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3 Tips for Breathing New Life Into An Established Employer Brand

2014-05-13_07-37-00Employer branding may not be new for your company. Maybe your organization has been actively branding its employment experience for several years. But an employer brand isn’t static; it’s an ongoing process. So if it’s been awhile (more than two years) since you revisited your employer brand strategy, it’s probably a good idea to consider refreshing it. Here are three ideas to get you started.

Adjust your communications for the younger demographic.

A new crop of students graduates and enters the workforce every year, and the messages that resonated with 2004 grads probably won’t work for the class of 2014. For that reason, it’s important to regularly assess the messages you’re sending and whether they are the right messages for your target audience.

Conduct demographic research through focus groups or surveys to find out what’s important to the candidates you want to reach, and make sure you’re sending the right messages. In addition, ensure that you’re using the communication methods that will reach them. If the audience you want to reach is using Google+ or Twitter, you should be there too.

For instance, some research shows that Generation Y candidates are more likely to try making connections with workers on the inside of an organization where they might like to work, than to simply look for career websites and recruiting materials. To reach them, you might focus on building more robust social media pages or using employee ambassadors to answer questions on Twitter or Facebook about what it’s like to work at your company.

Revisit the basics.

According to “The Growing Value of Employer Brands,” a research report by the Bernard Hodes Group, there is a great disconnect between many employers and their employees about what makes a valued employer brand. For instance, 64 percent of employees say that compensation is one of the most important attributes of an employer brand, but only 25 percent of employers say the same thing. Forty-one percent of employees rank job security as important for an employer brand, compared to 21 percent of employers.

If you haven’t revisited your employer brand for a while, chances are that economic conditions have changed and the cost of living may have changed as well. Ensuring that you are still offering competitive compensation and job security is a crucial step toward refreshing your employer brand.

Rethink recognition.

Take a look at how much time or money you’re spending recognizing your employees, and consider upping the ante. According to the Hodes research, 33 percent of employees say recognition is important in attracting new hires, compared to just 15 percent employers.

Showing recognition doesn’t have to be costly. It can be as simple as management writing personal thank you notes to employees who have done a good job, or awarding a team with a half-day off for meeting a goal. Or if you want to go all out, create an annual awards event and recognize all employees in some way. Be creative and come up with unique ways to express your appreciation for employees’ — and the company’s — accomplishments.

Check out the Glassdoor Talent Solutions Blog to learn more.

glassdoor logoAbout Glassdoor: Glassdoor is the world’s most transparent career community that is changing the way people find jobs, and companies recruit top talent. Glassdoor holds a growing database of 6 million company reviews, CEO approval ratings, salary reports, interview reviews and questions, office photos and more.

Unlike other jobs sites, all of this information is entirely shared by those who know a company best — the employees.

For employers, Glassdoor offers effective recruiting and employer branding solutions via Glassdoor Talent Solutions. We help more than 1,500 employers promote their employer brand to candidates researching them and advertise their jobs to ideal candidates who may not be aware of them. What differentiates Glassdoor from other recruiting channels is the quality of job candidates we deliver and our influence on candidates’ decisions as they research jobs and companies.

Candidate Experience: “What’s In It for My Company?”

rightbar_poster2013Besides the fact that treating your candidates with respect is the right thing to do, there are also some solid and important reasons for creating a positive candidate experience that can and likely will affect your bottom line as a company.  You all know that WIIFM stands for “What’s in it for me?” Well, WIIFMC stands for “What’s in it for my company?”

Data from the 2013 Candidate Experience Awards conclusively shows that a positive candidate experience increases the number of candidates who will reapply, refer others or will purchase your products, all of which have an impact on the company’s quality of product, productivity and revenue.

In most cases, the candidate experience really begins with clear communication – from the information provided on the company, its culture and about the job itself to the communication a candidate receives on the status of their application, next steps of the process and most importantly, feedback on why they were not select for the job.

The most common complaint among candidates is that they just don’t know where they stand during the application and screening process. Companies that provide some sort of feedback to candidates are ahead of the game, but what really seems to make a difference is the personal aspect of how that information is delivered.Nearly half (42.9 percent) of companies that won a 2013 Candidate Experience Award required that their recruiters provide either scripted or unscripted feedback to unqualified candidates.That is pretty powerful, but even with an automated message, in a timely manner, businesses can meet candidate expectations by letting them know where they stand.  It is the “not knowing” that causes the most frustration and will keep that same candidate from applying to the jobs for which they arequalified.

Another area impacting the quality of candidate experience is the job description itself. If the job description does not accurately reflect the type of skills or experience required, it will attract the wrong candidates and waste a lot of peoples’ time – including the candidate’s, the recruiter’s, and the hiring manager’s just to mention a few.  On the other hand, if the job requirements, necessary skills and experience are clearly conveyed, ideally you will receive a more qualified candidate pool and in the long run, a more productive new employee who can directly affect the company’s bottom line.

Candidates and new hires who were treated well during the hiring process are also more likely (62.5 percent) to refer people to your company; people they think would be a good fit even if they didn’t get the job themselves. In contrast, people who report that they were treated poorly during the hiring process (27 percent) would actively discourage their friends from applying, negatively impacting the company’s employment brand and ability to attract some possibly well qualified candidates.

Candidate experience also has the potential to impact a company’s sales. The CandE Awards research data showed that approximately 60 percent of candidates felt they had some sort of relationship with company to which they were applying. When they were treated well, 38.8 percent of candidates indicated they would be likely to “increase their purchase power” versus those who reported that they were not treated well (30.8 percent) and said they would take their purchase power elsewhere.

Would you like to know where your company stands?  You can apply to the 2014 Candidate Experience Awards to receive complimentary benchmark data to see exactly where you stand.  It is easy and FREE! Registration and the Employer survey must be completed no later than May 12.  Try it and you will find out WIIFMC.

Read more at the Candidate Experience Awards

The Need for New Key Performance Indicators in Recruiting & Hiring

It’s time for a change in the key performance indicators for recruiting.

kpiLast week, I mentioned that I’ve begun work on a new framework for key performance indicators in recruiting and hiring. In many ways, it’s the culmination of all of the work I’ve done in my role here at Brandon Hall Group – and beyond, as I’m drawing on years of experience in operations. The reason being, a framework captures all of the myriad pieces that comprise a mature and effective process and incorporates them into single, holistic model that drives desired outcomes.

I use the word holistic deliberately, as our research shows that high-performance people processes – from talent acquisition to performance management to leadership development and succession planning – are integrated and aligned with strategic business goals. And when framing up talent acquisition processes for maximum impact in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as improved quality of hire and increased new hire retention, a good framework needs to fuse everything together within the context of larger business needs.

A walk in the park, right?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how sourcing is changing, how candidate assessments are evolving, and the growing importance of onboarding – and how these things are impacting business performance. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how these things are affecting measures of success in talent acquisition. In theory, a holistic approach to finding, engaging, and hiring talent requires a holistic measure of overall performance.

In reality, however, our key performance indicators (KPIs) in talent acquisition haven’t changed all that much. And that’s a problem.

holisticA Need for New KPIs in Talent Acquisition

In The State of Talent Acquisition 2014, I examined the massive disconnect between talent acquisition process and priorities that persists among many organizations today. While hiring better talent continues to be a top priority, few organizations have evolved their hiring process to improve their ability to identify, engage, assess, and onboard top talent. As a result, very few are able to attract high-quality candidates, much less hire them.

There are a number of factors at play here, but I think there’s one core problem that affects all of the others: We’re still measuring things the way we always have, still using the same formulas to calculate performance, still using old benchmarks to predict future success.

The result is a rampant “good-enough” attitude in some 55% of hiring organizations and a widespread lack of maturity in talent acquisition process. Who needs a formal talent acquisition strategy when your performance metrics are at or slightly above industry average? So what if time to hire is steadily climbing and new hire retention is a little low? There’s a talent shortage, and competition for talent is high – right?

