep every night but searching an ATS is to recruiting what running is to sports.  Corporate America has invested billions… of dollars to get and keep that information.  I can hear you now, well those resumes are old, and we want to see new people we didn’t reject in the past. I totally get it!

Let’s address one issue at a time.  First, the resumes we find are old and out of date.  Possibly yes.  However, there are all kinds of ways to update information about where a candidate has been for the last two years, and what they have been doing while they were there.  You could, for example, look them up on LinkedIn, you can try a Google search or look for them on Facebook.  There are plenty of places to find updated information on old resumes.  The good news is the core of their experience probably hasn’t changed that much.  So the 30 seconds of research it takes to find their updated information is a worthwhile investment. If after finding out what they have been up to you decide you still like them for your job, you have all of their contact information AND an easy opener.

Remember the last time you let a candidate go you told them, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out BUT… I have you in our database, and if anything opens up I’ll be sure to let you know.”  It is recruiting’s excuse equivalent of “I’m washing my hair” or “cleaning out my sock drawer” for rejecting someone.

However, if you search the ATS you can actually fulfill a promise made by you or one of your predecessors to… wait for it… let them know there is something else available!  You can start your email like this:  “Hi Candidate, remember how we said we would get back to you if we had something else, well guess what?!”

Now there aren’t any good statistics I could find about the response rate of prospects that come from your ATS vs say an Inmail, but I have to imagine that they will be significantly higher.  Why do I think that?  Well for starters, they already know who you are.  Secondly, you are doing what you said you would, and people actually respect integrity.  Strange I know, but it is true.  Finally, there is an idea in psychology called reciprocity.  The basic idea is that people will feel compelled to do you a favor if they feel you have done them one.  By alerting them to a possible opportunity with a company to which they have already applied, you have done them a favor.  As such, they are more likely to feel like the minimum they owe you is an answer.

On to objection number two.  We want to see new people we didn’t already reject.  Here is the thing; I would be willing to bet that the majority of the people in your ATS were never actually rejected for anything.  How often do you post a job and find in the ATS there were 30 resumes attached to a req that were never reviewed?

Have you ever called some of them and played telephone tag, but never actually connected?  Let us not forget the great candidates that you presented, but they were not acted upon quickly enough, so the candidate went and took another job?  All of those great candidates are still just hanging out in your ATS.

Now that I’ve addressed two of the major concerns I hear from people in the industry, I want to convince you why you should be looking into the ATS.  Talking to the candidates in your ATS addresses two of the most difficult challenges we face as an industry.

The first is identifying people with the correct skills to fill our currently open jobs. Solving this first issue has been the focus of recruiting technology for over the past 10 years.  The great thing about the candidates in your ATS is that they are more likely to be relevant to your search then candidates you can find from other sources. When you identify a prospect from your ATS, the resume comes with excellent information.  You can usually find out what job they applied for, how far they went in the process, and importantly the best way to contact them! That leads us to the second challenge we face as an industry…

Once we have identified a prospect, we have to contact them and get them to talk back to us, which has become a real challenge these days.  If you are contacting someone from your ATS, they probably already know who you are and have some knowledge of your company. After all, the sheer action of applying shows they were interested.  This means they are much more likely to respond to you.  There are precious few tools in the modern recruiter’s toolkit that help get more people to respond to outreach.  And while this technically doesn’t qualify as a tool, it certainly addresses the issue.

Run Your ATS Off

So go have a run, yes, run Forrest run through your ATS.  Use the one-click job posting buttons.  Tweet that job!  Just don’t forget that for all of the mud and the glowing paint, that what you need to do if you want to get to the end of the race is to run!

 

 

 

 

Mike WolfordMike Wolford (not Forrest) has over 10 years of recruiting experience in a staffing agency, RPO and in-house corporate environments. He has worked with such companies as Allstate, Capital One, and National Public Radio. Mike also published a book titled “Becoming the Silver Bullet: Recruiting Strategies for connecting with Top Talent” and “How to Find and Land your Dream Job: Insider tips from a Recruiter.” He also founded Recruit Tampa, and currently serves as the Sourcing Manager at Hudson RPO. An active member of the Recruiting community, Mike has spoken publicly in an effort to help elevate the level of professional skill in the industry. Follow Mike on Twitter @Mike1178 or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

5 Ways to Provide a Better Candidate Experience

When was the last time you were a candidate instead of a Sourcer or Recruiter? I went through a job search last year, as a candidate, it was evident most recruiters need a lesson in how to provide a better candidate experience. Check out some of these interview experiences I found on Glassdoor:

“A hiring manager wanted to stop the interview to go pick up her kids. She became annoyed when I suggested rescheduling the interview because I said I did not want to interfere with her responsibilities as a parent. I guess the hiring manager expected me to sit there alone for at least 30 minutes waiting instead of rescheduling.”

