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How To Become a Recruiter: 11 Tips

What’s one tip for that would help someone looking to become a recruiter? That’s what we asked a group of career coaches, experienced recruiters and HR leaders. From learning to accommodate the unpredictable to finding a way to get your foot in the door, there’s advice that can help anyone seeking to become a recruiter.

Learn to Accommodate the Unpredictable

A challenging aspect of being a recruiter is the unpredictability factor during the recruitment process. People are complex and complicated, and each person can see the same opportunity from different perspectives. A recruiter should prepare for anything that could happen during the search. It is up to them to keep their clients and candidates on the same page throughout the hiring process.

Benjamin Farber
President Bristol Associates, Inc.

Don’t Haunt Potential Hires

Avoid ghosting job candidates. Keep in mind that they are also stakeholders in the vetting and interviewing process. In the digital age (where all comments are shareable and social), a negative or positive interview experience can be published online — and read — in a matter of seconds. This can have an impact on qualified job seekers who are researching your open positions and discourage them from applying. Regardless of how many “to do’s” are added to the task list, all applicants should expect open conversations and transparency throughout the process.

Jessica Arias
Director of People & Culture OnPay Payroll Services

Use LinkedIn Smarter

Tools like LinkedIn’s Career Explorer page are a recruiter’s best friend. It’s the platform’s central database that tracks today’s top-trending job titles in your recruitment vertical, but also the associated skills for these roles. The platform gives you a glimpse into what your actual target audience is prioritizing when job hunting themselves.

In this sense, think of tools such as Career Explorer like an encyclopedia for how to attract hyper-specific talent. You also get access to a library of workforce data and scouting and recruitment thought leadership, all in a single place. Basically, it’ll allow you to recruit faster, easier and ultimately better than colleagues who aren’t crafting their work around this centralized info.

Yang Zhang
CEO Plasmic

Build Your Network of Contacts

The first step is to identify the industry you want to recruit for (in my case, IT). Study org charts for some large companies in that industry to get an idea of what departments you might work with and what common and niche positions in those departments you may be recruiting for, as well as the growth opportunities for each position (good selling points for passive candidates).

I looked for IT org charts and learned everything I could about IT infrastructure from help desk to CIO/CTO, as well as where software development fits into the greater IT organization. Once you digest all that, do a deep dive into duties for each role and common tools/skills/technologies that are used for those positions. You don’t need to know everything, but knowing a little helps you to think of good questions to ask candidates. Now you know enough to be dangerous. The last step is to spend time each day adding people in the roles you studied to your LinkedIn and get a professional headshot taken.

Matthew Jones
Senior IT Recruiter VIP Tech Consultants

Seek to Recruit for Organizations That Matter to You

When you recruit for an organization whose causes, mission/vision, products or services are important to you, it shows. Your messaging comes from an authentic place, your ability to bring excitement to conversations with candidates becomes effortless and you become the best advocate for your candidates because of your vested interest in their and the organization’s, success.

Cindy Rodriguez
Partner Adirondack Diversity Solutions LLC

Identify and Sharpen Your Soft Skills

I believe anyone can become a recruiter, but not everyone can be a great one. Great recruiters share a common quality: They know the key soft skills needed to engage clients and successfully place high-quality candidates in challenging positions. Every successful recruiter’s main soft skills are strong communication, negotiation, sales and people management skills. As you launch your career, identify opportunities to strengthen these skills and you will navigate many of the obstacles most newbies face in their career.

Strong communication, people and sales skills are critical to engaging clients, evaluating and managing their needs and providing tailor-made solutions they cannot find anywhere else. These same skills are critical in maintaining high-quality and productive relationships with hiring managers. Strained relationships with hiring managers are a major obstacle for both new and experienced recruiters, but with the right skills, you can overcome these common challenges.

Paul French
Managing Director Intrinsic Executive Search

Be Familiar With Your Role as a Recruiter 

Listening is the number one qualification for the individual who dreams of becoming a recruiter. A recruiter understands the business, treats job seekers like customers and teams up with hiring managers to collaborate on job specifications, plans, sources, assessments, sales, communication, listening, marketing, coaching, interviewing, evaluation.

Recruiters-in-the-making recruit for diversity, share knowledge, persuade, negotiate, contribute beyond their assignment and enjoy joint achievements shared with their colleagues. 

Business competencies new recruiters will require include a drive for results, composure, creativity, priority setting, problem-solving, perseverance, comfort around senior executives, standing alone, organizing and approachability. They are talent scouts who are passionate and polished professionals who, having listened well, take great joy in congratulating each of their newly hired staff.

Bill Gunn
Principal Consultant G&A

Learn How to Like the Unknown

You need to learn to like the unknown from the terminology that you do not know to situations where you simply have to wait for updates and answers. When it comes to starting your career, you need to quickly familiarize yourself with all of the terms that you will be using on a daily basis.

That includes business terms, your team’s jargon and some key elements that you will be discussing with your candidates (i.e., if you are an IT recruiter, you must know and understand their tech stack to be able to ask the correct questions). So when you see something new, Google it and understand what it is. 

Another big part of recruitment is waiting for the feedback, the offer, the decision on that offer and many other things. Be ready for that waiting time and to constantly push for updates. Recruitment is very dynamic, so you must be prepared for requirements to change quickly and be able to adapt to the new ones to be successful.

Katya Lapayeva
IT Recruiter CNA International IT

Work on Your Communication Skills

The key to success for someone to become successful in recruiting will likely always be in communication. This affects interactions with hiring managers, candidates and within your team. Due to the emergence of additional A.I. and technology-based solutions, it seems that meaningful communication has taken a back seat.

However, communication, which includes both the written and spoken word, will continue to be what separates the most successful recruiters from average recruiters. If you become comfortable with video, this can also prove to be a tremendous edge as a new recruiter.

Rollis Fontenot III
Founder HR Maximizer Inc

Explore the Possibility to Shadow a Member of a Recruiting Team

The recruiting landscape is extremely competitive and many companies are seeking to beef up their talent acquisition team. Most companies look for individuals with prior recruiting experience. However, that shouldn’t stop anyone from pursuing the recruiting/talent acquisition field. Recruiting requires attention to detail, maintaining confidentiality, ability to work in ambiguous environments and an ability to relate to candidates.

One important tip for prospective recruiters is to have a solid understanding of the questions that you can and cannot ask prospective candidates. This may seem extremely tactical, however it is an important component of being a recruiter. There are questions that are illegal to ask a candidate. It’s also helpful to reach out to Human Resources to see if it’s possible to shadow a member of the recruiting team to have a better understanding of the full lifecycle recruiting process.

Tawanda Johnson
People & Culture Thought Leader Sporting Smiles

Find a Way to Get Your Foot in the Door

You can start as a sourcer or recruitment assistant in order to get a glimpse into the recruitment industry. As both of these positions have a lower barrier to entry, you may be able to find an internship or on-the-job training opportunities for both of these positions.

These positions will allow you to get hands-on experience, and you’ll quickly find out whether or not recruitment is right for you. Moreover, you’ll gain insight into which specialization of recruitment is the best fit, allowing you to properly adjust the course of your career from an earlier point in time than most people.

Iohan Chan
Senior Content Editor Clark Staff

People Aren’t Perfect: How to Avoid Perfectionism When Hiring

One of the hardest parts of a recruiter’s job is learning the hard truth that a hiring decision is never just a hiring decision. Recruiting decisions impact the whole company. That final decision over whom to hire has a ripple effect that travels through the company. Recommend or make an ill-matched hire, and it will trickle back to you.

That’s a lot of responsibility to bear. As a result, many recruiters find themselves working around the clock to find the ‘perfect hire.’ To do this, they often fall into perfectionist-styles of thinking. They start to think of their work in black-and-white terms — it’s either perfect or a failure.

Many content creators talk about being concerned by their perfectionistic tendencies. They find it hard to write, think and deliver on time as they are constantly worried their work isn’t good enough.

For recruiters, there’s all that and an added element of stress: the culmination of their work comes down to a single decision that can’t be easily ‘edited’ after it’s made.

Below we’ve gathered some of the best tips for avoiding perfectionism as a recruiter to help those who may find themselves constantly worried about making the right decisions. 

Remember, the less your mind is focused on getting everything right and the more engaged it is in the process, the better hiring decisions you will make.

Lower Your Expectations (In a Good Way)

An issue that might arise throughout the interview and recruiting process is the weight of high expectations. It is not unusual for human resources professionals, after months or years of interviewing applicants and recruiting new workers, to create a list of criteria they expect to see from prospects.

While this list may have some reasonable items, problems emerge when unrealistic criteria unrelated to the role creep in, especially when applied before even beginning to judge whether or not they fulfill the requirements of the positions they are interviewing for.

For instance, have you ever found yourself rejecting candidates who don’t match every single criterion?

You have got to learn that while the ability to identify the most promising prospects is certainly valuable, it should not be used in a way that sets an unrealistic bar of excellence. Keep your reasonable criteria, but remember that they aren’t set in stone. They’re guidelines to help you narrow down the hiring pool — not eliminate every candidate!

Trust Your Instincts

You should trust your instincts. 

HR and the recruiting process are very human-centered professions. And there’s nothing more human than our instinctual feelings and emotions towards other humans.

In a way, learning when to trust your instincts is an art form. A very individual art form that is learned over time. While basing decisions solely on a gut feeling isn’t the smartest option, incorporating it into the hiring decision is important.