I wouldn’t be so sure. In fact, I’ve preached before about the dangers of middle-of-the-road recruiting. And as I dig deeper into research for my forthcoming talent acquisition framework, I see a critical need to overhaul the common KPIs we’ve relied on to measure talent acquisition performance over the last several decades.

Total Cost of Turnover: A Holistic Measure for Holistic Talent Acquisition

You can keep tracking time to hire, quality of candidate sources, and offers accepted. But if you want to make any meaningful improvements in your ability to hire better talent, you should rethink your performance standards. Take new hire retention as an example:

There are few things as frustrating as losing a new hire. After all the time it took to find, assess, and hire someone, you’re back at square one. Except you’re not at square one – you’re now worse off than when you started. You haven’t just spent time hiring someone; you’ve also invested resources in sourcing, hiring, onboarding, and training someone just for them to walk out the door.

When you think of the full impact of turnover, it becomes a little more difficult to write that off as a “bad hire.” And it’s this full-picture view of retention – and the total cost of voluntary turnover – that distinguishes high-performance organizations from their less effective peers.

High-performance organizations take the time to calculate exactly how many resources they’ve lost. With a tangible measure of what each lost new hire costs in lost productivity, lost resources, lost morale, etc. they have a better concept of just how important retention is. More than that, this data serves as a much stronger motivator to determine the causes of voluntary turnover – and take action.

You see where I’m going with this. With bigger-picture measures of talent outcomes, you can quickly see the vast difference between average, reactionary recruitment process and strategic talent acquisition. If that doesn’t stir up the pot, I don’t know what will!

For further insights on other holistic measures and aligning recruiting process with business goals, stay tuned for my high-performance talent acquisition framework.

See more at Talent Acquisition Today


Kyle Lagunas-9About the Author: As the Talent Acquisition Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Kyle Lagunas heads up research in key practices in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding – as well recruitment marketing, candidate experience, and social recruiting.

Through primary research and deep analysis, he keeps today’s business leaders in touch with important conversations and emerging trends in the rapidly changing world of talent.

Kyle has spent the last several years offering a fresh take on the role of technology as part of an integrated talent strategy, and focuses on providing actionable insights to keep leading organizations a step ahead.

Previously the HR Analyst at Software Advice, he is regular contributor on SHRM’s We Know Next and TLNT, and his work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, Information Weekly, and HRO Today.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleLagunas or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Metrics that Matter: Moving Past Social Brand Awareness

Tips to measure brand awareness in your recruiting organization.

Metrics and RecruitingOver the past several years, those focused on Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing, and Social Recruiting spend a fair deal of money each year on catchy imagery, messages and social advertisements (among other digital investments). When leadership asks the question, what is the ROI?  They’re often met with the answer of “it raises brand awareness.” And while that’s true, it’s a very vague result that can hide a multitude of performance sins (or lack thereof). If there’s investment, there needs to also be specific measurement to balance it… but many Talent Attraction professionals struggle with how to do that and where to begin.

The best place to start when making the move past “we’re doing this to raise brand awareness” is to outline your purpose. What are you doing and why are you doing it? Answering those two questions outline your business and recruiting objectives; which you’ll use to determine the drivers that are appropriate for your organization. Then you need to be able to measure how many people knew of your company before employer branding efforts began.

How about share of voice? Pinpointing your starting point will allow you to benchmark to find total growth throughout your campaign. From there, you have two categories of metrics that matter: Soft Metrics and Hard Numbers.

Soft Metrics are the questions that need to be asked, but arguably have somewhat subjective answers as opposed to hard numbers.

Questions like:

  • What is the level of your employer brand awareness in your target markets?
  • Is your target audience reacting to and engaging with your brand messaging? This is a “soft question” that can be drilled down from a simple ‘yes’ to hard numbers. You can measure this by looking at the subsequent actions the take. Do they comment, like, share the content you’re putting out? Are they moving from the social content you share to the career destinations that you’re driving them to, joining your talent network, applying for jobs, etc?
  • What is the level of your employee base’s understanding of your EVP and brand messaging? If your employees don’t understand it or can’t share your values pillars effectively; chances are your candidates don’t, either. You can measure this through internal surveying or focus groups; but you can also solicit feedback from candidates brought in through your ERP. Simply send them a different survey than you do candidates brought in through your other talent attraction efforts (this will require some sort of source information field to be set up so that you know to send a separate candidate experience survey).
  • What produces the best hires? Is it employee referrals, hiring manager satisfaction with the selected candidates, completion of your onboarding program, early adoption and participation in social collaboration tools in your organization? By understanding what keeps employees in your organization engaged and successful, you can develop the key drivers of your program & focus appropriate resources into developing feedback/measurement of those activities.
  • What’s your Workforce Data? Move beyond the standard demographic info and collect information on who they are – this will help you better understand what your target audience likely stands for and will help you more effectively deploy brand messaging to your existing employee base. Look at:
    • Commuting Patterns
    • Interest and Hobbies outside of work
    • Behavioral Patterns

Gathering this information can help you understand the best way to share your messaging. This might include gamification efforts, targeted advertising on the heaviest traversed routes of your employees, etc.

Hard metrics need to include more than just Cost Per Hire (CPH). Beyond employee engagement and quality of hire, discussed above, also look at:

  • Retention Rate: This is the most commonly used metric and can be displayed as a stand-alone number and included in ROR.
  • Traffic Sources
  • Number of Employee Referrals (pre and post campaign)
  • ROR (Rate of Return): This is an actual formula and should be conducted on each project you undertake, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment: R= Vf-Vi/Vi. Universum recommends the Value of attracting and recruiting a candidate that matches the company profile but traditionally the following have been used in determining the Vf number in ROR calculation:
    • Number of Net-New Applications and Talent Network Sign-Ups
    • Cost Per Employee (this focuses on the development of a value set showing the cost to retain your talent)
    • Increase in Engagement/Productivity of Current Employees
    • Decreased Time – to – Fill
    • Open Positions

For Vi, you’re focusing on costs:

  • Program Investments (tools, materials development, platform costs)
  • Advertising costs
  • Operational Costs (including staff costs, travel, events, etc)

universumWhile the return of brand initiatives certainly go beyond what’s isolated in these hard numbers; it’s important to be able to calculate the results of your efforts so that you can clearly communicate the benefits of your efforts to leadership.

For more information on measuring the efficacy of your branding initiatives, consider attending Universum’s Employer Branding Conference in NYC tomorrow on May 7th, 2014.

crystalAbout the Author:  Crystal Miller is a strategist with AT&T and has nearly a decade of recruitment marketing and digital strategy experience. In addition, she has led both the internal HR function for a regional $350MM business and the largest real estate recruiting practice for the leading single-site search firm in the United States.  Miller has worked with start-ups to Fortune 5 companies to create and execute compelling recruitment marketing & employer branding campaigns.

She has been a reliable expert source on the topics of talent attraction, talent acquisition, talent management, and digital strategy for multiple media outlets including CBS, Hanley-Wood, Mashable, and ABC. As an industry leader, she is recognized for expertise in recruitment, recruitment marketing, social media, social communities, talent pipelining, and digital strategic solutions and speaks globally on the same.

Follow Crystal on Twitter @TheOneCrystal or connect with her on LinkedIn.

HiringSolved: A Look at the Startup Behind the LinkedIn Lawsuit

hiring_solved logoChances are you’re familiar with LinkedIn’s recent round of legal actions, initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in January. The initial complaint was filed “against Defendants Does 1-10 (collectively, the “Doe Defendants”); LinkedIn subsequently identified these Doe Defendants as HiringSolved in an amended filing.

This startup, accused of scraping LinkedIn profile information and then indexing them within the HiringSolved platform without the permission of LinkedIn, stands accused of “ongoing and irreparable injury to LinkedIn,” which is an interesting accusation for a publicly traded multinational worth billions of dollars to make of a two year old start-up which, according to CrunchBase, has received only about a million dollars in funding.

