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How To “Woo” A Recruiter And Land Your Dream Job

Do you know how to find your dream job? This recruiter can help.

Struggling to find your significant other the perfect Valentine’s Day gift?

If I may make a suggestion: woo a recruiter. Stop scratching your head and let me explain. Work-related stress is a leading cause of relationship squabbles.

While landing your dream job won’t resolve all relationship woes, it will give you and your significant other one less thing to squabble over, and as a result, likely improve your relationship.

So, do yourself and your loved one a favor this Valentine’s Day: woo a recruiter!

So how do you do that? For insights from the trenches, we turned to popular recruiting site Recruitingblogs.com, and asked recruiters, “What should job seekers do to woo you?”

Here’s what they had to say:

Get relationship-ready. Founder and CEO of ProfessionalExec Recruiters Nick Lagos says, “Don’t wait till you need a job to be presenting yourself as an ‘A’ player. Establish a digital footprint and maintain it at all times.” Eric Foutch, digital media manager at Red Branch Media, says, “Recruiters spend a lot of time on LinkedIn looking for high performers. The best way to become a high performer is to connect with people in your industry, showcase your knowledge by sharing relevant information, and start thought provoking conversations in groups.”
Do your homework. “Take time to learn about the company that we work for,” says ReachLocal Talent Acquisition Operations Manager Jim Wahl. “It’s a great help when someone reaches out to me regarding a specific position rather than stating ‘please take a look at my resume and let me know if I am a fit for any position in your company.’”
Shoot straight. “I’m amazed at all of the well-meaning advice given to job seekers about ‘tips and tricks’ when honest communication is all that is usually needed,” says Leute Management Services CEO Tom Bolt. “If I ask you a question, give me a straight answer. Don’t say what you guess I want to hear and don’t hide information that you know I will need to represent you. I can’t be your advocate if I can’t trust you.”
Emphasize your compatibility. “1. Really read the job description and speak to why you are a fit based on the needs outlined, both in your communications to the recruiter but also in your resume. 2. Learn about the company first — speak to why you are interested, what inspired you to apply, and definitely know the company’s business and how you can help. 3. Be passionate about the opportunity and make an effort to show that this is not just ‘another job’ but a desired career choice,” says Ed Nathanson, senior director of global talent acquisition at Rapid7.
Share your story. Apple Senior Technical Recruiter John Turnberg says, “As a job seeker, think of your work history as a book. What is the story that it tells and why is it compelling? Your cover letter, InMail message or email can be viewed as the synopsis that is found on the back cover, which creates the need or desire to find out more.” Nicole Greenberg Strecker, managing director of STA USA, says, “An engaging note with a bit of a story makes me want to pass your info along, even if I can’t help you myself. Many recruiters get countless connection requests everyday. Send a personal message and make yourself more than just another avatar.”
Call me. “Recruiters sift through so many applications a day yet it still amazes me how few candidates actually pick up the phone to follow up and sell themselves to me,” says Harvey Alexander Recruitment and Talent Director Matthew Harvey. “Follow up your application with a timely phone call a few days later. You may be surprised with the response.”
But don’t appear too desperate. “Demonstrate you know the difference between responsible follow-up and stalking,” says Crystal Miller, digital strategist for AT&T’s HR and recruitment teams. “Yes, I want to hear from you, but not every day.”
And above all else, be confident. “Be confident,” says Red Branch Media Chief Marketing Brain Maren Hogan. “Prove yourself not just with your skills and what’s listed on the resume and cover letter but with your email skills, a phone call where you display phone etiquette and assertive confidence. Every single connection you have with the company MUST prove that there is a reason I should hire you.”

So there you have it. Woo a recruiter this Valentine’s Day, land your dream job, and live happily ever after.

If all else fails, you can’t go wrong with a box of chocolates, tickets to a game or long stemmed red roses.

If you’re interested in learning how recruiters can woo prospects, click here.

This post was originally published on the LinkedIn Official Blog in partnership with RecruitingBlogs.com.

Leela Srinivasan is the Director of Marketing for LinkedIn Talent Solutions. This post was originally published on the LinkedIn Official Blog.

Connect with Leela on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter @LeelaSrin.

Recruitment Marketing Fundamentals: Same Game, New Tools

The discipline and techniques you need to know to successfully execute a recruitment marketing plan.

Marketing and recruiting have become inexorably intertwined, with recruitment marketing emerging both as a distinct discipline and a core competency affecting every part of the talent acquisition cycle.

In order to prepare for the future of talent acquisition, and overcome the talent shortage (real or imagined), we must rethink the way we approach recruiting — and, as such, recruitment marketing.

For recruiters, this means thinking like a marketer, and adding some core marketing competencies to the talent acquisition toolbox. Here’s the good news — the game hasn’t changed, only the tools. More good news — like recruiting, marketing isn’t rocket science.

That is, of course, if you can understand these basic recruitment marketing fundamentals:

Brand Marketing: The Company Brand Belongs to the Talent

Employer branding, while a relatively new discipline, used to mean creating slick collateral and creative campaigns produced under the auspices of an outside agency, allowing organizations themselves to shape perceptions and employer value propositions.

With the rise of social tools and technologies, however, there has been a democratization of information, and, as much as HR wants to believe otherwise, the organization no longer controls the employer brand — the company’s current and prospective employees do.

People are talking about your brand, whether you like it or not. That means ditching the generic smiling stock photos and platitudes about people being your greatest asset on your career site and actually developing a brand that shows what it is really like to work at your organization — warts and all. Not only does authenticity resonate more profoundly with candidates and current workers, but it also acts as an effective screening mechanism when it comes to ensuring culture fit and meeting expectations set forth in the hiring process, leading to better quality of hire and, ultimately, retention.

Lead Generation: Focus on Inbound and Outbound

Another major trend in talent acquisition today is the increase of proactive sourcing. Success at recruiting, like marketing, has become incumbent not only on being able to create a pipeline of the right leads, but also the ability to nurture them. This means that applicant tracking systems, once designed to capture exclusively inbound leads, must now have the functionality to generate outbound leads as well,transforming once dormant databases into CRM systems.

The days of the proverbial “black hole” are rapidly disappearing, and it is not hard to predict that as these capabilities become more prevalent and more utilized, organizations will err on the side of over communicating with applicants — a significant shift when it comes to candidate experience.

Lead Nurturing: Build a Pipeline

Once leads are generated, though, how do we nurture them effectively? Enter talent networks.

According to a recent poll, 78 percent of candidates will join a talent network and share information with potential employers, but only about 19 percent of companies actually have one. This represents a tremendous opportunity for employers to help close the talent gap while building an easy to engage pipeline.

Of course, candidates have expectations. Building a talent network isn’t enough to make the talent actually come. To create a meaningful talent network, and the lead nurturing that goes with it, requires added value, rather than simply trying to extract it. That means not only blasting job postings, but also sharing information and insights on your company, the hiring process, and general job search best practices which create not only more engaged leads, but better — and more viable — candidates.

Ultimately, those qualified leads are what define success in marketing — and recruiting.

Originally Published on The Human Capitalist

Call Center Recruiting – Employees Before The Next Phone Rings

How do you find great call center employees? With these tips on call center recruiting, of course.

Finding top talent for call center positions can be a tough act. Most call centers have remarkably high turnover rates, meaning recruiters often have to sift through a high volume of candidates. Yet something should be done to cut down on the sky-high turnover rate, which annually averages about 33 percent according to a study by Cornell University.

How do you improve retention for call center positions?

The first step is to start from the ground-up, ensuring you hire the right people for your open positions. This means acting quickly, connecting personally, asking the right questions, and finding candidates willing to stick around.

Here are some useful tips on how to staff call center positions with candidates more likely to stick around:

Cut Down Time-to-Hire

According to the Society of Human Resource Management, time-to-hire averages between 29 and 43 days. This is an especially long time considering call centers high turnover rates. On Top of the long hiring process, there are approximately 250 resumes received for each corporate job posting, with the first resume flying into recruiter’s inbox a mere 200 seconds after posting an ad. So with the likelihood of multiple open positions at call centers, this means being flooded with candidates.

What you need is a way to cut down the hiring process by sorting through the high volume of candidates easily, without missing out on top talent. Thankfully technology can hold the answer, from big data recruiting to video interviews. Big data recruiting can crunch numbers and use statistical information to help you narrow down your search to the qualities most likely to result in a great hire.

Meanwhile you can watch 10 one-way video interviews in the time it takes to perform just one phone screen, according to research from the Aberdeen Group. If a candidate doesn’t seem right for the job after a few seconds, you can move on to the next candidate, instead of being stuck on the phone for a half hour or more. New technology is making it easier to navigate through the wide pool of candidates to find the people best suited for the job.

Ask Situational Questions

When it comes to working in a call center, you need employees with top-notch communication skills. During the interview, whether in person or through online video, skip the boilerplate questions and get situational. Instead of asking about their qualifications, ask them to outline step-by-step how they would deal with an angry customer.