Plus, if you feel stuck when making certain decisions, it helps you ‘get out of your head’ and progress without constantly second-guessing yourself. You’re in talent acquisitions for a reason — usually because you connect with and understand others easily. Trust yourself and avoid the perfectionist trap.

Learn to Analyze Mistakes in a Healthy Way

Mistakes aren’t the end of the world. You have to be willing to learn from your failures if you want to go forward and increase the quality of your hiring decisions. 

It may seem at odds with what’s written above, but analyzing your past work in detail, such as hiring interviews, stumbling blocks and time-sinks, can reduce the feeling that you have to be perfect to move forward. 

You’ll learn to view your job as an iterative learning process, one that moves with small steps instead of reaching instant perfection.

Think about it this way: Gallup reports that in America alone, businesses lose more than $1 trillion each year as a result of employees voluntarily leaving. At this scale, it’s inevitable that you won’t always make the ‘perfect’ match between employer and employee.

Perfectionism can often be stopped in its tracks by analyzing what went wrong and mapping out new ways of avoiding those issues in the future. Once you’ve done everything you can to learn from previous mistakes, there’s no need to overthink it. You’ve done the best you can.

Keep Communication Simple

The following formula can be used to avoid overthinking:

Efficiency and Speed > Perfectionism

Getting something done at a high standard doesn’t mean it has to be done inefficiently and slowly. This applies particularly to your internal communication processes.

For example, forbid the use of powerpoint style presentations to convey information internally, such as pitching a new hiring strategy. While colorful, engaging, and all-around beautiful slides would be nice, this would take up hours — or days — for an employee to create.

Instead, opt to communicate in plain text. It’s quicker, more efficient, and prevents employees from becoming obsessed over getting every little design detail ‘just right.’

Recruiters who agonize over every little formatting detail of a message should adopt simple communication processes when engaging with job candidates. Consider this: earlier this year, Criteria’s Candidate Experience Report revealed that more than half of all job candidates surveyed had given up during a recruiting process as a result of poor communication.

A quick way to help remove the need for endless little tweaks and decisions is by leaving a post-it note on your computer that reads: “Content is primary. Design is secondary.” Read it often.

Practice Forgiveness

As an recruitment professional, you (hopefully!) see people as they are: only human. And you recognize that humans make mistakes. When it comes to small mistakes, such as a misplaced comma or an email sent too early, you forgive people quickly.

However, pause for a moment and ask yourself: “Why don’t I practice the same level of forgiveness for me and my work?” If you show others kindness and respect for not achieving perfect results all the time, why can’t you show the same to yourself?

Learning to forgive yourself is a big step toward reducing perfectionistic thinking. Plus, it gives you a clear mind to begin implementing how to analyze your mistakes in a healthy way.

Forgiveness is vital for this process, as if you look at your previous work and you’re blinded by your perfectionistic thinking, you’ll find yourself stressing and worrying about the past, as well as the future!

Conclusion

The simplest advice is often the most effective. Take a breather, refocus and get back to work without worrying about the little things.

Then, step back and remember: it’s okay to leave little imperfections behind and focus on the things that matter—their essence—the things that affect the final result. Knowing when to declare “that’s good enough!” is an essential skill in preventing perfectionism from controlling your life. Learn to keep things moving forward, as it is crucial for generating results and pushing oneself to greater heights. 

12 Things That Get Employees Excited (Besides a Raise)

To help you identify the things that get employees excited — besides a raise — we asked both workers and HR managers for their thoughts. And they are:

Career Advancement and Upward Mobility

Many employees these days want to ensure they have a path for career advancement and upward mobility. It excites employees to know what their path looks like and encourages them to work hard if they know there is a next step that they are working toward. Having a conversation and outlining a clear path can help employees stay the course instead of looking elsewhere for employment.

Alison Stine
Founder, Stine Wealth Management

Opportunities for Personal Projects

Over my summer holiday, I read the Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. It’s not about being a perfect manager, but about how a company can coach their employees to fulfill their dreams. So we set up our own program, and the employees love it. They’re working on their dreams ranging from “see fireflies” to “new printing machine for my sticker side-hustle” – and it’s already more rewarding than getting more money.

Bibi Lauri Raven
Founder, BibiBuzz

Management Using and Rewarding Employees’ Ideas

Management at many companies tells employees they welcome their opinions, ideas, suggestions and questions. Unfortunately, it’s often just lip service. 

One example: When I worked at a company that placed a suggestion box in the employee lounge, an HR staffer confided that management directed her to take the box to her office when it was full, dump all suggestions in the trash and return it to the lounge. Since I’ve encountered high morale and low turnover when I’ve worked for managers who go beyond lip service, I’m grateful I have a supportive manager as an insurance copywriter for our company. 

It’s my nature to suggest improvements when I see inefficiencies. So when I was promoted to team lead over a group of writers who created guest posts, I was thrilled that my proposals were welcomed, implemented, and recognized for everything from a way to create more content for our freelance writers to how to streamline our tracking process to reduce duplication and errors.

Karen Condor,
Insurance Copywriter, ExpertInsuranceReviews.com

Advancement Opportunities

I run my own business. And before that, I ran Intelligent Games. At my previous company, we would do things like buy pizza for employees who were working late. What I learned, really, was that having a culture where people work late, then buying pizza for them, is like putting a patch fix on a deeper issue. Pizza isn’t exciting. Having a work-life balance is. So is good pay, good benefits and opportunities for career progression. People want to demonstrate leadership, develop skills and be creative. They want recognition for their work. In short, I’ve learned that employees get excited when they are given the chance to grow. We call this “human flourishing” or, in Greek, “eudaimonia.” That’s what motivates me as an owner-manager, and it’s what motivates my team.

Matthew Stibbe
CEO, Articulate Marketing

Receiving an Unexpected Thank You Note

The moment of seeing an unexpected thank you note on my desk gets me excited as an employee. Knowing that my work is appreciated by the company I work for makes me feel good. I enjoy working and being able to contribute to the company in a positive way. Getting a thank you note from my boss or from the team shows me that my efforts are recognized and appreciated. It also makes me feel like I am part of a team and that I am valued as an employee. Getting a thank you note is one small thing that can make a big difference in how I feel about my job.

Lorien Strydom
Executive Country Manager, Financer.com

Brainstorming and Ideation Sessions

I have worked in management for over five years and have my own company. The most responsive and excitable employees get are during a brainstorming session with teams that span further than their usual colleagues. Brainstorming and ideation sessions are fun and creative. It allows for employees to take a break from their routine thinking and process flow, and utilize their experience to better future projects or current work process flow. I would encourage this because I have seen how the marketing and finance teams have different ways of breaking things down than the marketing and technology development teams. The excitement in employees is often furthered with snacks and playful presentation of ideas. In our company, we enjoy hosting it as if it is a panel of judges. It encourages healthy competition and an environment for people to laugh at themselves.

Daniel Forstner
Founder, Mailbox Empire

Collaborative Problem Solving

Being a part of a collaborative team can be one of the most exciting — and rewarding — things as an employee. If work offers space for everyone to contribute and refine ideas together, it helps teammates feel more personally connected to the goals and the outcomes for the business. The most exciting part of the process? That collaborative problem solving most often leads to better solutions.

Monica Thysell
Director of Product Marketing, OnPay

Vacation Days and Time-Offs

The one thing that gets me excited as an employee is more vacation days. I love acquiring more vacation and personal days annually and that gets me planning activities for the family. Vacation and time-off are what make me believe my company respects me. I’ve earned it, and more days mean they recognize that. Everyone needs time off from the stress and vacation and time off help me put things in perspective.

Amruth Laxman
Founding Partner, 4Voice

Working Towards the Same Goals and Achieving Results

One of the things that has always motivated me as an employee is setting goals with my team and watching as results take shape. You might not feel like you are making progress when you are in the thick of things on a day-to-day basis, but when you sit back and reflect on the past month’s work, you might just be amazed by what you have achieved. It is important for everyone you are working with to share the same vision so you can work together to reach the targets you set for yourselves.

Johan Hajji
CEO & Founder, UpperKey

Good Relationship With Colleagues

In work life most of us spend half our time in the office with colleagues, so as important as it is to maintain a good relationship and a bond with the family, it is also important to build a good relationship with an employee. Employees who have a good relationship with each other are more likely to be happy on the job than those who don’t get along with their peers. To form an authentic bond with your colleagues, don’t be this arrogant business person all the time. Take some chill time. Having a teammate who motivates you to understand your ups and downs maintains a very positive relationship with each other and is more likely to help you perform exceptionally.

Scott Krager
Owner, WODReview

As an employee, I’m excited to work for companies that are growing quickly and sustainably because they will have more opportunities for career growth. Companies growing slowly — or not at all — won’t provide much opportunity to take the next step. Companies that can’t sustain their growth lack employment stability. It’s exciting to find a company that can grow with you.

Joe Kevens
Founder and Director of Demand Gen, B2B SaaS Reviews (and PartnerStack)

Work Schedule Flexibility

Besides a raise, flexibility in my work schedule gets me excited as an employee. Flexibility creates a better work-life balance, ultimately resulting in happier workers. Things happen – cars break down, kids get sick, events pop up — creating stress to our everyday lives. When an employer allows flexibility it reduces that stress. Allowing employees to either work from home or non-traditional hours helps take the pressure off putting life into the (in my opinion) outdated 8 – 5 work schedule. Flexibility allows people to work when they are most productive. It allows people to not miss out on their niece’s after school play. It adds life back into each day.