I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to go into the lawsuit or legalities.  If you’re interested in learning more about that side of the issue, check out “LinkedIn Lawsuit: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide” by Nicole Greenberg-Strecker or The LinkedIn Lawsuit by Heather Bussing (both attorneys, and far more qualified to speak to the subject).  No, I’m a sourcer, which, of course, made me curious to learn more the tool and technology behind Hiring Solved itself – particularly since it’s apparently advanced enough to be perceived as a direct threat to LinkedIn.

hs1

HiringSolved gave me an advanced look at their beta user interface and some of the other features that they were offering prior to their being named in the suit, and I was impressed with what I saw.  It has a nice, clean UI & UX (see screenshot), and offers the ability to source candidates based on keywords, skills, location and other similar filters. 

It also has the ability to only return profile results where there is an associated e-mail address and/or phone number, which helps streamline what’s often a manual process, even in other talent aggregators who do not offer this same option for filtering results.

In fact, according ot the company, “HiringSolved is the only tool in the new group of the past few years called talent aggregators that covers the entire globe and all job categories.”  For example, you can find sous chefs in Singapore or commercial relators in Shanghai using Manderin characters just as easily as you can find MongoDB/Redis developers in Silicon Valley, meaning that the scope of this sourcing tool has potential applicability to every employer looking for any type of talent anywhere in the world.

Which is pretty cool.

screenshot shFor example, when performing a search for Java Developers within 50 miles of 98042 – my hometown of Kent, Washington, a radius that includes the greater Seattle area – I received over 99 pages of results.

At 10 results per page, that’s a lot of possibilities – even by the standards of a town that boasts the global headquarters of some of the world’s biggest tech employers, like Amazon and Microsoft.

This is interesting, because despite LinkedIn’s complaint, not all of profiles returned in the search results were populated with information pulled from LinkedIn, which is easy to see since HiringSolved clearly shows the social sites or sources of potential candidates (see screenshot), which extend far beyond the ubiquitous (and litigious) “professional network.”

As you can tell, from the first page of results alone, fully 30% of the profiles (3 out of 10) did not include any LinkedIn information whatsoever.  Which, according to Matt Ekstrom, Chief Revenue Officer at HiringSolved, is part of the product’s inherent appeal.

When contacted for this article, Ekstrom told Recruiting Daily:

“We are not trying to resell a replica of LinkedIn profiles.  There is no value to the customer.  Rather, we provide wherever we can a holistic approach to who this person is and how they can be contacted.  We have no limits to where we find data except pay walls, and to date we’ve found roughly 40+ contact vectors.  We also have other sites and repositories coming to us asking us to index their information because we augment what they have and drive traffic to their site since we attribute the source of information.”

No matter what the source of the information, I found it extremely interesting that their results almost unilaterally include either an e-mail address or phone number – here, the tool delivers as promised.  What’s even more promising is a unique feature, which is visible in the first screenshot of the interface, that recruiters or sourcers can upload a candidate’s resume or social profile and have the system search for and return similar profiles, essentially automating candidate slating and pipelining.

What better way to find your next top performer than by searching the deep web against the ones already in your organization?  I tried this feature several times with several different searches, and was impressed at its extreme accuracy – big data at its best.

While the company will be rolling out new pricing this month, citing “major changes on the horizon,” for now, HiringSolved licenses cost between $199-$799 a month, which also comes with a Risk Free Guarantee, meaning that HiringSolved has the ability to reap major rewards without incurring the risk often associated with point solutions or sourcing tools.

The bottom line: I was extremely impressed by Hiring Solved, and it’s a great tool for sourcing candidates effectively and efficiently.  It makes the process of sourcing seem simple, and allows you to not only easily find talent, but also, the information needed to engage them via phone or email to actually transform contacts into candidates.  Which is what great sourcing tools are all about.


dean_dacostaAbout 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.

How To Spot A Lazy Recruiter on LinkedIn

3 Reasons Why Being a Lazy Recruiter on LinkedIn Can Cost You Candidates

social_talentRECRUITERS – admit it, you’ve been a lazy recruiter. Have you ever sent a LinkedIn connection request to a cold candidate and inside that little 200-character message box told them you may have a job opportunity they’d be interested in?

Yes, of course you have.

Yet again this week, I received LinkedIn connection requests where the recruiter was so lazy and inconsiderate as to approach me about a job in their connection message, so this blog comes from a place of frustration and wanting to stop this epidemic from spreading.

I hope you find it helpful.

3 Reasons Why Being a Lazy Recruiter on LinkedIn Can Cost You Candidates

Here’s 3 reasons you should NEVER do this ever again, and 3 ways to reach out and approach your potential candidate in a more appropriate way that a) increases the chances that they’ll respond to you, and b) won’t decimate your reputation as a recruiter and headhunter.

Reason 1: LinkedIn will put you in LinkedIn Jail

LinkedIn say that you should only connect to people you know. If you were to invite a fellow LinkedIn member to connect that you don’t know, and they hit the “I Don’t Know” button, this sends alarm bells ringing in LinkedIn. 3 instances of this and LinkedIn will send you to LinkedIn Jail, and insist that from now on you’ll have to enter the member’s email address before the connection request will be sent.

If this is already the case for you, then read this excellent post by Stacy Zapar on how to get out of LinkedIn Jail.

Reason 2: Your message won’t even be seen

The new LinkedIn layout means that connection invitations now come up as an instant “Accept” or “Ignore” option, allowing a user to see the invitee’s name and headline and make a quick decision as to connect or decline without ever reading their little message.

LinkedIn Connection Request Message

So, your offer to discuss job options is wasted.

You may be thinking, “But they’ll see my message in the email LinkedIn send them”. Will they? The answer is probably not.

LinkedIn Connection request email message

What your connection request message looks like in Email – which no one reads

More and more often, people ignore notification emails from social networks because they just aren’t important! In fact, Gmail have segregated their email inbox into 4 compartments, banishing all social networking notification emails to another tab that no one reads, leaving only real emails in their inbox. So again, your job opportunity message goes undetected.

Reason 3 (and most important): It’s incredibly lazy and very annoying.

As a potential candidate, I want to feel special. Why do you think I’d be suitable for this job opportunity? What is it about my profile and experience that fits with this job?

In this connection-request message box, you get 200 characters to send to your potential candidate. That’s not a lot of space to personalise your message, put in enough detail to introduce yourself and why this member is ideal for the job. If I’m such a worthwhile candidate, realise that I’m probably getting at least one of these messages a week (which is about right).

Irrelevant LinkedIn connection request

The amount of times I’ve been sent LinkedIn connection requests with references to job opportunities that are completely irrelevant… This only makes my dissonance worse. I will end up not responding to introductions from recruiters at all because I’m going to start tarring you all with the same brush.

3 Alternative Approaches for Reaching Great Candidates on LinkedIn:

1: Pick up the phone.

Recruiters are becoming too computer-happy these days. What happened to good ol’ conversation? Watch this webinar on how to find the contact details of potential candidates. Seriously, it’ll change your life.

2: Reach out to them elsewhere.

Phone not suitable? Ok then, send them a real email (again, watch this webinar on how to get their email details) or reach out to them through a common connection.

By the way, I explicitly state on my LinkedIn profile in the “Advice for contacting Holly” section my email address and Twitter handle. How lazy must a recruiter be?…

Advice for Contacting Holly on LinkedIn

3. Find them on a social network they actually use.

Recruiters are really the only ones who actually use LinkedIn regularly. The average time spent on-site per month on LinkedIn is 17 minutes, compared to Facebook which is 8.3 hours per month.

So find them on a social network that they actually use – Twitter, their blog, Facebook, Pinterest, Github, Stackoverflow and so many more.

What are your thoughts? Are you still successful at getting candidates to respond to your job opportunity messages, or are you getting sick of them as well? Leave your thoughts in the comments :-)

Learn more about sending LinkedIn connection requests at Social Talent

hollyAbout the Author: Holly Fawcett started out her working life as a retail manager, working for giant PLCs like Topshop and Gap Inc. Holly had always wanted to work as a marketeer in the buying departments of these big brands, and as a result, decided she’d need to go back to college to start learning business.

While completing a one-year Advanced Diploma in Marketing in 2011, Holly took the plunge and left her retail career behind, starting as an intern in Social Talent in April 2011.

