Blog - Page 41 of 430 - RecruitingDaily

Building Within Site: Command

Whether you are a Boolean novice or pro, you’ve likely run across and used the site: command to go deeper into urls or uncover a way to extract contact information from a variety of websites. Using solid fundamentals, you can use the site: command in a myriad of ways. While I was writing about Polywork previously, I thought about how to peel back the social network using the site: command. Reflecting on some of the searching I’ve done on LinkedIn when the network inevitably goes down for maintenance (the one where I shared how to extract contact information from LinkedIn), I want to take a dive into Polywork using the site: command.

Focusing On Fundamentals

One of the fundamentals of hunting for qualified candidates is leveraging Boolean search, and for me, it means marrying AND, OR (|), or NOT (-) to the site: command. This marriage is often referred to as X-Raying a website. It is a fundamental part of advanced sourcing.

If built correctly, delivers highly targeted results and helps find the most relevant candidates. This search technique can be accomplished in a variety of search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Exalead, just to name a few. For a deeper dive on search engines, take a listen to Ronnie Bratcher here.

I tend to use this method to quickly and easily locate candidates’ info from web sources that are indexed by these search engines with one Boolean string. The more you use the site: command, the better you’ll become at it and the more you’ll want to play with it as a tool to uncover profiles. So let’s play.

Let’s start with site:polywork.com before we get granular. Just starting, we realize that Google tells us that the Polywork domain has about 42,300 links for us to explore. On the other hand, Bing shows us less than half of the links to Polywork. This lightly illustrates how using different search engines brings back different results.

Why does this happen? Simply, it’s because each engine uses different algorithms and produces slightly different results. if you’re searching for something obscure, if one search engine is good, two is definitely better. You can even try a third or fourth engine before the diminishing returns start to make it a waste of your time.

Let’s add some complexity and get more specific. Let’s say that we are looking for recruiters or sourcers. Using site:polywork.com (recruiter | sourcer | “talent acquisition”) on Google, we discern that there are roughly 800+ profiles of recruiters, sourcers or talent acquisition folks.

Let’s dig into some of these results.

While looking for recruiters, sourcers, and talent acquisition professionals illustrates one type of search we could do, it posits the fundamentals for us to build upon.

Looking for Developers & Engineers

Looking for software developers and engineers is my bread and butter, my stock and trade, the bees knees. That’s what led me to Polywork in the first place. Let’s look for developers and engineers using Google. What do we find? About 10,000+ profiles.

What if we want to look for specific frameworks or languages? Ask and you shall receive.

Want to look for people in a specific geography? How about New York?

What about using some natural language search to find profiles that are “open to work”?

But let’s say I want to find their contact information? Remember the little trick I did previously with LinkedIn? Let’s do that using Polywork.

In some results the email address is obvious, but in other instances, we need to dig into the profile. In this instance, the gmail address appears at the end of the Summary section.

Practice Makes Perfect

While using Polywork as an example produces profiles, there are lots of other social networks that you can use site: command to uncover and connect with prospects. Next time you come across another social site like Facebook, Twitter or LeetCode, try adding the site: command to the mix and see what results it will produce for you.

Remember, being a good sourcer or recruiter is to constantly remain curious. A great recruiter or sourcer acts on that curiosity and acts on it.

9 Must-Read HR Books That Every HR Professional Needs to Read

Due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic dragging out, many are still stuck inside not socializing. This means there is plenty of time to catch up on reading. Why not do a little professional development at the same time. Here 9 HR books every sourcing professional should read:

Fundamentals of Human Resource Management: People, Data and Analytics

Written by Talya Bauer, Berrin Erdogn, David Caughlin and Donald Truxillo, this book provides a succinct and interesting introduction to HRM. The book has a special focus on how data can help managers make better decisions about the people within their companies.

The book uses the newest cutting edge case studies and modern examples to help illustrate the main ideas and trends.

Workplace Jazz: 9 steps to Creating High-Performing Agile Teams

What does music have to do with HR? Well author Gerald J. Leonard manages to use his experiences as a professional musician, life coach and business consultant to create a strategic blueprint for developing connected and agile high-performing teams.

There are stories, metaphors, cutting edge neuroscience research, even case studies to make help make the author’s point.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman’s book is not strictly an HR book; it’s more an in-depth look into modern psychology. This book explains much of his investigations into the two types of thinking and biases. Understanding how to leverage these biases can help you convince others, which is useful in the workplace which is why it makes the list.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

A timeless classic, this book couldn’t be left off the list. Carnegie’s well-known self-help book also benefits HR in surprising ways. So why is a book that is over 80 years old on this list?