Erin Sullivan
Digital & Inbound Marketing Manager, University of Advancing Technology

iCIMS, SparcStart Settle Lawsuit

Like a number of major technology platforms in the recruiting industry, iCIMS has made quite a few acquisitions over time. Some of them were fantastic. TextRecruit, for example – a credible, leading provider in a rapidly growing category got scooped up and quickly integrated, resulting in a huge lift in functionality and offerings for iCIMS, and the TextRecruit team received (we hope) a nice little exit. Everybody wins.

Of course, they’ve also had their misses. 

One that seemed like it would work seamlessly was Altru Labs, which iCIMS acquired in late 2020. The marriage seemed straightforward: iCIMS has been pushing itself beyond the ATS category and deeper into an integrated platform that can address the breadth and scope of the recruiting funnel.

In this case, it beefed up their employer branding offerings through the use of easy-to-use technologies that allowed clients to spin up employee testimonials virtually on the fly, and then integrate them into various points of their branding and engagement efforts.

Cool, right?

Here’s Where it Turns

At issue, and less cool, was an implication floating out there that Altru Labs had infringed on a patent in the process of developing their offerings. SparcStart, a rival video-first provider in the employment brand space, cried foul shortly after the acquisition.

The company offers remarkably similar software and offerings to its clients, and had patented the approach in 2020. According to SparcStart, they had tried reaching out to iCIMS’s general counsel several times over the fall and received no response. Following this, SparcStart filed suit in December of 2021.

Fast forward to the present: iCIMS has agreed to settle the lawsuit and it appears, is now licensing SparcStart’s approaches and technology. Which is interesting and raises the question of how much Altru Labs was really worth in retrospect.

According to the SparcStart press release:

“We are very pleased with the outcome of this case,” commented Maury Hanigan, CEO of SparcStart.  “We are delighted to have resolved this matter and return our attention to bringing clients exceptional products and services.”

RecruitingDaily has reached out to both companies for comment. iCIMs issued the following statement in response: “iCIMS does not comment on litigation matters as a policy, the company respects intellectual property rights and expects others to do the same. iCIMS invests heavily in R&D and has a portfolio of U.S. and international patents and patent applications, consistently delivering innovations to customers worldwide.”

 SparcStart founder Maury Hanigan, when reached, requested that we refer to the press release and could not add anything beyond that. (The assumption by this reporter is that there is some sort of gag order around the settlement).

We are interested in this story, and will continue to investigate.

Hacking Tech Talent at #HRTX September 2022

RecruitingDaily presented 2022’s third free HRTX virtual program for recruiters, featuring nearly 50 trainers and a whole lot of content.

RecruitingDaily presented 2022’s third free HRTX virtual training program for recruiters, featuring nearly 50 trainers and a whole lot of content.

The theme of the day was hacking tech talent, with discussions around sourcing for 14 highly sought-after tech positions. We asked each trainer to bring one tip, trick or hack to illustrate their approach to sourcing using only free tools. The idea was to give attendees strategies and tactics they could apply to their own sourcing.

Industry experts including Brian Fink, Dean Da Costa, Shally Steckerl and Larry Anderson held Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions to keep discussions going. And, there were demonstrations for a number of paid tools in the space, including HireEZ, SeekOut, Gem, Filtered.ai, Findem, DataPeople, Arya by LeoForce and Celential.ai.

Over the course of the two-day event, the trainers used 30-minute time slots to teach nearly 3,000 attendees. After a general kickoff, participants could choose from a variety of training sessions, as well as sponsored presentations of product demonstrations and sourcing advice. In between, there were networking sessions where attendees could meet and chat via video or message to discuss the events of the day, as well as their personal work.

Each trainer’s session covered a variety of ways attendees could improve their own efforts. Some gave advice on new places to source from, including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. Others focused on optimizing and automating the sourcing process to make it more efficient. Several even taught the audience how to get a better response rate from candidates through the use of message templates, openers and personalization. And, not surprisingly, there was much discussion on searching techniques and Boolean strings.

Takeaways

  • The majority of sessions focused on making the sourcing process more efficient by using new tools and hacks. Dean Da Costa, enterprise sourcing practice lead at Lockheed Martin, discussed both a search engine tool and an instant data scraper. A Google Sheets hack to “automate the mind-numbing” aspects of sourcing was shared by Sarah Goldberg. Carrie Collier introduced the Magical Text Expander, which allows for configuring variables and merging fields. In a particularly compelling session given by LevelUp’s Senior Tech Recruiter Florian Damian demonstrated how to automate sourcing by recording actions and playing them back using Macro Recorder Pro.
  • Many trainers suggested personalizing sourcing methods to get better response rates from potential candidates. Talent engagement consultant Marvin Smith explored messaging prospects to turn them into candidates based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which details human motivation centered on needs such as safety and belonging. Industry coach Dena Davis shared how to personalize messages in order to soften any skepticism from the candidate. Larry Anderson, talent acquisition manager at Slalom, urged attendees to go “two layers deep” in conversations with candidates to win them over, which can be as simple as asking a follow-up question.
  • One of the biggest takeaways was the idea that there are many, many untapped places from which to source. In “Sourcing from Twitter,” Twitter Senior Technical Sourcer Blair Fambro discussed using emojis, hashtags and the @’s of companies to source diverse candidates. A custom tool shared by M&T Bank Principal Sourcing Leader Greg Hawkes assists in sourcing from TikTok. Sue Viswanatha, career matchmaker for the engineering teams at Tinder, talked about scraping YouTube comments for candidates. Microsoft’s Sophie Okonkwo shared the tip of using emojis like a unicorn or ninja emoji to search for a certain skillset when working from any website. Another trainer, Odyssey Information Services Director of Recruiting Kristin Hughes, looked at sourcing in-person events.

Coming Up

Our next HRTX will be held December 7 and 8, along with…

…The 12 Days of Sourcing: December 8 through December 23, 2022
Register to receive a daily email with the link to a newly unlocked sourcing tip, trick or hack that’s being shared exclusively for this event. We’ll do that for 12 days. You’ll learn secrets of some of the industry’s best-known sourcing leaders, leading talent acquisition at some of the best-known companies.

Recruitment Trends To Look Out For In 2023

One of the numerous business areas that has undergone transformation in the past few years is recruitment. It can be challenging to stay up with business since it moves so quickly and everyone is trying to outdo each other in a variety of ways. This is greatly influenced by technology, which has emerged as a crucial element in many business disciplines and a force that propels us all to operate constantly at breakneck pace.

Recruitment is a complex area that, if done incorrectly, can do a lot of damage to a business, not just by wasting time or using resources inefficiently, but also by producing a staff that isn’t as good as it could be. Let’s look at some recruitment trends that may be useful to you in the upcoming year to make sure you’re on the right side of everything.

Businesses Value Candidate Experience

A candidate’s chances of engaging with a company in the future should not end just because they were rejected for a particular position. One of the most demoralizing things that can happen to you as a worker is being rejected for a job, according to tradition. Typically, the application procedure is stressful, and if the outcome is negative, the entire process appears to be a huge inconvenience and waste of time.

The response to this problem is changing, though, as employers realize that it’s much better to keep applicants satisfied by making the application process something enjoyable and fulfilling so that, if they are someone who could work for the company, they can always approach them when a position does become available. This way of thinking saves a ton of time and enhances the culture of your business.

Trending Freelance

The freelance business sector is expanding forever. The field as a whole gets more appealing to new people as more people get engaged and more resources are dedicated to figuring out how to make it as efficient and successful as possible.

Technology is a big enabler, enabling effortless and convenient interactions between businesses and remote workers. That a corporation will ever even meet, or be in the same nation as, one of their full-time employees is no longer necessarily the norm. This amazing development will continue unabatedly into the upcoming year.

Culture Is More Important Than Paycheck

Numerous surveys conducted in the past year or two have shown that the majority of the job-seeking population does not prioritize financial security. People are willing to accept average-low income, perhaps even a pay loss, provided the company they are applying to has a strict and supportive work environment.

As a result, employers have been attempting to fill positions by emphasizing the corporate culture, notably by promoting the privileges that employees receive, such as the ability to work from home twice per week, gym memberships, complimentary meals and other perks. In exchange, they are able to recruit top talent at lower rates, which is a fantastic position that will change over the course of the upcoming year.

Patchy AI Implementation

Artificial Intelligence certainly has an ever-increasing role across business, in all sorts of different departments. That said, there certainly are some question marks over exactly how effective or relevant it is in certain areas, recruitment included. The general upshot is that utilizing AI for recruitment lacks a certain ‘humanness’ that is vital when it comes to connecting with future employees.

The algorithms would need to be a lot more sensitive than they are at present for this to be achieved. However, AI is getting great usage in HR, a department that is responsible for all sorts of technical aspects to the new employee process, so keep an eye out for that.

Conclusion

So there’s lots to come in recruiting across the coming year and lots for you to pay attention to as you go about trying to assemble your workforce. It’s so important that the personal at your company are exactly who you want them to be in order to really progress as a company.

Tired of Sub-Par Image to Text Conversion? Use Google Lens Instead!

