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Express Yourself: The Real Secret of Retention

Learning how to talk to each other is a concept that’s becoming steadily more difficult thanks to the influx of a thousand different channels, many of which are designed to deliver one way communications – not conversations. Back in the day, we had to say what we thought without the veil of a 6 second timer before it disappears or the protection of saying what you think from behind a computer screen. As people spend more and more time using social media as a primary form of communication, this machismo that develops from the security blanket has contributed to an overall lack of listening. This reactive, one direction communication leaves people preparing their next comeback before you’re even done typing, anticipating what you’ll say instead of doing that whole listening thing. People used to say you have two ears and one mouth so you should listen twice as much as you talk. Now, we have 10 fingers and we can type faster than most of us can think.

That has also led to a lot more passive aggressive behavior. When we listen less to what’s being said and remove context or tone, things you would get from the old communication methods like the phone are mis-interpreted far more often. I’d imagine that’s partially why the divorce rate steadily increases in correlation with social media channels and growth in their membership.

Every marriage and relationship counselor will tell you one thing: communication is key. It’s probably printed on the walls in most therapists office. Come to think of it, it’s printed on most of the walls in your HR department, assuming you’ve invested in those soul-sucking posters that are anything but motivational. However, what the poster should really say is: “If you don’t figure out this shit, you’re screwed.”

But instead of listening to the half-assed inspiration, our teams are centered on buzzword bingo vocabulary – attraction, engagement and retention. All are often touted as the most important areas for talent acquisition and talent management practitioners to focus on, but they’re starting from the wrong corner, with the wrong priority.

That’ll Make You Think:What We Know

We’ve all gotten “the look.” The one that happens to every person in our field, when you share over drinks that you work in HR/recruiting. I’m frequently contacted by friends, relatives, acquaintances and former colleagues seeking advice on assorted work related or job search issues. Obviously, I’m always glad to help. In fact, I’m usually relieved.

But when I can’t help? It’s endlessly frustrating. Working in this field long enough, I know few recommended resolutions are straight-forward. Most are anything but. In fact, empathizing and listening occasionally ends up being the only pragmatic choice as some problems are too messy for a clean solution. It frustrates me when I encounter those types of no-win scenarios. I wish I could do or say more than serve as a venting vestibule, but sometimes reality is beyond repair.

Sure there are plenty of laws intended to ensure “fair” employment practices, but it’s 100% legal to be an a-hole. And, judging by abundant evidence provided by both my internal and external conversations with others (not to mention millions more posted on the Internet), there’s no shortage of bad behavior. Every single day we hear about and witness lousy treatment of members of the workforce beginning with the pre-hire candidate experience phase all the way through the employee departure steps. These interactions aren’t hard, but certain people operate in ways that suggests they have no idea how to demonstrate professionalism or common courtesy.

Whether or not you’ve been fortunate enough to have only satisfying career experiences, it is highly likely that someone you know has been confronted with uncivilized conduct in the workplace. Perhaps you know someone like my friend Elizabeth who sought my direction about her story…

That’s Program, And It’s Easy: Where Things Go Wrong

“So here’s what happened,” she said as soon as I sat down for dinner. You know it’s going to be a legendary hiring tale when the other person can’t even wait until you’ve sat down to start.

Elizabeth works at a company that’s growing really quickly. If you’ve ever worked at a company in hyper-growth, you’ll know that thanks again to social media and one way communication, they suck at communication. But she explains that she has always gotten stellar reviews and feedback. Then, her boss Francine, resigned. A replacement, Angela, was hired. Prior to Angela starting, Francine informed Elizabeth that not only is Angela replacing Francine, but Angela also happens to be “an expert” in Elizabeth’s functional area.

Are your red alarms going off too? That one that says “uh-oh. Redundancy alert.” I can feel myself doing the nod because I can sniff this one out. Elizabeth starts feeling like maybe she’s on the chopping block; she’s not stupid. You don’t have to work in the field to sniff a bad situation out.

Work slowly starts to disappear, to no one’s surprise. No one says a word about that work disappearing. An unfortunate, but consistent, lack of surprise around that subject too. The passive aggressiveness that came up next was pretty standard too, as her boss repeatedly said “everything’s all taken care of” when Elizabeth asked about new projects. The boss isn’t responding to e-mail, now. Colleagues including company leaders that would normally exchange greetings or chit chat a bit weren’t even making eye contact Other coworkers seemed to react a bit surprised when they saw her, as if they weren’t expecting her to be around. Then, she found her things piled in a corner. The new boss was taking her office. No one said anything about the move or where Elizabeth was supposed to sit. Ominous music is now playing in my head.

Finally, after another week or so passed, Angela sent Elizabeth an email requesting a variety of reference documents and procedural information about what she does and how she does it. She asked Elizabeth to take care of a few low level clerical tasks, as well as a meeting to discuss all of that. Aside from a brief introduction on Angela’s first day weeks earlier, this would be the first face-to-face conversation between them.

The boss rescheduled a few times that day but finally, and reluctantly, they met. Angela informed Elizabeth that she is now overseeing and personally handling all of Elizabeth’s “department’s” work and was doubtful that it required more than one person to do so. Elizabeth agreed that it didn’t. But then, something surprising happened. Something I didn’t expect.

Elizabeth brought Angela up to speed on everything she’d been handling. And, instead of firing her, Elizabeth went along with Angela’s vague concept of the two of them “partnering” on things and confirmed her availability to help. But partnering really meant, “you’ll be doing the boring stuff,” even after Elizabeth asserted her desire to add value and willingness to do whatever is needed as long as she’s needed there.

Either way, everything was extremely awkward!

Come On and Do It…: Communication Time

Because of how Angela phrased certain comments and questions, Elizabeth got the impression that the company seemed to expect her to simply resign, rather than them “letting her go” because she was no longer needed. Or perhaps they intended to pave a convoluted enough path to fabricate firing justification. There’d been a history of executive leaders having an “if you don’t like it, leave” attitude when they wanted to get rid of someone. What that translated into was enforcing restrictions, reductions and expectations no one would like, then rapidly terminate an employee for performance infractions never addressed before.

That’s crappy, lame, a hundred other words I won’t say now. Regardless of the reason, there are dignified and respectful ways to manage the employment termination process. And they all start with communication. Those choices and the consequences of quitting suck and it’s unfair for Elizabeth to endure that predicament. It’s clear to me that she needs to find a new job, but that takes time.

But saying that to her eyes that say “help!” feels a little shallow and unsatisfying to me. Who I really want to talk to is the company. Ask about how they self reflect, unprofessionalism, and communication – most importantly. Why insist on pushing people to the edge instead of letting them go in a humane way? I can’t think of any rational reason other than they must be a-holes. The unfortunate answer here is money, of course, but that’s not a good enough answer for me.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably thinking,- yep, it sucks to be Elizabeth. Ultimately, this job is ending one way or another so her immediate pain is only temporary. The unfortunate truth is… the indefinite career ramifications will remain in the form of going from underemployed to unemployed. Not only will Elizabeth have a fresh employment gap to explain, but there’s not much she can say about this sequence of events that won’t be met with suspicion or skepticism, by you and people like you.

Of course there are countless examples of far more egregious and damaging a-hole assaults (literally and figuratively) than this story. That’s the point. And THAT’S the PROBLEM. Instead of concocting new programs and processes and pretending the latest flavor-of-month tech tool or tip will be just the trick we need, we need to use better communication to undo some of the injustice happening to people who are “managed out.” We need to pacify passive aggressive behavior and shut it down at the door.

About the Author: Leveraging her unique perspective as a progressive thinker with a well-rounded background from diverse corporate settings, Kelly Blokdijk advises members of the business community on targeted human resource, recruiting and organization development initiatives to enhance talent management, talent acquisition, corporate communications and employee engagement programs.

Kelly is an active HR and recruiting industry blogger and regular contributor on RecruitingBlogs.com. She also candidly shares opinions, observations and ideas as a member of RecruitingBlogs’ Editorial Advisory Board.

Follow Kelly on Twitter @TalentTalks or connect with her on LinkedIn.

5 Ways To Build Your Niche Network

Niche recruiting is nuanced, to say the least, I’ve gotten a good laugh with people who tell me healthcare recruiting is the same as recruiting for any other field more than a few times. From the outside looking in, it might seem like any other kind of recruiting, but there are some surprising nuances.

I became a healthcare recruiter in November of 2012. To my surprise, it was a lot more challenging than my previous recruiting. It’s not so much that healthcare is harder to recruit for, but I had to rebuild my entire network because healthcare talent is drastically different than Engineering, Finance, Legal, Tax & Payroll talent. Healthcare recruiting for a faith-based, non-profit organization, such as the one I work for, has a steep learning curve because many of jobs we hire for are not found in corporate, for-profit, organizations. The nuances of both combined to one hire is one hell of a challenge.