HR professionals are constantly influencing people and sometimes manipulating people(managers) to do things that they don’t want to do, such as those boring performance reviews. HR is all about working with people and there isn’t a better book to help us do just that.

Belonging at Work: Everyday Actions You Can Take to Cultivate an Inclusive Organization

Inclusion is something that has been gaining a lot of traction recently. Written by Rhodes Perry, MPA, he highlights the importance of belonging in the workplace and the positive impact it has on the workplace.

Rhodes also explains how diversity, equity, and inclusion are separate concepts, but they must work together to create better work environments where everyone feels like they have a place.

This book discusses how to cultivate an atmosphere of belonging within the workplace. It provides clear tips that anyone in any position within the company can take to make the necessary changes to create a positive, inclusive and equitable organization that can better represent its customers and the community at large.

Work Rules!

Author Lazlo Bock shares ideas you can take and use in your recruitment process. This book focuses on creating a workplace culture that will utterly change your company.

Poor organizational culture is a large barrier in attracting passive candidates and the top 20% of jobseekers. Work Rules! Is designed to tackle this challenge head on.

This book is subtitled Insights from inside Google that will transform how you live and lead, and as the form VP of People Operations at Google, Lazlo doesn’t fail to deliver great insights.

The Talent Delusion

This exceptionally detailed human resources management book written by Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic focuses on vital approaches HR professionals can use to measure and manage their top talent. The book’s main question is what is talent? The book also focuses on how data is an essential factor to consider while trying to learn the aptitudes of top talent.

The Talent Delusion explores in depth the differences between an employee’s optimal performance and their regular performance, making a case for how difficult it actually is to discover your candidate’s abilities on limited data sets.

HR Disrupted: It’s Time for Something Different

Lucy Adams wants to modernise the HR industry. Her book is all about encouraging HR professionals to change up their strategies and approach.

Most of the advice offered is common sense, but the takeaway is too few companies are bothering to think about the impact their policies have on their people, which is dangerous.

Myths of Work: The Stereotypes & Assumptions Holding Your Organization Back

Unlike Lucy Adams, authors McRae and Furnham are keen to get rid of outdated workplace assumptions and stereotypes. They use the latest research to help them debunk 27 so called ‘myths of work’ from working hours to gender in the workplace. Knowing about these myths will help dispel them.

10 HR Recruiting Benefits of Incorporating a Whistleblower Hotline for Your Company

As much as you want to trust the people you collaborate with, the reality is no company is immune to misconduct or corrupt activity. Whistleblower tools can play a crucial role in uncovering serious problems that may be happening under the radar in your business. Effective resources like a whistleblower hotline can offer employees an easy, safe and anonymous way to improve corporate governance by alerting human resources about any illegal or inappropriate behavior.

And the sooner your HR recruiting team is aware of a problem, the easier and faster it will be to rectify the situation with minimal damage caused. If you’re considering implementing this into your organization, here are a few of the key recruiting and talent acquisition benefits of incorporating a whistleblower hotline for your company.

It Help Protects Your Company

If there is illegal or inappropriate behavior at work, whether it’s theft, fraud or discrimination, a whistleblower hotline can give employees the ability to speak up. With a safe and discreet method to tip-off management, your team won’t have to fear repercussions for reporting any misconduct they witness.

This can help safeguard your entire company from corruption while giving employees the means to report potential threats such as harassment, fraud or cybersecurity risks.

An Effective Way to Assess and Manage Risks

When misconduct or illegal activity occurs for an extended period of time, it can do more damage to a company and cost a lot more to resolve. Whether it’s minor discrepancies like cybersecurity issues or something major, like bribing an official, whistleblower hotlines reduce the amount of risk that companies are exposed to regularly.

Aside from enabling staff to come forward, whistleblower tools provide a simple and effective way to assess reports that are made. This lets your HR and management teams manage those risks accordingly to save your company time and money while keeping your reputation unblemished.

It Promotes a Stronger Workplace Culture

Your team is the backbone of your business. And having employees feel valued, respected and engaged in their work is fundamental for any business to succeed today. But retaining top talent can be challenging, especially when you’re competing with other companies who are continuously striving to evolve and attract in-demand workers.