Give them real-world scenarios they’re likely to face on the job, and see how quickly they can dream up solutions. Call center work is more than just picking up the phone, it also requires good people skills and a high level of adaptability. Ask them for concrete examples of times they’ve made a mistake, times they’ve gone above and beyond, and times they’ve had to think on their feet. Candidates who seem stumped in the interview are unlikely to do well in a pressurized customer service environment.

Focus on Teamwork

You might think call center work is perfect for a lone wolf candidate, but this might not be strictly true if you want someone willing to stick around. Research has shown call centers with 30 percent of their employees working together as a team had 50 percent lower quit rates. If you want to retain talent, you’ll need team players.

In the hiring process, look for candidates who have worked well in a team-based environment. Getting employees to work together not only makes work easier and results in better ideas, it also improves the company culture.

If employees are invested in both their work and their coworkers, it’s a powerful step towards reducing costly turnover.

Evaluate Career Aspiration

One of the biggest reasons turnover is so high in call center positions is because recruiters and staffing pros aren’t looking for long term employees. You can’t take a “warm body” approach to filling your call center seats. After all, employees who look at the position as only a paycheck are likely to be temporary workers at best.

Focus on hiring candidates who can actually take value out of the position– and add value back to the company. This means looking for candidates with career aspirations in the sales, management, customer service, or leadership fields. These candidates can learn valuable skills during their time in the call center which they can apply to their future career path. As well as apply to future promotion opportunities, keeping their value within the organization. It might not be a particular candidate’s aspiration to stay in a call center for their entire career, but it’s important to identify their aspirations and where they fit into the skills needed for call center work.

Call center recruiting might seem like a never-ending task, but by following some of these tips you can retain more of the top-notch talent you hire.

What are some things you look for when recruiting for call centers? Share in the comments!

Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video powered hiring solution that makes high-volume recruiting and collaboration simple with video interviews. Find out more about using video interviewing for call center recruiting and connect with Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

Top 12 Twitter Tips for Social Recruiting Success

Twitter. It’s everywhere… on the news, in commercials, on TV shows, in print advertisements and there’s no escaping it ANYWHERE you go online these days. But what IS it really? Why do it? Do we really need another social network if we’re already on Facebook or LinkedIn?

Back in the day (2008), I created my Twitter account just to poke around and see what it was all about. I looked around, posted a tweet or two, scratched my head and then let my account gather dust for a couple of years.I just didn’t get it. I just didn’t care. It must be for OTHER people. Which other people? I didn’t know…

Eventually, I came to the realization that this Twitter thing wasn’t going away. On the contrary, it was growing like crazy and had even surpassed my beloved LinkedIn! (As of today, there are more than 650 million Twitter accounts v. 260 million on LinkedIn and there are one million new accounts added daily… that’s 11 new accounts created every SECOND!)

I realized that there much be some real benefits to the service and I decided to give it another whirl, this time with my business / recruiting hat on, not just as a casual user. That made all the difference! I’ve not only met business partners, clients, candidates for hire, leaders in my industry (who now converse back and forth with me on a regular basis – priceless!), event organizers for speaking engagements, jobseekers that I can help (yes!!) thought Twitter… I’ve even met met real-life friends (who knew?).

The relationships which started online have now turned into real-life contacts that I interact with on LinkedIn / Facebook / Google+, via telephone / email and, yes, even face-to-face! It’s been an invaluable tool for meeting new people and I’m so glad I gave it another shot!

Like most people, I still found Twitter to be pretty confusing at first, but I decided to tackle the learning curve by jumping in with two feet and simply copycatting what I saw out there (often times incorrectly). I received a few corrections / reminders along the way, but folks were always pretty positive about it, even when my mistakes accidentally took credit for stuff that other people had said! Oops… I always *did* learn stuff the hard way!

12 Things I Wish I Knew About Twitter When I First Joined

If I knew then what I know now, this is what I would have done differently along the way. Here’s my advice for all of the Twitter Newbies out there… and a few helpful reminders for us Twitter veterans as well:

1. Take a peek at the ever-helpful Twitter Glossary.
What’s a DM? An RT? A hashtag? What are all of those pound signs in front of words? Why is everyone talking about #FF and what is it anyway? What’s a Twitter handle? The glossary clearly defines the basics of the Twitter vernacular and will help make the Twitter learning curve much less daunting.

2. Complete your entire profile – bio, avatar, location, etc. – ASAP.
No one wants to follow someone with an egg as their profile pic and no info in their bio. Why should they follow you if you don’t even clue them in to what it is that you plan to tweet about? It also makes you look like a spammer or Twitter “bot” (spam account). Complete your entire bio (it’s not perfect, but here’s mine) and tweak it as you develop your Twitter voice.

Tell people what you’re all about and give them a reason to follow you. (Remember, if you have no followers, then you’re talking to yourself in an empty room… there’s no one there to hear you!) Completing your bio tells folks that you’re ready to roll.

3. Tweet consistently.
Now that you’ve completed your profile, folks will just follow you in droves, right? Not so fast… You may gain followers, but if you don’t tweet fairly consistently, you will most certainly lose them. You should tweet at least a few times every week, preferably a few times a day. You can do this in less than 5 minutes a day to start.

Find stuff to share – a cool online article that you read over your morning coffee, retweet an interesting post that someone else shared (giving them credit, of course), answer someone’s question, ask a question yourself, jump into a conversation, share a personal anecdote or favorite quote…. The possibilities are endless. A complete bio with zero tweets (or no tweets in the last few weeks) is just as ineffective as having an egg for your profile pic.

4. Twitter isn’t Facebook or LinkedIn. People WILL unfollow you so don’t take it personally! 🙂
This is a classic newbie reaction… Oh my gosh, you mean people UNFRIENDED me? Yes, I lose about 50 followers a day! haha But usually I gain 75-100 new ones. There’s a constant flux of folks coming and going, hearing what you have to say, dropping off for whatever reason. It’s just the nature of Twitter. Why?

Maybe you don’t tweet enough, maybe you tweet too much, maybe you talk about business and they only want personal, maybe it’s the opposite, maybe they only want to follow local contacts, maybe you didn’t follow them back quickly enough, maybe they just don’t like the color of your hair… Who knows! 🙂 People are going to come and go, so don’t be shocked, rack your brain trying to figure out why or take it personally, it’s just the way it is!

5. Subscribe to some cool blogs, feeds, etc. that are relevant and interesting to you.
Mashable, TechCrunch, The LinkedIn Blog (duh!), CareerBuilder’s The Work Buzz, etc. are some of my faves because I tweet about technology, social networking, recruiting, careers, etc. Find the ones that speak to you and reflect who you are in the Twitter world and share some of the posts / articles that you find most interesting.

It will give you a fantastic springboard for developing some consistency in the content and frequency of your tweets. (Here’s a GREAT article on finding great stuff to share on Twitter. Tells you what some of the Twitter superstars recommend and where they find their content to share.)

6. Create more original content and don’t just retweet all the time.
In the beginning, I just retweeted other people’s stuff that I found interesting. This is still a pretty good strategy for beginners who are getting into the swing of things, but creating a little original content and sharing your own ideas once in a while is the best way to create your own voice and develop a targeted and loyal following.

Share your thoughts. Give pointers. Talk about something that inspires you, gets your blood boiling, confuses you, etc. Whatever it is! Just be original once in a while. (Thank you Simon Meth (aka @SDCorpRecruiter) for the great call-out on this one!). Most people do it the other way around, but I ended up creating this blog after joining Twitter, just to inspire me to create my own content a little more. It’s turned out to be a really fun experience (and a great branding / networking / business boosting tool to boot)! Thank you, Twitter!

7. Read the article / blog post (the whole thing) BEFORE retweeting the link.
Okay, we’ve all done this… admit it! The title looks interesting and relevant so you go ahead and retweet it, fully intending to go in and read the article at some point (you swear!). Unfortunately, the content isn’t exactly what you thought it would be and you end up sharing something that does NOT reflect your thoughts or who you are. Oops!

I did this in the beginning and got called out for it. Another time, I read most of the article and had to run off to a meeting, so just tweeted it out before finishing. The last paragraph contained some pretty controversial thoughts and, had I read it through, I probably wouldn’t have retweeted it. Or, at the very least, would have put a disclaimer comment in there or something. Oops! Another example of learning things the hard way… haha.

8. You don’t have to follow everyone back.
I used to think I was being rude unless I followed back every single person. Not only did this create a lot of extra stuff to wade through in my Twitter feed (spam, posts in foreign languages, deals on car washes in Skokie, Illinois – haha), but it also made it a lot harder to build relationships and engage with folks who had similar interests as me.

I often think of it this way… would this person ever have a reason to retweet my content (or vice versa)? If not, then we probably don’t have enough in common. Just my two cents…

9. Engage, engage, engage.
Don’t just tweet and retweet. Respond to folks, start up a conversation, thank them for retweeting you, share your opinion on stuff that they post (respectfully, of course), get the dialogue going! Social media should be just that – social. When you engage with folks and begin conversations, you will make Twitter friends and enjoy the experience so much more. (Maybe I should make this one #1 on the list. It is probably THE most important one, in my opinion…)

10. Make lists to organize your friends and followers.
It’s a great way to recognize folks (everyone loves to be listed) and it shows that you understand them and appreciate the content of their posts. I have lists of techies, social media aficionados, recruiters/career advice folks, San Diego tweeps, etc. Those folks will often “list you back” and you’ll get more followers who have similar interests as you. Again, this drives meaningful conversations (in 140 characters or less, of course!) and creates a much more interactive and fun Twitter experience. There are sites like Listorious and ifttt to make this process much simpler and even automated, if that’s your preference.