Holly is the conscience of the company and as well as answering phones, correcting homework from Black Belt trainees, moonlighting occasionally as her boss on LinkedIn, and keeping the office presentable she is the moral compass that stops Johnny from planning to invade small countries.

Follow Holly on Twitter @HollyFawcett or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The Big ‘But’: Trust and Talent Acquisition

The 3 types of people involved with talent acquisition at every organization.

A significant percentage of people involved with screening and selecting job candidates fancy themselves detectives, mind-readers, psychics and psychologists. They’re almost always willing to trust their own gut. But not much else slips unscathed through the scrutiny of these trust deficient evaluators of talent.

When this takes place do we end up with a talent shortage or a trust shortage?

Judges of Job Seekers

Trust deficient individuals are overtly judgmental and suspicious of anyone that happens to be actively pursuing a new employment opportunity. To them, active job seekers are viewed as defective and inferior and obviously not trustworthy talent or they would not be unemployed, underemployed or unsatisfactorily employed.

If an active job seeker is fortunate enough to be granted an interview, everything he or she says about why they are looking or why they are not working may unjustly fuel skepticism about their employability. Entire chunks of the available labor pool are automatically disregarded because of this unreasonable level of distrust of active job seekers’ abilities.

Interrogators

Instead of conducting a professional business-person to business-person conversation, trust deficient interrogator types play games and ask tricky (no-win & awkward to answer) or irrelevant questions to see how people think, act or respond under pressure. They prefer to treat interviews as “guilty until proven innocent” interrogations. Putting people on the spot and convincing them to spell out failures, mistakes and weaknesses helps reinforce the mind-reader’s reasons for not trusting any positive information acquired. Anyone that doesn’t tell the interrogator what they want to hear in the way they want to hear it gets dismissed.

Power Trippers

Some interviewers live in a world where their own power trips entitle them to demand current compensation and salary history from any prospective candidates in order to pre-classify them as worthy or unworthy of the position under consideration.

Rather than developing a market-driven compensation structure to reflect the performance criteria of any respective position, the trust deficient power tripper bases a candidate’s future earnings on unrelated present or past income.

Even if a candidate is adamant about money not being a key motivator, the non-trusting psychic-friends-network interviewer will assume that’s a lie and refuse to accept that anyone would have different priorities than him/herself.

The power tripping wannabe psychologist’s assessment of candidates’ financial situation is what determines who moves ahead or who is dropped.

CoveyTrustQuotePrivate Investigators

These self-appointed detectives are not satisfied with traditional due diligence and objective (compliant) background or reference checks, so they seek out backdoor methods to dig up dirt about candidates. They have no qualms about putting the candidate’s employment status or professional relationships in jeopardy with premature inquiries or unauthorized sleuthing.

Investigators may even probe backdoor sources for personal details, gossip, hearsay and speculation and put more weight on that than other input. Trust deficient detective types are always eager to rely on information obtained out of context, especially if it contradicts other data collected. Sneaky NSA-style intrusion or privacy invasion might be all it takes to disqualify an otherwise qualified candidate.

While being thorough and thoughtful is encouraged, taken to the extreme trust deficiencies can undermine the success of a selection process. Judging, interrogating, power-tripping and investigating as described here does not make for a trust-based relationship.  If the pre-screen crystal ball predicts LIES ahead, then don’t waste time engaging in any of this trust deficient behavior.

Sir-Mix-A-Lot knows what he likes and so should you.

Read more at RecruitingBlogs.com.

talenttalks

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.

 

Best Represent: Entelo Diversity, Bigotry and Big Data

Is HR the industry of diversity? Maybe not.

etsySure, only 47% of the American workforce over the age of 16 are women (a gender disparity that’s been gradually closing over the past decade), but you wouldn’t know that from the looks of your average HR department. There’s a reason we often refer to the profession, collectively, as HR ladies (see left, coming soon in the SHRM Store): according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 72.4% of all human resources workers in 2012, a number that jumps to a whopping 80% for compensation and benefits specialists.  HR is second only to primary school teachers in terms of gender representation within a job function.

And, while they might not often lay claim to the title of early adopters, HR workers have beaten the rest of their corporate counterparts in shattering the glass ceiling, with a whopping 71.9% female representation in HR management and leadership roles.

In the perverse logic of HR compliance, however, that means that this is, in fact, one of the most diverse professions.  HR, while largely tasked with ensuring compliance with AA/EEOC and other employment regulations, has historically been one of diversity’s biggest internal champions, turning it into a ubiquitous focus of many company’s talent strategies and workforce management plans.

Which means that it’s also a stated core value of almost every company, since the overwhelming majority of C-Suite executives are men, and denying diversity is never a good idea when you’re the (overwhelmingly white) guy in charge.

 Just ask Donald Sterling.

 HR, obviously, is an anomaly; by contrast, only 26.1% of professionals in computer science were women, according to BLS data.  Within this subset, only 19.1% are the most prized technical recruiting quarry: programmers and developers. Not that women are the only underrepresented population in the technology sector; only 12% of programmers are African American or Latino, according to the National Center for Women In Technology.

But what looks like a diversity problem in programming and tech is, by the same rules that make women count as diversity candidates in benefits-related jobs, anything but.  In fact, 50.1% of all Silicon Valley professionals in 2010 were Asian, up from only 38.7% in 2000 – meaning that, in fact, the occupation is making dramatic progress towards being HR’s definition of “diverse.

But for the vendors selling into those HR ladies, that apparently isn’t quite enough to satisfy the insatiable desire to make their workforce into an ad for the United Colors of Benetton.  Enter Entelo.

unnamedEntelo Diversity: A Big Data Approach to Reverse Racism

That long introduction should serve to provide context for a product announcement that, rare among any of the snooze news that dominates the recruiting technology space, its founders acknowledge is controversial, and rightfully so. Also, because you have to be really careful talking about issues involving race, unless it’s done under the guise of diversity, which somehow categories without the context of culture – historical heritages reduced to a check box on a form.

Meet Entelo Recruiter, the world’s first racist and sexist algorithm – and by the way, racist and sexist don’t necessarily imply a pejorative, but rather, a bias towards one protected class over the other.  Which, by their own admission, seems pretty much the entire case use for this product, which the profile aggregation company announced in a press release this morning.

“Entelo Diversity uses a proprietary algorithm to find candidates whose social profiles indicate a high probability of meeting a specific gender or ethnicity as well as candidates who may have previous military experience,” according to the release.

I spoke with Entelo CEO Jon Bischke prior to product launch, who indicated that while many of the factors in determining the algorithm are proprietary, the product more or less uses stereotypes under the guise of predictive analytics to filter, with around a 95% success rate, candidates’ gender, veteran status or race depending on their aggregated social information.

Some of the examples cited by Bischke include the assumption that being an alum of a historically black college or university are likely to make the candidate African American, or that if a candidate is a female, she’s likely to be in a sorority, or if they have a social profile with the word “Marine,” or a title like “Sergeant,” they’re likelier to be a veteran.  Here’s to you, Captain Obvious.

This, apparently, required a lot of programmers and “big data” to figure out – but the good news is, Entelo is meeting a market need by more or less automating good faith efforts by saving recruiters the trouble of, you know, taking the time to look at the picture on one of those said social profiles or even looking at their name to determine whether it’s likely that the candidate is male or female.

“We don’t want the tool to be used in a discriminatory fashion,” Bischke said, “We built this tool to help find more diverse candidates in situations where an under-representation exists.”

Bischke notes that Entelo, as a sourcing point solution, is not an applicant tracking system, meaning that while this tool will ostensibly help employers meet compliance requirements, it is not a system of record for the documentation and dispositioning required by statutes like the OFCCP.

Entelo Diversity has been vetted by a number of employment attorneys and compliance experts prior to its release, Bischke noted, ensuring the legality of the solution.  In researching this article, three independent licensed employment attorneys, as well as a labor law expert, confirm that, in fact, Entelo Diversity is compliant as an independent solution.