That’s why having a strong workplace culture that fosters respect, better communication and trust is crucial. Beyond promoting a workplace that cares, encouraging internal reporting through a whistleblower hotline just makes sense for businesses that want to stay competitive while minimizing risks.

Fewer Legal Repercussions

The sooner your HR and management teams know about a problem that’s happening, the fewer repercussions your company will likely have to face. This includes lawsuits, negative press, a scarred reputation and smaller settlements if your company ever faces litigation.

It Deters Wrongdoing

When your team knows there is a simple and safe way to be called out for inappropriate behavior, it will deter them from doing it in the first place. They’ll be far less inclined to indulge in risky activity if they know your company takes allegations seriously and will thoroughly investigate reports to uncover the truth, which could result in legal action.

Prevents Unwanted Attention

Businesses are constantly landing in hot water due to allegations of fraud, misconduct and other wrongdoings. And the media loves to get their hands on flashy headlines that feature a CEO, or a company caught up in a scandal. However, as an effective, internal tool, whistleblowing gives your company the power to identify issues quickly and subtly to avoid unwanted attention that could jeopardize your position with stakeholders, customers and future employees.

Promotes a Safer Work Environment

Implementing procedures that aim to reduce illegal and unsafe actions at work promotes a safer environment for everyone. This also enables companies to be proactive instead of reactive, taking necessary steps to improve situations that could potentially escalate into something hazardous.

Demonstrates Accountability

Today, prospective employees can easily hop online to get an idea of what a company has to offer before applying for a position, which is why good corporate governance can’t be emphasized enough. By implementing a whistleblower hotline, your talent acquisition or recruiting department can demonstrate your company’s commitment and accountability instantly.

Uncover Relevant Details

Even if your HR and management teams are aware of something illegal that’s happening at work, they may not have all the details needed to understand or present evidence for legal action. Anonymous reporting tools like a whistleblower hotline can help gather as many details as possible to piece together. This can help management teams understand the full scope of the situation and respond in a manner that is appropriate.

It’s Ethical

Protecting employees by offering the support they need to feel safe at work should be every company’s ethical obligation and priority. Whistleblower tools provide a win-win scenario by protecting them and your company’s bottom line.

Source Developers From GitHub Using HireGIT

Software developers are one of those rare breeds of talent that companies just can’t hire enough of. Just when you think that the industry is reaching an equilibrium, you get new statistics pointing to another rise in the quest to source developers. The ebb and flow of coder shortages makes securing one for your project a game of roulette.

Trudging through the trenches of GitHub definitely has its drawbacks, despite having pretty much every single developer in existence on this platform. If only there was some easy to use tool that could compile all of these geeks into one easy list! Well, Dean Da Costa has found a streamlined tool to assist in your GitHub scavenger hunt, dubbed HireGit.

This app lets you source developers based on the following criteria (that you can mix and match):

Programming Language
Country
Followers
Git Age
Sorting Order

Source Developers the Smart Way.

What really puts this tool ahead of the competition is the design. Not just from a point of aesthetics, which is another area this tool outshines the competition, but also in terms of how approachable its results are.

It’s like looking at that rare breed of PowerPoint presentations that condenses endless amounts of data and presents it in an easily digestible format. That’s what this tool is doing with GitHub profiles. And it’s all done on the fly as you search for users.

Uniquely enough, a great feature that hasn’t been available in other GitHub search engines is an “employability” score. While arbitrarily phrased, their employability score implies how active the user is on the platform. Cold calling is brutal enough as it is, so this will prevent you wasting your time on abandoned or inactive profiles.

It’s obvious that the devs at TechNarcs have a background in user interface and experience design. With this in mind, if you want to try it for yourself, be sure to head on to hiregit.netlify.app.

Fair Warning: You’ll have to connect your Google account to run your searches.

Understanding Intersectionality Through the Community of Affinity Groups

Engaging Leadership, Recruiting Allies and Leaning Into Company Goals Make Affinity Groups More Effective

When we walk (or Zoom) into work, we don’t leave our identities at the door. It’s impossible. Our aspects of self follow us—our race, gender, religion, sexual orientation. What’s more, these characteristics intersect, meaning that we need to broaden our ideas around what it means to be equitable and inclusive through affinity groups.

Many professionals believe their company culture requires them to mute their personal voices during work hours. Well, it’s time to for us all to start talking and listening so we can understand our complex identities —or intersectionality—and forge connections to build the strongest possible teams.