I didn’t have the option to rely on LinkedIn for this one. To really get it right, I had to understand the interest of the talent I was sourcing – figure out where they read online, what they like and where they look for jobs. It’s tough when you’re not a clinical person, like me. I’m the type who always stayed as far away from hospitals as possible; I never did like that hospital smell and refused to be around blood or surgical procedures, so becoming a healthcare recruiter was a big stretch for me and a little intimidating. Where would I go to find information without grossing myself out?
In my first year as a healthcare recruiter, I recruited addiction counselors, social workers, bereavement counselors, chaplains and “no one dies alone” coordinators. I never knew half these jobs had existed before I started recruiting for them. My initial thought was “Where do you find these people?!” They weren’t on Linkedin; that’s for sure. So I started searching.

Niche? No Problem

After a year of recruiting for non-clinical positions, I made the transition to recruiting for clinical/allied positions. For the past 3-years, I’ve recruited for Diagnostic Imaging, Respiratory Care, Cardiology, Oncology & Echocardiography. I recruit for Technologists, RN’s Supervisors and Directors within each of these specialties. When I began recruiting for these roles, I had to build my network again because I could not rely on Linkedin for my sourcing and recruiting efforts to fill these roles.

To seek out the talent, I had to do some deep sourcing and ask a few favors.

Listservs Still Exist: After deep sourcing, I stumbled upon (pun intended) membership lists for various chaplains associations and listservs which became my most valuable recruiting and sourcing tools. I also became reliant on professional associations such as the National Association of Social Workers and The American Clinical Social Work Association.
Back to the ATS: Taleo became my best friend for sourcing because I found that we had hidden talent in our candidate database. So, of course, I took full advantage. It’s surprising how much talent we have in our databases that we haven’t taken the time to search and filter through! The other great thing I found about sourcing in Taleo was that I could also learn so much about each job I was recruiting for by using all the search terms to find them.
Throwback Every Day: I found that going through old requisitions to see who we hired for past positions was also a valuable resource because I could pull keywords from those resumes to build my searches. In fact, I created and presented an entire training for Talent Acquisition at my company so all our recruiters could learn how to source in Taleo. It’s now one of our primary methods of finding talent!
LinkedIn, Of Course: Niche means these people probably don’t exist in your network already. Over time, I have built my Linkedin network for these roles and spend a lot of time using LinkedIn Recruiter for my sourcing on these roles now. I find it’s very important to craft your InMail messages in a much more refined way than with general recruiting because clinical talent is different than say, Engineers or Accountants. The great thing about InMail is that I’ve had great success asking for referrals of clinical talent on the first contact. Before LinkedIn, I also relied on Avature CRM, which was a great sourcing tool in the beginning.
Social Recruiting: In addition to general Boolean searches, (and having success sourcing personal blogs) I also rely on Facebook for my recruiting. I post personally created content, use Facebook Graph Search and I’m active in various Facebook groups specific to the specialties I recruit for. The trick is finding a group you feel comfortable with that will allow you to interact with the talent you’re working to attract. Do what works for you but I assure you just posting all your open jobs to all the members won’t get you any traction. Here is one of the groups I’ve used for recruiting new grad nurses: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Newgradrncalifornia/

We recruiters aren’t always going to be subject matter experts on every job we recruit for. However, our duty is to immerse ourselves into whatever industry and jobs we are recruiting for in order to gain the respect of those in a particular industry/field.

About the Author

Terry Hall is a Senior Recruiter at Providence Health & Services, which is headquartered in the Seattle-Metro area. Terry is a Marine Corps Veteran and has over a decade of recruiting experience, starting her career in agency recruiting running a desk for Select Personnel and Manpower Professional Finance before making the move in-house, where she has held strategic talent roles for Washington Mutual Corporate Human Resources, Amazon, and T-Mobile.

Follow Terry on Twitter @TerryJobs or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Can Hiring Teams Work?

With kickoff just a few weeks away, I’ve been thinking about football. Specifically Draft Day. I imagine being a candidate for selection in the NFL Draft must be one of the most intense hiring processes – and we all get to witness it. I can’t imagine what it must be like to sit and patiently await a decision that will impact your life in most of the ways a life choice even could – where you live, where you work, who you work with – all in front of approximately 100 cameras. It’s the most stressful day of their career up to that point. Most of them are 18, hanging out with their mom and spending most of the day (or days, depending on what round they’re picked in) just waiting. Anticipating a call, a message, a justification for the sacrifice they’ve made all these years for the sport they love. After weeks of camps, trials and testing – they’re left in this moment, waiting – just like any other candidate. They’re just doing it on live TV which is, like I said, intense.

We’ve seen good, bad and plain old weird from these people over the years of watching these live streams. Speeches about what’s next from people who don’t really know because they were never selected. Speeches from people who are drafted then don’t go on to make the team at all. Speeches from the underdogs and all-stars about their NFL career and team pride. As I watch them, sitting anxiously with their family and friends, I can see so many parallels to the hiring situation we work in today, and a few parallels I’m glad don’t exist.

Luckily for all of our conscious’, we don’t have to watch the angst and anticipation of our job seekers. Can you imagine if every candidate were waiting on the other side of a live video feed for a response from you? Here’s where things get scary. What if they had to give a speech afterward – what might they say? That’s a more than scary thought – one that might leave us self-reflecting a little more often than normal about the candidate experience and the chaos we cause in their lives. There’s also the joyful side, I guess. The side that let’s us see what it looks like for dreams to come true.

There’s something particularly joyous about that moment when you see that smile. The moment where everything changes. It’s unfiltered joy and pride. It’s everything I believe parent’s hope for when they see their rug-rats scrambling across a field in their first pee-wee football game. For most, hopes of a professional sports career are quickly dashed as their child fumbles and fails but for an elite few – this is the beginning of a dream.

Dream Teams?

There’s another side to this equation – what happens after the draft. What everyone doesn’t know is that just because you’re selected in the draft doesn’t mean you’re on the team. There’s still rookie practices, tryouts and preseason to get through, each representing yet another stop along the road before you’re officially an NFL player. It’s the corporate world’s equivalent of a 30-60-90 day review, but taken a lot more seriously as they cap the total members of the team and every player is critical to a lineup that can support and provide back-up for injured players.

Players are selected based on where they fit on the team, what type of support they offer to different positions and how their personalities balance the team. Notice the shift from the player to the team. This person, once idealized as an all-star is now a member of the unit and is being evaluated in relation to that team.

See, football is a team sport. There are plenty of clichés to remind us like “there’s no I in team.” Success is directly tied to the team’s accomplishments, not just the accomplishments of the individual. Yet, when we recruit them – we recruit them one at a time, plucking them from their successful team nest to learn a new team. Likely one of the many reasons some over-hyped players fail, besides sudden fame and a propensity for drugs, alcohol and strippers – cough cough Johnny Football.

The individual’s accomplishments are the consequences of the team’s efforts. Think about it. If a quarterback completes a pass, it’s because their offensive line protected them and the receiver was also on track. If a receiver makes a great catch, they also need defense and blocking to achieve their ultimate goal of a touchdown. Yet, we recruit them as individuals rather than recruiting a group to continue their play at the professional level.

Team Win: Better Hiring, Better Teams

We mirror this selection process in hiring. See, we know that nothing happens in a vacuum. We know that teams make big projects happen; it’s never just one guy steadily working. We need input into concepts, ideas to make them come to life, and hard-work that far exceeds one person’s abilities. Yet, when we recruit them – we pluck just one member of the team.

This concept of a team-based hiring model is on the rise in Silicon Valley. It’s the newest way of convincing tech talent a company is different and diverse. The concept is pretty simple – post a job asking for a team of developers. The company offers coding challenges and projects for the team to accomplish. Then, the company decides if it will make an offer to all or none of them.

On one hand, I’d wonder if everyone on my team had the chops to get it done and would worry about relying on someone else to help me get a job. But I’m a total Type A project manager. On the other hand, I know – even with frustration, that my team is what makes everything possible. Who I work with is a major contributing factor to my happiness. In fact, I know there are jobs in my past that I’ve stayed at through hard times and other offers purely because I loved working with my team so much.

Thinking back to source of hire and the quantitative data around the quality of referrals, this is a jackpot. It multiplies a good thing, at least conceptually. It’s not just one referral; it’s an entire product team of referrals. It’s hiring 5 at once that already know each other and will need little to no time to adjust to working with their new team.

Looking at startup foundings, this is how many of them begin, too. A few friends split off from one company to form their own little company that they hope will beat all the odds and take over Silicon Valley as the next Salesforce or Facebook. Harnessing that type of innovation and teamwork for your company seems smart, at least fundamentally.