11. Don’t be a one-note / spammer / advertiser / job blaster.
When I was brand new, I just used Twitter to share open jobs at my company via my LinkedIn status update (checking the little blue bird Twitter icon). I was a job blaster only and I had very few followers. Who can blame them? Who wants to justread about open jobs? Boring. Shake it up a bit! If you are a recruiter, there’s a lot more that you can talk about – the job market, the economy, the latest and greatest at your company, interview / resume / networking / jobsearch tips, career advice, tech, social media, etc… topics that are relevant to your target audience of candidates. You should also feel free to sprinkle in other things that show who you are as a person – your hobbies, your interests, your passions, etc. You’ll expand your Twitter audience and meet lots of cool people who share these interests with you!

12. Say thank you. A lot.
Twitter is a pretty upbeat, positive place. People are quick to show their appreciation and gratitude toward others, unlike anything I’ve seen in other forums, social or otherwise (even real life)! There’s a lot of gratitude being expressed and if you show your appreciation for others, you will quickly feel it back and see what I’m talking about… Thank others for retweeting you, listing you, adding you to their #FollowFriday tweets, etc. They will love you for it and you’ll find the Twitter experience that much more fulfilling.

Trust me on this. 🙂

Originally Posted on StacyZapar.com

About the Author: Stacy Donovan Zapar is a 15-year recruiting veteran for Fortune 500 tech companies and CEO of Tenfold Social Training, a B2B Social Recruiting training company for talent acquisition and staffing teams around the world. She is also the Most Connected Woman on LinkedIn with more than 40,000 1st-level connections, making her the #5 most connected person out of 259 million users worldwide. She is a monthly contributor to LinkedIn’s Talent Blog and served as Technical Editor for Wiley’s LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Stacy speaks regularly at HR / Recruiting conferences globally, including #truLondon, LinkedIn Talent Connect and Sourcing Summit Australia. She is #6 on Huffington Post’s Top 100 Most Social HR Experts on Twitter and #7 on ERE.net’s 50 People Most Retweeted by Recruiters on Twitter. Feel free to connect with Stacy on LinkedIn and Twitter (@StacyZapar).

Comply or Die: The Affordable Care Act for Staffing Firms

The impact of the Affordable Care Act on staffing firms.

While concepts like employer branding, company culture and social and mobile recruiting seemingly dominate the discussion about the themes, topics and trends changing the face of recruiting and hiring, when the focus moves from high level strategy to front line execution, the biggest changes (and challenges) facing most real recruiters seem to be decidedly less sexy, although infinitely more important.

And no issue is more pertinent – or more pressing – to the staffing industry than the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as ‘Obamacare.’

The ACA, of course, mandates health care coverage for all Americans, including the estimated 2.9 million workers per day – or 11.5 million workers every year – placed temporary or contingent jobs through staffing companies, a significant percentage of the overall U.S. workforce that’s projected to grow significantly over the years to come. But while business is booming, the costs of doing that business, at least in the foreseeable future, are inexorably intertwined with implementation and compliance with the ACA.

Few companies understand the implications of this legislation better than Bullhorn, whose recruitment software provides the backbone for the back office at over 5000 staffing firms while serving as the system of record for over 200,000 frontline recruiters.

Recruiting Daily recently spoke with Sean Harrington, Bullhorn’s Manager of Back Office Projects, for a behind the scenes look at how the Affordable Care Act is affecting the staffing industry, what staffing professionals need to know about this landmark legislation and why choosing the right technology can play such a critical role when it comes to ACA compliance.

As contract staffing and temp agencies start to consider the implications of ACA, what should they be looking for in technology to support them?

Sean Harrington, Manager of Back Office Projects – Bullhorn: Staffing companies fall amongst the list of industries where the ACA conditions and metrics pose the most complications. Primarily this has to do with the temporary nature of the employment arrangements as well as the fluctuating hours a temp may work. Both of these scenarios pose challenges not only to the staffing firm but also to the government in regulating these cyclical business models.

There are many areas in which technology can make the ACA compliance process much easier for staffing firms. In particular, the four most important functions that a software tool can provide a staffing firm in terms of ACA readiness is:

1. Calculating the average number of hours an employee has worked over a period of time

2. Reporting on the total number of accrued hours an employee has worked over that same period of time

3. The average wage of a temp, which will help the firm shape their benefits plans so that they comply within the definition of an acceptable cost.

4. Helping the company decide if they should use the ‘look back period’ of 3 month or 12 month period to determine eligibility

What are the key points of ACA that a staffing firm should be considering? Which of those should be addressed through technology?

The most controllable components of the ACA that a staffing firm should be focused on are:

1. The length of the look back period that the firm chooses, since this will have ramifications looking forward

2. The decision to “pay or play” – meaning to provide health benefits or simply pay the penalty

3. The amount of coverage that the Staffing firm should provide, should they decide to offer benefits instead of the penalty.

4. Employment decisions on candidates that are “cusp”, meaning they don’t qualify today under ACA, but by placing them in the job you have today, they will qualify.

While each one of these items doesn’t completely rely on technology, a firm with a solution in place that can automate these components will not only remain in compliance but will also find themselves at a competitive advantage. Rather than spending a bulk of 2014 hashing these items out, those companies with technology in place will be able to stay focused on growing their businesses and increasing revenue.

What makes a full time employee? What is the “look back” and how does that impact a staffing firm?

According to the ACA, a full time employee is someone who works either:

1. A minimum of 30 hours per week

2. 130 hours per month

3. A total of 1,560 hours in a year

The “look back” period is designed to help employers with fluctuating workforce determine what the true “full time” headcount is over a given period of time. The results of this look back will determine the company’s obligation for the number of people to provide health insurance coverage for – or the number of penalties they will pay. The length of the look back can be as little as 3 months to a maximum of 12 months.

The length of the look back period determines the length of future time that the companies will be obligated to provide coverage for that headcount looking forward. The general consensus among most staffing firms is that the longer look back is more beneficial. The reason is that the longer period will eliminate many shorter term employees from the equation; whereas a 3 month look back might skew the numbers if that firm had a larger amount of temps working consecutively over that 3 months.

What should have already been done in 2013, what do you need to plan for in 2014 & 2015 – is there a simple checklist?

Unfortunately, given the fluid changes in how Washington is dealing with ACA, any defined lists have been adjusted due to delays. So while the employee mandate and employer mandate have been pushed until 2015, now is the time for companies to:

1. Begin their look back process to see how their numbers begin to compare

2. Plan for any healthcare coverage – both from choosing which Insurance company to go with as well as the level of benefits

3. Most importantly – start determining how the additional cost and burden is going to be absorbed. This will most certainly be some form of pass off to the clients as well as ways to streamline their operations to account for the reduced margin.

Companies also need to start looking at their Master Service Agreements to make sure that any agreements being reviewed now that are multi-year contracts take into account any plans for fee increases due to the costs of ACA.

How do you determine if your front office software is providing your recruiters with accurate information about hours worked by your contractors?

Any software being used to help companies track the metrics listed above should be able to provide detailed data down to the weekly level per placement. This data should be easily accessible and in a controlled and secure format in the event of any audit reviews. Integrated data is essential, not only timecards provided by the staffing firm, but also accurate capture of time entered via VMS.

How do you ensure your back office staff has accurate data on you contractors? What can be done to ensure that both your recruiting team and back office team are operating off of up to date, accurate data on your contractors?

For staffing firms, capturing and storing data at the timesheet level is a great way to make sure that the data is accurate. The timesheet should show the details of when the employee submitted the data as well as the Manager approving that data. Any changes that have occurred to that data should be contained in a controlled audit trail showing date and time changed, the user and location. That way, no accusations of manipulating timesheet data to avoid full time status can occur. All data should also be contained in an end-to-end system, that way the retrieval of that data and audit visibility is easy to retrieve.

Backwards looking reports, vs predictive forward looking analytics – what can each do for you? Why might you adopt one over the other?

Both of these types or reports really need to work hand in hand. For one, with the “look back” regulation, staffing firms are going to be required to look at historical data. But, it’s going to be critical for planning purposes for staffing firms to look at their current placements, average weekly hours and predicted end dates to see how healthcare reform will impact their future costs.

If the firm often sees their contracts extended, they should plan at minimum for those extensions, and if possible have data available on a client-by-client basis that allows the recruiter to know by that client what the average extension of the contract is. ACA is an ongoing process and the amount of coverage is going to continue to change as staffing firms grow. So using these metrics to make future company decisions will be crucial.