What Is Intersectionality?

All people are multidimensional, it’s part of the complexity of being human. However, for some people overlapping aspects of their identity can leave them at risk for heightened discrimination. For example, a member of the LGBTQ community who is also a person of color may experience increased, or different kinds of prejudice compared to a white person who is gay, or a person of color who is heterosexual. Intersectionality refers to the interplay of these overlapping identity aspects, and its significance in the world and in the workplace.

While intersectionality has roots in social justice, the concept also comes into play in corporate culture. HR professionals and managers must vigilantly ensure that all employees, including those from one or more underrepresented groups, have fair access to opportunities and resources. That’s where affinity groups have a part to play.

How Do Affinity Groups Promote Understanding?

Affinity groups bring together co-workers with shared experiences. They can represent underrepresented backgrounds like military families or widely shared issues like mental wellness, giving them a potent role in the workplace.

Many employees choose to participate in more than one affinity group when they are available and groups are wise to collaborate on the many joint issues that touch our work and home lives.

Every day, through the collaborative work of affinity groups, companies can foster inclusion while transforming company and community culture for good.

5 Ways to Leverage Affinity Groups to Grow Understanding of Intersectionality

As a DEI executive, I’ve seen the power of connecting people who represent a variety of identities and perspectives. One of the best tools we’ve used to hit our DEI goals and accelerate an understanding of intersectionality is through affinity groups. Here are five ways to leverage them:

1. Define “affinity” broadly.

Race and gender aren’t the only foundations on which to build affinity groups. My company has affinity groups for women and people of color, but also for veterans, members of the LGBTQ community and their allies and those with diverse abilities.

In addition, we have an intergenerational affinity group for colleagues across five generations who want to develop ideas together. By educating the organization with a broader definition of “affinity,” HR sets the stage for employees to grasp the basics of intersectionality and begin to understand what it means, both the struggles and perspectives of others.

2. Invite employees who belong to two or more underrepresented groups to speak with affinity groups about their unique experiences.

Their insights and stories can be highly valuable when working to drive systemic change.. Empathy can help us build allyship and work together to drive systemic-level change. While everyone’s lived experiences are different, sharing perspectives builds common ground and a deeper understanding of who we are and inevitably, how we are all connected. This provides a sense of belonging, one study showing bottom-line benefits driven by higher performance and reduced turnover.

3. Encourage all employees to join multiple groups (and reward them for it).

A good general rule is to ask employees to consider joining three affinity groups: one with which they personally identify, one where they want to be an ally and one that they’re simply curious about.

4. Reward employees for their active participation in affinity groups with perks such as recognition, company swag or special external opportunities to represent the organization.

By joining these groups, they are likely to have conversations they never would have had otherwise and they begin to appreciate the dynamics of intersectionality.

5. Urge corporate leadership to join affinity groups.

Embed top leadership in affinity groups as sponsors to model an understanding of intersectionality at the top. Make them champions of diverse interests and connect their effective participation to bonuses and other incentives. Bringing leadership into affinity groups demonstrates a company’s commitment to resolving the issues they raise and to DEI values in general.

Two creative approaches:

Executives embedded in the groups can share concerns with their business leaders
The company CEO can conduct a listening tour, visiting each affinity group to hear feedback directly

Either way, leadership should act on recommendations from these groups by adjusting company policies, expanding benefits or taking other steps to thoughtfully address requests. When voices from the top grasp the experiences of intersectionality, the whole company culture begins to shift and grow.

Turn to affinity groups as business resources. Groups can identify and explore key intersectional markets and develop and test new product ideas. Affinity groups aid job recruitment; they contribute to research and development and they engage the surrounding community via volunteer events, fundraising or identifying philanthropic causes.

When our workplaces are competent in understanding the complexity of identity—when we support employees and honor those who embrace all aspects of their own backgrounds—we create a stronger, thriving environment.

Affinity groups are an enabler. They forge vital connections among employees through ongoing interaction. When co-workers know each other’s stories, as they do in these small but mighty spaces, they can support each other’s issues and work together better—and that’s good not only for business but for humanity.

This OSINT Search Toolkit is Your Sourcing Swiss Army Knife

If you’re a search connoisseur, it’s nearly mandatory to have an assortment of OSINT search toolkits in your sourcing utility belt. Keeping track of which one does what is quite the hassle. There’s an almost unreasonable amount of these platforms available online. Which one helps you reverse search emails, and which one just lets me search usernames on social media?