Or this gem:

“I was interviewing for an administrative position at a rather large HVAC company. I was talking to the (male) manager in his office and a male employee busted in and said ‘[Has] he hit on you yet? He does that all the time.’

I don’t know if it was a test, [but] I know I had a stunned/mortified look on my face. Never did hear from them again.”

I knew these things happened but never expected them to come from a recruiter seeking an HR professional. Below are my lessons learned and what I focus on now as Head of People.

Better Candidate Experience1. Set Expectations

Be responsive to your candidates. Be prepared to reviews candidates daily. Set up regular check-ins with your hiring managers. Plan ahead for potential delays such as vacations, product releases, and quarter-end sales pushes.

Want to ruin your company’s “Move Fast” employer brand? Contact a candidate 30 days after she has applied. A true “Move Fast” company contacts her within four days of her submission and makes her an offer in less than 30 days.

2. Automate to Save Time

It is fine to send a template email if you reject an applicant after resume review but personalize your templates for your company brand. It is best to have a separate email template for every stage in your interview process.

During my search, I received a “reviewed your resume” rejection letter from a company where I had completed three rounds of interviews. Their rejection response seemed amateur and impersonal after I had invested 6+ hours. Will I recommend my friends to apply there? No!

Better Candidate Experience3. Give Better Feedback

You should provide more feedback the further a candidate proceeds in the interview process.

Any applicant that interviews onsite deserves a rejection via a phone call. They invested time in your company. The least you can do in return is call them and give them the news in person and feedback for future opportunities.

The best rejection letter I received was short but specific:

Dear Bob,

I wanted to update you on where we are at with the Head of People role that I was talking to you about.

We had over a 100 applicants and the overall quality was outstanding. You made it down to the last 10 people we were considering and each person on that list had one or more characteristics where you led the others. That said we could pick only one and we have just had an acceptance for the role from the person that we felt, ultimately, had the strongest blend of what we need right now.

I cannot tell you how humbled and appreciative I am that you went through this process with us and put yourself forward as someone who could help lead us. Now that we have filled this role I’d love to find a way to continue to work with you….

better candidate experience4. Teach Interviewers How to Interview

A fast response time will be for naught if there is a poor experience later in the process. Make sure all interviewers are trained, prepared, and effective at interviewing. Make sure you are answering candidate’s questions as well as asking your own. Look for areas of improvement. Ask applicants how you can improve and how you stack up against the competition. Remember, knowledge is power. Smart Employers understand this and will consistently evaluate the entire interview process.

5. Manage Your Reputation

Candidates and employees are talking about your company whether you like it or not. Monitor what people are saying about your employer brand on venues such as Glassdoor, Twitter, Facebook, Indeed, etc. Respond to feedback, both positive or negative. Thank people for taking the time to share their perspective.

You will never be able to completely control how people perceive your interview process, but if you treat them with respect and dignity, you have a good start.

Good luck!

About Our Author: Bob Lehto is a Human Resources leader with more than a 15 years of progressive HR experience, including managing global HR, recruiting and office staff. He possesses global expertise in both start-up and large technology companies and is passionate about helping start-ups excel through people.  Follow him on Twitter at @safetybobsf or on LinkedIn.

The Best Around: The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in Talent Today.

Needless to say, there are a ton of applicant tracking systems. Figuring out which one is the best fit for your business requires looking at that increasingly broad field of competitors and doing the research required to efficiently narrow down that list to a handful of final contenders and doing demos of those top choices.

With the proliferation of challengers vying for mind and market share rapidly evolving, new players and potential disruptors inevitably emerge, legacy solutions or acquisitions ride off into the software sunset, and change happens so fast that sometimes it can be hard for even the most hawk-eyed analyst – much less your average front line recruiter – to keep up with.

As the ATS landscape continues to evolve and mature, we wanted to shed some light into what’s often a nebulous market at best. We thought the best way to do this was by taking a hard look at the hard numbers surrounding marketshare and each ATS’ relative performance.

While imperfect and incomplete, as a metric goes, it’s as good a baseline as any for a business where business as usual is anything but these days.

Take a look at who’s growing the fastest, whose customers stay the longest and which brands may live up to the marketing buzz after all. A good look at the numbers reveals who’s worth a good look for recruiters looking to whittle down the playing field to only the most relevant tools and technologies on the market.