About Sean: Sean Harrington is Bullhorn’s Manager of Back Office Projects, focusing on the Bullhorn Back Office product. He founded EASY Software, the maker of timeshEASY and EASY OnBoard, which was acquired by Bullhorn in 2013. Prior to EASY Software Sean held a variety of key sales roles, including as an Account Manager at Apex Systems. He can be reached on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/seanharrington1.

How To Pack Your Pipeline: Sourcing and Social Media

Tips to fill your pipeline with qualified candidates via social media.

I’ve spent the last six years recruiting with social media, and watched as platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook continue to experiment and evolve to the point where these emerging networks are not only a peripheral tool, but an essential part of any recruiter’s job.

Social media not only represents a real replacement for expensive, often ineffective job boards, but in my experience, they’re actually more effective than their traditional counterparts, in my opinion.

Social media, like any recruiting tool, is not a silver bullet, so should you make it your main source for, well, sourcing? Probably not.

But limiting social recruiting efforts for targeting exclusively external talent also limits social recruiting’s potential payoff. While you’ve probably considered some aspect of using social media to develop, drive or expand an existing employee referral program, increasing the quantity of quality referrals from current employees and candidates, but also, from their extended networks as well.

Straight from the Source

The best way to do that, of course, is through creating brand ambassadors who can extend your relevance and reach by representing your recruiting function, creating an amplification effect that not only gets the word out about open opportunities, but builds buzz while building your employment brand. But getting the word out means rethinking what word of mouth really means.

In his article Viral 2.0, author Jonah Berger writes, “If every one of your existing customers brought in just one new customer, your business would double. You’d be ecstatic (and so would your boss). So while 10 million views is exciting, focus on the much more useful (and reachable) goal is getting more people to talk and share.”

The same can be said about candidates. A recruiter with good connections doesn’t need hundreds of leads, but instead, only a handful of actual advocates to get the word out in a way that’s more authentic – and infinitely more powerful – than blasting out an automated e-mail to your entire candidate database, no matter how many contacts it contains. But how do you go about turning those connections into connectors?

The key is adding value in order to extract it; like all relationships, you’ll only generate referrals and build your bench of brand ambassadors if there’s a solid foundation of trust, and the only way to do that is by proactively and regularly reaching out to build mutual respect instead of just more fans or followers. This means instead of asking your candidates to join the conversation, you actually need to have, you know, conversations.

Take LinkedIn, for example. Every recruiter can vouch for the fact that it’s unlikely any one of us actually abide by that whole “only connect with people you know well” thing – there’s a good chance that it’s really just replaced your Rolodex, but no matter how you use LinkedIn for recruiting, it’s unlikely you actually really know everyone in your network. Yet for some reason, that doesn’t stop many recruiters from asking every single person they’re connected to for referrals or leads.

So why in the world would they be inclined to refer anyone to you when they know nothing about your organization, or, more importantly, nothing about you? And why would you trust anyone they sent your way to be any more qualified than any other source? If you don’t really know your network, then it won’t work any better than any other online recruiting channel, job boards included.

Building Relationships, Driving Referrals

The same can be said about candidates. If you have good connections with a handful of candidates who could refer you potential employees, that is much more powerful than sending out a blast email to 10,000 contacts who you barely know, if at all. Look at your LinkedIn connection list.

Do you know every single person you are connected to on that list? Probably not. So why would they be inclined to refer anyone to you when they know nothing about your organization and more importantly, you?

My main sources, like most recruiters who probably won’t admit it, come from LinkedIn – and there, it’s often referrals from other candidates through a few key connections I’ve consciously developed and nurtured.

In building these relationships beyond just accepting an invitation to connect, I’ve found that it’s more important to explain what the company does than the kinds of opportunities you recruit for. If that’s compelling enough, then often you don’t even have to ask them for referrals. They’ll come to you. The same goes for third party recruiters and consultants, too – it’s important to remember that ultimately, the success of social referrals rests not with the recruiter, but with their colleagues and candidates, internal or otherwise.

Don’t make the mistake of just pumping your most promising connections for referrals; if you take the time to understand what they do and what they’re about, then you’ll not only stand out from almost every recruiter, you’ll be able to actually find referrals who fit your company’s culture instead of just a job description, as is too far often the case. If you’re not willing to put in the time to nurture these relationships or be responsive to their needs, forget referrals – you shouldn’t even waste your time connecting with them on LinkedIn (or any other network) in the first place.

Being upfront and honest about your company’s vision and values sometimes means that you’ll encounter connections who aren’t worth taking the time to develop these relationships, or who likely won’t be of assistance to future recruiting efforts. That’s OK, but make sure that you let them know and leave open a door, because you never know when “not right” really means “not right now.”

That kind of trust, coupled with the amplification only brand ambassadors can provide, will, over time, likely create a ripple effect in the marketplace that makes people want to come to you as a trusted resource, not just another recruiter asking for referrals.

Turning Connections Into Candidates

Sure, we use job boards like The Ladders and, yes, we still have a Monster account – like I said earlier, substantially relying on any source, social or otherwise, is never a good idea. Instead, effective recruiting means spreading your sourcing across every available resource, database, platform or channel. Even if you’re already actively advertising on the “Big 3” social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), the best connections (and valuable referral sources) can often be found in closed, more traditional networks like college and employer alumni groups or professional associations. It really all comes down to knowing the market and mentality of the candidates you’re recruiting for.

For instance, I recruit consultants, all of whom fall into a fairly tightly defined niche – Big 4 external auditors, IT professionals, management consultants and compliance & risk management specialists, like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) consultants. With these target candidate profiles, I know that most auditors spend their days on site with clients, not hanging out on Google Plus, or that most management consultants are unlikely to “like” a Facebook company page.

That means as a recruiter, it’s my job to know the organizations, affiliations, job market conditions and professional expectations of my candidates in order to source and develop a full candidate pipeline. No matter what you’re recruiting for, knowing this sort of information is critical, or no matter how good you are at finding candidates or building a following on social media, you won’t have the ability to effectively engage them in a conversation or leverage them as a candidate or connection.

There will always be a busy season for auditors and a month end for accountants, there will always be long term project commitments preventing project manager placements, but time ceases to be a challenge when you get your name and brand out there, because when you approach these relationships the right way as a recruiter, it’s just-in-time all the time.

It just takes a little time, and a systematic, strategic approach to sourcing and social media.

About the Author: Carlo Leboffe possesses 7 years of recruiting experience in both staffing and corporate recruiting roles. Prior to joining MorganFranklin Consulting, where he is currently a Senior Recruiter, he served as a Recruiter in the Accounting & Finance division of Mergis Group, a division of Spherion (now Randstad).

Carlo’s recruiting experience and marketing background includes recruitment of accounting and finance professionals to include audit, tax, corporate finance and consultants at all levels as well as c-level executives.

He also possesses social media and communication strategy experience, and his continued focus on new recruiting techniques and strategies has included the introduction of a targeted recruiting strategy using Facebook which led to increased brand awareness for Mergis Group.

In addition, Carlo has led trainings which included a company-wide training for social media recruiting and has been recognized as a fast resource with a proven track record of success. He keeps himself well-informed of the DC market and keeps abreast of new recruiting and sourcing trends and technologies to ensure success of business objectives.

Follow Carlo on Twitter @CarloLeboffe or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Why Recruiters Ignore Your LinkedIn Invitations

I receive a number of daily invitations from people I don’t know, but for some reason they want to connect.

My first reaction when I saw such invitations was to ignore and delete.

However, I changed my views on this a while ago based on my understanding of the fundamental differences in people’s relationship talent and circumstances.

Personalizing an invitation is one common “tip” or advice provided by recruiting and networking professionals. So why do people keep sending impersonal invites?

Here are my theories:

They have not received or read anything that implies this is bad practice. In addition, LinkedIn makes it easy to ignore what would under other circumstances be an obvious bad practice. LinkedIn’s objective is to continue to grow their user base.
They simply want to quickly grow their network and want to spend the least amount of time doing it.
Success for the sender depends on building as many connections as possible.
People’s circumstances and perspectives are very different: Active candidates, networkers, passive candidates, happy employees, sales professionals, etc…

My first reaction to ignore or reject these invitations comes from my individual talent theme. Naturally, I am compelled to connect using areas in common and I typically have a reason why I connect with someone.

In recruiting, this natural ability helps me discover commonalities between me, or the brand I represent, and the potential candidate.

All recruiters know how to research candidates, and often use their available social channels to accomplish this. If you truly enjoy this process, you are a natural recruiter. If you enjoy the process of “hunting” for people without necessarily feel eager to connect and you are great at it, you are a natural sourcer.

These are two different sets of talent. Can you have both? Absolutely.

My point is that for individuals like me, a non-personal invitation will not likely “push” the right button. Having said that, I understand that people’s relationship talent is different. And given the right profile, I would welcome an invitation to connect.

In summary, my advice coincides with most recruiting professionals: “Personalize your invitation, it takes one minute.”

However, the next time you receive an “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn,” think about their circumstances and the differences in our natural abilities to connect with others.

For more recruiting insights and advice from Andres, check out AndresTraslavina.com.