The image search-ability of the internet has become quite daunting. Remember way back in the DSL days the thrill of typing your name into Google? The shock and awe days are over…and well, it’s even scarier now with Google Lens. Search the internet with a picture of yourself, you’ll be intimidated by what you find.

Google Lens has a couple of interesting features that you wouldn’t guess right off the bat. Dean Da Costa showed us one fantastic quality: Text from images.  We have done an article or two about compiling text from images, but between the poor quality returns, the paywalls, or limited free attempts…it was a chore. With Google Lens, you now have an incredibly accurate and sustainable way to scrape text from resume files, blurry pictures, or whatever your imagination can handle. The accuracy is impeccable, gone are the days of word spaghetti!

It’s a fairly straightforward process, Google Lens highlights all the fun parts of the page and will even reverse image search what you plug in. This works for both images already scattered across the webiverse or any you add to it. It’s also surprising how good it can convert blurry text to something actually useable.

So, give it a go and see if Google Lens is your next mainstay tool! Be careful not to upload anything sensitive, because you’re adding it to the web weather you like it or not. And just be aware that you’re directly contributing to the eventual world domination of Google…like we have any say in the matter anyway.

Other Dean Content!

Dean has a free page of sourcing tools, links, and other recruiting resources that we highly recommend you check out! That page has an overwhelming amount of stuff, so you gotta really love sourcing to appreciate the infinite hours of work Dean has put into it. For all of the Dean Da Costa resources on RecruitingDaily, click here!

Succeeding with Talent Intelligence in 2022 and Beyond

The recent volatile shifts in the labor market have thrown organizations’ traditional people strategy out of the window. As the Great Resignation segues into the Great Rehire, organizations are challenged with not only retaining their current talent but also bagging top talent from a competitive talent pool.

With the wealth of talent data, both internally and externally, organizations are incorporating it to make data-driven people decisions. Talent intelligence enables organizations to collect and process data of current and past employees, prospective candidates and competitors. Organizations then can build a realistic picture of the job market, identify trends, create an optimal employee experience and hire the best talent.

Talent intelligence is particularly helpful in talent acquisition and talent management, helping organizations reduce candidate acquisition cost and time-to-hire, promote internal mobility and retain employees.

This article will look at how organizations can get the most out of talent intelligence.

Getting Started With Talent Intelligence

Talent intelligence is gathered from multiple websites, tools and systems. Organizations can collect the right talent intelligence data points with the right system in place. Here is a list of tools to get started:

    • Talent acquisition (TA) software: Talent acquisition and talent intelligence software solutions like SeekOut empowers companies and people to grow and win together. TA software gives the complete picture of all talent, both internal and external – the people you have and the people you want. With dynamic and comprehensive data, powerful people search, and easy-to-use analytics. Organizations can also integrate the platform with their ATS or CRM to gain granular insights into the talents’ skills, experience, salary, etc.
      Along with talent optimization features, robust talent analytics tools help organizations understand the talent market.
    • Compensation websites: Compensation comparison websites and third-party reports provide organizations with information on how talent is compensated based on their skills, experience, education and location.
    • Surveys: When searching for specific information, it helps to conduct a well-designed survey. For instance, if an organization hasn’t been able to bring down the time to hire, it can survey its hiring managers to understand the causes.

How to Leverage Talent Intelligence for Optimal Results

Here is how organizations can leverage talent intelligence to meet their objectives:

Talent Mapping

Talent mapping orients the talent acquisition strategy based on the organization’s long-term objectives. This includes defining new roles, updating existing jobs and planning career paths for internal mobility.

Organizations can utilize talent intelligence for talent mapping in the following ways:

    1. Identify successful employees’ skills, experience, education and behavioral traits and build ideal candidate profiles (ICP).
    2. Analyze hiring activities and candidate pool of competitors.
    3. Build a talent pipeline of passive candidates that match the ICP. Organizations can also tap into their ATS to identify silver medalist candidates.

Meet DEI Objectives

The first step in using talent intelligence to meet DEI goals is to understand the current state  of the organization. Organizations can analyze the workforce based on various dimensions of diversity such as age, gender, ethnicity, race, etc., and identify patterns in salary, seniority, hires, promotions, attrition and department against these dimensions. This is how organizations gain insights into potential issues, such as a gender pay gap or high attrition rates for underrepresented groups.

Organizations can set goals based on these findings.

The next step is to use talent intelligence during hiring. Many recruitment platforms prevent unconscious hiring bias by masking candidates’ identifiable information so that recruiters are screening candidates purely on merit. A complementing feature is diversity filters that allow recruiters to source and screen candidates from underrepresented communities.

Reduce Employee Turnover

Pew Research Center tried to uncover the reasons behind the Great Resignation. The top three reasons people left a company were low pay, no advancement opportunities and feelings of disrespect at work.

Employee turnover causes the organization to lose out on its top talent plus replacing the talent is expensive and time consuming.

Organizations can use talent intelligence to identify the reasons behind the attrition. For instance, if the organization observes massive turnover in one department, it can get to the root cause of it using talent intelligence. The reasons could be from the one we discussed earlier, or it could be due to not fitting in with the organizational culture. HR managers need to collect this data during exit interviews.

If better pay was the reason for quitting, the organization could look into salary reports, comparison websites and TA software to establish the salary benchmark.

Predict Upcoming Labor Market Trends

Trends like remote work, flexible schedules and the gig economy existed before 2020. But their adoption was forced on organizations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the circumstances in which these trends were introduced were completely unexpected, organizations already experimenting with them got a head start.

With so much information collected during the hiring process, internal surveys and industry reports, organizations can analyze this data, forecast trends and build more resilient practices to prepare themselves for change.

Promote Internal Mobility

With ICPs in place, organizations know the skills and mindset required to succeed in a role. Talent intelligence presents organizations with their employees’ skills, strengths and weaknesses. By mapping the skills and strengths to the right job, organizations can offer better opportunities to their employees to move up or laterally in the organization.

Organizations may want to create a customized learning path and a mentorship program for each career path to implement this program better. This will equip the employee with the necessary knowledge to grow in the new role.

Analyze Competition

Talent platforms enable organizations to tap into competitive intelligence through their people analytics function. Organizations can gather company insights such as job roles, diversity, seniority, etc., for a particular region at a company. Organizations can also compare themselves against competitors to learn where they stand regarding diversity, location of talent, experience, skills, salary bands, etc.

This data can act as an input for various initiatives and HR activities such as setting hiring goals, salary benchmarking, and diversity.

Setting Up for Success

Talent intelligence presents a holistic picture of the labor market, including the present scenario and future possibilities. These crucial insights help organizations optimize their hiring and internal mobility efforts to meet their business objectives.

To utilize talent intelligence to its full capacity, organizations must hire folks who swear by data, integrate tools in the HR tech stack properly and keep updating the system with changing times.

Critical Sourcing Data with Alla Pavlova

Alla Pavlova discussed the critical role of sourcing data in the recruitment of AI Engineers. She emphasized the importance of understanding the specific needs and requirements of AI Engineers and how recruiters can leverage data to meet these needs.

At our #HRTX Virtual event on September 28 and 29th, 2022, Alla Pavlova discussed the critical role of sourcing data in the recruitment of AI Engineers. She emphasized the importance of understanding the specific needs and requirements of AI Engineers and how recruiters can leverage data to meet these needs. She also highlighted the significance of staying updated with the latest trends and technologies in the AI field to attract and retain the best talent.

HRTX: AI Sourcing Spreadsheet

Critical Sourcing Data: Artificial Intelligence Engineer

Key Takeaways:

  • Understanding the Needs of AI Engineers: AI Engineers have specific needs and requirements that differ from other fields. Understanding these needs is crucial for effective recruitment. This includes knowledge about the technologies they work with, the challenges they face, and the environments in which they thrive.
  • Leveraging Data for Recruitment: Sourcing data can provide valuable insights into the AI Engineers’ job market. This data can be used to identify trends, understand the competitive landscape, and tailor recruitment strategies accordingly.
  • Staying Updated with AI Trends: The field of AI is rapidly evolving, and staying updated with the latest trends and technologies is essential. This knowledge can help recruiters present attractive opportunities to potential candidates and retain existing talent.

 

For more like this, visit the HRTX recording library or register for our next #HRTX event here!

Talent Analytics and Talent Rediscovery: A Match Made in Data-Driven Heaven?

The job market volatility surrounding layoffs, hiring freezes and furloughs over the last two years gave rise to the Great Resignation. Now that the job market is returning to the new normal, organizations are looking to pace up on their hiring efforts.

The Great Rehire is termed the natural culmination of the Great Resignation and will work in favor of prospective candidates. More job alternatives, faster hiring processes and flexible work options are some of the benefits job seekers will get. However, challenges are stacked up against organizations as they have to hire from shrinking talent pools and face cutthroat competition to snatch top talent.

The answer to this war for talent is to tap into the existing talent pool. But organizations are ill-equipped to do so because accessing past candidate data from the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is simply too cumbersome, and the information is outdated and inaccurate.

A potential answer to this is to combine the power of people analytics and talent rediscovery – an intelligent feature that scans your ATS to find the right talent for the job role.

Why Leveraging Talent Rediscovery Is a Competitive Advantage

One concept HR can steal from marketing is remarketing – a form of online advertising that targets ads to visitors who have visited the company’s website or a specific webpage. For instance, you may have viewed a product on Amazon and seen ads featuring the same product while scrolling through your social media feed later. Marketers swear by remarketing because it’s an efficient way of acquiring new customers.