What if the interview team really hates your friend Mark? Do they make an offer to some, but not all? The more important question – would you accept a job where some, but not all, of your team was hired? There are social elements that take on a whole new meaning here. Not only are you impacting your personal life and future, now you’re potentially impacting your personal relationships too.

Touchdown: Making Team Hiring Happen

Interested in team hiring? Here’s what you should consider first:

Are you willing to risk all of your candidates if you hate one? Your hiring team needs to recognize that they’re taking a risk here – one that could lead to a big win or a big loss.
Do you have enough roles open? If that number is not greater than 5, I’d consider starting with the traditional interview. Telling everyone you’re hiring a team and only taking 2 of 4 is weird and creates a bad candidate experience. One that will likely generate no hires.
How are you going to support this team in working together and salary leveling? We all know they’re going to talk. Are you budgeted to offer everyone a commensurate salary? Is your team trained to talk salary in a really transparent way across multiple individuals? A little preparation will go along way here.
Do you have cliques in your company? How do you manage dynamics in the office? One consequence of bringing in a team is that it’s a self-serving ecosystem. They can be their own lunch buddies and confidants. But you don’t need an engineering mafia, either.

Teams, technically, sounds like a good idea. So here’s my question – why isn’t everyone already doing it now?

____________________________________

I’m Katrina Kibben and I’m the new managing editor of RecruitingDaily. I write, I speak, I listen – and I feel so lucky to do that for a living.

For most of my career, I’ve been a marketer living in a recruiter’s world – listening to both sides of the talent equation to understand endemic issues and conceptualize solutions for engaging and (hopefully) hiring better people. Every day, I take all of that listening and the most successful campaigns from my day job to teach recruiters about marketing principles that will actually make their lives easier. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter if you want to talk stories, press or anything recruiting. Thanks for reading!

Can’t Buy Me Love: Earning Candidate Love

Have you ever noticed how people buy and sell almost anything? Craigslist is a landmine for junk hunters. People who just collect random things and start their own antique stores. That sounds like the beginning of an episode of Hoarders. A little scary.

There are corporations that are collectors of companies. They scoop up organizations big and small, and in that acquisition, companies also acquire people. In some cases, that’s precisely why they buy the company in the first place. They want people who are highly specialized and if that company does it really well? Why wouldn’t you buy them, if you have the cash on hand that is. But here’s the thing. You can’t buy candidate love (or employee love, for that matter).

Can’t Buy Me Love

Companies acquire property and things—and sometimes other companies—but they never really buy employees. People need to be enticed, motivated, encouraged and empowered to apply for and take a job. Individuals thrive on engagement with work and attraction to an employer and a team.

You might say attraction is fleeting, and you’d be correct. Attraction to a job is created through an ongoing process of open communication, solution creation and personal satisfaction generation. Team building. Managers who care. The things that keep people sticking around.

Yet, solutions are usually temporary and personal satisfaction can be gone faster than your latest Snapchat photo. Eating a delicious Torchy’s taco temporarily satisfies hunger, but you’ll need to eat one again (insert taco excitement here). I’m talking about career nourishment. Our jobs don’t end at attraction. The success can’t be measured on hires alone.

We can’t be measured on happy employees, either. Each person is responsible for achieving real happiness in his or her job. Let’s face it: recruiters can make a job or company sound downright amazing. But the employee is responsible for matching a job opportunity to their personal requirements of fulfillment. This includes challenges, but also career progression and compensation. Gotta get paid, folks.

And I Love Her, Indeed

My strategy at Indeed? Benefits, growth and culture. In every candidate conversation, we challenge ourselves to put the jobseeker first and help them get the right job that’s a fit for them, not just where we want to fit them in right now. No matter how quickly we grow, we need to grow with people in mind. You know the line- people first. It makes a difference.

As corporate recruiters, we evangelize the brand too. We build teams that work together, with a side of fun – all in the name of seeing the company succeed. Now, identifying people who will be great for the team AND have all the skills we need isn’t so easy. There has to be a long game.

To succeed long term we are consciously shifting the recruitment message to align with both the onboarding and employment experience. It means that your initial experiences don’t leave you completely unprepared to go and do your job. It means we’re aligning on engagement.

We Can Work It Out: Re-branding Talent

Does this sound like acquisition to you? It doesn’t to me either – and that’s why we’ve rebranded our recruiting team as Talent Attraction.

This may seem like a small change or just semantics, but changing our group name within Human Resources has really changed our attitude. Here’s why we made the change and why talent attraction is much more accurate than talent acquisition.

Talent Attraction Helps Define your Employer Brand

We continue to be thoughtful and personal in our messaging to candidates and prospects. This applies to job descriptions, recruiter outreach, and career-related social media content. Talent attraction science highlights several drivers for career change. If our outgoing recruiter and sourcer communication is rooted in these principles, we can track and truly understand what makes people click. That means better information not just for our team but our clients, too. It’s all about the bottom line, right?

Talent Attraction is More Focused on the Candidate Experience

Attraction starts before a candidate even knows why a career at your company may interest them. It continues through initial contact, conversations and job application. Not everyone is a fit for every job. Putting yourself out there and applying takes guts. This is where respect is most important. Respect for time, respect for communication, respect for people. We need to continue to test, iterate and create a better experience.

Talent Attraction Helps Define How Everyone in Your Organization Has a Role to Play

Recruiting is everyone’s job. Attraction has to be embraced by employees in every function from custodian all the way through to the CEO. This is particularly important for hiring managers…but this isn’t a quick or easy journey. Like motivation, it’s a process that takes effort and energy every day. It takes humble, caring leaders at every level of the organization, who support and believe in our mission to help people get jobs.

Don’t Let Me Down: Advice On Practicality

You’re asking “what can your employees and teams do differently today to attract talent?”

The bottom line is thoughtful messaging and outreach. You need to tell stories focused on benefits that matter to your audience. Consider how your group of recruiters is currently being represented and think about your name – are you simply collecting and acquiring people, or are you attracting them?

Change your mindset. Change your relationship with candidates. Change your company.
About the Author: Bryan Chaney is director, employer brand, Indeed. He has worked in recruitment, technology, and marketing, providing him insights into the marketing of hiring, the importance of technology and the buying process that candidates make when applying for jobs. He’s an international speaker and trainer on the topic of recruitment and talent branding and loves to travel. Find him at @BryanChaney

Strategic Talent Mobility: Who, What And How

By definition it’s the art of moving around employees to different parts of the organization. Move them where it makes the most sense. It really is an art. Shifting positions and filling in gaps requires consideration. It matters both for people and teams. It’s not as simple as shifting someone who excels in marketing to help the sales team. It’s about adopting a talent model that supports this upward mobility.

The ability to organize and manage talent effectively is the difference between success and failure in talent mobility. While many HR professionals don’t understand the concept. While when done well – it can help increase retention rates while increasing employee engagement among a host of other positive benefits.

Rather than a course in the technical side, we’ve asked our next webinar presenter to show us the practical application and the pitfalls to avoid. Thanks to our sponsor, Rolepoint, we’ll be joined by the Director of Talent Acquisition at the American Heart Association, Michael Goldberg, as he shares the story of how he’s used talent mobility to keep the talent behind the American Heart Association sharp and at the top of their game. This webinar will show you how AHA used talent mobility as the foundation of their best hiring practices and give you takeaways to bring back to your own organization.

You’ll Learn

How talent mobility can be practiced in your organization,
What talent mobility can do for your bottom line,
Pitfalls to avoid as you move talent into new roles,
And more!

If I Only Had A Brain, Part II: Rise Up

“Higher education must lead the march back to the fundamentals of human relationships, to the old discovery that is ever new, that man does not live by bread alone.” John Hannah

There is a saying: necessity is the mother of invention. It’s true really; this is the reason we have so many things in our lives that we did not have even ten years ago. Where there is a perceived need, where there is a vacuum, someone will find a way to fill it. That’s what their marketing campaign are all about. Helping you identify a need that, in some cases, you don’t really have. That’s the thing with marketing. Sometimes it’s piss poor snake oil or real science, but there is always someone looking to fill that void. To monetize and capitalize. It’s the capitalist way.

Capitalist ways bleed into government. Let’s be honest here. Money lines hands and those hands feed each other, if you get what I’m saying. It’s not classified – major universities got a windfall when the US taxpayer guaranteed student loans and pushed salaries and tuition through the roof.

I get the feeling this was a political ploy but in fairness, maybe it’s just yet another so called highly-educated politician showing off the naivete of a grade school student. They studied political science instead of basket weaving, right?

In reality, the programs that exist today have done nothing to help the diligent student who wants a better life but not at the price of having to pay monthly student loan bills until they’re 50 years old. Rather, they’re using student interest to line their pockets with a consistent flow of revenue. Seriously, even Ponzi could not have made this shit up on his best day.