About the Author:About the Author: Andres Traslavina currently serves as the Director of Global Recruiting at Whole Foods Market a “100 Best Companies to Work For.” During his fifteen years in recruiting, Andres has also worked as the Director of Recruiting and Institutional partnerships at Blackboard and as a Sr. Consultant at Talent Plus, a recruitment and assessment company based in Lincoln, NE.

Andres has been a keynote speaker at local, national and international conferences in the areas of career placement, positive psychology, conscious leadership and social recruitment. His recruiting approach is based on helping candidates discover their strengths and employers find and select top performers based on their talents and cultural fit.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in Education/Psychology, both from the University of Nebraska. Andres is actively involved in the International Positive Psychology Association, Society for Human Resources Management and the National Association for Colleges and Employers.

Follow Andres on Twitter @traslavina or connect with him on LinkedIn (just make sure it’s personalized).

A Heady Brew: How the Maker of Fat Tire Beer Mixes Growth & a ‘Carnie’ Culture

New Belgium Brewing’s story is familiar to anyone running a rapidly-growing business. The Fort Collins, Colo.-based maker of Fat Tire beer has thrived for more than two decades on a mix of gut-level decision-making and employee empowerment.

Today, New Belgium is at a crossroads — albeit an enviable one. Business is strong; New Belgium is now the country’s eighth-largest brewery and the third-largest craft brewery.

Revenues in 2012 hit roughly $180 million, a nearly 40 percent increase in four years. A second New Belgium brewery is under construction in North Carolina, and its national sales team is growing. For every job opening, the company receives anywhere from 200 to 300 resumes.

A Foundation Built on Employee Empowerment

So what’s the trouble? Turns out, it’s a classic one: as the company expands, leaders fear losing the unique, tight-knit culture that helped the business grow in the first place — and land on the Wall Street Journal’s “Best Small Businesses” list and Outside magazines’ ranking of the “Best Places to Work.”

“We make beer for a living,” explains CEO Kim Jordan to the The Coloradoan. “If we can’t have fun, that means we have some real challenges as human beings.”

Jordan and her team value what she calls the “high involvement culture” that’s existed ever since she and her husband began brewing beer in a basement more than 20 years ago. That employee engagement plays out in ways both big and small:

Employee ownership: employees have stakes in the company through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).
Profit-sharing: Employees start receiving pieces of the profit pie after one year on the job.
Transparency: New Belgium practices open-book management, meaning employees gain access to the company’s finances so they can see how their work directly impacts the business.
Recognition: Employees receive a new cruiser bike on their first anniversary with the company. On their fifth anniversary, they accompany Jordan on a tour of Belgium (the country). After 10 years, they get a month-long sabbatical and a tree planted in their honor.

New Belgium’s success, both as a business and desirable place to work, is also attributable to its community involvement. The company sponsors an annual “Tour de Fat,” which is a 12-city festival and bike parade. New Belgium also promotes local sustainability initiatives and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to its brewery tours.

No. 1 Goal: Keep It Quirky & Authentic

Today, New Belgium boasts 424 employees — or, “carnies” as they call themselves (a reference to the close bond that exists among carnival workers) — and is hiring. In the beer industry, consumers are choosing craftsmanship and individuality over mass-produced brews with a corporate flavor. Craft beer sales grew by 17 percent compared with one percent growth in overall beer sales in 2012, according to the Brewers Association.

Although New Belgium is ramping up production, the company strives to maintain its quirky, unique culture across a workforce that’s growing both in size and geographical distribution. “During our expansion, we need to be able to keep employees connected and engaged, deliver training across the country, and make more data-driven decisions,” says New Belgium CFO and COO Christine Perich.

To that end, New Belgium invested in Cornerstone OnDemand’s integrated talent management software suite to help manage the many workplace challenges that inevitably arise when companies grow. New Belgium, for example is a big believer in self-directed learning — especially experiential learning. While it’s difficult to create seamless experiences across locations, the company is using Cornerstone’s learning management solution to streamline training and development initiatives.

“Our challenge is to create communities and learning opportunities that are accessible nationwide,” says New Belgium HR director Jennifer Briggs. “With Cornerstone, we can connect people through community building and learning opportunities and put co-workers in charge of their own learning. This is very empowering.”

Talent Pools Stocked With Hop Heads

The company’s culture of bike-parading and beer enthusiasm has drawn a national following, including aspiring New Belgians.

While the company is fortunate to have so many job applicants, Briggs says it’s challenging to find the people who really want to work there and self-select into the company’s culture. She and her team use Cornerstone’s recruiting solution to find candidates who have both the skill and cultural match. Using talent pools, New Belgium builds relationships with people who may be good fits for future openings, a process that helps reduce on-boarding time.

What’s more, as the company continues to expand, Jordan and her team know they have to move beyond gut-level decision-making. Today, they are using comprehensive performance data and training metrics to track what’s working in talent management — insights that certainly will be useful when growing the team at its new brewery in Asheville, N.C.

Set to open in 2015, the East Coast brewery is staffing up and getting in on the local cycling action. The company recently donated $50,000 toward bike lane improvements in Asheville. Look out for new cruisers on the road.

About the Author: Jason Corsello is Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Marketing for Cornerstone OnDemand. In this role, Corsello is responsible for identifying key market opportunities, driving corporate initiatives and guiding M&A, as well as supporting product strategy and service innovation.

Corsello joined Cornerstone from HR consulting firm Knowledge Infusion, where he was senior vice president of strategy and corporate development, responsible for the organization’s strategy and solutions. At Knowledge Infusion he also developed and launched many new services at the firm and played a lead consulting role with many of the firm’s Global 2000 clients. Prior to his role with Knowledge Infusion, Jason was a research director at Yankee Group, leading the company’s human capital management and talent management advisory and consulting services.He also spent six years with Flextronics International, where he worked with large, multi-national clients in developing their outsourced manufacturing and supply chain strategies.

Corsello is an active participant in the HCM community and is a frequent presenter and panelist at industry events. Corsello is often quoted as an industry expert in human capital management, and his research has been featured in leading publications including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and CIO magazine. Corsello holds a BA in business administration management and marketing from the University of San Diego. Follow Jason @JCorsello or connect with him on LinkedIn.

What Does 2014 Have In Store for ITSM?

2014 ITSM projections for recruiting and HR.

There are few industries that move with the speed and fluidity of IT. For any industry, the beginning of a new year can only be about one thing, learning from the previous 12 months in order to predict the trends and directions of the coming year and what this means for training, employment and business prospects.

There is a consensus among those in the IT sector that change is on the horizon; dissatisfaction with ITSM has been growing for a while.

While cloud services and outsourcing were the buzzwords of 2013, the new focus for IT Service Management is based on people, outcomes and customer satisfaction.

So what can we expect to see in the coming year from the IT industry?

BYOD Is Here To Stay

Love it or hate it, Bring Your Own Device is going nowhere. While it poses multiple challenges for security, among other things, employees are finding that their own devices run better, faster and more easily than standard office PCs. If you don’t own a smart device of some kind in 2014 then you’ve been living under a rock; the whole world seems to own a tablet, a smart phone and a laptop, and while their applications are almost identical to those found in the office, their developers have provided them with a more user friendly interface that the average individual favours.

The challenge to employers is thus: if we’re embracing the BYOD trend, which most of us are, can we then justify employing an IT department whose functions now seem largely redundant? As always, there are two sides of the coin to consider.

Is IT Still Relevant In The BYOD Revolution?

Dissatisfaction with standard office IT is what has fuelled the revolution. Smaller companies have found they can survive without the need for a designated IT department to oversee everyday operations; instead employees are managing their own devices and utilising ever evolving cloud services to work from their device from the office, from home, from the train on their commute and everywhere else, but are they setting themselves up for a fall?

While it is true that companies can save significant amounts of money on software investments and employee salaries by not hiring an IT expert, they are leaving themselves vulnerable should anything go wrong.

Larger corporations have been wary to say the least when it comes to embracing BYOD, and the ITSM professionals feel secure in the knowledge that when a problem occurs, whether it’s on a personal device or not, they are still the team to call. When it comes to R&D, app recommendations, management solutions and security procedures, having an in-house IT expert may not only be relevant, but in some cases could be vital.

Is Outsourcing On the Way Out?

Luckily for anyone seeking employment in the lucrative IT sector, it seems as though 2014 will see a shift back to an in-house focus. Outsourced IT is a money saver that can be a life saver for small businesses who lack significant resources, but the focus of in-house IT experts is solely on you. A dedicated team can help you choose the devices that are most suitable for your business needs, help you get volume discounts on bulk purchases, oversee security, implement strategies to protect the business and stay in touch with users in order to meet their individual IT needs.

For those breaking into the world of IT or for individuals looking to develop their skill set in order to become a pivotal member of an in house IT team, 2014 is shaping up to be your year.

By undergoing training and utilising the resources of specific IT recruiters you can ensure you have the skill set to implement the best, most innovative ITSM practices that will keep you on the cutting edge.

This post was written by Emma Smith in partnership with Aim Hire Recruitment, one of the leading ITSM resources and recruiters in Europe who specialise in BMC training and ITSM recruitment.