We hope that this deep dive offers employers a faster start when it comes to finding the best ATS for their company – and the biggest bang for their respective recruiting ROI.

A Deeper Dive Into The Data Set.

And now, a word for the nerds: this data set comes from Datanyze, a sales and investing intelligence platform. While an overwhelming majority of the solutions we looked at in our analysis are primarily categorized as applicant tracking systems, there are a few solutions on this list for whom applicant tracking is not considered a core capability.

With that disclaimer, we wanted to preserve the integrity of the data set, and therefore left these solution providers on the final list.

We figured that if we were offering an unbiased look at the best ATS’ on the market, it didn’t make much sense to leave off any system that actually helps companies make better hires faster. Even if those systems aren’t built explicitly for tracking applicants.

The Fastest Growing Applicant Tracking Systems.

First off, let’s look at which applicant tracking systems are growing the fastest. Out of the 95 different recruiting technology companies we tracked within our dataset, a handful stood out as having the kind of hockey stick growth indicative of an emerging contender experiencing hyper growth.

If you believe markets are an efficient system for determining viability and sustainability, then growth should be one of your only considerations – it tells you a lot, if you’re into the whole capitalism thing. The faster a company grows, the more value it has. It’s that simple.

Employers today are doing their research and increasingly picking these same companies from a crowded field, and if you’re looking for a new ATS, it might be worth checking out some of these tools and technologies, too.

 

Applicant Tracking Systems Who’re Retaining Their Customers.

I remember my early days in the HR Technology industry a few years back, when one of the most common complaints and recurring conversation topics in recruiting involved practitioners complaining about how unhappy they were with their ATS.

Every system had different workflows, which didn’t ever align exactly with what’s optimal for any one employer, meaning that no company was truly satisfied with how their system was set up. Add in the fact that these systems were full of old or outdated data, were cumbersome to use and were the victims of some pretty poor UI/UX decision making, and you’ve got the perfect storm for customer churn.

So, who weathered the waves the best? Our dataset shows something sort of funny when sorted by the applicant tracking systems that are the most effective at retaining their customers every month. Most surprisingly is that some of the vendors topping this list of best ATS providers in terms of retention aren’t even ATS solutions to start with.

Realistically, looking at this list, you’ve got to jump down to Jazz at the #5 spot before you even get to a “pure” ATS vendor; from there, it’s a few more spots down to Jobvite, the second highest rated provider on this list. Greenhouse ranked a distant #16 with an annualized churn of 8%, ahead of Lever, in 23rd place with 13% annualized churn.

ATS Market Share.

When it comes to which companies have the most overall share of the ATS market, we broke down the list and came up with the following overall rankings for applicant tracking providers. It’s important to note that we’re defining marketshare as the number of websites that currently utilize any given companies’ technology.

This means a company like Taleo likely has an even greater market share than seen on this list, given the fact that they charge significantly more than competitors like Jazz or Workable, who target the SMB space and therefore have a much lower average deal size.

TL;DR: Taleo is crushing it, despite being probably the most painful user experience conceivable for both TA professionals and job seekers. Apparently that business link between profitability and candidate experience doesn’t actually extend to the sector that’s seemingly obsessed with this correlation.