Or consider the application fees. There’s another example of capitalism. If there’s enough demand created for attending college, they can charge you whatever they want per application. Seems simple if your parents have money but what about the kids with little financial support from family members? What about single parents on a limited income? Application fees can be as much as $150 per university. Genuinely brilliant in its arrogance, really.

I say all of this because after somehow the educational industries ended up with the bad rap while the universities are still the golden child. And it’s causing problems for folks, like me, who want a better gig than what we could get without a degree. In my days, this whole new online thing was less time consuming and allowed us to pay bills and feed ourselves while getting an education. The part you might be surprised about is that I did 2 ½ years at a regular public school and 1 ½ at University of Phoenix and got more real world information in business than I ever did at the latter. The fact you’re surprised is the problem.

Educational Discrimination Is Not Illegal — Until It Is?

Educational discrimination in hiring or workplace settings isn’t technically illegal as it does not involve a protected class defined in discrimination legislation. That being said, educational discernment may straddle the line between legal and illegal if the educational requirements of the job make obtaining or doing the job difficult for those protected under other laws. For example, immigrants who received education from another country or those who have been doing said job for an extended period, you know, experience. Another group this demand is affecting is minorities, and you can read the letter that was posted by the EEOC on this topic.

Sadly despite a slew of qualified candidates coming from these universities, there have been multiple cases in which corporations have used this as a discriminatory tool. There’s still this conversation about what makes a REAL degree.

But if you ask me what makes a real degree, it’s less about the books and the papers. I don’t know how an accredited university, where kids spend their days stoned in class, are more qualified than a working adult. How access is tilted towards people without the foundational knowledge of the workplace. The consequence of that tilt when it comes to job opportunities.

The perception, and funding, requires a revamping in the worst way within the US but hey – the capitalists are making money and that is all that really counts right? M’erica! I mean, really. Why does anyone that spends four years in high school need to go learn four more years of essentially, the same stuff. Why is that what’s required to get a job?

This level of indoctrination is terrifying, and it is real. Universities have been inundated with drug scandals, rape scandals, hazing scandals, discrimination scandals, fraternity/sorority scandals, and the list goes on. These so-called higher learning centers are desperate to protect their “brand” to the point that they are hiring PR firms to help them navigate through the iceberg filled waters of discontent.

End Rant

I hate to use an old cliché, but I must. I have been around a long time. I know that an education is important, and a mind is a terrible thing to waste. But it’s important to consider who’s profiting from it and consider that you might be the one losing by not recruiting from online universities.

It’s time for a perception change – and a radical one.

About the Author: 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.

He has experience with both third party agency and in-house recruiting for multiple disciplines and technologies. Using out-of-the-box tactics and strategies to identify and engage talent, he has had significant experience in building referral and social media programs, the implementation of Applicant Tracking Systems, technology evaluation, and the development of sourcing, employment branding, military and college recruiting strategies.

You can read his thoughts on RecruitingDaily.com or Recruitingblogs.com or his own site Derdiver.com. Follow Derek on Twitter @Derdiver or connect with him on LinkedIn.

RecruitingLive With Maureen Sharib

The more I hear people talking about not using the phone, the more I cringe. While I’ll admit, I’m one of those people to ignore my cell phone ringing mid-day, the reality is that there are some conversations that just can’t (or shouldn’t) happen online. There’s more to a conversation than a text and when it comes to hiring, there’s more to it than words on a page. It’s about inflection, introspection and really getting to know someone’s mannerisms. You never know, that could be the thing that moves them to the top of the list.

The thing is, a conversation makes you feel something. It helps you connect to someone and gives you a glimpse into what they’re feeling, not just leaving your intuition to be your guide.

Phone sourcing is a hidden secret, one so many avoid but the people who get it right? They’re getting the hires. Because yes – despite popular belief, there are still people sitting at a desk that aren’t on LinkedIn. Let me say it again – there are people who are not on LinkedIn. However they are findable, if you’re willing to dial.

That’s why I’ve invited my guest Maureen Sharib to RecruitingLive this week. She’s a teacher and coach on all things communication and she’s also a phone sourcer – something we all used to be but we’ve seen steadily decline as the reliance on LinkedIn and other social mediums to stalk – I mean source- your next candidate has grown.

My favorite thing about Maureen is that she’s curious, creative and always willing to lend a hand and coach someone toward being more efficient, strategic and creative to hit their goals. I’m sure after this show, you’ll have not only learned a lot about phone sourcing but about how to have better conversations at every stage of the recruiting process.

And don’t forget to bring your questions. That’s what RecruitingLive is all about. While I host the show on a webinar platform, the format isn’t webinar like. There are no slides and we don’t have an agenda. The conversation is driven by your questions, comments and curiosities.

See you there…

What’s In A Name? Hiring Talent or Titles

My wife and I recently closed on purchasing our first house. We had been looking for months, one we loved came onto the market, and we put an offer down. Being in Austin, Texas, one of the fastest growing cities in the US, you have to be somewhat aggressive. We put down about 7% more than asking price. Did I mention this was the same day the house hit the market?

Within 24 hours there were seven offers on the house. SEVEN. We didn’t get our hopes up, we were pretty sure someone else would get the home but then our real estate agent called us and let us know they were executing our contract. Oh shit. I guess we’re really buying a home.

After the first bit of shock and awe, we very quickly realized the amount of things we had to get in order before our close date about a month later. We had to do background checks and locate all our pay stubs. We had to put together all of our finances and savings that we didn’t even know we had and send them to our lender. We had to do a write up about ourselves for underwriting (…wtf?). We emailed all of our personal documents, social security numbers, and more to our lender so they could steal our identity if they wanted.

After we thought we gave them everything they need, I’d get an email and a call with about 8 more things they needed from us. I’d find those eight things, get them to our lender, and then they would have eight more questions based off our new documents.

To call it a shit show is probably a compliment. Nothing really seemed to drive the process to closing. We just had to keep jumping through hoops for the lender because if they didn’t say “we’ll give you this loan,” well, we were SOL on this home and back in this really competitive market.

We wished there was a better way to go about purchasing a home.

In the same way, recruiting is broken. It leaves our most valuable asset – people – feel as if they are worthless in our hiring process. Being in recruiting and always enjoying time around people, I was curious as to why the process is so broken, and what we could do to fix it. It doesn’t seem so mind-blowing to assume that there’s a way to humanize how we attract, apply, interview, and hire. In fact, it’s crazy we even have to talk about this if you ask me.

Without a doubt, there is and it’s really simple. All we have to do is stop glorifying bullet points of qualifications and experiences and, instead, focus on what it would take to be “successful.”

Can it really be that simple? I really believe it can be. Let’s break it down.

Here Ye, Here Ye: Attraction

How many businesses can you name off the top of your head?

Exactly. Unless you are Google or Apple, people likely don’t know who you are or what you do. They’re not motivated to apply, and you’re not alone. 98% of US businesses have less than twenty employees and suffer from the same attraction issues.

In the same way these businesses live and die by attracting potential customers, we HAVE to continually attract potential hires.

Look, people want to do good work. People want to be challenged and learn new skills. Does your job description get to their needs? Does it depict good work and growth? If it doesn’t, you’re missing out. Period.

Let’s take a look at one of your job postings. Just guessing here, but chances are there are 10-20 bullet points of experiences and qualifications and a title every other company has. Am I right? So a Director of Support may look like this:

10 years of managerial experience
Ability to work without much management
Expertise with technical support
Insert 10 more really boring bullet points…

So, what did you learn from that? If I’m a candidate, I learned how to self-select myself out if I don’t fit every box. I assume you don’t want to talk to me. Pretty sad. The worst part? I still know nothing about what you need to accomplish.

But there’s a better bullet. Instead, try this:

Lead the improvement of our customer satisfaction rating from it’s current 65% to 90% or above in 6 months for our 40 person team.

The candidate translation just changed. Here’s what they’re learning now:

Customer satisfaction has to improve 35%
I have 6 months to do it
They have a 40 person team

In one sentence. I learn so much more about a company and what they need accomplished than I did with the initial description. With one sentence, I’m attracting the right people and discouraging the wrong people from applying.

Oh Horrible, Most Horrible: Application

Do you really want to see the same resume that someone sends every other job opportunity? Even just one other company?

As a recruiter, I sure don’t.

If we now have a great way to attract, and we give our potential hires the information that they need to do to be successful….Throw out the resume, and give them a call to action. I know you’re scared. Leaving the resume behind is scary, but follow me here. The resume makes it easy for us to hire titles over talent and persuade us that they’re a better fit. It creates bias.

Using the above attraction example, what if we asked job seekers to answer two complex questions related to the job instead of gathering their entire work history that, really, we don’t need. Here’s an example:

“In detail, how have you improved customer satisfaction rating? Where were you, how big was your team, and how long did it take you?”
“For you, why is now the right time for a change?”