Writing on the Wall: Finding Fit by Linking Candidate Words & Behaviors

Even for employers and recruiters actually able to objectify such a seemingly subjective concept, finding the right candidate for your company’s core values and culture rarely occurs at the front end of the recruitment process.

Instead, fit is generally assessed only for final candidates as a determining factor in who actually gets hired, since this means candidates are still slated on the basis of hard experience instead of soft skills.

This is largely because the resume continues to be the de facto basic unit of screening and selection, forcing us to focus largely what the candidate does instead of who the candidate really is.

The bad news is, the resume probably isn’t going anywhere given it is already inextricably interwoven with our core recruiting systems, which seems like bad news for automating or improving our abilities to find fit in the front end of the funnel.

The good news, claims Austin based startup Electronic Insight, is that they’ve found a way to reinvent the resume by extending its utility and filling in the person behind the picture. Using a proprietary algorithm which purportedly matches an employer’s stated core values by using the context of the words on a candidate’s resume, the company claims it can turn the art of finding fit into an exact science, a high tech approach to the traditional high touch culture screen.

Recruiting Daily recently spoke with Marc Mapes, Director of Product Management for Electronic Insight, to learn more about their company, some context on how their eiTalent product, which is still in beta, actually works. We also spoke about how reengineering the way we hire for fit could potentially revive and reshape the future viability and utility of resumes and recruiting alike.

Tell us a little bit about eiTalent. What inspired this product and how has it developed?

Marc Mapes, Director of Product Management – Electronic Insight: eiTalent is the first product to market powered by the patented Electronic Insight (ei) technology. The most basic premise of ei is that your behavior shows up in the way you write. In other words, the words you choose and how you naturally structure your writing provides massive amounts of insight.

Your words show your levels of intent, motivation, engagement, potential behavior and much more. ei was started by two founders who exploited this link and have been working over the last number of years to turn it into useful technology which can be utilized in many vastly different markets.

eiTalent has grown over time through tons of customer discovery. When I started working with ei almost a year ago we were working on using the technology to match candidates to jobs based on job descriptions. Results were encouraging, but hindered by the quality of the job description itself.

We were also working on understanding company culture and Core Values and discovered that ei could be used to gain insight into the presence of a candidate’s Core Values, even from the most basic source of data: their resume. The companies we talked to about this were very excited about this new direction and the value we could add to their recruiting efforts from start to finish.

eiTalent purports that a resume can determine not only personality, but also culture fit. How?

More and more, companies have spent vast amounts of time developing their culture statement or Core Values and do a great job clearly communicating this. However, this is not always the case. When we first engage with a customer we do a deep dive into their culture and Core Values. We take what we learn, map it to the Electronic Insight text analysis engine and deliver results back to them in their own words.

After ei knows their Core Values companies can run resumes, LinkedIn profiles, cover letters or other candidate data through ei and get detailed reports of how candidates fit their culture.

Electronic Insight does this by using a contextual analysis engine which decodes data to understand what people mean by what they say. For instance, if one of a company’s Core Values is “Adaptable”, candidates don’t need to say they’re adaptable. ei knows they are (or aren’t) based on their language.

Why should a company consider eiTalent as part of its hiring process? With so many background check and assessment vendors out there, what stands out about eiTalent?

I can’t speak about background checks since that’s not our market, but I can say from my experience with building a previous assessment based company that candidates hate taking them. There are lots of good ones out there, but often times candidates won’t take them unless they’re practically guaranteed to be one of the finalists for a role. Companies also mostly use them too late in the overall recruitment process due to candidate aversion and cost.

The beauty of eiTalent, is that there is no manual or online assessment so there is no friction on the candidate’s behalf. We provide valuable candidate insight specific to each company using candidate generated text that already exists within the company’s recruiting and sourcing workflow. This can be resumes, cover letters, social profiles or even transcripts of candidate interviews.

What real world recruiting or HR challenges is eiTalent designed to solve? How does it make the day-to-day work of practitioners easier or more efficient?

Even when companies understand their culture from top to bottom, it can be extremely tough to determine whether or not a candidate fits that culture, especially without an in-person interview. Even after an interview, a candidate’s fit is often subjective. We hear from recruiters all the time that they are frustrated with presenting who they think is an ideal candidate to the hiring manager only to be told that candidate is not a “fit”. And when they ask why, hiring managers often struggle to articulate the reason. That’s it’s just a gut feeling. eiTalent provides actionable data to assist hiring decisions beyond a gut feel.

The customers who use our technology for sourcing love the fact that it helps save huge amounts of time by giving them an instantaneous understanding of whether or not people they find in searches fit their culture before they even contact them. Talent and recruiting folks find that using eiTalent data helps reinforce their decisions and avoids lengthy discussions trying to justify their position on candidates.

Given the disconnect that often exists between a company’s perception of its culture and reality, isn’t it risky to assess candidates’ resumes for concepts like transparency & agility that are largely subjective and can vary widely across companies?

Different words mean different things to different people. Transparency and agility could mean many different things depending on the context of what any given company is really looking for. This is why we spend time on the front end of an engagement to understand the meaning behind the company’s Core Values. Understanding these meanings allows eiTalent to look for similar language patterns in candidate data. This is also a great way for a company to standardize how they assess for culture fit, which makes the recruiter’s job more efficient and takes some of the guess work out.

What are some of the most common misperceptions or objections you encounter when talking to HR & Recruiting leaders about eiTalent? How do you overcome these?

Resumes are always a big bone of contention. Companies are concerned that either the data present is insufficient or perhaps the candidate had help writing it. We do need a minimum amount of what we call good data, which is about 250 words other than title, company name, dates, states, etc. We’ve continually proven that ei can get an accurate read on a candidate’s culture fit with this minimum amount of data, whether it is from a resume, cover letter or a social media profile.

As far as whether or not a candidate wrote their own resume, they still choose to represent themselves through the document. And typically, candidates will alter the words to add some of their own personality. In addition, the resume is still typically the main starting point for every recruiter, along with a candidate’s social profile. Electronic Insight gives the recruiter much more valuable information than they would otherwise get in just reading the resume or reviewing a candidate’s social media profile.

Candidates have long tried to optimize their resumes to ‘beat the system’ through things like adding key words and phrases. Although eiTalent analyzes resumes contextually, is there any way to game the system for job seekers to appear like a better match than they really are?

We all know candidates will always try to increase their odds when trying to find a job. It’s a fact of life. As you mention, Electronic Insight takes a contextual approach with our analysis. Our analysis of text in a candidate’s resume is not keyword based. We analyze their language in it’s overall context. We can also use multiple sources of candidate data from resumes to cover letters to social media profiles. With this fundamentally different approach, there really is no way to “trick the system” with keywords as we do not base our analytics on them. Just dropping in keywords will not get you a better result. It is a holistic analysis of how the candidate is saying what they are saying, not just what they are saying.

This all points to a huge difference between ei and other tools that utilize keyword, or even semantic search methods. We get to the meaning behind the words.

For the full conversation with Marc, check out the complete Q&A at RecruitingTools.

Recruiting Daily LLC is committed to bringing talent acquisition leaders and practitioners a real time look at recruiting trends and staffing strategies. As such, this post does not constitute an endorsement for Electronic Insight or eiTalent and eiTalent did not pay for or review this post prior to publication.

If you’d like to feature your recruiting product or news on Recruiting Daily, leave a comment in the box below or e-mail [email protected].

eiTalent: Getting To the Core of Your Culture

One of the most reliable indicators of quality of hire is the ever-elusive concept of “fit,” but accurately predicting whether or not a candidate actually clicks with your culture can be exceedingly difficult. Even for employers and recruiters actually able to objectify such a seemingly subjective concept, finding the right candidate for your company’s core values and culture rarely occurs at the front end of the recruitment process.

This is largely because the resume continues to be the de facto basic unit of screening and selection, forcing us to focus largely what the candidate does instead of who the candidate really is.

Tell us a little bit about eiTalent. What inspired this product and how has it developed?

eiTalent purports that a resume can determine not only personality, but also culture fit. How?

After ei knows their Core Values companies can run resumes, LinkedIn profiles, cover letters or other candidate data through ei and get detailed reports of how candidates fit their culture.

Why should a company consider eiTalent as part of its hiring process? With so many background check and assessment vendors out there, what stands out about eiTalent?

What real world recruiting or HR challenges is eiTalent designed to solve? How does it make the day-to-day work of practitioners easier or more efficient?

What kinds of companies could benefit most from utilizing your product? Are there any industries, job functions or levels for which it’s particularly effective? Talk to us about your current client base and the results they’ve seen – any proof of concept?

eiTalent is agnostic to company size, industry, job function and position level. Most enterprise level companies will take advantage of the custom Core Values mapping I mentioned before. Small to medium size companies can as well, or they can use our Core Values Creator. This tool was built to allow them to choose eight Core Values that match their company culture and the employees they want to hire and immediately begin analyzing candidates.

We’ve completed numerous proof of concepts, or application studies as we call them, with our current client base and have several more in various stages of completion right now. This is not only a great way to gain new customers, it also helps us gather valuable validation data and often leads to new feature ideas as well.