This obviously overcomes the obvious red flags (and eyebrows) this controversial product will raise with HR and recruiting practitioners and leaders.  That said, both the company as well as the attorneys consulted for this piece do caution that while the tool itself is compliant, the possibility for abuse or misappropriation by end users could result in compliance violations.

While Entelo does have a global client mix, Bischke admits that while the product has undergone scrutiny under US law, the company has not gone to the level of verifying compliance with the employment law standards of every country in which its clients operate.

Additionally, Entelo advises all customers to perform due diligence and consult outside counsel prior to adopting Entelo Recruiter, since variables like Affirmative Action plans and OFCCP status vary from company to company.  Entelo Diversity has been used by several clients in closed beta prior to today’s public release.  It has so far received praise for its precision (an accuracy rate of around 95%) as well as its efficiency, since it automates the fully entrenched, fully manual process of finding and slating diversity candidates.

It is, in effect, no different than going to a career fair at a women’s college or paying money to sponsor a National Black MBA Association event – it’s just a different means to the same end, which means that the case use should be fairly obvious to anyone who’s ever had to create a diverse slate or align search strategies with a company’s good faith efforts and Affirmative Action plans.

 “We believe in hiring the best person for the job from the candidates available,” regardless of diversity status, Bischke said.  “We believe that means making sure that no particular group is underrepresented within that candidate pool – and Entelo Diversity is a way to correct that under representation.”

Unfortunately, this apparently doesn’t apply to white men, who, as noted above, are actually underrepresented within the technology sector – the tool does not have a way filter Caucasian or male candidates.  For this marginal group, companies will still have to continue manually sourcing candidates through networks like yacht or country clubs and events like Macklemore concerts or the Republican National Convention.

It’s not impossible, though – in fact, Bischke is clearly working to correct this grievous underrepresentation within the technology sector.  According to their website, 67% of Entelo’s current management team are, in fact, white males, a number which is in fact 9% higher than the nationwide average, per BLS data.

This is proof that even for tech companies who don’t have the resources for dedicated diversity functions at companies like Google or Facebook, there’s still hope for correcting the problem of under representation within the tech industry.  Now, if only it worked for HR – because if you think finding a female software developer is hard, finding a male payroll specialist is damn near impossible.

The Five Elements of A High Performing Sourcing Strategy

sourcing_strategyOf all the stages of talent acquisition, sourcing is perhaps the most dynamic – and this is evident in how rapidly the use cases for sourcing technology are evolving and changing. The emergence of social technology has had an especially profound impact.

The Source Stage is the culmination of all efforts to find and engage candidates. For small companies in particular, sourcing has been limited to posting open jobs on various job boards and social networks. As competition for talent continues to increase, however, very few employers can rely on direct applications as a source of talent.

Instead, data from the Brandon Hall first annual State of Talent Acquisition Report shows recruiters at the most effective hiring organizations are actively searching for qualified candidates across various social networks, job boards, and talent communities. Across the board, however, employee referrals continue to be the single most effective source of qualified candidates for organizations of all sizes.

But as I dig deeper into the data, it would seem there’s far more to sourcing than the channels recruiters are using to find candidates. As I see it, technology is rapidly evolving the sourcing function in some very significant ways.

Five Elements of Sourcing Strategy

Finding the best talent can be time consuming. Success requires a more diverse approach to sourcing than before. While the challenge for some recruiters is to cast a wider net, others need to do more targeted networking – and demand for technology that can minimize the work each strategy requires has resulted in a major increase in the number of sourcing tools available today.

While this corner of the vendor landscape changes almost daily, the most effective sourcing tools typically fall into one of these categories:

  • Broadcasting. The main purpose of these tools is to increase the exposure of open jobs and/or your employer brand. Functionality can include distribution of job postings, creation and management of email campaigns, and aggregation and management of social networks.
  • Searching. Almost every ATS has some form of search capabilities. The extent of those capabilities, however, can play a huge role in recruiters’ sourcing outcomes (as any Boolean master can attest). Searching technology is getting increasingly sophisticated, with many systems automatically searching through internal candidate databases to find potential matches for new job postings. Others use complex search algorithms to track down top talent outside of the ATS, and rank candidates based on experience and competency.
  • Attracting. While many sourcing solution providers are improving recruiters’ search capabilities, others are focused on leveraging candidates’ search habits. These tools leverage SEO tactics to improve visibility of job postings, which is becoming a recruiting staple. Note: Few (if any) standalone products focus exclusively on SEO, and instead incorporate this functionality into the standard requisition opening workflow.
  • Referring. Employee referrals have become one of the most popular sourcing strategies for finding quality hires. To that end, a number of vendors in the space have developed tools geared toward improving employee referral programs – through automating the administrative workload these programs require, gamifying participation, automating job sharing on social networks, and more.
  • Engaging. These tools are heavily CRM focused, in that they keep a recruiter in touch with important activity in their networks. For example, when a candidate has recently made a number of updates to his LinkedIn profile, or has recently accepted a new job. These tools make it easy for recruiters to maintain a birds-eye view on their talent pool, and maintain a high-touch relationship with top talent.

Sourcing technology is probably the hottest corner of the market in talent acquisition technology these days – and for good reason. Every organization sources candidates as part of its talent acquisition process, though some are decidedly better than others.

 I’ll leave you with this: While the basic function of sourcing may remain the same over the years, organizations that diversify their sourcing strategies and leverage advances in sourcing technology will consistently winning the race for top talent.

Read more at Talent Acquisition Today


Kyle Lagunas-9About the Author: As the Talent Acquisition Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Kyle Lagunas heads up research in key practices in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding – as well recruitment marketing, candidate experience, and social recruiting.

Through primary research and deep analysis, he keeps today’s business leaders in touch with important conversations and emerging trends in the rapidly changing world of talent.

Kyle has spent the last several years offering a fresh take on the role of technology as part of an integrated talent strategy, and focuses on providing actionable insights to keep leading organizations a step ahead.

Previously the HR Analyst at Software Advice, he is regular contributor on SHRM’s We Know Next and TLNT, and his work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, Information Weekly, and HRO Today.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleLagunas or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Talent Attraction: Why It’s Time To Grow Up

talent brandI’m demanding of our industry – and am the first to admit that. These demands aren’t unrealistic, I think; I expect organizations who haven’t developed a dedicated effort to attracting talent to get on the bandwagon. It’s up to us, in talent acquisition and human resources, to create compelling content and a comprehensive strategy around what it’s like to work at your company and stop tasking the corporate communications or consumer marketing team to do the heavy lifting.

I expect great things from those leading edge organizations who have already recognized recruiting and retention reality by already dedicating headcount, budget and resources towards attracting (and keeping) top talent to their organizations – on a multi-dimensional level.

What, exactly, does ‘multi-dimensional’ mean?  It means it’s time for these programs to grow up and move up to the next level by finally realizing what we in talent attraction really are: a true marketing function.

OK, let’s face it. It’s nice to see some cutesy employee quotes with a couple of lines of copy on why they love their culture, company or jobs. But these sanitized, stripped down ‘testimonials’ fail when it comes to creating employee engagement or even a contrary point of view. After all, what else is there to say besides some lame affirmation of what’s printed on the ubiquitous ‘values’ section of your company career site? Who doesn’t like stuff like good benefits, decent work life balance, cool colleagues and a fun office environment? If you don’t, chances are pretty good you’re in HR, anyway.

Most of what we choose to share in our recruitment marketing sounds like they were created by Captain Obvious, and we continue to salute the superficial. No one notices, mostly, because no one expects us to share anything but the positive, transforming dynamic employers into Potemkin villages when it comes to talent attraction. Now, I’m not saying you should highlight all your company’s dirty laundry – although there is absolutely a benefit to shining some light on the difficult realities of your corporate culture in your recruitment marketing materials. What I’m saying is we need to collectively help each other innovate by creating ideas and individuality that not only distinguish a company’s talent brand, but also add an element of depth that’s largely missing from what we currently share in our careers collateral and conversation.