Talent rediscovery helps talent acquisition achieve the same. By tapping into the existing candidate repository, organizations can hire faster while reducing hiring costs. Considering the talent shortage, the organization with the most efficient hiring process earns the competitive advantage. Here are three ways talent rediscovery benefits an organization:

Reduces Time to Fill

Hiring for any new role usually begins by posting ads on job boards to attract talent. With talent rediscovery, you already have a list of candidates who fit the criteria and have shown a prior interest. Instead of screening thousands of inbound applications, recruiters can shortlist candidates from the ATS.

Since these candidates are already acquainted with the organization, the hiring process can progress faster, reducing the time required to fill the position.

Slashes Candidate Acquisition Cost

The Great Resignation has pulled a double whammy on organizations. At one end, they are losing their best talent; at the other end, finding their replacement has become more expensive and time consuming.

The hiring equation gets more expensive with the involvement of third-party staffing or recruitment agencies. Similar to reducing the time to hire, talent rediscovery identifies job-ready candidates and cuts down significant costs.

Reduces Hiring Bias

Talent acquisition platforms can integrate with various ATS and enable recruiters to find suitable candidates with intelligent, AI-powered search features. While performing the search, platforms like SeekOut can optionally hide names, photos, schools, social profiles, salary history and other identifiable information. To meet diversity goals, recruiters can also search for candidates from underrepresented groups.

These features allow recruiters to take a data-driven approach to diversity hiring and prevent unconscious biases from kicking in.

How People Analytics Can Boost Talent Rediscovery

People analytics can significantly impact talent acquisition by introducing critical data to the talent rediscovery process in the following ways:

Identify Silver Medalist Applicants

Silver medalist applicants are the ones who came close to receiving an offer but were outshined by other candidates. Engaging with them is one of  the fastest ways to speed up talent rediscovery. Here is how you can do it:

    1. Segment your silver medalist candidates in your ATS.
    2. Import their data from ATS into the talent acquisition platform and build comprehensive candidate profiles that outline their experience, skills, projects, proofs of concept and published material.
    3. Whenever you have new job openings, you can quickly filter out silver candidates that fit those roles like a glove and reach out to them immediately to start the hiring process.

Analyze Successful Employees

Successful employees in each role have specific traits and skills that empower them to thrive at their work. Tap into your people analytics data and identify these skills and attributes. It is also necessary to track their KPIs, work quality, efficiency and performance metrics to form a holistic picture.

Combining this data with their resume, social profiles, previous experience, etc., builds an ideal persona for each role. You can now clone these employees in your talent acquisition software, which will fetch candidates with similar characteristics from the ATS.

Turbocharge Rediscovery Through AI

AI-powered talent acquisition platforms have sophisticated search functionalities that ATS lacks. Organizations can import ATS data into a talent acquisition platform to find the right candidates. For instance, basic keyword search, boolean search and power filters can help you rediscover talent that fits job requirements.

Furthermore, organizations can upload job descriptions, and the algorithm will find past applicants that are suitable for the job. The algorithm doesn’t screen resumes exclusively on verbatim keywords. The natural language processing (NLP) technology scans resumes and looks for semantically or thematically similar keywords. So, candidates with a qualified skillset are shortlisted.

Based on accepted and rejected candidate profiles, the algorithm identifies patterns and refines itself to return more accurate results.

Establish the Right Metrics

People analytics helps organizations track crucial talent acquisition metrics such as time to hire, time to fill, quality of hire, sources of hire and cost per hire. These metrics applied to the talent rediscovery aspect of hiring can provide vital insights. However, combining two or more metrics can get even more extensive insights into talent rediscovery. For instance, time to fill and quality of hire combined can help you understand current hiring practices’ effectiveness.

While combining two or more metrics, it is necessary to remember that correlation isn’t causation. Just because a correlation between two metrics is established doesn’t mean that time to fill impacts the quality of hire.

Build Funnel Insights

The real strength of people analytics and talent rediscovery can be experienced by tapping into the native insights section of the talent acquisition platform. Organizations can get insights about their competitors, specific roles in a city, diversity and job roles.

For example, suppose organizations are facing difficulties hiring for a specific role. In that case, they can map talent based on the city they currently live in, the organization they work at and the schools they attended. So, if the talent acquisition team finds that candidates for the specified role are available in other cities, they can take the strategic decision of allowing remote work to the candidate.

Closing Thoughts

Data-driven talent rediscovery can deliver unique insights into hiring, enabling organizations to win during the Great Rehire. The Talent analytics data can help HR leaders identify and quickly re-engage with qualified talent instead of starting a traditional, more costly candidate search from scratch.

Since this will be an ever-evolving process, organizations that are willing to harness the combined power of both systems are most likely to lead the way in the coming age of data-driven HR.

Employee Lifecycle and the Role of Mentoring in Each Stage

Mentoring is one of the most valuable strategies a business can use to nurture and develop employees. But what about those employees yet to reach the stage where mentoring would be beneficial? What role does mentoring play in the employee lifecycle, and how can businesses make sure they are getting the most out of their mentoring programs?

While each employee’s experience is unique in its own way, there are some significant similarities. Every journey will include how the employee learned about your company, how they were recruited and onboarded, why they stayed and how their time with your company has changed them.

Employee Lifecycle Model

The employee lifecycle model is a framework that businesses can use to think about their recruitment and retention strategies. The model divides the employee journey into six distinct stages: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention and separation. By understanding each stage of the employee lifecycle, businesses can identify areas where they can improve their policies and practices. For example, they may need to provide more support during the onboarding process or offer more opportunities for career development. By taking a holistic view of the employee lifecycle, businesses can develop programs and initiatives that will improve recruitment, retention and engagement.

Understanding Employee Lifecycle Strategy

Lifecycle surveys reveal how employees feel about your company at various stages of their careers, such as when they are hired, promoted or decide to leave. HR and managers can leverage this data to upgrade employee engagement and pursue a better brand and image. If you use an engagement solution that keeps all responses anonymous and private, your employees will share their true feelings about your firm.

The 6 Stages in the Employee Lifecycle

Attraction

The first and foremost stage in the employee lifecycle model is attraction. It showcases your company’s image as a nice place to work in the minds of prospective employees and critical associates in the market.

Recruitment

Recruitment is more than just choosing candidates – it’s also possible for candidates to learn more about your organization and see if it’s an excellent fit for them. Hiring resources that fit your culture can benefit existing as well as prospective employees at all stages of their careers.

Onboarding

Onboarding is a critical step that includes everything needed to change your candidate into a confident employee. Onboarding requires a significant amount of work, including communicating the nuances of the new position and handling administrative tasks.

Development

Everything helping the team mature in the company is included in the employee lifecycle development stage, from career advancement to upskilling. Professional development is a win-win situation because it enables your team members to accomplish things they never imagined possible while cultivating a workforce that consistently delivers for your customers.

Retention

If your company’s culture is poor, it will inevitably result in high employee turnover. Boosting the retention rate is a good way to reduce this risk. It will also promote longevity and satisfaction in the career paths of your team.

Separation

Your company should do everything possible to keep valued employees on board until retirement. Many, however, will choose to continue their careers elsewhere for various reasons. At this stage, employees should be given every chance to speak their minds and say goodbye on a pleasant note.

Role of Mentorship in Each Stage

Attention

Companies seeking to hire from universities and colleges can benefit from having employees serve as career mentors, assisting undergraduates in learning more about the industry as well as the company. HR departments can also mentor and advise candidates during the application and evaluation.

Recruitment

Employee lifecycle surveys can aid your company’s recruitment efforts. Inquire with new hires about what they liked best and what could improve their hiring experience. You can gauge their feelings about key engagement factors and track how they change over time.

Onboarding

Explain everything related to the employee’s position thoroughly and ensure transparency. Confusion and frustration will result from poorly written job descriptions or failing to communicate expectations and responsibilities. Employees who do not understand their role will not succeed in their professional journey.

Development

Employees should be encouraged to pursue qualified development opportunities, such as seminars or tuition reimbursement for an advanced degree. Recognizing those who meet their development objectives will keep your employees interested in learning. Encourage knowledge sharing within your organization by coaching employees and holding regular meetings.

Retention

You can measure retention by asking employees if they see themselves working for your company in five years or if they would recommend it to a friend looking for work. Employee lifecycle and pulse surveys can provide live and accurate information on the success of your organization.

Separation

Editing your point of view and offboarding will help an employee take the subsequent steps in their career with dignity and confidence. This strategy will pay dividends to your company for many years to come.

The Role of ERG software

Employee Resource Groups act as a support system and a pillar for candidates, assisting them in locating job opportunities that will allow them to prosper in an efficient workplace environment. The groups place a premium on personal and professional development. They also encourage members to participate in a variety of activities and raise awareness within their organization. A social network can assist employees in forming stronger bonds, which encourages all social practices while respecting the employees’ culture and traditions.

Employees are the company’s most valuable asset, and it is critical to create an environment that allows them to set their pace. Employee resource groups help diverse groups of employees bring out the best in themselves. Being part of an ERG provides them with valuable experience that will assist them in navigating the inclusive work environment.