Like many others, this particular OSINT Toolkit contains a regularly updated list of the most useful scripts and search tools out there. Let’s get into the mud and focus on what sets this platform apart from the rest.

The collection divides across multiple categories to help you quickly find the right tool when you need it. There are dedicated pages for searching usernames on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google. Conveniently enough, you can even keyword search through emails, documents, and websites.

One thing that we haven’t seen in other collections is the list of bookmarklets. As the name suggests, you can save these links as a bookmark in your browser and trigger a unique function.

For instance, there’s a List Email Links bookmark that instantly extracts all the emails from a page so you don’t have to sift and scroll your way through all the content by yourself.

This OSINT Collect can be accessed online at one-plus.github.io for free. Since you’re a fan of Dean Da Costa’s teaching style, he has an upcoming presentation this Feb 24th! Dean unveils his secret library of sourcing tools, so be sure to register for this event on Feb 24th.

How to Attract More Employees Than the Competition

It’s a well-known fact: in order to truly flourish as a company, you need every bit of advantage over your competitors that you can realistically get. Market environments of today are utterly Darwinistic in nature, meaning that those who can’t distinguish themselves are either forgotten or worse, violently taken over by their more adapted rivals. As such, it is paramount that you actively work on making your business superior to others to attract and retain employees.

One of the most vital areas you should focus on is talent recruitment. It’s no secret that the prosperity of your company is largely driven by the skills of your employees. The better they are, the better your services get. Merely headhunting for new rising stars is not enough, however.

What you should prioritize is actively attracting new and professionally appealing candidates by implementing deep changes within your company. Some of them may appear harder to carry out than others, but the resulting gains should be more than worth the initial effort.

Your Work Environment Should Be as Flexible as Possible

One of the most common misbeliefs in today’s society is that there is only one way to work, and that is the office job in a 9-to-5 model. While there are many people who don’t mind this environment, there are also others who have no interest in it whatsoever because they find it highly tiresome and incompatible with their lifestyle, not to mention entirely obsolete.

As such, if you want to attract more potential employees than your competitors, you need to make your company as flexible as possible in terms of the working environment.

This can be done by offering several options maximizing adaptability. This includes flexible hours, relaxing the dress-code requirements if possible, letting them choose which tasks they want to take on and even offering the option of working from home.

Moreover, even if something is theoretically within their duties, consider if an advanced program could do the task as well as them. To illustrate the point, your administrative employee doesn’t have to fill out the stubs manually. A paystub creator can easily do it too.

What software can’t reliably do is write a highly personalized message to one of your important clients. That, in turn, is an easy task for the said employee.

Always Offer a Very Competitive Initial Pay

One of the biggest reasons many people choose to work in one place rather than another is the pay rate. This is a fundamental issue and many of your competitors are likely doing everything they can to offer the highest pays possible. The result is that most companies offer competitive pay rates, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd.

Still, you can get an edge over others by offering higher initial pay than before. This will let you attract more talent, which in turn, creates a positive feedback loop for your company. The more quality employees you have, the better your services get, allowing you to offer even higher pay rates.

As the word gets around, the new talent will come flocking to you, and your business will grow exponentially.

It’s Not Just About Pay, It’s About the Opportunities

Although money is important, it’s not everything. People nowadays look for jobs that satisfy them on a professional level. They want to feel challenged and they want to learn new things. If you want to attract more talent than your competitors, you need to understand this and offer your employees the chance to grow professionally.

You can do this by giving them opportunities to learn new skills at work and attend seminars or workshops. You can also create a rewarding system that will allow your workers to grow and learn while also increasing their pay and responsibilities as time goes on.

All of these things will make them happy and satisfied with their jobs. And as the word is bound to spread inevitably, the new talent will come to your company in spades. The result? Both sides win.

Don’t Just Hire Workers, Hire People

As your business grows, you will naturally be hiring more and more people. It’s essential to understand that you should not treat them as mere numbers when hiring. Instead, you should always try to look at the person behind the CV.

What actual skills do they have? What kind of personality do they possess? Are they reliable? Will they fit in the team? All of these things matter a great deal.

By hiring employees based on their actual skills and characteristics instead of just their resumes, you will get much more talented workers who are willing to go above and beyond for the company. New talent will notice this and be drawn by your person-oriented approach, resulting in them applying for your job openings.