Ranking Technology Domains Market Share
1 Taleo 12,361 11.22%
2 Taleo Enterprise 7,490 6.80%
3 iCIMS 5,976 5.42%
4 Taleo Business Edition 5,174 4.69%
5 UltiPro 4,146 3.76%
6 SilkRoad 4,024 3.65%
7 Jobs.net 3,479 3.16%
8 Jazz (Resumator) 3,283 2.98%
9 Jobvite 3,258 2.96%
10 ClearCompany (HRMDirect) 2,662 2.42%
11 Workable 2,635 2.39%
12 ZipRecruiter 2,159 1.96%
13 Kenexa 2,030 1.84%
14 Applicant Pro 1,911 1.73%
15 Greenhouse 1,906 1.73%
16 Workday Recruit 1,697 1.54%
17 myStaffingPro 1,676 1.52%
18 SmartRecruiters 1,630 1.48%
19 TalentEd 1,477 1.34%
20 BambooHR 1,444 1.31%
21 Lever 1,432 1.30%
22 Recruiterbox 1,422 1.29%
23 Bullhorn 1,382 1.25%
24 Paycom 1,351 1.23%
25 SuccessFactors (SAP) 1,283 1.16%
26 Zoho Recruit 1,231 1.12%
27 CATS 1,148 1.04%
28 Tenstreet 1,028 0.93%
29 Newton Software 996 0.90%
30 PC Recruiter 924 0.84%
31 Monster ATS 865 0.78%
32 ApplicantStack 861 0.78%
33 JazzHR 826 0.75%
34 Erecruit 825 0.75%
35 ADP Employease Applicant Tracking 816 0.74%
36 JobDiva 784 0.71%
37 Lumesse 768 0.70%
38 OTYS 741 0.67%
39 Lumesse (US only) 722 0.66%
40 iApplicants (ApplicantPro) 658 0.60%
41 ATS OnDemand 630 0.57%
42 PeopleFluent 600 0.54%
43 Jobscore 556 0.50%
44 JobAdder 551 0.50%
45 Umantis 542 0.49%
46 People Matter 530 0.48%
47 CareerBuilder 517 0.47%
48 Kronos 458 0.42%
49 Maxhire 391 0.35%
50 ApplicantPool 382 0.35%
51 Carerix 373 0.34%
52 Avature 366 0.33%
53 Broadbean 357 0.32%
54 Sendouts 343 0.31%
55 SearchSoft 335 0.30%
56 HireBridge 329 0.30%
57 Hireology 329 0.30%
58 BirdDogHR 321 0.29%
59 PageUp People 297 0.27%
60 SmartSearch 274 0.25%
61 MidlandHR 272 0.25%
62 Technomedia (Hodes iQ) 256 0.23%
63 aCloud Recruitment 254 0.23%
64 Hyrell 249 0.23%
65 Health eCareers 248 0.23%
66 Breezy HR (Formerly NimbleHR) 241 0.22%
67 Recruitics 240 0.22%
68 Infor (PeopleAnswers) 239 0.22%
69 ExactHire 237 0.22%
70 TheJobNetwork by RealMatch 235 0.21%
71 Recruitee 231 0.21%
72 HR 4 You 228 0.21%
73 Madgex 220 0.20%
74 The Applicant Manager (TAM) 219 0.20%
75 Eteach 214 0.19%
76 Prevue 213 0.19%
77 GetHired.com 198 0.18%
78 Jobtrain 195 0.18%
79 Talent Clue 192 0.17%
80 Dice 189 0.17%
81 BrightMove 187 0.17%
82 Zywave HR Connection 185 0.17%
83 TalentSoft 170 0.15%
84 Winocular 163 0.15%
85 WCN 158 0.14%
86 Firefish Software 154 0.14%
87 JobApp 153 0.14%
88 AcquireTM 150 0.14%
89 iRecruit 146 0.13%
90 Emply 145 0.13%
91 CareerArc 142 0.13%
92 Njoyn 140 0.13%
93 IBM Kenexa BrassRing 139 0.13%
94 Vacancy Filler 138 0.13%
95 Hirewire 137 0.12%
95 Hirewire 137 0.12%

Where The Data Falls Short.

  1. Unfortunately, this data set has a few major flaws, some of which should be painfully obvious. The most glaring example of this is the handful of non-ATS providers who made the final list; sure, some companies may use ZipRecruiter as an ATS, but not most. Jobs.net? Forget about it. Everyone else seems to have already done so.
  2. We can assume some level of bias in interpreting the results of sites Datanyze crawls, since they don’t look at every webpage on the internet, but rely instead on a smaller representative sample for their findings.
  3. This means that many smaller companies who use SMB providers like Jazz may not be included in here. Workable, for example, says they have 6,000 active customers while our data set showed only 2600; similarly, RecruiterBox claims of 2k customers didn’t stack up to the 1400 our sources showed.
  4. The growth and churn numbers here are based solely on March, 2017. These were the latest and most comprehensive numbers available, so if a company had a stellar sales month, or had historic churn, then it’s going to greatly impact the growth and retention numbers presented in this post. We plan to fix this by updating this data in a few months.

Where to go from here.

These numbers are simply another data point to consider when searching for the best ATS for your company, and these findings are by no means exhaustive nor are they intended to be prescriptive. They are simply a snapshot of the state of the ATS market today at a distinct moment in time. That’s about as good as it gets with the data we’ve got.

For what it’s worth, the ATS vendors that we hear the most are Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS and Lever (editor’s note: for what it’s worth, all these companies are also RecruitingDaily clients); however, it’s worth noting that none of these solutions are designed as enterprise solutions, and despite larger deal sizes of late, started out strictly focused on the middle market.

This means that if you’re a Fortune 500 employer or multinational, you’re likely stuck with larger, clunkier legacy solutions and are less likely to have the flexibility or capability of making a change. Don’t worry. Eventually, you’ll have to select a new ATS, and the good news is, there are some pretty awesome options out there (and getting better by the day).