What major changes or new features/functions can we expect to see from eiTalent over the next 12-18 months? What’s the future look like, and how are you measuring success?

Our development philosophy is to be driven by our customers and their needs. As we meet those needs, we strive for one goal: add value, not more steps to their process. We realize that recruiters and talent managers already use many systems to attract, recruit and onboard candidates. The last thing we want to do is become yet another tool that does not fit seamlessly into their workflow. A lot of our future development will focus on seamless integration with social profile sites, applicant tracking systems, and other data sources to complete a well rounded picture of candidates in one system.

We’re also working on enhancements to allow a company to benchmark their current employees. With this capability they can establish specific Core Values profiles that tie directly to great job performance and instantly compare a candidate’s profile by position, department, team or the company as a whole. We see this also being incredibly useful to companies who want to measure how they are living up to their Core Values internally on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Such data can also be used for team building, succession planning, learning and development and much more.

Another primary objective is to help our customers access data for candidates who have non-traditional or even non-existent resumes or social profiles. Developers, senior level candidates and veterans would be prime examples. We are working on other ways to get candidate content whether through partnering with other technologies or developing our own features around this.

What are some of the most common misperceptions or objections you encounter when talking to HR & Recruiting leaders about eiTalent? How do you overcome these?

This all points to a huge difference between ei and other tools that utilize keyword, or even semantic search methods. We get to the meaning behind the words.

If you’d like to feature your recruiting product or news on Recruiting Daily, leave a comment in the box below or e-mail [email protected].

Perfectionism In Recruiting: A Very Slow Death

On on-going question posed to recruiters is about how they started in the business. For me, it was nearly 25 years ago and looking back, I can unequivocally assert that while I thought I was really intuitive and knowledgeable about people back then, in comparison I am a far better recruiter today at 50 – and I’ve noticed how I’m continuing to improve as the years pile on (better understanding of local, regional, global business, and functional trends).

To know this is to first know how I moved from being an engineer to being a member of the people lover’s profession.I was approached by two female co-op students – at the time about six years younger than me – who were complaining that they were uncomfortable reporting to the person who ran the co-op program; although he truly was brilliant, he had the unfortunate habit of staring at women’s chests when he was speaking to them (the women not the breasts).

While I always considered myself to be a sensitive person, being a people person was counterintuitive to my years of engineering study and practice.

But as everyone in an HR related field knows (except for compensation – these folks take data wonk to a entirely new level), we exude some type of pheromone that says, Speak to me, I’ll listen, I’ll care. This is a very important quality to have at 25 – like child bearing hips and a good credit score. At 50, you may still listen and care but your attention span is far shorter. This probably explains why the so-called GenWhiners blame their parents – people like me – for all their ills.

Yet with the puppy dog looks of these two young ladies staring back at me to go along with them saying, “We don’t like it when he stares are our tits; can we report to you?” I had no option. I found out if the change was possible and the journey began. Of course it helped that one of the co-op students who already reported to me had a father who was a well-respected if not overly verbose OD consultant with the company. At the same time, one of the ASIC managers had an issue with one of his co-op students – lack of engagement brought on by the manager’s dubious relationship building skills. I was asked to investigate and discovered that it wasn’t lack of engagement but the belief by the manager that all engineers were wind-up automatons and when presented with technical work would 3CPO to life and dive on in.

A short United Nations meeting later, both sides had their first happy talk ever; all I did was to have a pow-wow with the manager on how young engineers (which I was) like to be engaged – which really was nothing more than how I liked to be managed – and with the co-op on not being a whiny know-everything.

So my first foray into marriage counseling produced happy co-op students and a happy manager. I remember thinking this was far easier than coding and performing complex multivariate statistical analyses; maybe this HR thing is something I should look into. And the rest, as they say, is pretty much history.

The Scientific Method of Recruiting

Truthfully it wasn’t easy; when youthful enthusiasm meets youthful pretension, youthful ugliness often rears up on its hind quarters and makes a scene. I was thrust into co-op and entry-level recruiting – all technical stuff which made perfect sense – with absolutely no recruiting training. My solution was look at recruiting as an engineering design – not just in 2D but from three dimensions (read Edwin Abbott’s Flatland).

No design of any consequence would ever be built without the incorporation of “safety factors” and I figured that if I was going to assess someone’s skills and abilities, it was going to be from multiple angles (I certainly wasn’t as glib as I am now). As any good scientist would do, I experimented with different questions, varying the intonations of how I asked these questions, all the while thinking like an engineer: Technical and scientific people create things and how they created these things is more important than anything else.

That was before I was introduced to hiring managers with differing opinions on things like GPAs, where one went to school, piercings…

There were certainly times I overstepped by bounds and was thankfully brought back in by people who either saw something called potential or didn’t like the sight of blood (which would have been my blood).

At the heart of the problem was that I still thought like an engineer (and still do) – which on one hand was very helpful but on the other hand was the beginning of decades of torment – but had yet to learn how to articulate issues I saw in the processes that were inefficient, ineffective or both. Funny how the elements of recruiting that irked me back then are still practiced by the bulk of the profession (such as recruiting for buzzwords, not knowing the real job, inarticulate questioning, sensing over digging). Being a Deming wonk helped immensely (measure, measure, measure) but since so few in HR and recruiting really understood the playground of numbers, my validity and reliability mantras often fell on deaf and dumb ears.

Despite it all, I found myself at Cornell, RPI, MIT, the HBCUs several times each year. Cornell and some of the HBCUs really hold fond memories…

From Engineer to Entry Level: A Recruiter’s Journey

One co-op recruiting session at Cornell, I found my schedule booked solid; my company had a reputation for offering real-world work and the waiting list was nearly as long.

Whereas some recruiters – perhaps many – would have given some song and dance to those waiting (“Send me your resume and I’ll take a look at it”), the parental lessons of work ethics kicked in and I stayed to interview everyone interested.

A short break for dinner and I was back at a bar that evening where I finished meeting those I couldn’t meet earlier – everyone received an opportunity to sell.

I didn’t know this but I had created a reputation at that school that paid dividends every recruiting season. My job was to recruit and not to offer excuses.

My unusual lesson about co-op and entry-level recruiting (it may be different nowadays but remember, I’m talking about the 1980’s here) was when in the middle of an interview at Cornell, I stopped in my tracks and stared at the sleeve of the suit jacket of one candidates. He was mortified and not knowing what the heck caught my eye.

Finally, I blurted out, You paid how much for that suit? Apparently poor college students back then would buy an interview suit then return it after the interviews were completed. I never knew that but it opened my eyes that people will anything to look good at an interview; nothing is ever as it seems.

Recruiting at the HBCUs – really provoked deep thinking about recruiting, lessons that stay with me today, in particular, my visits to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and Howard University in DC.

At the time FAMU’s engineering program was a 3/2 collaboration with the University of Florida. While the interviews were held in Gator country, I spent time walking around the FAMU campus. While there weren’t any fancy structures – if I recall, most of the buildings were brick – I knew it was interview season because so many of the kids were in their best business suits. I wish I could remember the name of the head of Career Service because what she did to prepare the students should be copied by all Career Services departments today.

Not only did everyone I interview know about my company but they knew about the entire sector – all students not just the technical ones; what cemented home my awe was that at the end of each interview, every person handed me a business card and asked for mine. The standard by which I measure the preparedness of everyone I interview today are the students from FAMU.

It was my time at Howard University that taught me how important relationship building was to the recruiting process – how once a sense of ease and confidence is established, the richer is the information gleaned. Can’t remember the guy’s name but he was a EE major and clearly on the football team – when he came into the room he eclipsed all the light coming through the doorway. As soon as I saw him, he was oddly familiar. Get this – my brother was an O-lineman at URI and this fellow was a DT for Howard and I remember them shaking hands after a recent game. Go figure. So we talked football and engineering and it was clear that his mind was at ease.

And as we both talked instead of playing the standard interviewing games, the richness of the experience led to us really getting to know each other. He was offered a job but in the end we stayed in touch. Again, a lesson that still plays today – for every person you touch, you will help each other learn about others. There are no expendable people in recruiting.

Going Back to the Old School: Still Learning After A Lifetime

Those who entered recruiting back when didn’t have the crutch of job boards to help them when the pipelines were thinning.

Job boards, while exceptionally useful, have done more harm than good in their ability to foster within the people who download and present a sense of what encompasses recruiting.

A little bit of success constituting a few fees and pretty soon the neophyte thinks they can intuitively sense a good resume from a bad one, a high potential from a dud. 15 minutes of relationship building later and one’s an expert.

Mind you, they’re a great resource if you’re willing to reach out and develop a relationship with people even without an opening but how many recruiters do this?

Job boards today are more like whorehouses in Nevada; you pretty much stop by only when you’re horny and need something quickly.

I’ve used them but for all the talk about passive versus active, the fact remains that those on the boards are saying, Hello world, I’m here if you’re ready; they’ve been practicing the answers to the questions. I don’t hunt but I’ve heard that some hunters, perhaps from New Jersey, will drive their vehicles onto a lea and dawn, bright lights blinding the deer. All these brave hunters need is to walk a few paces and Bambi winds up as stew and sausage. I’d be a bow and arrow kind of hunter if I was a hunter at all.