And since you also focus on having a solid working environment with a positive culture to boot, they will stay with your company for a long time, making your business thrive like never before.

Be Understanding to Your Workforce

Above everything else, your employees are humans. As such, they have to live their lives like everyone else. If they want to do something that isn’t immediately conducive to greater profits, like taking a paid leave in order to visit their ill grandparents, you should be understanding and allow it.

The reasons go beyond simple courtesy. According to the study conducted by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, workforce happiness is directly related to their actual productivity.

As such, you kill a few birds with one stone. You indirectly improve the efficiency of your business, possibly raise your employee retention rate and most likely increase the number of talented applicants, once the word of your humane approach gets out.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, it’s possible to attract more talent than your competition by implementing small but vital changes in your company.

The ideas mentioned above will make your business stand out from the crowd and that’s why the new talent will be drawn to you. It’s a win-win situation for both sides and it will ensure that your company keeps growing with each passing day. Good luck and remember the old adage “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”!

Coping with Transformation and Performing Under High Pressure as Recruiters

High turnover rates are what keep many recruiters in business. At the same time, dealing with high turnover often requires performing under pressure, so it’s a double-edged sword. While higher demand means more business, it can cause recruiters to feel overwhelmed. However, there are strategies you can use to cope with this transformation and manage more effectively while under pressure. In this article, we’ll be sharing the strategies you can use.

High Turnover Rates Cause High Pressure

A high turnover rate refers to the number of workers who opt to leave an organization. This could be for a number of reasons, including:

- Lack of progression
- Job dissatisfaction
- Low wages
- No learning and development opportunities
- Issues with management
- Lack of professional support
- No flexibility around working hours

High turnover rates, especially those caused by the pandemic, put a huge amount of pressure on recruiters. Having to fill the roles of the departing employees can affect recruiters in the following ways:

Mental Health and Wellbeing

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, many people quit their jobs in what has become known as “the Great Resignation, in which employees search for roles that offer more fulfillment. While this has been rewarding for many people, for those working in recruitment it has caused a surge in demand and put many recruiters under significant pressure.

This surge in demand has made it incredibly difficult for recruiters to balance their existing commitments with an ever-increasing workload. As a result, many high performers are experiencing burnout, mental health struggles and even, in some cases, an unhealthy reliance on substances.

“As many people know, high achievement can be a double-edged sword. While it comes with motivation, hard work, creative thinking and, often, success, it also can also lead you down a path toward substance abuse and other addictive behaviors. For many high achievers, substance abuse isn’t the problem — it’s simply a way to cope,” explains Kayla Gill, content director at LuxuryRehabs.com

“Treating the underlying causes that can lead to addictive behavior, and learning about how your body handles substances, can be an invaluable way to find healing,” Gill said. “The more you know about yourself, the more easily you can break old patterns and discover a more successful, motivated and capable version of yourself.”

Low Quality Hires

It can be difficult to find that perfect fit when you’re utterly overloaded with work and feeling under pressure. When recruiters are balancing high volumes of demand alongside the panicked requests for organizations to fill roles as quickly as possible, lower quality hires are inevitable.

Neglecting Company Growth Goals

It is not uncommon for recruiters to scramble for new employees to replace old talent. However, this often leads to recruitment teams spinning their wheels and panicking about replacing people, rather than focusing on the company’s long-term growth. In cases such as these, recruitment can be like putting a plaster on a broken limb: It provides a short-term solution that delays dealing with the bigger issue. Ultimately, this only results in more work.

How Recruiters Can Perform Under Pressure

Recruiters have the challenging job of speaking with thousands of job seekers every single year. It is a demanding job that can quickly become overwhelming if the appropriate management strategies are not put in place. Below are some of the ways recruiters can perform well under pressure.

Stay Up-To-Date With Industry Changes

In the world of recruiting, things are constantly changing. Whether it’s the technology used, the legislation required or the best hiring strategies to employ, one of the most effective ways to manage the pressure is to stay up to date with industry changes.

Another reason to stay up to date: Recruitment continues to evolve at a rapid pace. A great resource we recommend is LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends Reports. They explain everything you need to know about the industry in a clear and concise way, so you can find out what you need to know and then get back to work.

Get Organized

There are only so many hours in the day and you want to use them as productively as possible. Organization is the key for any recruiter and will ensure even the busiest periods are more manageable.