Read more at NextWave Hire.

Editor’s Note: NextWave Hire is an advisory services client of RecruitingDaily, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of RecruitingDaily or its partners. RecruitingDaily was not compensated for publishing this post. We just thought it was really interesting.

About The Author: 

Phil Strazzulla is the founder/CEO of NextWave Hire, a recruiting and HR technology startup which builds software to help make it easy for employers to create the content that explains why their company is a compelling place to work – and effectively attract top talent.

Before NextWave Hire, he was a venture capital investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, the oldest VC in the world which has made investments in companies such as LinkedIn, Cornerstone On Demand, Skype, Yelp, Pinterest and many others.

Phil started investing at the age of 11 when he opened his first brokerage account and hasn’t stopped since.

Follow Phil on Twitter @PhilStrazzulla or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

99 Problems (And A Pitch Is One): What More Can I Say About PR and HR?

A couple dozen times a week (at least) I get some e-mail from some account executive at some PR firm I’ve never heard of representing some client I could give two craps about; most of these are about as personalized as an automated recruiting rejection email or your average InMail, and have about the same utility (which is to say, as a rule, they’re completely worthless).

Now, these inevitable email blasts are generally sent from some twenty something account executive who probably hates having to run point on HR Technology accounts, and most of them are pretty much just cut and paste jobs, even though there’s a pretty short list of potential placements out there among the handful of writers and reporters who even tangentially cover the HR and recruiting space.

These writers fit into two main camps: there are bloggers (or “influencers,” “thought leaders” or “douche canoes,” alternatively) who have really no idea what the hell they’re talking about, and there are the “analysts,” who know even less, as a rule.

Of course, the analysts don’t generally generate work without hiding it behind some pricey paywall or a similar pay-for-play arrangement (anyone wanna be on a Magic Quadrant?), and bloggers, admittedly, generally don’t work at all.

Don’t Knock the Hustle.

This means if you’re in PR, in this industry you’ve got 99 problems, and a pitch is one.

Now, with most press, the promise of an “exclusive” is enticing enough to line up a premium placement, but in HR Tech, it’s kind of ridiculous, since there’s really no need for ‘scoops’ in an industry that no one really cares enough about to cover, save a few of us geeks who for some strange reason have some sort of sadistic interest in what might just be the most boring backwater of the entire tech industry.

That’s not to say that there aren’t really interesting companies developing innovative – and sometimes disruptive – products out there.  It’s just that they suck at telling their story, and the junior account reps tasked with getting that story out there don’t do their clients much (or any) justice.

I can’t blame these kids, though – nor the agencies for assigning the boring clients like payroll systems and benefits administration companies to the lowest person on the corporate totem pole.  It’s not like they’re being given much to work with from their clients.

Generally, their pitches follow one of two themes:

Reasonable Doubt: No News Is Product News.

SaaS companies’ “roadmaps” are often no more than thinly veiled sales ploys designed to close deals while pushing actual product features and functions the client is looking for until after the contract ink is dry.

You want integration with your ATS? “It’s on our roadmap.”  You want to be able to get that beautiful analytics dashboard they showed you in that demo?  “Coming next quarter.”

It rarely does, so when a company actually releases the stuff they’ve been promising clients for months, they want everyone to know it.

But from an editorial perspective, the thing is, no one outside your company cares about the fact you can support video now, or added a mobile app just for employers, or announced some partnership with some other no-name software company that’s just a channel marketing play.

Anyone who cares about this news is either in your sales cycle or already a client, in which case, there are far better ways to educate them than trying to hope that mention on Forbes.com actually creates a lead which will convert.

Hint: no one’s aware of your brand, even if you think this crap builds brand awareness.

Best of Both Worlds: What To Do About It.

Limit this communication to existing customers and leads – this is the kind of sales pitch to press that will never land without a whole lot of quid pro quo, because, well, if you want to pimp your product news so badly, there’s a reason most editorial outlets sell ad space.

Buy that instead if you want a placement – earning it (if you even can) is never worth it for this crap.

“These f-s too lazy to make up shit: they crazy; They don’t paint pictures, they just trace me.
You know what? Soon they forget where they plucked their whole style from – then try to reverse the outcome…”

Kingdom Come: Lies, Damn Lies and Thought Leadership.

Every vendor wants to establish themselves as “thought leaders” in categories they’ve either entirely created or totally commoditized.  This, of course, means cranking out a bunch of firewalled content for lead generation and nurturing purposes – and getting HR leaders to fill out those damn forms means creating the illusion that they’re adding insight or value with what’s often nothing more than a piece of product collateral wrapped up in a few spurious statistics and survey results slapped together in a .pdf.