You’re going to ask both of these questions at some point because they’re critical to success in this role. You can’t hire someone without asking this. Can you hire someone without asking about their job after college? Yes. So why not save the candidate time by asking it up front? Let them put into their own words how they work, and how they can help you.

Two things happen when you do this….

People who are a good fit for the role nerd out, and you get a chance to see their enthusiasm and expertise first-hand.
People who can’t help don’t apply. (Hallelujah, amen.)

Thus – Less applications but much higher quality. There’s nothing wrong with that. And now, you can answer every single applicant, even if it’s a no. Either they tell you how they’ve worked in the past and how they know they can help you…or they can’t.

All The World’s A Stage: Interview

If you’ve done the above two things, you should have a short list of kick-ass hires who are already strong communicators because they’ve impressed you with how they can help.

Now, wait. Before you go for the full blown interview let’s go back to basics. Treat your candidates like humans who have options by scheduling an exploratory call to finish closing them on why your company would be a great company to work for.

Remember, prior to your “we’d like to interview you” e-mail, all they have done is seen a job posting > applied > gotten a response from you. Now starts that pesky recruiting thing.

When you have them on the line, ask one simple question: Is this still something that really interests you? Or, a variation: Does “being successful in this role excite you?” Know where they stand, why they’re motivated and where they want to be. All of these are answers that will help you close the deal later if there’s hesitance from your ideal candidate.

So the details of the interview are pretty simple. You want to..

Search for more examples of this person being successful in a complementary task. (hopefully you have at least 3-4 more tasks to compare with).
Ask about how and when they grew the scope of their job in past environments.
Treat the person like a consultant.
Share any red flags you see and allow for conversation.

And here’s why…..

You hopefully need a few more things accomplished than just improving one thing. Share the other success indicators the hiring manager has communicated with you and ask for specific examples of things they have done that translate. More touch points is always better. 5 years experience is vague and doesn’t tell the story the way an experience will.
You want to see that someone has shown opportunities of growth within a company, or, why they didn’t. Both are important.
Look, you are hiring because you need something to get done or you need to delegate a new job off. That’s what consultants are hired to do.
Bringing up red flags genuinely and allowing someone to respond gives a LOT of insight about a person’s emotional intelligences and teamwork. A lot of times they are not as bad as they seem, but let someone respond and you can confirm that upfront before disqualifying them for a perception problem.

The interview does not and should not have to be a grill fest. Honestly you should already know whether or not someone can accomplish the tasks you need done. The interview is to learn more in depth about their thought process and decision making skills, how much guidance they need, and if they might be the best fit.

Because let’s remember, at the end of the day we’re hiring a person, we’re not hiring a job title.

About The Author

Jordan Johnson believes that people are creative and genuinely want to do challenging work. He believes in connecting people to people in the form of hiring managers to their future hires. Having been someone who loves to recruit people to a cause, he started agency work in Technology and Financial Services in Austin, Texas.

Jordan currently works independently while he works on building a SaaS platform that can help more people than he can directly. He loves music, trying all he up and coming food spots, and hanging out with his wife and mini Aussie, Millie.

Follow Jordan on Twitter @jordanrecruit or connect with him on Linkedin.

Spam: She’s Crafty

Licensed to Ill is a record that changed everyone’s mind about what hip-hop was, especially coming from three white guys from NYC. Now mind you, I’m no hip-hop historian. I’m a 40-something white guy so I’m well aware that I don’t know everything about hip-hop isn’t exactly all there is to know. What I do know is that the Beastie Boys changed things up. They broke the mold in the midst of hair bands and pop legends. A mold that rippled through rock and rap stations alike, making them question their musical lineups and seek out new styles to keep audiences tuning in.

The bottom line for me is that the Beastie Boys made being a rapping, white kid awesome.

4 and 3 and 2 and 1….When I’m on the mic – just kidding I have no intention of freestyling the gods of the 5 boroughs. But, I can do simplistic math, and those numbers added equal 10. Which is about how many new-style spam emails I get before 11am each day. What’s the new-style spam, you say?

Ah, spam. It used to be so easy to spot, a pleasure to filter out, and one of the many reasons you drink Brass Monkey when you work in recruiting. When spam was a rebellious ‘to-hell-with-your-feelings’ preteen Spam, it was just simpler and so obvious. She hurled Nigerian princes promising riches and invaded our inboxes blaring banner ads toward every email address we had. But we knew her wily ways, and thwarted her at every turn we could.

Spam drifted from your sight for a while, but she’s back. She left those awkward developmental years and morphed with the technology. And she’s back with a whole new look.

For the TL;DR crowd: I’m not going to talk about anything groundbreaking here, but rather give you a few hearty laughs at the expense of what might be your competitors. Enjoy.

Rhymin’ and Spammin’

“Because mutiny on the bounty’s what we’re all about I’m gonna board your ship and turn it on out”

Chances are you’ve had the pleasure of seeing one of these gems. They usually begin the assault with your standard spammy template, and continue on from there. I’m omitting the names of the guilty, because that’s my choice. Given the non personalized nature of this, if you copy and paste the text into a search in your email, you’ll likely find it too.

It’s no secret that in the Staffing/Recruiting industry, cash flow is integral. It’s unfortunately also no secret that receivable financing has proven to be a very “expensive” means to access that capital for some staffing companies.

With such a competitive market your margins may not be what they used to be. This means that in the end, you need to make sure you are getting the cash you need to grow your company at the price that makes you money. That’s why I wanted to write you and introduce you to my company, Xxxxxxx Capital. For years our clients have told us that we’re consistently the best deal for receivable financing available in the market while still maintaining the best customer service they have experienced.

It goes on from there, but if you’ve spent more than 10 minutes in recruiting, you likely already know what the rest says. But he wasn’t going to be dismayed by my silence, no sir.

Pete,

Please don’t mistake my persistence as pressure, but I wanted to try you again regarding working capital. After all, we offer the industry’s most aggressively priced terms, guaranteed.

(yadda yadda…)

Ok, the follow up. I’m very used to seeing 2 attempts from someone before they peel off to the next letter in the CRM database or the next page of Lead411. But alas, our hero just knew I had been dying to get back to him – probably for the aggressive pricing – but my archaic HR leader was restricting my free time to get back to him. Rather than making me frantically search outlook for his past emails and contact info, why not get to the top of my inbox?

It’s Xxxx again.

I’m sorry I keep missing you. (My last two emails are below.) I wanted to try you again regarding any potential need for working capital. In short, we offer the industry’s most aggressively priced terms, guaranteed. Consider the following:

(EXACT SAME yadda yadda…..from email 2 and several following)

There are 3 or 4 more from him, but they all are small word variations on the previous attempts, so you get the idea. But this is it gang, this is the New World Order in spam, and it’s going to be here until the masses begin eating their young and a new form of spam arrives. Don’t believe me? Here’s a sample of what I find in my inbox on any given day:

I was hoping that you had received my email which I had been sending you from the past few weeks along with my old voice messages too.

(the guy he sent this to no longer works here, I just get his emails, and this joker never called)

I’m not sure if you had a chance to address my below email due to your demanding schedule. Can the privilege be ours to grab a time slot for a call in coming days/ weeks to discuss regarding our IT & Staffing services and see how our transformed expertise can be of help to you and how we could assist you in your upcoming business needs.

(sent to my co-worker, FIVE TIMES)

Given your busy schedule I am not sure if you’ve had time to address my earlier email. I wanted to circle back to you and see if my team and I can get on your calendar to discuss potential Agile IT staffing and Outsourcing needs for comScore.

(Thanks for “PERSONALIZING”. Does Agile IT staffing mean that they only staff in 2-3 week sprints?

She’s Crafty

“Well this girl came up to me – she says she’s new in town, But the crew been said they seen her around”

Sometimes even those who mean well make an egregious gaffe. This one comes from one of the major social/recruiting aggregators in the space. You know, the ones who are ‘revolutionizing the talent space’? I rarely get something so wildly off-base that it makes me slide back in my chair and read it 5-10 times. I really struggled digesting what what in front of me in this pure WTF moment.

Hi Pete,

This is NAME from XxxxxxXxx.

I Hope you day is going well and I saw in the news that Comscore was recently acquired by Adobe Systems. Congratulations on that! I hope this leads to big opportunities for you going forward.

You last spoke with XxxxxxXxx over a year ago while you were still at NPR and from my notes, you were pretty excited aboutXxxxxxXxx, but you switched companies. It seems we dropped the ball thereafter with follow-up.

I hopped on your jobs page and saw that you’re still hiring quite a bit, and thought it would be a good time to catch up!

Since we last spoke, we’ve added a number of new features and completely re-vamped our search engine.