Take a look at this clip from one of my favorite shows to watch with my daughters, Nashville. They go behind the scenes to feature a few people discussing a project (or song) that’s featured on the show. It shows collaboration, pride in work, environment/ambiance, cultural influences and the central dynamic of overcoming adversity to survive – and thrive. In other words, this clip captures all the stuff we get geeked up about sharing when building our employer brands or recruitment marketing messaging. They even go a step further than most talent brands do, drilling down another level to include contractors and consultants – it’s not just the full time employees who are the stars of your organization. Give this video a look and learn to take a page from their playbook – contractors represent an increasing percentage of the workforce, and must also live the culture of the companies we’re still tasked with attracting them to, regardless of employment status.

It’s an interesting piece that we can use to start thinking about retooling and reprogramming what stories we tell and how we share them. The best existing example I’ve seen in talent branding comes from Microsoft’s “I Created This” campaign. This campaign beautifully mixes corporate, consumer and employer brands in a perfect mix that highlights the artists, entrepreneurs and employees driving innovation behind the scenes at this tech titan. Microsoft, unlike many companies, isn’t hung up on differentiating W2 workers from their 1099 counterparts, showcasing all contributors and colleagues equally – just like, ultimately, the contributions they make to the organization.

It’s a brilliant take on the “Get A Mac” campaign deployed by Apple from 2006-2009, and shows not only product and projects, but the real teams and real users upon whose sweat equity Microsoft’s bottom line relies. It’s compelling recognition for those featured, and sends an even more compelling – not to mention very attractive – message to current and potential employees alike: your work matters here.  It’s worth checking out.

Once you have, it’s time to start building your brand with an audit or assessment of existing collateral and content. Take a careful look not only at what the copy says (which is extremely important), but also, what it means. Is there depth? Which shareholders are included (or are you stuck with stock art)?  Most importantly, consider what, if anything, your recruitment marketing actually achieves. Does it build buzz? Will it drive conversation, sharing, and ultimately, conversion of candidates and increased sense of ownership (and fealty) among current workers?

Your existing employee population is the most obvious – and ideal – of focus groups (an important element of any marketing strategy).  You’ll know you’ve ‘nailed’ talent branding when people proactively share what you put out there – but the only way to do that is, optimally, by working with them to capture feedback and refine your talent attraction strategy before it’s distributed to a wider audience.  No one knows what it takes to attract talent to your organization better than the talent that’s already in the kinds of roles you’re trying to fill.  Capitalize on their experience and expertise to discover what, exactly, is compelling to your target audience – their professional peers.

These initiatives can be easily transformed into true marketing campaigns by including the following essential elements:

  • Marketing Communication Opportunity Assessment:  Examine the make-up and needs of target market.
  • Communication Channels Analysis: Where will this campaign be seen? What platforms will you use?  Use the needs/practices of the initiative/campaign’s defined markets, job levels, and environments to help guide you.
  • Defining Objectives & Outcomes:  Clearly state the expected long &/or short-term behaviors of the target audience for the campaign.  This defines your promotional objectives and is important to include in metrics planning; rather than focusing solely on our standard “number of views, apps, interviews, hires.”  Remember, all objectives must be measurable and succinctly stated.  If it takes a paragraph to explain an objective? Start again and keep refining it down to a single statement.
  • Determination of Resources & Budget: Simply showing up to an event doesn’t mean you’ll be asked to dance.  In order to create awareness, you must have resources that allow you to participate in your selected channels and platforms.  This is where you allocate resources amongst sales (read: recruitment) promotion, advertising & publicity (read: branding).  All three are necessary for a well-rounded campaign.  An advanced program will also include the cost of personal selling (in our case, the cost of the line recruitment staff); though currently very few actually do this.   The promotion budget involves determining cost breakdowns per business unit, by geography (and potentially job level) and promotional mix elements. Don’t rush this; be sure to drill down and understand the allocations being made/given and determine the affordability, percent of sales (referrals/apps/hires), and competitive parity (yes, what your competitors do actually does matter).
  • Messaging Creation & Promotion:  Notice we’re at step 5 and we’re only NOW focusing on message development.  You have to know the ‘Why’ to know the ‘Who’ to know the ‘Where’ to know ‘How’ to create ‘What’ actually needs to be said.  This is backwards from what many learned with the “Who, what when, where, and why” in science, but that’s okay – this is marketing. At any rate, this is where you and your team (or agency if you don’t do it all in-house) focus on content.  The formula follows: structure, format, source, appeal and execution of the message.  They all must flow and work together.
  • Campaign Measurement and Efficacy:  You have to measure what you make or how do you know if it really matters?  Once marketing communications are developed, the promotional plan must be created.  This is a formal, well-defined, written document. Define your hiring initiative (campaign/situation analysis), platform, timetables (execution, integration of promotional elements with other elements in marketing mix – this probably isn’t the only thing you’ll have running at one time), costs, methods for measuring effectiveness (metrics). To measure the effectiveness of your promotional objectives, you’ll actually have to ask for feedback from candidates.  What elements did they recognize or know as part of your existing branding?  What do the recall from your campaign’s content (how much of the message do they remember)?  How did this make them feel about your company and how much did it influence their decision to apply?  You’ll need to record that into your plan so that you truly have an effective document that can be referenced later.

Only by realizing that our recruitment marketing strategies must capture these mandatory marketing elements to succeed can we work towards the shared objective of every employer: to recruit and retain the best talent. This is the goal we need to work for, the ultimate end regardless of the mechanics or means we use for our marketing. It’s not just about creating some flashy videos, cool graphics or clever copy. While those are great, they don’t show depth – and digging into the operations, framework and content of our programs matters most, then planning (and executing) accordingly.

Executive Search Without Seizures: 4 Keys for Recruiting Success

executive_recruitingWith limited networks, company recruiters once had to leave it up to professional search firms to source and recruit the best high-level executives from around the world.

But in the age of social media, it has become much easier for in-house recruiters to build relationships with far-flung executives who exhibit the experience and skills they’re looking for, even for the most senior positions.

Social recruiting tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Glassdoor allow recruiters to interact with job seekers and qualified candidates who may not be currently looking for a new position.

But even though social media makes it possible for recruiters to exponentially grow their Rolodexes, without ever having worked with or met in person many of those new contacts, the process of recruiting high-level executives continues to demand due diligence.

4 Keys for Executive Search Success

These steps should be part of every executive search or recruiting process:

1. Research. Before searching your network and social media to locate potential candidates, a recruiter must have an in-depth understanding of the company’s needs and develop a detailed job profile. That profile should include more than a list of responsibilities; it should also include a description of specific competencies and expectations. Develop such a profile by interviewing current executives, as well as those who report to them, and by studying company strategy and goals.

 

2. Screening. Once you know exactly what type of candidate you’re looking for and have sourced several potential candidates from your social network or other avenues, the next step is successfully screening candidates. This process includes a call back from the candidate, receiving a resume (or an online employment profile if your company accepts that in lieu of a resume), and in most cases, a phone screen and a face-to-face assessment interview.  Successful recruiters must have tools in hand to assess candidates against hiring criteria. Many companies utilize behavioral and competency testing during this stage, which can be accessed online.

3. Checking References. In the age of social media, when everyone can present online the persona they choose to present, checking solid references may be more important than ever. In addition to contacting the references that a candidate provides and verify educational and professional backgrounds, recruiters should check with additional people who have worked with, supervised or reported to the candidate. Check out any speaking engagements the candidate has held in the past. How did he or she do? What was the response from the audience? Going the extra mile with candidate referencing can help ensure that you are hiring the person you think you are hiring.  

4. Negotiation. It can be difficult to persuade a senior executive to leave a safe position for the uncertainties of a new employer. Negotiating a compensation package is only part of the process; recruiters must deftly interact with candidates on a regular basis to understand their family issues and other issues that may affect their decisions, and to provide ongoing assistance. For most senior-level executives, it’s important to discuss a change in position in the context of his or her entire career and how it may help him or her achieve ultimate goals.