Every quarter, most vendors publish some sort of study, survey, statistical analysis or similar shit that’s supposedly so compelling that it somehow constitutes news.  This will come in the form of a press release with some key takeaways or an executive level summary and a link to download the white paper, which like, no reporter ever has ever done.  So, here are some of the newsworthy stats I’ve recently read that are, in someone’s sick mind, fit for print:

  • 77% of all active job seekers report wishing that the hiring process took less time.
  • 68% of all recruiters surveyed say they have trouble finding the right candidates for their open positions.
  • More recruiters turn to LinkedIn when searching for candidates than any other social network.
  • The majority of third party recruiters find it more difficult than before the recession to land retained searches from clients.
  • Over 75% of recruiting leaders surveyed felt that sourcing candidates was critical to their department’s success.

Really? Stop the presses – you’re saying recruiters are bitching about finding candidates, job seekers are bitching about employers and the employment market still hasn’t fully recovered on the executive level from the financial market meltdown?

One could make these crazy correlations, but fortunately, someone at your company made the decision to pay for a (likely statistically invalid) survey’s administration, promotion, interpretation and packaging.

And once the numbers are crunched, the power of big data really takes hold – and turns those boring ass, selectively skewed statistics into really amazing infographics.  And nothing says thought leadership quite like a cartoon, really.

Fade to Black: What To Do About It.

This actually can be news, but please – you probably didn’t even read the damn thing, which is why you farm your editing and content out (or delegate it) in the first place.

If you want to stand out from the dozens of these similar market studies, industry surveys and trend reports that have become a ubiquitous cornerstone of HR technology marketing, then don’t offer to arrange a time to talk to whatever product manager is responsible for talking through PR playbooks and knowing how to stick to the talking points provided.

That’s a ton of work, and a ton of time. Instead, do the work for us on this one.  Seriously, you give any editorial outlet a completed, quality post post covering whatever statistics or study you’re trying to get placed, and it will – because when you do the legwork, it’s a whole different ballgame. And most of us live on free content and tight deadlines – which sucks when vendors won’t stop harassing you with this stuff all day.

Make our jobs easier, and we’ll do the same for you. And since pimping isn’t easy, we can both all use all the help we can get. Just as long as there’s no embargo involved.

“I’m not a biter, I’m a writer for myself and others. I say a B.I.G. verse, I’m only Bigging up my brother. Bigging up my borough–I’m big enough to do it, I’m that thorough, plus I know my own flow is foolish.”

Count On Me: Why Early Engagement Leads To Better Recruiting Results.

We don’t often get the opportunity to expose the workers of the future to their future world of work very often, which is why I must admit that the annual Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day is one of my favorite days of the year.

The 2017 edition, fast approaching this Thursday, April 27, is perhaps one of the only programs out there designed to expose children of all ages to a variety of career options, and give them the chance to gain a deeper understanding of what happens at “work” by showing them firsthand what really takes place in the workplace.

I always look forward to participating in what’s become an annual ritual with my colleagues and coworkers’ children every year, and eagerly look forward to when my two young children are grown up enough to finally take to work (and finally show them what Mommy does all day, firsthand).

While I’m always excited about this event, this year’s theme in particular is one that really resonates with me on a personal level: #COUNTONME. To me, this really reveals the reciprocity inherent to our work, our lives, and the sometimes perilous balancing act between the two.

For me, it’s knowing that I’ve got a team at work I can count on to kick butt and over deliver, as they have continually proven throughout the years.

That same trust is reciprocated by the fact those same colleagues I have absolute faith in also have my back no matter what, and there’s no doubt in any of our minds that we can count on each other to be responsible with their own responsibilities, deliver their own deliverables, and deliver the results for our shared business and bottom line.

That’s What I Like.

That level of implicit trust that I have in my coworkers started even before they became my coworkers.

We first started working together on a few talent acquisition initiatives while I was an in house recruiting leader, and it was through those deeper interactions I discovered that, in fact, I really belonged on the other side of the table.

Call it a spark, call it affinity, call it a “culture fit” – whatever it was that clicked between us and our shared passion for recruiting and technology made me feel, finally, that there might actually be people out there who geeked out over this stuff as much as I did.

It wasn’t like I was looking for a new job, but that intrinsic connection proved to be one of the best recruiting tools out there – and it didn’t take much for me to say “yes” when the opportunity to come over to WCN finally presented itself.