(yadda yadda…)

For the relative succinctness of this email, there are so many issues I have with it.

It took me 10 minutes to digest the poor name of the rep. Think….massive global terrorist group. That must be one hell of a tough ice breaker.
Crap. We’ve just been acquired, what the hell am I going to…..oh wait a second. She’s got this all wrong. Sigh. If only you had a place to go do research on target companies. Double sigh.
I never spoke with anyone from this company about their product. I’ve been a vocal supporter of their main competitor in the space almost since their inception.
They re-vamped their search engine. Yawn. That’s the new “we have over 300 million resumes in our database that the competition doesn’t have”.

Sabotage!

“You’re scheming on a thing that’s a mirage, I’m trying to tell you now it’s sabotage”

And while these examples above are poor plays by those in the Staffing and/or HRTech space, it doesn’t exclude the similar things that go out to engineers or others with in-demand skill sets. And all the #FightSpam movements in the world can’t stop the onslaught. I’m sorry, but that’s the harsh, unenviable truth. What we can do is to raise the awareness of this epidemic to those who are new to our industry, and those veterans who are open to change.

Look, we can’t change the past, but we can use it as a compass for how to do things better in the future for ourselves and our industry. Denying ourselves that opportunity only allows for the same mistakes to be repeated in the future.

About the Author: Pete Radloff has 15 years of recruiting experience in both agency and corporate environments, and has worked with such companies as Comscore, exaqueo, National Public Radio and Living Social.

With experience and expertise in using technology and social media to enhance the candidate experience and promote strong employer brands, Pete also serves as lead consultant for exaqueo, a workforce consulting firm.

An active member of the Washington area recruiting community, Pete is currently a VP and sits on the Board of Directors of RecruitDC.

Follow Pete on Twitter @PJRadloff or connect with him on LinkedIn, or at his blog, RecruitingIn3D.

Talent Wars: A New Hope

Let’s talk Star Wars, specifically Star Wars IV – A New Hope. For those of you who have seen the movies which, based on previous reactions to Star Wars themed posts is most of you, you can probably skip this contextual part. For those of you who don’t get the metaphor, I’ll get right to the good stuff. In this film, the plot is all about ending the Death Star’s plan by identifying its most vulnerable point to destroy the Death Star. As is typical of the Star Wars films, there’s a battle and the good guys – the Rebels – suffer heavy losses, leaving Luke one of the few surviving pilots. The bad guys, led by Vader, leads a squad of fighters and prepares to attack Luke’s X-wing fighter, but Han returns and fires on the Imperials, sending Vader spiraling away. Helped by guidance from Obi-Wan’s spirit, Luke uses the Force and successfully destroys the Death Star seconds before it can fire on the Rebel base.

Boom. Article over. Go watch the movie. Audience appeased. Roll the credits.

Kidding. I have a recruiting point. Now, if we were to apply this metaphor to recruiting, you – the hiring team – get to play Luke. You’re the hero of this story as you seek out the best jobs for candidates. But lately, I’ve been getting the sense that we have a fatal flaw in our search strategy, much like the Death Star. One that would destroy our search strategy.

Because despite the broad availability of new channels to connect, for the last decade or so we’ve been relying on one tool… LinkedIn. It’s the professional’s network, after all. I’ve seen recruiters trying every tactic available on LinkedIn – from groups to shared connections to, of course, InMail in hopes that we’d achieve the trifecta of outreach – right time, right message, right place.

I don’t have anything against LinkedIn, even if this metaphor makes them out to be the Death Star. However, when 97% of us are fishing from the same hole we create a lot of noise and we scare off the fish. That’s regardless of your customized message, by the way. The candidates don’t stay because they like one e-mail. While customization is obviously a good thing, reinforced by the SPAM groups on Facebook and constant propaganda marketing a silver bullet for response rates, from a competitive standpoint the net benefit is negated.

Are you still with me? Is your mouth covering your hand as your brain figuratively and literally explodes?

While there are obvious benefits for message customization, where we get into trouble is not necessarily the vocabulary but the fact that we’ve become reliant on one channel. It’s dangerous almost like… building a Death Star with one fatal weakness. We are just waiting for someone to come along and bullseye our proverbial womp rat / purple squirrel while cruising in a T-16. So how do we dodge this Death Star-eske Catastrophe?

We’re Gonna Have Company! Aggregators

After years of being solely dependent on Inmail, there is a new hope rising. Search aggregators like Entelo, HiringSolved, SwoopTalent and until recently Connectifer (rest in pieces) have offered recruiters an edge in their sourcing efforts. While not entirely new, there is one area where these aggregators have made tremendous progress: finding contact information in an automated way, at scale. It has been a game changer for the industry.

In case you’re not in the know, you might be asking what an aggregator is in the first place. Think about Boolean searches and Custom Google Search Engines. They do the job, however, it’s a difficult task to replicate at scale. Aggregators utilize search engines but they also get smarter by saving information they gain from their search results.

Over time, they accumulate information that they can later match with the old record to append that record. Combine with new algorithms that help predict email formats and ta da, they are able to display a compelling amount of data.

So what else can aggregators do? The newest feature is the ability to integrate with our ATS. This could truly be a game changer. For years, every recruiting thought leader and coach has told us that our ATS was a gold mine of candidates. But there are a few problems with the application and sourcing of candidates from the ATS in the first place.

The first limitation is the number of results we can obtain because most ATS’ limit the number of results and the search functionality just plain old sucks. The other problem is that the information becomes outdated and good addresses go bad. People move, change jobs and even change fields so how are you supposed to know if that candidate from two years ago is still at the same job or even interested in the role? Based on marketing data that shows attrition of 2% every month on their database, the chances are good that your data is also bad by the time you come back to a candidate a year or two later.

Use The Force: Aggregation Advantage

Now there are a few big bonuses to contacting people from the ATS, even if most of the data is stale. If you find someone who is still looking, you’re already promoting a more consistent candidate experience. Everyone says, “hey we will keep your info on file and if something else comes up we will let you know.” The truth is… almost no one does it. You can surprise and delight candidates by using this warm(er) approach.

The second advantage is that, hypothetically, they already know who you are. Most of us don’t work for companies with a huge consumer brand name but rather mid-market companies that few, if any, of our candidates have ever heard of. Application is acknowledgement and the fact that they know who you are will help increase your response rates. Add a line about how they applied before and you’ll see that response rate increase.

So where does aggregation come in? First, the aggregators can search your ATS more efficiently than that dinosaur search algorithm that came with the ATS. We’ve all been on the other side of bad results, sorting through an ATS that you know has 10,000 java developers yet when you search, you see 1,000 thanks to the results caps. With an aggregator returning all of the results, you can have access to all of the resumes in the database.

Now that is pretty cool and probably good enough to send a few of you off searching for a new tool, but in the famous words of Billy Mays – there’s more! New aggregators can also update the information in the ATS so it’s not slowly deteriorating in quality. Now that gives you the potential to turn a gold mine into a platinum factory.

This is the new hope of aggregation. Not only can aggregators offer us multiple avenues to connect with prospects, they also help us solve data integrity woes. I know this may come as a shock to you LinkedIn addicted recruiters, but not every LinkedIn profile and resume we find is up to date. We need to leave the comfort of the social network confines and search our database, the internet and cross check our work all in real time.

You see I don’t think it matters if you fly a proverbial X-wing, a Y-wing , Mon Calamari Cruiser, employee referral program or an elaborate Boolean search string, the objective is the same. The challenge for our industry is that we need to move in two different directions. The choice is ours. Evolve or be replaced.

You’re all clear kid blow this thing and let’s get out of here… what are you waiting for?

About the Author

Mike Wolford has over 9 years of recruiting experience in staffing agency, contract 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 Mike 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.

Follow Mike on Twitter @Mike1178 or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Crushing Culture: A Recruiting Manifesto.

Sports teams are typically a child’s first introduction to culture. See, between the pop, chips and juice boxes, we’re teaching kids a lot of the lessons we later see HR posting signs about in our workplaces.

Think about it. From “remember to share the free snacks” to “respect is a core value,” the rules of corporate culture and good employee behavior are constantly echoed on the playing fields each weekend.

After spending the last 10 years on the field, I’m sure all the sports parents are happy to read that some day all of that will add up to something, even if it’s not a medal or a scholarship.

These interactions have an accumulation effect, creating beliefs etched in their memories about how teams should work and their place in the dynamic. Just like a swing or any other move you learn begins to turn into muscle memory, athletes memorize teamwork, compassion and consideration as well.

In “Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace”, Gordon MacKenzie – the former head of creative at Hallmark Cards – writes about speaking to elementary school students…

“Hi! My name is Gordon MacKenzie and, among other things, I am an artist. I’ll bet there are other artists here, too. There have to be with all the beautiful pictures and designs you have hanging in your classrooms and up and down the halls. I couldn’t help but notice them when I first got here this morning.”