Conclusion

The employee lifecycle model is an intriguing way to visualize and plan each stage of a team member’s interactions with your company. You can captivate and keep a fantastic team by aiming to do your best at each stage. Mentorship programs can help organizations and managers advance their employees during every stage of their team-member lifecycle. Mentors assist new employees in learning about the culture and connecting with others. Mentoring can improve team member morale and engagement and is a great way to attract and retain top talent.

7 Common Mistakes When Recruiting Real Estate Agents (and What You Should Do Instead)

Recruiting a group of talented and experienced real estate agents is easier said than done. HR may have an easy time finding talent, but quality of hire may be lacking if their acquisition and onboarding processes aren’t structured. However, disorganization may not be what’s holding you back.

7 Common Mistakes That Negatively Affect Agent Recruitment

While implementing background checks can be helpful after you find the right candidate, you need to make sure you’re targeting the best applicants first by avoiding these recruitment mistakes.

1. Not Keeping the First Call Short

Unless you plan on sponsoring a new agent, the people you’re recruiting should already be familiar with or experienced in real estate. While a welcome call is a great way to create interest, revealing too much too soon could make them uninterested in pursuing an in-person meeting.

This seems like a good thing because if the agent isn’t interested, then it’s unlikely they’ll be a good fit. At the same time, an in-person meeting can give you and the candidate a better read on each other’s personality, which is important when assessing culture fit or sales skills.

What To Do Instead: Use a script on your first call, so you can ask everything you need in under 10 minutes. At the end of the call, set up an in-person meeting, but don’t be discouraged if they cancel. Try to set up another meeting at a later date that’s more convenient for them.

2. Not Listening to Prospective Agents

When starting a new real estate brokerage, it’s easy to assume that you and your agents will share similar goals or motivations. After all, you need to work as a real estate agent before becoming a broker, so you have first-hand experience with the industry and the people within it.

While this makes you a better boss, it doesn’t mean your recruited agents will want the same things you wanted when you were in their shoes. Some agents are motivated by the commission split, while others want more flexibility, remote options, mobile technology, or educational training.

What To Do Instead: If you want to recruit (and retain) the best agents, ask them what they expect out of the agent-broker relationship before the initial meeting. Not only does this help prospective agents assess their fit, but it also gives you an idea of what new agents want.

3. Not Giving Agents Access to Technology

According to the real estate website Home & Money, smart homeowners educate themselves to avoid common home purchasing mistakes. If a customer asks your agent a question about the neighborhood they’re unable to answer, the agent should be able to look this information up from their phone.

But, what if they don’t have that technology available, even if it was promised during recruitment? What if they use a calendar, reporting system or CRM that doesn’t link up with your back-office applications? It’ll only make their job harder and their clients more frustrated.

What To Do Instead: Modern brokerages use CRMs, management software and a knowledge base that agents can easily refer to. Be sure to adopt this and other types of technology to save your agents time and money. Plus, you can use technology to track agents who may require coaching.

4. Not Marketing Your Online Presence

Brokers understand that real estate agents exist in one of the most competitive industries on the planet, so the only way to separate yourself from other brokerages is through marketing. If a prospective agent looks up your company but can’t find you, they may avoid working with you.

Brokerages need to have a website that regularly features their agents and a social media profile (preferably on LinkedIn) that includes engaging content. You also need to explain your company culture clearly and practice what you preach, or it’ll affect your reviews on job sites.

What To Do Instead: Besides making content (i.e., blogs, podcasts and videos), get familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), as it’ll help clients and agents find you. Don’t forget to market your brokerage using local SEO and traditional advertisements, like flyers and billboards.

5. Not Attracting Passive Candidates

Most recruiters only pay attention to active candidates or candidates who are currently unemployed and actively looking for a job. However, since the unemployment rate for real estate agents is much lower than the national average, that doesn’t give you a lot to work with.

Not only that, but the best candidates tend to already be employed, since that proves they’re sought-after professionals. To find passive candidates, recruiters have to contact them directly (via email, job sites or social media) and convince them to work for your brokerage instead.

What To Do Instead: When you focus on passive candidates, you open yourself up to 95-98% of the currently employed agent population. But to convince agents to switch, you need to offer better incentives – like better commission, benefits or job security – than their current employer.

6. Not Streamlining the Recruitment Process

A prospective agent may remove themselves from the recruitment process at any point, for what can be narrowed down to two main reasons: process length and incompatibility. Neither active nor passive candidates are willing to sit through multiple rounds of interviews or long applications.

To improve hiring speed, a standardized application and interview process is key. For one thing, it will be difficult for you to compare candidates who don’t answer the same questions. Not only that, but an unstructured recruitment process could cause you to rely on your biases more often.

What To Do Instead: AI recruitment tools, like applicant tracking software, can prevent poor skill, experience or culture fits, but they can’t make up for other deficiencies. Make sure to keep applicants engaged by responding to them quickly and updating them on the hiring process.

7. Not Using Alternative Hiring Methods

If you’re using the same website to find talent but coming up short, you may need to review your job posting to ensure you’re attracting the right people. Despite that, you may still run into issues if you’re using the wrong job sites or attending only general networking events.

It’s also essential to target niche-specific agents, as a commercial agent may not be familiar with residential properties. If you work in a special sales-based or real estate-oriented industry, consider searching for a title, mortgage, insurance or escrow agent rather than just an “agent.”

What To Do Instead: To find high-quality real estate agents, try to recruit on websites they frequent, such as Zillow, Houzz, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Ask other agents to refer their friends, or speak to agents in your own network. Finally, attend agent-focused networking events.

Unleash Your ATS Superpower with Talent Rediscovery: A How to Guide

This year, companies are keen on hiring but struggle to find great candidates in a tight labor market. Research suggests that, despite the rising hiring demands and competition, companies continue to feel less confident in finding the right fit. Research further suggests that sourcing quality candidates, identifying candidate matches quickly and screening and assessing candidates are top three pain points before the interview.

Another survey revealed similar trends, with 73% of recruiters reporting that it is difficult to find quality talent today. But 42% of recruiters believed that AI will help them be more strategic in their jobs. 

Talent rediscovery software is one example of such AI powered solutions on that market that can help you hire faster and better from your existing talent network. In this article, we discuss how you can rediscover candidates and elevate your talent acquisition efforts through your ATS.

Why Your ATS is Failing You

With each hiring cycle, organizations amass hundreds (or even thousands) of resumes. While classical applicant tracking systems can parse resumes and store candidate information, it’s considered to be a relatively ‘dumb’ piece of technology. This means, it can support storage, but cannot perform screening and matching functions. Often the data is outdated, making it harder to get back in touch with these candidates.

Although most ATS allow advanced search with keywords and Boolean strings, these methods have their limitations. Inefficient searches lead to false positives and negatives, as qualified candidates slip through the cracks. False positives identify candidates who might not be a good fit because of keyword stuffing. In contrast, using overly specific keywords and Boolean strings omits appropriate candidates.

As a result, a majority of the resumes get lost in the system. Manually retrieving candidate profiles from your ATS is a daunting task, to say the least. But there’s good news. With a large amount of candidate information, you are sitting on a goldmine of talent data. 

But how can you optimize this candidate data to transform your hiring? 

Leveraging ATS for Talent Rediscovery

Talent rediscovery is screening candidates who applied for previous open roles and matching them to current open roles using your ATS.

A dedicated Talent rediscovery software or Talent Intelligence tools use AI to automatically find previous candidates fit for current open positions from the ATS. The software allows you to have a candidate’s complete updated profile (education, employment, skills) and previous interactions with you, right at your fingertips.

Focusing on existing candidates while hiring significantly improves the process and you can focus on high-quality candidates; optimize the recruitment process, reducing hiring time and cost.

Benefits of Talent Rediscovery

    • Reduce Time to Hire- having a strong candidate network gives you a jump start anytime a new role opens up instead of reinventing the wheel every time.
    • Lower Talent Acquisition Costs–sourcing, attracting and hiring candidates is an expensive affair. And, longer hiring times further increase hiring cost. Candidate rediscovery narrows down your candidate pool, which reduces advertising cost and hiring time. It also streamlines and automates the sourcing reducing other associated costs. 
    • Improve Quality of Hire–since you have already interacted with these candidates, your pipeline is already filled with high-quality and vetted candidates. These candidates have a relationship with your brand and have expressed an interest in working with you. So, they are better matched to the role than others.

Your ATS works in tandem with the talent intelligence tool to power your talent rediscovery efforts. Here’s how it works:

    1. Integration with ATS: The talent intelligence solution will integrate into your existing ATS and enhance its AI powered advanced search capabilities.
    2. Understanding Job Requirements: Once the systems are integrated, you can upload your job description into the system. The software will scan the job descriptions of open roles to understand the qualifications and requirements.
    3. Candidate Sourcing: Your talent rediscovery software will search your existing resume database to find candidates that match the role requirements based on their education, work experience and skill set.
    4. Candidate Shortlisting: Finally, the software will generate a list of candidates ranked according to their suitability for each open role.

How to Start Your Talent Rediscovery Journey

Use Candidate Data: Insights from Your Talent Funnel

With the talent intelligence integration with your ATS, you can screen existing resumes based on your job descriptions, rank and shortlist ideal candidates. You can export the following candidate information from your ATS:

    • Current company and title
    • Contact information (phone and email)
    • Education History and Qualifications
    •  Candidate’s work experience and skill set

The software also allows you to use an advanced search and additional data from your recruiting funnel. For instance, you can filter candidates based on:

    • Candidate source
    • The stage of the recruitment process reached
    •  Reasons for rejection/Reasons for application withdrawal
    • Interview Feedback
    • Diversity,Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) attributes 

These advanced search options and filters make it easier to retrieve appropriate candidate profiles. 