It might seem obvious, but keeping your calendar completely up-to-date remains one of the most effective ways to stay on top of things. In addition to the organizational and timekeeping benefits, ticking tasks off as they’re completed is extremely satisfying. In fact, according to Trello, “when we experience even small amounts of success, our brains release dopamine, which is connected to feelings of pleasure, learning and motivation.” So, getting organized won’t just help you perform well under pressure, it will also keep you motivated.

Focus on the Individual

Often, when recruiters are faced with a high volume of demand, their process can become rushed. As we mentioned earlier, this can result in low quality hires. However, no matter how busy your job becomes, you can’t lose sight of the individual. If you’re not focusing on the individual, you could lose out on attracting the best candidates.

So much of recruitment relies on your efforts to build relationships. Delivering an omnichannel experience is a great way to stay in touch with candidates, get to know them and find the right person for the job. If you learn to focus on the individual, you’ll become an even better recruiter.

Take Time Out

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, the “recruiter’s role of serving others at the expense of expressing themselves and the constant interactions with many other people are additional factors that can lead to emotional fatigue and burnout.”

If you want to manage the many demands and pressures of being a recruiter, let alone manage them during the pandemic, taking time out is essential. Whether it’s a half day away from work, a long weekend or a proper holiday, taking time off helps manage demand and provides the rest you need.

Final Words

Recruitment will always be a busy industry, with working under pressure a given. However, there are strategies you can use to cope. We hope this article has provided some helpful tips for managing your workload, connecting with potential candidates and taking care of yourself during busy periods.

Performing under high pressure is always challenging. However creating proactive steps to manage these demands will prove to be one the best paths to your success and satisfaction within the role, too.

The Next LinkedIn

What if there was an alternative to LinkedIn? Something that was more akin to Twitter, and less like the static resumes that either are fully baked or so scant you can’t make heads or tails of it?

What about the kind of information you seek when hunting down an expert, candidate, or potential partner on a platform like LinkedIn?

It would certainly help to know proactively the types of projects each person has led, or all the relevant extras they take on across their professional and personal lives, such as hosting a podcast, mentoring, or volunteering.

Next Generation Professional Social Network

Welcome to Polywork, a professional social network where people share what they do and collaborate with others.

Polywork is a small design-obsessed team working on building the next generation professional social network to enable people to share what they do and collaborate with others.

They believe that the world needs better information on what people can do to make it more productive. lets users create a free personality-focused professional profile where they can share updates and send collaboration requests to others on the network.

In contrast to LinkedIn, Polywork features “badges” to highlight personal and professional skills and interests as opposed to focusing just on a job title. Users also have the option to add projects and accomplishments to career timelines.

Whether it was pivoting careers or starting new projects like a podcast or a store on Etsy to pass the time, the pandemic amplified a growing trend of people who do more than one type of work. Existing professional social networks use the job titles we hold and schools we went to as the main way to identify who candidates are.

Is This Flawed and Outdated?

Consider for a minute the myriad of similar job titles we look for Site Reliability Engineers. At companies like Facebook, these engineers are called “Production Engineers.” Looking on LinkedIn for “Site Reliability Engineers” or “SRE,” actually eliminates results based on job title that could be a fit for the role.

Yes, as a social network dedicated to professionals, LinkedIn offers a treasure trove of business contacts, but I’d argue that there is more to learn about our candidates which yields better outreach and increased engagement.

All the result of being able to find or decipher a better picture of who our candidate is and what they are interested in doing or producing.

On the professional networking side, the approach allows users to get a quick visual overview of an individual — perhaps fleshing out some of the dry details they already saw on their LinkedIn account — and quickly navigate to individual examples of specific activity.

Recruiters looking for professional ice-breakers will probably relish the chance to find more up-to-date material to work with, ahead of making a cold pitch.

Current professional networking platforms don’t cut it. Your moniker might read “Software Engineer” or “Product Manager” or “Designer” and perhaps the school you went to. But these titles alone don’t come close to capturing what we actually do in our professional lives or the types of work we find motivating.

Enter Polywork and Resume 2.0

As opposed to being a resume directory with a social-professional network built adjacent to your resume profile, Polywork is a historical professional portfolio or journal that also is a social-professional network.

Polywork focuses on letting people tell their own stories and all they’re capable of, so we can meet new people, supercharge our teams, and unlock creativity.