It’s a lesson I try to remember in every interaction I have, each and every day – you never know when that person you’re talking to is going to be your next hire.

Now, I was lucky to get to see how my company worked first hand before accepting an offer with them, and by no means am I advocating that every candidate should try to take a test drive and try an employer before they buy, or vice versa.

I do, however, deeply believe in the need for building deeper relationships as early on in the recruiting process as possible – even when there’s no job that’s open or opportunity for an immediate fit.

Every conversation and every interaction you have with candidates, clients and even coworkers presents a unique opportunity to develop a long lasting, mutually beneficial relationship that can have a payoff far beyond making a single hire or closing a single req, whether that’s a source of great referrals you can continually count on, or creating the word of mouth top talent actually listens to.

Again, it comes down to reciprocity: the more value you give, the more you’ll get.

This isn’t rocket science, but for some reason, many of us seem to forget just how essential this formula is to recruiting results.

I’ve been personally encouraged by the efforts many recruiters out there are increasingly making to win over top talent, and the encouraging trend towards personalization that seems to be returning to recruiting after years spent emphasizing automation, instead.

1:1 interactions can’t scale, but they’re essential for tipping the scales and winning the hearts and minds of qualified candidates (and closing offers). Of course, the proliferation of mobile and social technologies has made engagement easier than ever before, and consequently, candidates are increasing their expectations, too.

Just The Way You Are.

Top talent today demands immediacy, whether that’s access to information or a real response from a real recruiter in real time, all the time. Beating the competition means not only meeting those high expectations, but exceeding them.

The most important thing for recruiters to remember is that the recruitment process and hiring best practices of today must revolve around creating as engaging and personalized a unique experience for every candidate you come into contact with on pretty much every req.

This means knowing how to combine high tech and high touch approaches and form a bond with candidates as early as possible in the talent attraction process. If you can’t easily engage and create meaningful dialogue, compelling conversations and personalized engagement early in the hiring process, then doing so is only going to become more difficult later on.

The more you offer of yourself early on, the likelier candidates will be to accept an offer at the end of the process – which, you know, is more or less the entire point of recruiting. Whether you use technologies as sophisticated as virtual or augmented reality or as basic as a YouTube tour of your workplace, you should be able to offer potential new hires as immersive a look into what careers at your company are really like.

The more you show, the less you have to tell.

This means recruiters can spend less time answering superficial questions and really focus on building more meaningful, sustainable and successful personal interactions with their candidates and connections.

If I Knew.

Let automation take care of the administrative stuff and do the one thing machines will never be able to do at scale – adding the human touch to hiring. It’s what it takes to have the best chance with the best talent.

Similar to the exposure that millions of children will receive this upcoming Thursday during Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day, creating an authentic, meaningful and enriching experience involves giving them a candid, close up view of what work really looks like at your workplace.

Allowing candidates to have as much information and as many interactions as possible as early along in the process as possible will enable you to not only select the best candidates, but allow candidates who aren’t a fit to self-select out if there’s not a match there.

Bad hires happen when expectations and reality don’t align. If you’re going to recruit the best talent on the market, and if you want to #CountOnThem as colleagues and coworkers if they get hired, then they’ve got to know they can always count on you, too.

And for recruiters today, that’s really all that counts.

About The Author:

Jeanette Maister is Managing Director – Americas at WCN. A Jersey girl at heart, Jeanette lives and breathes campus recruiting having spent almost her entire career as a practitioner (aside from a short stint in advertising).

Jeanette began her career in campus recruitment at Lehman Brothers in regional and later global leadership campus roles, where she first used WCN.

A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis with an MBA in Management from Columbia Business School, Jeanette is a New York Jets and Tottenham Hotspur FC fan. During her spare time you can find Jeanette spinning at SoulCycle, obsessively playing Mahjong, and raising her two great kids with her husband in Edgemont, NY.

Follow Jeanette on Twitter @JeanetteMaister or connect with her on LinkedIn.

 

The Five: Books Every Recruiter Should Read

You can’t go to college to earn a Recruiting degree.  So how do you learn? Of course, you come here to RecruitingTools, RecruitingDaily, and RecruitingBlogs for the fundamentals. Additionally, you will benefit from reading. Use an audio book if you have to. There are books for recruiters that can help you increase your skills. Remember, you don’t necessarily need to read books for recruiters. For example, there are books for sales, marketing, and writing that will all help you become a better recruiter. To illustrate, below are five books not targeting Sourcers and Recruiters yet, can help you excel in your career.