Identify and Prioritize Silver Medalists

Silver medalists are the candidates who made it to the final stage of hiring, but fell short for some reason. It does not mean that these candidates are not skilled or qualified for the position. In fact, silver medalists provide a great starting point for recruiters to enrich the talent pool with pre-screened and interviewed candidates. But often once the role is filled, these candidates are forgotten and the leads eventually turn cold.

Talent intelligence tools enable you to add silver medalists automatically from your ATS to a ‘warm’ pipeline and match them to open requisition based on skill and behavioral attributes, employment history and job description. The tool will also use recruiter feedback to make accurate candidate suggestions to start the hiring process.

Previous candidates are also more likely to respond to new opportunities as you have a relationship and they are already enthusiastic about working with the company. But, to sustain interest, you have to engage your talent pipeline.

Transform Candidate Experience With Re-Engagement Campaigns  

Building a talent network of interested leads and passive candidates allows you to source when hiring in the future. But, only 35% of the Fortune 500 companies have any type of talent network. Even with a talent network in place, one third of these companies never send anything to their interested leads.

Nurturing candidate relationships through consistent and personal communication improves the probability of them accepting future job offers. With AI based tools, you can deliver personalized content and keep them engaged in between hiring cycles. Automated email drip campaigns, including personalized job recommendations, informative blog posts related to specific roles or skills or the latest and relevant company updates can be helpful in getting the candidate’s attention.

Meaningful and targeted communication also helps candidates. They feel valued and sustained engagement encourages them to apply for future roles. These are especially important in the case of silver medalists.

Conclusion

Candidate rediscovery with AI allows you to take advantage of your existing talent database, identify suitable candidates and reduce time and cost of hire. Talent rediscovery software will integrate with your ATS to scan candidate data and resumes and generate a list of best fits. It also allows you to develop and nurture relationships with the candidates over a period of time. This makes it more likely for the candidates to respond to your future job requisitions and accept offers. 

To know more about talent rediscovery, companies like Seekout (with more than twice the amount of reviews than the next competitor), Ripplematch, Entelo and about a dozen more can help you dig deep into the numbers.

Here’s a ranking on G2 to help navigate the course.

HR Tech 2022: Back, and Larger Than Ever

There’s a great bit from the sitcom Seinfeld. The titular character’s friend Elaine bursts into his apartment, and yells, “People” as she slams the door behind her. Jerry then responds, “Yeah! They’re the worst!”

And, if what I saw at HR Tech is any indication, that’s where the industry has landed when it comes to its most precious commodity: they’re the worst. From a tight labor market, constant turnover, candidate ghosting, hybrid work, gig work, etc., the industry is enduring a shared trauma, and some of the approaches (and, thus, tools) we’re deploying reflect that.

We’re loosening standards left and right to get butts in seats – over cocktails is when you get this sort of information from VPs of Talent (and you’re never allowed to attribute) – which means riskier hires and impacts on work culture leading to higher turnover.

We’re worried about req overload, burnout, skills and confused as ever by tech. And, for fun, we’re still stuck in the position where no one seems able to agree on what buzzwords like AI and employee experience really mean.

Also: talent intelligence.

That’s the new hot kid on the block, people. The one with the cool parents who leave them home alone every weekend with the liquor cabinet unlocked. Everybody wants to get to know talent intelligence. No one knows what it means. Aside from that it has something to do with people… and they’re the worst.

Can We Trust ‘em? Really?

Consider that there were 16 background check vendors at HR Tech (which feels like a record, at least from my recollection), and it’s positively buzzy.

This is a category which used to be one of the most consistently unsexy of HR functions (which is saying something). A necessary evil. One best avoided unless you were worried about things like compliance and lawsuits.

If you were at Fidelity, they were critical. If you ran a Beau-Bo Cafe? Maybe you let that part of the process drop. Which means you’d see the same relatively same short list of vendors at the expo every year, generally pitching slightly different shades of the same color. That seems to be shifting. And I think it’s because of employer PTSD. Fear of consequence. Burned fingers that flinch when they go to use the stove.

In the good-old-days, if your employee dragged his drunken ass behind the wheel of your garbage truck one sunny morning in Brooklyn, and then proceeded to drag said truck along the sides of, oh let’s say 20+ cars in a quiet street (where more than one tree grew), that would make for a headache for HR.

The whole thing, along with the ensuing foot chase by an angry mob of Brooklynites, several cops and finally Tasering, lands on YouTube. As long as the driver had a clean record when you hired them, and there hadn’t been any reports of on-the-job drinking, it was just a social media headache. That’s changing. And it’s reflected in a newly excited background check vendor scene.

The category is going through a tectonic shift from pre-screening to constant monitoring. The economic model providers like First Advantage, HireRight and Sterling are moving increasingly toward is pure SaaS, which is interesting. In the old days, we would run a background check on our driver candidate before an offer letter was created.

Once they passed, they’d be hired. Simple. Now, there’s the option of constant monitoring, post-hire. That driver, the one sitting in a jail cell at the moment? He received a DUI three weeks ago, a week after you hired them. If you’d known about it, a theory that will likely get tested in court, then you could have suspended him pending the outcome. And saved a street full of cars in Brooklyn. And possibly a  life. The legal questions to be tested:

    • If an employer has the option of this level of monitoring, are they liable if they fail to monitor (ie. they can’t afford to play stupid)?
    • Flipping that a bit: what about the employee’s right to privacy? That’s likely the one the entire category is holding its breath on.

No One Has Met a Robot Yet

We are still obsessing over AI. Stop it. Get some help. Every few booths read, “AI powered/ embedded/ enthralled/ branded/ overlord.” With one exception: they didn’t really mean it. They really meant things like NLP, machine learning, chat bots and other pieces of the large whole.

It’s like walking into a shop that says “Bike Store” thinking they’re going to have… well, bikes. Only to discover they focus on selling wheels, and that they just acquired a tire vendor which they “haven’t integrated fully yet but you have to buy the tire even though it doesn’t exactly fit the rim.” But they’re working on a build that should fix that in 2024. Meanwhile, they think they integrate with the following list of frame vendors, none of which you use.

Reejig is the only vendor with ethical and independently audited AI. So, I believe them when they say AI. They seem to actually carry the whole Schwinn.

The Talent is Intelligent, at Least – Maybe

Ahh, buzzwords. Like the firework colors of a New England fall, they explode every autumn at HR Tech. This year’s buzziest? Talent intelligence.

Oooh… sexy. It’s got two cool words that together, implying we as an industry are getting into the intelligence game. That’s right: we’re all Jack Bauer now. Which means we have to master the art of going 24 hours without using a restroom. Not once. It also implies that we’re using data to do all sorts of cool predictive stuff when it comes to demographics, economics, labor markets. TA now has crack teams who can find signals in the noise and deliver talent on demand in time for a rapidly shifting economy and labor market.

It means we can start calling ourselves “Talent Intelligence Analysts,” maybe even “Special Talent Intelligence Agent,” right?

Nope.

The emerging category seems more like workforce planning that’s been churched up, versus truly sexy. (And, church ain’t sexy – well, not usually). Lots of people are fighting over who the hell actually owns talent intelligence. And yet, what you see when you dig down is that – much like big data and AI, talent intelligence is primarily reactive and or sexy dashboards.

To my knowledge, no one is doing passive at the signal level signally, which is where actual intelligence should come from. CIA analysts spend hours, days and weeks looking for the tiniest signals in the noise as they build their maps.

Until there are enough people at the corporate level that have this mind/skillset and know-how, and who know what tools to use to get their work done, we’re going to be relying on the vendor to define what we should be looking for. That’s a huge mistake. And one we should have learned from by now. You’re supposed to adapt the technology to your needs and process, versus the opposite.

Speaking of Confusion – Candidate Experience, Oh, My!

Caring for the candidate is nice, but by now we should know what it actually means, and what the data-driven business case is for why we should be given money to address. We’ve been talking about Candidate Experience for almost 15 years, and I’m still not sure that people give a shit.

Experience (candidate, employee, alumni) comes down to two basic human things: (a) give a shit about the people you interact with and (b) be transparent and communicative with the folks that you care about. I personally think it’s is a trojan horse for retention. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea but let’s call it what it is. Also, like with talent intelligence, who the fuck owns EX? Everyone and no one. Great, just great.

Payroll Gets Sorta-Giggity

Every single payroll provider is flummoxed by pay-on-demand models for hourly and salaried employees. What started as a nuanced thing for gig economy workers is now expected of firms with salaried employees. For instance, if you’re an Uber driver, you can easily tab out at the end of a ride, day, or whenever you want.

If you’re an accountant for Deloitte, you now have the same expectation. My day is over; I want my money. Payroll companies and companies themselves have grown accustomed to what we call “float” – the time between when work is done and payroll dates. Yeah, those days are over. Employee behavior and expectations have forever changed. It will be interesting to see how new players change the category.