Check out the Glassdoor Talent Solutions Blog to learn more.

glassdoor logoAbout Glassdoor: Glassdoor is the world’s most transparent career community that is changing the way people find jobs, and companies recruit top talent. Glassdoor holds a growing database of 6 million company reviews, CEO approval ratings, salary reports, interview reviews and questions, office photos and more.

Unlike other jobs sites, all of this information is entirely shared by those who know a company best — the employees.

For employers, Glassdoor offers effective recruiting and employer branding solutions via Glassdoor Talent Solutions. We help more than 1,500 employers promote their employer brand to candidates researching them and advertise their jobs to ideal candidates who may not be aware of them. What differentiates Glassdoor from other recruiting channels is the quality of job candidates we deliver and our influence on candidates’ decisions as they research jobs and companies.

Size Doesn’t Matter: Recruiting Technology for Small Business Hiring

How are small businesses leveraging recruiting technology to support more effective processes?

smb_recruitingAs many of you know, Brandon Hall Group launched its first annual Talent Acquisition Benchmark Survey at the start of the year. In the time since, I’ve been slicing and dicing the data – by levels of effectiveness, by industry, and most recently by company size.  Across the board, survey respondents indicated hiring better talent is their highest talent acquisition priority for 2014.

I have a lot of questions bouncing around in my mind, but as I get further and further into analysis of survey responses, I keep coming back to one: How?

How do they plan to achieve their goals? How are they adapting talent acquisition strategy to meet changes in the talent market with recruiting technology? How are they leveraging recruiting technology to support more effective process?

With that in mind, I came across a staggering statistic while working on my forthcoming white paper comparing and contrasting talent acquisition data by company size: 70% of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees are not using an applicant tracking system of any kind to manage their talent acquisition process.

According to our survey, the vast majority of small companies are using their own assortment of tools – a slapdash combination of emails, spreadsheets, and paper files.

Methods for Managing Talent Acquisition Processes

Chart Source: Brandon Hall Group, 2014

It should come as no surprise that small companies are struggling to source and hire qualified candidates. Only 13% rated their talent acquisition process as more than moderately effective – with nearly 1 in 3 rating their process as less than effective. For these companies, time to hire is running rampant, with 54% taking four to eight weeks to hire a new employee from the time an application is received until the day an offer has been accepted.

These days, an organization’s ability to engage candidates and maintain momentum from first touch to offer extension is vital to their ability to hire better talent. That’s because high-quality talent expects high-quality process. For some employers, a candidate’s interest in the job opportunity will make up for the inherent flaws and bottlenecks in their hiring process. For the rest, however, things are only going to get worse.

While top talent may not care what technology you have in place, they are certainly paying attention to whether or not you’ve acknowledged receipt of their resume, how quickly your recruiters respond to their questions, and how many different times you have them come in for a 20-minute interview.

Stepping your technology game up can make a significant difference in talent acquisition performance. I recommended a few power-ups in my blog a few months ago, but at the time didn’t realize just how many small companies are still hiring without an applicant tracking system in place. It would seem we have much more basic needs to address first.

Hiring better talent is no walk in the park. Upgrading your talent acquisition technology is a good start, but it requires more than an applicant tracking system. I have a few ideas, and will cover them in my forthcoming benchmark by company size – as well as another report on the talent acquisition vendor landscape.

For now, I’d recommend that small companies look at solution providers like SmartRecruiters and WePow, which offer free versions of their products. For more detailed advice, stay tuned.

See more at Talent Acquisition Today

About the Author:


Kyle Lagunas-9About the Author: As the Talent Acquisition Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Kyle Lagunas heads up research in key practices in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding – as well recruitment marketing, candidate experience, and social recruiting.

Through primary research and deep analysis, he keeps today’s business leaders in touch with important conversations and emerging trends in the rapidly changing world of talent.

Kyle has spent the last several years offering a fresh take on the role of technology as part of an integrated talent strategy, and focuses on providing actionable insights to keep leading organizations a step ahead.

Previously the HR Analyst at Software Advice, he is regular contributor on SHRM’s We Know Next and TLNT, and his work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, Information Weekly, and HRO Today.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleLagunas or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Yatedo: Personal Search Goes Global

A review on Yatedo from recruiting pros.

yatedo

While free profile aggregation tools such as Pipl or Spokeo, have been established recruiting resources for years, this suddenly hot category has seen an explosion of emerging (premium) platforms looking to improve – and monetize – the personal search arena.

Yatedo, however, represents a dramatic improvement on many emerging and established entries in this category, but unlike many similar tools, remains free for public use. And when used for sourcing and recruiting, Yatedo proves that the old maxim that “you get what you pay for” isn’t always entirely true.

Yatedo, based in Paris, was established in 2009, but despite their origins in the social media arena as a site dedicated to helping users manage and control their online presence and digital footprints, have only recently added a people search capability.

This search offering leverages the profile and personal information collected from their social media product to return some fairly impressive results, although these results are often inconsistent or incomplete, depending on the person queried.

Given the company’s European roots and customer base, it’s no surprise that unlike many US-centric tools like Spokeo, Yatedo stands out for its ability to find information on candidates throughout the UK and EU – no small task, given their much more restrictive data privacy and safe harbor laws regarding personal data.  And, of course, it is also capable of finding candidates here in the US, too – although getting the most out of Yatedo might require using your browser’s translation capabilities, as the native language for the software is French, not English (although this often is irrelevant).

Here’s what Yatedo returns after entering a query for people at Google:

yatedo

 As you can see, the results are fairly accurate and complete – and comprehensive enough to make Yatedo’s easy filtering features come in handy, allowing users to sort results by fields like title, location, education, etc.

The only major issue with the site’s capabilities seem to be its tendency to go over capacity during times of peak demands, and the site is often impossible to access due to too many users trying to access Yatedo simultaneously.

Which, of course, also serves as an implicit endorsement about Yatedo’s utility and applicability. If you can get in (which happens too rarely, unfortunately), Yatedo is a good tool, particularly when recruiting for global talent in general, European talent in particular.

The only thing that seems to stand in the way of Yatedo’s ability to grow and scale are the frequent outages and errors resulting from its overburdened network – resulting in a similar frustration early Twitter users often experienced when seeing the all-too-common “Fail Whale.”

Of course, Twitter was able to resolve those issues and thrive – and once Yatedo can figure out a similar fix, it should emerge as a major player within the people search and sourcing arena.

 

To try Yatedo, click here.


dean_dacostaAbout 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.

 

Yatedo: Profile Aggregation Meets Semantic Search

yatedoGuest Post by Dean DaCosta

While free profile aggregation tools such as Pipl or Spokeo, have been established recruiting resources for years, this suddenly hot category has seen an explosion of emerging (premium) platforms looking to improve – and monetize – the personal search arena.

Yatedo, however, represents a dramatic improvement on many emerging and established entries in this category, but unlike many similar tools, remains free for public use. And when used for sourcing and recruiting, Yatedo proves that the old maxim that “you get what you pay for” isn’t always entirely true.

Yatedo, based in Paris, was established in 2009, but despite their origins in the social media arena as a site dedicated to helping users manage and control their online presence and digital footprints, have only recently added a people search capability. This search offering leverages the profile and personal information collected from their social media product to return some fairly impressive results, although these results are often inconsistent or incomplete, depending on the person queried.

Given the company’s European roots and customer base, it’s no surprise that unlike many US-centric tools like Spokeo, Yatedo stands out for its ability to find information on candidates throughout the UK and EU – no small task, given their much more restrictive data privacy and safe harbor laws regarding personal data.  And, of course, it is also capable of finding candidates here in the US, too – although getting the most out of Yatedo might require using your browser’s translation capabilities, as the native language for the software is French, not English (although this often is irrelevant).

Here’s what Yatedo returns after entering a query for people at Google:

yatedo

 As you can see, the results are fairly accurate and complete – and comprehensive enough to make Yatedo’s easy filtering features come in handy, allowing users to sort results by fields like title, location, education, etc.

The only major issue with the site’s capabilities seem to be its tendency to go over capacity during times of peak demands, and the site is often impossible to access due to too many users trying to access Yatedo simultaneously.