Then there are the interview questions that everyone seems to know…for me, I have always tried to interview people, oddly enough, outside-the-box, eschewing the standard questions for lines of questioning that lead down the road to the soul. It’s the scientific method of working to prove or disprove the null hypothesis. What is the point of asking questions for which people have practiced giving the answers? I wrote this years ago on my buddy Jason Alba’s blog and it summarizes how engineering interacts with human resources to produce more effective recruiting:

“As a recruiter it is relatively easy for me to discern what is truth and what is rubbish when hearing someone talk about their personal qualities. Resumes are propaganda constructed to put one’s best foot forward. Yet resumes pale in comparison to personal statements that include things that, while they may make some uncomfortable, speak to the individual.”

When did you fail? How did you feel? What did you do to pull yourself up from the floor? Who helped you? Who did you ask to help you and why did they decline?

Even back then, I never cared for the color of one’s parachute; I was more concerned with how the parachute was packed, who taught you to pack the chute, what training did you receive for times when the chute failed and how did you practice.

So with hardly any training in recruiting – I recall one sheet on Do’s and Don’ts – I went to my strengths…the scientific method; it wasn’t that I was any smarter or prescient, it was simply all I knew. Add this to a few tremendous mentors and people who were willing to listen to my ramblings, and here I am 25 years later, still recruiting…but still experimenting. Looks as if I’ll never be satisfied and I’ll always be looking into the nooks and crannies of life for insights that will enable me to be just a little bit better than the day before.

At 50, perfectionism is still a very slow death.

For more, check out RecruitingInferno.com.

About the Aughor: Steve Levy is well respected as one of the best sourcers in the business, combining old school and new cool technologies to identify and engage exceptional talent – and actually knows those mythical “purple squirrels.” Levy, a member of the RecruitingBlogs Editorial Advisory Committee who has been referred to as “the recruiting industry’s answer to Tom Peters” has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Social Human Resources Experts on Twitter; The 10 to Follow in Social Media Recruiting; Top 25 Twitter Accounts for Job Seekers to Follow; Top 100 Twitter Accounts Job Seekers MUST Follow: 2012; Top 50 Twitter Accounts Job Seekers MUST Follow: 2011; 101 Career Experts all Job Hunters Should Follow on Twitter; and Top 100 HR & Recruiting Pros to Follow on Twitter.

Follow Steve On Twitter @LevyRecruits or Connect With Him on LinkedIn

How To Think About Social Recruiting Data

Data to help recruiters understand social recruiting risk factors.

I recently had the opportunity to review Dice’s Open Web product. I found it to be a great addition to the recruiter’s toolkit as it provides access to a much wider pool of potential candidates by making it incredibly easy to search in the social realm.

This certainly meets a need and saves time because, let’s face it, recruiters and HR ladies with a new Open Req on their desk are usually doing some sort of Google search, LinkedIn search, or trolling on social sites anyway. It does, however, remind us how important it is for organizations to have defined policies/procedures for their use of social media profile information in the recruiting stage.

As unsexy as it may be it’s still critically important for HR professionals to manage risk and liability while balancing that with the benefits to be gained from interacting with and sourcing candidates via social channels.

There are many of my HR colleagues who continue to believe, very adamantly, in the need to keep personal and professional personas separate – both for themselves and for their candidates.

They really have no interest in viewing a applicant’s social footprint nor do they wish to cross the streams and engage with candidates via sites that are perceived as more personal (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr come to mind).

When reviewing applications these HR practitioners are the first to say that the only things of importance are professional skills and work experience…the corporate hiring equivalent of name, rank and serial number.

Does this mean HR professionals should never interact and connect with candidates or applicants online? Does it mean they should never consider the ‘whole person’ when evaluating the importance of cultural fit, motivation and interests when contemplating moving someone along in the hiring process or extending an offer? Of course not; in my mind that’s just plain foolish.

They can, however, be smart and purposeful by keeping a few key points front and center:

HR professionals and recruiters who research candidates or view candidates’ online social media information, even if public, should be aware that the information once seen cannot become ‘unseen.” (note – the Open Web data is pulled from billions of web pages, all of which is public information readily available). There are certainly pieces of information that may be gathered by reviewing SM profiles that would be considered protected category information such as race, ethnicity, religion, marital status, physical or mental disabilities or medical conditions. While this information could, and quite often does, come out during conversational chit chat in an interview, being aware of it earlier means the recruiter must make sure that screening/selection processes do not have an adverse impact on individuals in protected categories.

It’s advantageous to fully define which employer representative should be viewing social media profiles; for example, removing the Hiring Manager (ultimate decision maker) from this process and instead having the Recruiter who has been trained in how to use this information be the one who views social profiles. It’s a plus within the Dice product that when forwarding a candidate’s resume to a Hiring Manager only the resume moves forward; the Hiring Manager does not see the links to Open Web.

Employers who are government contractors and subject to E.O. 11246 must also ensure that their policies and procedures fall in line with OFCCP record keeping requirements in regards to the “Internet Applicant” definitions. As always, they should refer to DOL guidelines and/or get legal guidance with any questions in this area.

This is certainly not Dice’s first rodeo and I’m fairly certain that customers have access to guidance and best practices on how to appropriately manage candidate data; the customer dashboard I worked with had a treasure trove of information and links to resources.

But even if one is not using this platform the above tips are pertinent to anyone traversing this brave new world of internet and social recruiting. We all remember the Uniform Guidelines/UGESP (HR 101) … right? Right?

Originally posted at HR Schoolhouse

About the Author: With 25 years of HR Management experience, Robin Schooling, SPHR, has worked in a variety of industries including gaming, healthcare, manufacturing and banking. In 2013, after serving as VP Human Resources with the Louisiana Lottery Corporation for almost 7 years, Robin left corporate HR to open up Silver Zebras, LLC, a consultancy focusing on unique HR strategies that power people, strengthen talent capabilities and harness the power of connections.

She’s a member of the Smartbrief on Workforce Advisory Board and served on the Boards of Directors for Geaux Veterans, and the Louisiana Business Leadership Network, which focuses on providing positive employment outcomes for people with disabilities. Robin is a Past President of Greater Baton Rouge SHRM, a former board member with ASTD Baton Rouge, an active member of the Baton Rouge Social Media Association and she currently serves as Secretary/Treasurer and Communications Director for the Louisiana SHRM State Council. In 2011, GBR SHRM awarded Robin its “HR Professional of the Year Award.”

You can follow Robin on Twitter at @RobinSchooling or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Technology Candidate Experience

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to sit in a room and speak with an industry icon? Talk about a great Technology Candidate Experience! Today it is especially relevant.

Have you spent years in recruiting without ever actually being called a recruiter? It may seem odd that you are far from different. In our industry most recruiters and recruiting departments have adopted the term talent acquisition. Of course it sounds far more strategic than plain old “recruiting.” Although it seems easy, it’s not.

The Army has recruiters. Hollywood has talent executives. It is of no great surprise that an industry fixated on perception has opted for the less fun business of hiring. Rather then spend time on mindless objectives, focus on the end game. Too many recruiters are lazy, and consequently this results in…well.. you know. While most employers structure their hiring, how it is affecting things?

If our job is exclusively acquisition why do we make things harder?

Seems like it’s a trend that’s only become popular in the last few years.

Technology, resources and process trends may evolve over the next decade. The goal is to help companies more effectively engage top talent and market their employment brands.
This will highlight emerging trends and share case studies from organizations that have successfully implemented superior candidate experience practices.
This highly interactive presentation will guide participants through a structured process for assessing and bench-marking their own candidate experiences and help them understand how they can strengthen their employment brand.

Participants will learn talent acquisition best practices and hear about the technologies that are making a difference for companies.

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Is Outsourcing On the Way Out?

Writing on the Wall: Finding Fit by Linking Candidate Words & Behaviors

eiTalent: Getting To the Core of Your Culture

Perfectionism In Recruiting: A Very Slow Death

The Scientific Method of Recruiting

From Engineer to Entry Level: A Recruiter’s Journey

Going Back to the Old School: Still Learning After A Lifetime

Technology Candidate Experience

Technology Candidate Experience

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Brand Marketing: The Company Brand Belongs to the Talent

Lead Generation: Focus on Inbound and Outbound

Lead Nurturing: Build a Pipeline

Cut Down Time-to-Hire

Ask Situational Questions

Focus on Teamwork

Evaluate Career Aspiration

12 Things I Wish I Knew About Twitter When I First Joined

Straight from the Source

Building Relationships, Driving Referrals

Turning Connections Into Candidates

Here are my theories:

A Foundation Built on Employee Empowerment

No. 1 Goal: Keep It Quirky & Authentic

BYOD Is Here To Stay

Is IT Still Relevant In The BYOD Revolution?

Is Outsourcing On the Way Out?

The Scientific Method of Recruiting

From Engineer to Entry Level: A Recruiter’s Journey

Going Back to the Old School: Still Learning After A Lifetime

Technology Candidate Experience

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