We Know Where We’re Going, But We Don’t Remember Where We’ve Been

Bottom-line: it was a much busier conference than this writer has seen in years. People want to get out and see each other. Granted, it turned out to be a super-spreader, but that’s sort of our new reality of trade-offs. The industry is more jaded, and – interestingly – more confessional. And I don’t mean confessing work-sins (although that happened too). There was sharing. So much sharing. Oversharing, even. People just wanted to talk. Get things off their shoulders, share war stories.

We’re still trying to figure out the current thing. And, whatever the things were before. We see ourselves evolving (maybe in Jack Bauer), but we’re still making many of the same questionable moves we’ve been making as an industry for decades. Hey: maybe we’re the worst. We’re only people, after all.

Why Now is the Time to Double Down on Enterprise Talent Optimization

The current job market is chaotic. On one hand, the Great Resignation led nearly 57 million Americans to quit their jobs between Jan 2021 and Feb 2022. On the other hand, news of tech companies laying off talent and withdrawing job offers are doing rounds.

With the possibility of a looming recession, the current market situation doesn’t seem too optimistic. However, in certain sectors the demand for talent continues to grow – as evidenced by low unemployment rates across economies like the U.S., Japan and EU. 

The Great Resignation and layoffs will fade out as the market eventually stabilizes. Organizations will get ready again to scale up their hiring process at a rapid pace. This hiring trend is termed the Great Rehire, and while it has been in use since COVID-19 struck, we will experience it in its full capacity as the job market returns to normal.

To prepare for this transition, organizations must implement a robust enterprise talent optimization framework to ensure that their talent is equipped to meet their business objectives. This article explains how to use the framework precisely. Let’s dive in!

What Is Enterprise Talent Optimization?

Enterprise talent optimization is a four-step framework that leverages people data to help organizations meet their business objectives.

The foundation of enterprise talent optimization lies in collecting and analyzing people data to identify current problems within the workforce, design better team dynamics, hire or promote top talent and keep them motivated.

In the coming sections, we will explore each stage of talent optimization.

1. Diagnose

In the diagnose stage, you take stock of the existing situation, identify the causes, verify the evidence and run a talent audit. Here is how you can do it in the current context of the evolving hiring landscape.

  • Reasons Behind the Great Resignation

Organizations either laid off or furloughed talent in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the tables turned in early 2021 as employees started quitting jobs. While it may seem that the pandemic was the factor, it was merely an impetus. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the top three reasons employees quit were:

    1. Low pay (63%)
    2. No opportunities for advancement (63%)
    3. Feeling disrespected at work (57%)

Identifying the causes behind employee dissatisfaction and attrition is necessary to address this issue at its root. This can be done by collecting and analyzing employee engagement and job performance data. Identifying common sentiments or perceptions of employees toward the job and company will lead to a better understanding.

  • The Great Rehire

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the number of employees who quit their jobs was 4.4 million, whereas the number of new hires was 6.6 million in April 2022. 

As organizations gear up for the Great Rehire, they must identify what employees and job applicants expect and prioritize those expectations accordingly. The Greenhouse 2021 Employer Hiring Sentiment report states the following expectations laid out by candidates:

Logistical Requirements Financial Requirements
    1. Flexible schedule (63%)
    2. Hybrid/remote work (52%)
    3. In-office perks (12%)
    1. Variable compensation (42%)
    2. Pensions, 401Ks and retirement matching  (38%)
    3. Company equity (20%)
  • Perform a Talent Audit

The talent audit helps organizations evaluate performance standards against the benchmarks, identify gaps in the talent acquisition process and find ways to improve both.

The talent audit is not about individual performance. Rather, it focuses on the competency and skills of various teams and how well they are poised to meet business objectives.

2. Design

When choosing managers and leaders for teams and departments, it’s necessary to separate an individual’s work competency from their leadership capabilities. Just because someone is excellent at their core responsibilities doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll succeed in a managerial position. The design phase focuses on evaluating the organizational structure, talent-culture fit and how to address gaps, if any.

  • Identify Talent-Culture Fit

While the talent audit assesses the competency of various teams, talent-culture fit tries to unveil implicit performance drivers. It helps organizations understand how well the employees are aligned with the organizational culture. It does so by gathering following the information from employees:

Values: Personal beliefs and values and how they support the organization’s ethos and objectives.

Work: How empowered do employees feel about their work? What common nuisances prevent them from performing optimally?

Leadership: How well do the leaders enable employees to perform optimally? Do they micromanage each step or do they trust employees to use their best judgement?

Compensation: Does the organization’s strategy help retain employees while attracting new talent? Where does the organization stand among its competitors in terms of compensation?

  • Address Culture Gaps

After reevaluating the organization’s structure and assessing talent-culture fit, the organization will find culture gaps. It must proactively address them and communicate them with its employees. Here is how organizations can do it:

    1. Talk about the gaps, the plan to address them and the impact it may have on the culture and the organization.
    2. If any issues or friction were to arise during the implementation, how would they be resolved?
    3. Host training sessions or workshops across the organization to help employees get acquainted with the values.
  • Revisit Your Departmental/Team Organization’s Structure

Enterprise talent optimization is focused on building high-performing teams. Therefore, organizations must evaluate their hierarchy and see how they can reorganize it to meet their business goals.

Let’s consider what a software development team at a bootstrapped startup can look like:

    1. Full-stack developers
    2. Designers or generalist UI/UX professionals
    3. Product Manager

If the company raises funding and scales its operations, it must expand the team as follows:

    1. Business analyst
    2. Project manager
    3. Front-end developers
    4. Back-end developers
    5. DevOps
    6. Quality assurance
    7. Technical writers
    8. Technical support
    9. IT Operations
    10. Security

After evaluating how to structure their teams to meet business goals, organizations should work on the following steps:

    1. Define new job roles.
    2. Identify how each role relates to one another in the hierarchy.
    3. Define processes to enable teams to work productively.

3. Hire

The talent optimization insights derived during the previous two stages will help organizations plan their hiring strategies. In this stage, organizations must define new job openings, promote internal mobility, and empower recruiters and hiring managers with the proper training to onboard top talent.

  • Define New Job Roles

The talent acquisition team should begin by interacting with the leaders across various departments to learn what new job roles they plan to add.

Considering the shift talent optimization will bring to the organization, it’s necessary to consider the ideal talent’s skills, experience and competency along with their behavioural and cognitive abilities.

The key is writing job descriptions that use precise words to explain the job. Hiring managers need to speak with team members who will work with the new talent to understand their exact requirements. They can also consult with top performers in similar roles to learn their responsibilities. Hiring managers can also look into top performers’ talent-culture fit data to identify implicit factors that help them thrive.

The talent acquisition team can compile all this information and write a comprehensive job description.

  • Evaluate Internal Mobility Opportunities

Internal mobility enables employees to move laterally or vertically within the organization. A crucial part of talent optimization, internal mobility lets employees work in areas they can truly excel at. Talent mobility helps organizations retain top talent.

Organizations can combine talent analytics data from talent acquisition and HRIS platforms like SeekOut Grow to get a clear view of their employees. This information can help them identify how each employee fits within different roles based on their capabilities, skills and experience.

  • Train Hiring Managers to Hire Top Talent

Hiring right  means paying special attention to ensure that prospective employees are fit for the organization’s culture.

The talent acquisition team should put special emphasis on the interview structure. Along with questions related to job-specific skills, it should train hiring managers in interviewing candidates to learn about their values, behavioral traits and attitudes.

For instance, if the organization values collaboration, hiring managers must ask questions to determine if the candidate is a team player, how well they communicate and how open they are to receiving feedback. The hiring managers must also convey the value during the interview by assuring that the organization values the candidate’s opinions.

4. Inspire

In the inspire phase, the organization prioritizes talent strategy, developing career paths for employees and strengthening relationships with its employees. It is imperative for organizations to address the factors that caused the Great Resignation.

  • Build a Talent Strategy

The talent strategy is responsible for hiring, developing and retaining top talent. Here are the critical steps to building a successful talent strategy:

    1. Set stretch goals that are just challenging enough to get the employees out of their comfort zone but not set them up for failure. The feeling of accomplishment is crucial for growth.
    2. Ensure that the organizational culture follows top-down. The leadership must lead by example by following the organization’s values.
    3. Introduce talent development programs that support the overarching stretch goals.
    4. Let employees experiment with the latest technology and processes to experience the novelty factor.
    5. Have periodic talent reviews to let them know how they are performing.
  • Create New Career Paths

As the organization grows, it should identify the need for new job roles necessary to meet the business objectives. Keeping this in mind, the organization should first create new career paths that offer growth opportunities to in-house talent.

Having a centralized career hub for internal opportunities allows employees to explore their future options at the company. The company can also introduce assessments to help employees identify the skills they need to learn to grow in their desired roles. A mentorship program will also enable employees to speak with experts to know how they can work towards their goals.

  • Provide Psychological Safety to the Employees

The root cause behind the Great Resignation can be distilled down to the lack of psychological safety among employees. This situation will get amplified with the rising market volatility.

Organizations need to make employees feel safe about their jobs in such scenarios. This can be done in the following ways:

    1. Proactively communicate the growth and future plans of the organization.
    2. Set employees up for success by creating an environment that complements their behavioral and cognitive traits.
    3. Implement employee recognition programs.

Closing Thoughts

As organizations scale up on their hiring efforts again, they need to ensure that the talent they onboard is aligned with their values and objectives.

The present situation brings the perfect opportunity to implement the talent optimization framework so that they can address the current problems and prepare for the Great Rehire.