Which, of course, also serves as an implicit endorsement about Yatedo’s utility and applicability. Of course, if you can get in, Yatedo is a good tool, particularly when recruiting for global talent in general, European talent in particular.

The only thing that seems to stand in the way of Yatedo’s ability to grow and scale are the frequent outages and errors resulting from its overburdened network – resulting in a similar frustration early Twitter users often experienced when seeing the all-too-common “Fail Whale.”

Of course, Twitter was able to resolve those issues and thrive – and once Yatedo can figure out a similar fix, it should emerge as a major player within the people search and sourcing arena.  To try Yatedo, click here.

Lies, Damn Lies & LinkedIn

linkedin LinkedIn’s recent announcement that the company had surpassed the 300 million registered user mark sounds pretty impressive, considering that means that their online population pretty much parallels that of the United States.

This comes about 5 quarters after reaching 200 million users in January 2013, impressive growth considering that LinkedIn, founded in 2003, only celebrated its 100 millionth user in March 2011.

That means that in 14 months, the site managed to drive as many sign-ups as the previous 8 years combined.

Those numbers are objectively impressive, but LinkedIn’s growth is in fact underwhelming when compared against other public companies in the social network space – although granted, 100 miilion new registered users in 14 months is beyond the realm of comprehension for most websites, particularly those targeted primarily around a specialized vertical like recruiting.

Facebook registered 100 million in August 2008, despite being launched after LinkedIn and at that point, having only been open to the general public for about 8 months after years restricting users to verified .edu e-mails.

In April 2009, they hit 200 million, or about twice as quickly as LinkedIn registered their second 100 million.  Only 5 months later, Facebook reached 300 million users in September 2009.   Consider that this benchmark was hit well before the “mobile explosion” credited by LinkedIn for accelerating its recent growth in members.

Similarly, Twitter, founded in March 2006 as an exclusively mobile platform (hence the 140 character conforming to SMS standards.  The utility of such conventions as # and @ stem largely from the fact that these were available as on the default keyboard of almost all mobile phones at the time of its launch, which preceded the release of the first iPhone by a full year and the mobile revolution by several more.

With that genesis and the LinkedIn thesis that mobile is a significant driver of future growth within the social space – which is why they seem so openly optimistic about their future , than Twitter should swoop (pun unintended) into the lead and run away with the title.

Consider that while up to 50% of LinkedIn’s traffic is mobile in markets as developed as the UK, according to its recent release, that pales in comparison to Twitter’s 80% mobile driven traffic as of February 2014. Twitter, however, logged their 300 millionth registered user way back in May 2011 and now has 883 million active users. LinkedIn also credits China with much of its growth potential, touting their growth in this market in which, famously, Twitter and Google are banned.

This is likely because LinkedIn, who’s been opaque at best, malicious at worst with issues on user and data privacy, has a similar mindset as the totalitarian state, and same approach to monitoring and limiting dissidents (think LinkedIn jail, random API restrictions, branding experience that’s fully employer controlled). There was plenty of fuss when, in their 2013 IPO filing, Twitter disclosed that as few as 46.2% of those accounts were actually active users who had registered but never actually tweeted.

LinkedIn, according to a company spokesman, “will not disclose their active user numbers,” making this comparison impossible, but instead pointing out that between the site and Slideshare, LinkedIn properties averaged 187 million unique visitors in Q4 2013 (corrected statistic; earlier versions reported this number as 147 million in error).

That means that, assuming every LinkedIn visitor accounted for only one of these hits, than just over half of all users would have been active on these sites.  Facebook, on the other hand, averages around 84 page views/user a month, and Twitter around 19, according to Comscore.

CORRECTION: Joseph Roualdes, Senior Manager of Communications for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, reached out after this story was filed to point out (correctly), that overall, LinkedIn generates 41% of its traffic from mobile, that this number is not included in the Comscore figure of 187 million average unique visitors in Q4 2013, meaning that the previous claim of active user to unique visitor ratio is inaccurate or misleading. Recruiting Daily regrets the error.

LinkedIn, when mobile users are removed from the equation (and are, since app activity is not tracked nor aggregated in Alexa or Comscore numbers) still ranks less than one page view per registered user, whereas their competition enjoys a significant multiple when looking at registered users vs. traffic (which is a crappy benchmark, but the only one available).

And while Twitter is abysmal at conversion at 1.17% of all traffic referred online, compared to Facebook’s 14% share. Both sites, however, absolutely wallop LinkedIn, who accounted for a measly .07% of traffic in Q4 2013. While LinkedIn users did have a slightly lower bounce rate at 29.9% to Twitter’s 33%, and the average Twitter user generated only 5.6 daily page views per visitor, well less than the 7.8 pageviews logged daily by LinkedIn members.  It should be noted that Facebook wins this category, too, boasting a bounce rate of 21% and 15.63 daily page views per visitor, respectively.

Those statistics, of course, neglect mobile or app-based traffic, which, as mentioned earlier, LinkedIn lags far behind either of its competitors in terms of percentage of mobile visitors overall, and LinkedIn lags far behind these competitors in terms of mobile traffic.  This means that as LinkedIn, which will likely close the mobile gap in the coming months, will be increasingly reliant on mobile for continued growth, but might not be able to move into mobile quickly enough to satisfy shareholders.

These shareholders have already punished LinkedIn’s share price, which has been adversely affected by estimates that, quantity metrics aside, the quality of their member – that is, their value to potential advertisers and clients – is pegged at substantially less than that of Facebook or Twitter.  With the average LinkedIn user valued at just $84, compared to $128 per Facebook user and $118 per Twitter user, these statistics should be of significant concern to LinkedIn’s continued viability against competition increasingly moving into the talent solutions space (for example, Facebook recently rolled out the ability to target advertising by member’s current company, job title & industry, among other professional filters).

As George Anders noted in Forbes, “Those valuations aren’t just a way of seeing how investors are playing favorites right now. They also provide a way of thinking about where social media stocks should trade, at a time when money keeps moving back and forth without any attention to traditional metrics such as price-earnings ratios.”

In other words, LinkedIn might not be worth its nearly $22 billion in market value, after all – at the time of publication, LinkedIn’s P/E is around 920 times profits to earnings at the time of this post’s publication, a rate that more than doubles the normal valuation of most blue chip public companies – although this valuation may be coming back to reality, as evidenced by their stock price slide in Q1 2014.

Of course, this entire post might be specious because of the fact that LinkedIn, as we know, is a job board, and it’s unfair to compare it to a social network, or their growth rates to peers like Facebook or Twitter, even if they are identified as the competition in their SEC filings. Monster.com, of course, generated around 40 million unique views,according to Alexa, in Q4 2013, so that’s significantly lower than LinkedIn’s 148, and Monster is the #162 ranked site in the US, whereas LinkedIn is #8.  Indeed, the top job site, is #63.

2014-04-22_07-26-47But LinkedIn, built to drive engagement, has a bounce rate of 29.9%, which is only about 5% lower than Indeed’s 33% (identical to Twitter’s, and the entire model of indeed is to create bounced traffic, from scraped description to online application.  That’s troubling, but not as much as the average visitor who actually went to these sites looked at only around 7.8 pages on LinkedIn,  compared to 6.7 on Indeed – again, a site built entirely around SEO, referral traffic and acting as an intermediary in the online recruiting process instead of a destination.  The average Indeed user spent only about half the time on site as the average LinkedIn user, but that’s still a margin that Mountain View can’t feel too great about.

Long story short, LinkedIn’s recent hoopla can’t hide the fact that their combined unique monthly visitors, which is the only available public benchmark (app and mobile activity, conversely, is proprietary) doesn’t stack up to the lofty benchmark 300 million sign ups may seem. 400 million might be quick in coming, but chances are, they won’t come back after completing their registration, and if they do, they won’t stay long.

Which makes sense, since the average LinkedIn user is too probably too busy looking for places which actually have open jobs posted to spend much time building a “professional network.” At least, that’s what I’m guessing – but without the disclosure of active user figures, that’s the best anyone can really do.