“Beautiful pictures. They made me feel wonderful! Very energized. So many bright colors and cool shapes. I felt more at home when I saw them because they made me realize there are other artists here, besides me. I’m curious. How many artists are there in the room? Would you please raise your hands?”

MacKenzie then goes on to describe how the reactions differed by grades…

First grade: En mass the children leapt from their chairs, arms waving wildly, eager hands trying to reach the ceiling. Every child was an artist.

Second grade: About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher. The raised hands were still.

Third grade: At best, 10 kids out of 30 would raise a hand. Tentatively. Self-consciously.

And so on up through the grades. The higher the grade, the fewer children raised their hands. By the time she reached sixth grade, no more than one or two did so and then only ever-so-slightly — guardedly — their eyes glancing from side to side uneasily, betraying a fear of being identified by the group as a “closet artist.”

She would describe to the sixth graders the different responses she received from the other grade levels. Then ask, “What’s going on here! Are all the artists transferring out and going to art school?” Usually, in recognition of the little joke, students would laugh. Then she said

“…I don’t think that’s it. I’m afraid there’s something much more sinister than that at work here. I think what’s happening is that you are being tricked out of one of the greatest gifts every one of us receives at birth. That is the gift of being an artist, a creative genius.”

Something equally sinister is happening once candidate experience is turned over to the scions of the employee experience.

All Grown Up: Artists in Action

When they arrive at their employee experience, the “new car smell” wears off quickly. The excitement of a new challenge dies off and there’s almost instant proof in the job search data. In just 60 days, the majority of new hires have already looked for a new job according to Glassdoor.

On the other hand, people that fall into the retention trap fall to the wayside far too often – in passion and production, suffering under the consequences of staying in one cubicle in the back corner of the floor for too long. It’s a bit of a conundrum – that we preach the value of retention knowing well that it’s a death sentence for innovation and change.

The cure to the death sentence of innovation? Culture. It’s obvious in the select few companies with tenures that far exceed the average company and booming referral programs. But the true definition of culture is more unpredictable than the current dialogue and advice would make you believe.

It’s not uncommon for companies to weave in food, foosball, beer, community outings, woofs, and purrs into conversations about culture. While these work perks unequivocally make people feel good, they don’t necessarily positively impact engagement and performance.

Perks Don’t Mean Performance

In a FastCompany article a few years back, Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace study was cited as it uncovered that flexible hours increased employee happiness more than free food, and but that “employee happiness isn’t the driver of company success.” The items routinely referred to by companies as evidence of their “unique culture” are in fact, more bribe worthy than culture enhancing.

Think of this in another way – when a child misbehaves at the dinner table, where are they sent by most parents?

Their bedrooms AKA the place where all the toys can be found.

Does going here solve the little darling’s behavior or performance problem that had him sent to the perk room in the first place?

Simple answer? No. We reinforce bad behavior. We create cultural spaces that quickly become culture caves – places that employees go to complain about their work, their managers and everything else that is going terribly wrong. In parenting, the experts might tell you that it’s time to directly address behavior and in this all-too-familiar metaphor for work, the advice is the same.

It’s time to call out your haters. It’s time to put them on the spot. Ask the hard questions and address the blockers to the culture you’re intent on creating. It’s about addressing the chaos that corrupts. We’ve all been there before. We know the people are talking and it isn’t good. Even worse, they’re sharing via social media tools and are infecting your brand.

Rather than letting the problems manifest, we need to create a manifesto.

Culture Manifesto

It’s not comfortable or comforting but it does mean we’re getting somewhere. See, true culture – the kind that actually works, isn’t something you can learn with muscle memory. It’s an evolving thing, like the The Blob. It’s life – the Good, the Bad, and even the downright Ugly. Culture is a beast that engulfs everything in it’s 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…

What people too often fail to grasp is that a beast can be tamed; that a snarling, frothing, teeth-gnashing monster of entrepreneurial entropy – or a musty smelling, curmudgeonly cesspool of cognitive conceipt – can willingly become a magnet of love (don’t snicker – great cultures are places of love). True love isn’t about bribes, baubles or beer but about continuously learning, honesty and caring.

So right now, right where you’re sitting, think about your company’s culture: Is it something that has been described to you, right down to where the “tees” are crossed and the “eyes” are dotted? Or is it something that you can feel in your bones without any clues? Is it a place where only certain people are welcome or one that is welcoming to all people? Is it one where it is dictated from the Founders on down or one that is remolded by the people around you?

About The Authors

In a collaborative co-writing effort, Steve Levy + Katrina Kibben took turns writing paragraphs to develop this article and concept. If you want to learn more about either of these authors, google them. That’s your job after all.

RecruitingLive With Alan Fluhrer

Asking the right questions is never more important than when you’ve got the talent you want to hire right in front of you. Whether it’s on the phone or in person, we make an impression too: about how much we care, our motivations, etc. What we so often forget is that to most candidates, this job isn’t one of many. It could be their big job – the job that changes their life, their situation, and their future. For the job seeker, the stakes are always high and when we start to forget that – that’s when we miss out on the right people. It’s when we focus on number of hires, instead of calling them what they are (people), that we start to tarnish the reputation of recruiters. We become that annoying phone call instead of the game changer. We become a problem instead of an opportunity. We let people down.

But knowing what to ask, why it’s important and how to manage candidate experience while we’re spread thin isn’t the easiest thing to do. For those of us just starting out or recruiting in a new field, we’re learning. Hell, we should all be learning every day. We should be pursuing the best strategies and talking to people who model the same behavior and follow the conversation so they’re learning, too. We should be asking the right questions of ourselves, not just candidates.

That’s what RecruitingLive is all about – bringing people who want to learn from each other together and creating a safe place where we can talk about new ideas. A place where we can critique each other and laugh with the sole purpose of education, minus the digital snark that’s so pervasive in recruiting conversations.

This week we have a seasoned (that’s another word for old, sorry Alan, but we speak the truth here) veteran of recruiting, Alan Fluhrer. Alan is currently a recruiter at Nestle and a talent advisor. However in all of our conversations, I’ve really gotten to know Alan as a storyteller, which is probably why he’s so good at his job in the first place. He’s the kind of guy you can sit around with for hours and walk away with a million ideas about recruiting, human behavior and technology. He’s entertaining, educational and an all-around good guy.

In our RecruitingLive conversation, we’re going to talk more about candidate interaction and dig into why it’s so important that we ask the right questions in the right context. We’re going to talk about what question comes first and why. Then, we’re going to let you ask the questions.

See you there?

Chrome Extension Review: Clearbit Connect

With so many Chrome extensions, how do you know which one to use? Well, it depends on what you are trying to do. As recruiters, we, often have to look for candidates with a particular title. Other times, we are searching for candidates from a competitor. If you ever find yourself in this situation, Clearbit Connect is a great tool to use. Because Clearbit Connect works in Gmail, it will allow you to verify email addresses within a particular domain as well as reveal additional social information.

Why I like Clearbit Connect:

Very simple to use.
Free.
You can verify emails with it, as well as know more about the people who email you from that company.
Allows you to search company domains for people and get their emails, and other social info.
Also has a Google Sheets add-on that does more as well as working in Blockspring for even more capabilities.

About the 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 creation of innovative tools and processes for enhancing and changing staffing has established Dean as one of the top authorities in sourcing and recruiting. Connect with Dean at LinkedIn or follow @DeanDaCosta on Twitter.

Home Alone: Why We Can’t Keep Candidates Waiting

From the gate to take-off, it’s a waiting game. We wait in lines to get a bag checked, making small talk as we eye each bag to see the array of packages large and small that are making their way across the country. Our patience begins the ultimate test, a frequent one for the busiest of travelers who regretfully have to travel more than just a few days and must take a larger bag. Then, once we’ve reached the gate agent and made some polite small talk as we watch the scale in fear – even one pair of shoes over 50 pounds and you’re that person holding up the line as you pull items you assume weigh just the perfect amount to get your back safely checked and on the plane. Even that, a calculated risk, hoping you’ll see your bag on the other side with all its wheels and zippers.

That’s just the beginning of the waiting game, though. Your next stop – security, where the pat down is beginning to happen so frequently and with such… let’s call it thoroughness that we’re left asking if we should have tipped or asked when we’d see each other again, like a one night stand. The lines are increasingly long and at the worst hours of the day; standing in line at 5 am just isn’t fun. Even once we’ve arrived at the gate – it’s another waiting game to see if your crew and plane will be prompt and you’ll make it to your destination on time.