 

Enchantment – Guy KawasakiBooks for recruiters

Sourcers and Recruiters are in the people business. When you read ‘Enchantment’ you learn don’t only how to be a good recruiter but learn how to communicate with your “customers.” Customers in the recruiting and sourcing world are candidates. It is also about attracting candidates to you. To enchant customers, Guy says, you need to make your product or service enchanting.  An enchanting product or service is DICEE:

  • Deep – has multiple layers of value
  • Intelligent – solves problems in smart ways
  • Complete – offers a turnkey experience
  • Empowering – helps people do what they do better
  • Elegant – works with people, harnesses what they already think and do

“Guy’s book captures the importance — and the art — of believing in an idea that delivers something entirely unique to the customer. The power of a really good idea to transform the marketplace and individual customer experiences is huge, and this book offers a wealth of insights to help businesses and entrepreneurs tap into that potential.” ~Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group

 

How to be That Guy – Scott GinsbergBooks for recruiters

This was the first book I read in 2006 when I realized that it was not as important to build my company brand as it was to build my own personal brand. This book reveals 47 secrets to help entrepreneurs MAXIMIZE their visibility, credibility, uniqueness, authenticity and memorability in the eyes of their customers and prospects. Ginsberg offers practical lessons for professionals who want to make a name for themselves such as:

  • How to create an unforgettable personal brand
  • Discover how to position your value and increase visibility to magnetize more business
  • Facilitate authentic and approachable word of mouth about you, your company and your ideas

“Engaged from the start! This book isn’t just about branding or growing your business – it’s about growing yourself.” ~Belinda Brin, Manager of Org. Learning, Nestle Purina

Books for recruiters

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind – Vishen Lakhiani

Okay. This one is a deep one. This book teaches you to think like some of the greatest non-conformist minds of our era, to question, challenge, hack and create new rules for YOUR life so you can define success on your own terms.

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind is a blueprint of laws to break us free from the shackles of an ordinary life. It makes a case that everything we know about the world is mostly decided not by rational choice – but instead by conditioning and habit. And thus, most people live their lives based on limiting rules and outdated beliefs about pretty much everything – love, work, money, parenting, sex, health and more—which they inherit and pass on from generation to generation. But what if you could remove these outdated ideas and start anew? What would your life look like if you could forget the rules of the past, and redefine what happiness, purpose, and success mean for you?

“Your life does not just happen. You experience life exactly as you have fashioned it. If you are unhappy with where you are, you can deconstruct the parts you don’t like and build them up again. Vishen gives you a step-by-step blueprint for doing just that. Your days will be filled with more joy and less stress. And you will accomplish far more than you ever thought possible. This book is a guide to crafting your perfect life. And it is funny to boot. ~ Srikumar Rao is a TED speaker and author of Are You Ready to Succeed and Happiness at Work

 

Books for recruitersEveryone Writes – Ann Handley

Daily as a recruiter, you write. Whether it be short text messages to candidates,  Twitter updates, emails or job descriptions, you are always writing. If you do this wrong, truly, you will look like an idiot. When you look like an idiot, your credibility as a recruiter is shot.   Ann Handley wrote “Everyone Writes” because she couldn’t find what she wanted—part writing guide, part handbook on the rules of good sportsmanship in content marketing, and all-around reliable desk companion for anyone creating or directing content on behalf of brands.

“With wisdom and an infective wittiness, Ann shows you how to take your writing from awkward or awful to electric or elegant. She’s your favorite teacher, cracking you up while her tough love gets you to do the work to improve.”~David Meerman Scott, Bestselling Author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR  

The New Rules of Work – Alexandra Cavooulacos and Kathryn MinshewBooks for recruiters

This but was written for folks who are trying to bring their career to a new level. Conversely, I found it as an insight into what candidates are learning and how they are marketing themselves in the current landscape. The world of work has changed. Furthermore,  people in previous generations tended to pick one professional path and stick to it. Switching companies every few years wasn’t the norm, and changing careers was even rarer.

Today’s career trajectories aren’t so scripted and linear. Technology has given rise to new positions that never before existed, which means we are choosing from a much broader set of career options—and have even more opportunities to find work that lights us up. However, we don’t discover and apply for jobs the same way anymore, and employers don’t find applicants the way they used to. Isn’t it about time we had a playbook for navigating it all?

“In today’s digital age, finding job listings and endless data about those jobs is easy. What’s difficult is making sense of it all. Here, Muse founders Alexandra Cavoulacos and Kathryn Minshew give us the tools we need to navigate the modern job search and align our careers with our true values and passions.” ~Arianna Huffington, bestselling author of Thrive and The Sleep Revolution