A thousand variables all based on waiting and pressing your patience. Let’s face it – waiting is the hardest part. It’s in waiting for the next big thing to happen or the change in our path that we become the most frustrated with our circumstances. We wait for things we need – like a license at the DMV. We wait for things we want – like a ticket for a concert. But waiting, as you know, can be trying. Think about the time you spend at the airport around the holidays; the delay peak of the year. You’ve secured a few days around the holidays to get time with family, a faux vacation because you know you’ll be spending your entire trip running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Compared to spending weeks with in-laws, the flying isn’t really that bad. It’s all the anticipation and waiting games we play before we ever get there that push us over the edge.

The Recruiting Reflection

The application process mirrors an airport, at times. Even if job seekers aren’t waiting longer than ever to hear back from you, it still feels that way purely because of the stakes at hand. They’re taking a risk and warranting big changes in their life simply by applying, and their candidate experience to this point has convinced them that the person on the other side of this application just doesn’t get it. After their wait time increases, applying to sometimes hundreds of jobs, they inevitably become more frustrated. While we prioritize and shuffle our candidates around as if they’re bags on the tarmac, human nature leaves them in a state of desperation, hopeful for answers on their future, not just a late departure.

The amount of time they have to spend applying before even waiting is a variable you can control and adjust. How? It’s simple, apply to a job yourself and see how long it takes. Is every step necessary? Whether you exclusively recruit for white collar, exempt workers or specialize in staffing for high volume, high turnover positions, your application process must cater to the people you most want to hire—candidates who are qualified, interested and available. And if it takes more than 10 minutes, that’s probably too long to keep the attention and patience of your applicants.

But the real question at hand, of course, is one we wish the airlines would address too – how do we move people through the process faster so they don’t hit max frustration?

One Step, One Application

A candidate who actually wants to apply for a job really only has one mission motivating them—to get through the often arduous online application process and successfully submit their resume for consideration They just wish it was a digital experience more akin to buying a book on Amazon than waiting at an airport around Thanksgiving. And there’s really no reason that it can’t be that easy.

Very few companies, and even fewer recruiting software vendors, offer one-step apply capabilities. Instead, most have an extremely complex and convoluted application workflow that requires dozens of different clicks to do something as simple as submitting a resume to a job posting despite data from Jobs2Careers that cites a 33% decrease in conversion by having a two-step apply process.

If you don’t know how many clicks your application process takes, then find out. The answer, for most employers, is probably both shocking and sobering. Remember, each and every single one of those clicks is going to cost you great candidates, who often drop out of the process well before you’re even able to capture their information. Unlike the airport, these candidates don’t have to stick around to get their money’s worth – especially the top candidates you want to attract.

Many recruiters and hiring managers seem to approach this with the attitude that this onerous application process somehow is an effective screening mechanism, and that “if they were motivated, they’d take the time to finish the application.”

News flash: that’s a bunch of BS.

In fact, the 2015 Candidate Experience Awards surveyed candidates about negative experiences while applying for jobs, and effectively dispelled this myth by providing a ton of data points that show how significant the issue of negative application experiences really is when attracting and recruiting top talent. There’s no confusion with these numbers.

We’re talking about…

42% of candidates of candidates with negative applicant experiences said they would never consider employment at the company again
22% of candidates with negative applicant experiences said they’d actively tell others not to work for that company, just like that one annoying guy who’s yelling at the gate agent to make special adjustments for him.
9% of candidates with negative applicant experiences said they would not purchase products or services from that company again.

It doesn’t take a big data specialist to do the math and realize the huge business and bottom line implications inherent to providing a bad application process. In the air or behind the ATS, a lot of waiting and bad experience will drive fewer referrals, kill your employer brand, and sabotage sales.

Interested in learning more about how to cut the waiting time in your application process? Download our latest eBook, written by Matt Charney, where he breaks down 5 recruiting strategies that work to strategically shorten your time to fill. Thanks to our sponsors Jobs2Careers for making this content possible.

10 Popular Places To Post Jobs Free

“Free” sites can actually cost you. Ever notice how in several articles I said, “free for now?” That’s because most tools are free in the beginning when they are in beta. When software is in Beta mode, it means that companies are still testing it before officially launching, which usually includes a paid model. In plain English, they’re using us for free labor and QA with the hope that we will try it out and give the feedback they need to get a ton of paying customers. I mean, Gmail and Google Calendar were in Beta for over five years. You get hooked to the software you have been using for free for so long and then all of a sudden, boom; they are asking for a fee. That is why most lists for free resources (unless they are current) don’t have free stuff on them. Are there any sites that let you post jobs free still? Short answer: Yes.

Where Can You Post Jobs For Free?

When you Google, “Post Jobs Free,” you’ll see over 200,000 results… but only two of the eight sites listed on the first page are free. Yes, you read that right.

Before signing up and alerting sites that you are hiring read the fine print or you could get tricked. The biggest trap I saw were sites that say you can post for free, but they are only free for three days. Stranger still, they say you can “sign up for free,” but you can’t actually post for free. Others expect 10 – 20% of the candidates 1st-year salary. So, just for you, I went through pages and pages of “free” job boards to see what up to date resources still let you post jobs free as of today.

AngelList

AngelList is known as the go-to site for all things regarding start-ups and venture capitalists But did you know it is also a resource for job seekers who want to work at startups? Currently, their reach is 543,070 active candidates including 164,162 developers and 35,022 designers. 6,000+ new candidates weekly.

ProductHunt

ProductHunt does not have an official traditional job board, but if you send an email to [email protected], they will post jobs free, update it on their jobs page and email it out to the subscribers of their newsletter.With over 400,000 users, it could be worth a look.

AllStarJobs.com

All Star Jobs allows you to not only post jobs free but also review resumes. Another stand out about this site is that they are backed by humans! In this day and age, most job boards are being left to robots to update. Allstar Jobs uses humans to test the validity of the jobs posted as well as make sure that it is up to date.

Best Jobs 4 Grads

Graduating college is quite an accomplishment. But it is not the end for graduates; it is just the beginning of figuring out where they are going to put those skills to work. Best Jobs 4 Grads offers 30 free job listings for recruiters and employers. This is the place to post jobs free for entry-level and intern positions.

ActiveHire

ActiveHire allows you to have five free postings including email notification, cross posting to free job boards and free customer support. For a fee, you can also search resumes. According to their website:

Jobs posted on ActiveHire get on average over 1000 unique visits – much higher than the industry average.

Jobinventory

Around since 2009 the site has no ads and it is entirely free. Also, they do not use aggregators to find jobs; all of the jobs are from contributors. According to RANKW, they get over 3,000 unique visitors a day.

jobcase

Better get in quick on this one. It is free now but will begin charging a monthly fee starting December 2016. This feels and looks like a more modern style of job board because it’s built more like a social media site. They have “groups” broken down by various verticals, a community section where potential candidates can ask questions and a place where you can rate your friends, colleagues and companies. Their community section is backed by over 50 mil. contributors. It will be great to see what this site will be doing in the future.

Jobvertise

This site offers free basic job postings and resume searches. Of course, you can pay if you need a bit more oompf. They have great traffic flow which could get your jobs looked at. Read Dean DaCosta’s article about how to use X-Ray searches for Jobvertise by clicking here.

US.Jobs

This job site offered by the National Labor Exchange may be the best one. The site is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), social media integrated, and mobile ready. I have always gotten great results from posting here personally and definitely recommend it.

Bullhorn Reach

Bullhorn Reach leverages social media to get your posts in front of your target audience. I like the ease of use and the social sharing aspect. Although it only allows you to publish two jobs at a time, you should still make sure you are posting here. It is a great site for social recruiting.

Remember, your job posts are only as good as the description. So clean up those reqs and happy posting!

That’ll Make You Think:What We Know

That’s Program, And It’s Easy: Where Things Go Wrong

Come On and Do It…: Communication Time

Niche? No Problem

To seek out the talent, I had to do some deep sourcing and ask a few favors.

About the Author

Dream Teams?

Team Win: Better Hiring, Better Teams

Touchdown: Making Team Hiring Happen

Can’t Buy Me Love

And I Love Her, Indeed

We Can Work It Out: Re-branding Talent

Don’t Let Me Down: Advice On Practicality

Strategic Talent Mobility: Who, What And How

You’ll Learn

Educational Discrimination Is Not Illegal — Until It Is?

End Rant

Here Ye, Here Ye: Attraction

Oh Horrible, Most Horrible: Application

All The World’s A Stage: Interview

About The Author

Rhymin’ and Spammin’

She’s Crafty

Sabotage!

We’re Gonna Have Company! Aggregators

Use The Force: Aggregation Advantage

About the Author

All Grown Up: Artists in Action

Perks Don’t Mean Performance

Culture Manifesto

About The Authors

Why I like Clearbit Connect:

About the Author

The Recruiting Reflection

One Step, One Application

News flash: that’s a bunch of BS.

Where Can You Post Jobs For Free?

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