From capturing details like who you collaborated with on various projects to career highlights, to a system of community-created badges reflecting both personal and professional traits, Polywork is building a new professional network, from the ground up, that reflects how we work in 2022.

It looks like Polywork is building a professional network that strongly appeals to the aesthetics of young professionals like influencers, developer advocates, designers, hustlers, lifestyle entrepreneurs, models and musicians.

These have been the early adopters. While making these observations, it’s important to consider the function and future of resumes because it becomes apparent that this network is for everyone.

What is a Resume, Anyway?

A resume is a pdf you email to a company. Another way to see it is that a resume is a burdensome standardized method of communication.

A resume is job-history-oriented, and that we use to verify an applicant’s supposed “experience,” right?

Candidate says they know Java, so they know Java. Right? Well, how well do they know it? Can you verify it via a code test or a code snippet from Github?

It’s not like carrying a certification from your state’s Bar Association, is it?

There is this supposed authenticity via the resume. With a resume it primes the hiring manager or recruiter to use job-history oriented as the filter:

Is this person changing jobs too frequently?
Does this person have gaps in their workplaces?
Does this candidate really know Java?

After all, Java is to Javascript like Ham is to Hamburger. Same thing, right?

The problem with this analysis (and complete absence of logic) is that these are concerns and do not tell if an applicant is qualified.

Also, it does not adapt to the market as a whole.

Shitty References and Bogus Endorsements

References have not been legitimate for years.

Anyone can pretend to be your reference. Anyone can endorse your work without tangible proof.

People on LinkedIn will endorse me as being knowledgeable with SEM. This is preposterous.

The reason they endorse me: I used to place a lot of search engine analysts, managers, and sales people. It would be more useful if the proof of endorsement was tied to an activity such as posting a SEM certification like Google AdWords.

You can kind of replicate this on LinkedIn by mentioning people on a post in the public time-stream. However, it eventually becomes lost and cannot be easily filtered. The LinkedIn social network is adjacent, not your resume.

Opportunity Over Spam

Direct Messaging on LinkedIn, on the whole, is people messaging you for unsolicited services. It has us treat every connection or relationship with suspicion and apprehension.

Polywork has messaging with a purpose before being sent to a target user, a first big step to cut down on spam.

I could see them expanding this feature with their AI assistant to assess whether the sent message is genuine, meaningful and a wanted communication. The system could quickly penalize unapologetic spammers via an internal karma system.

Another option is to associate activity tags with contact types. This would allow contacting users to be forced to understand the context of what they are messaging for — and do their homework to understand if there is genuine alignment.

Can’t LinkedIn copy these features? Like how they can copy Instagram User Stories and Clubhouse audio chats?

Sure they could.

LinkedIn could replicate these features, but — and here’s the but:

The fundamental way the social network works, like connections and resumes profile through the public live stream, these features would be subject to exploit that render them not as valuable.

LinkedIn Resumes are not useless, but their value and purpose are going to change. LinkedIn is not positioned to deliver on Resume 2.0.

Find a Developer

If you know me, you know that I try 100 different ways to find developers and engineers. What does this Polywork have to do with developers?

The normal combination today for developers applying to a job is Resume + LinkedIn + Github.

Isn’t that a lot of “stuff” to supply in an application?

Polywork can solve all this in one package. I think that will be better for developer communities for their proof of work.

Duplicative Work

Convincing people to duplicate their social networking activity or indeed ditch their existing hard-won social media networks looks like a big ask. The risk is irrelevance, despite a pretty interface.

Sure LinkedIn is boring. The whole point is that it’s low maintenance.

Polywork’s name and philosophy suggests it might be okay with being added to the existing mix of professional and social networks, i.e. rather than replacing either. But, well, a supplementary professional network sounds like a bit of a sideline.

Polywork launched in April 2021 but isn’t disclosing user numbers yet — and is currently operating a wait list for sign ups.

Automating Your Hiring Process

Automating your hiring process can seem odd for such a people driven task, however in a digital age with increasing concerns about hiring bias it’s well worth looking into. This does not mean completely replacing your HR department and removing people from all areas of the hiring process, just streamlining the system to make the work less repetitive, easier to manage and bias free.

Applicant Tracking

The most common type of recruitment automation is having a system that keeps track of all applicants in a hiring database from the moment they apply throughout their journey in the hiring process.

This allows you to keep track of all applicants without human error and keeps you organised.

Candidate Pre-Screening

One of the worst parts of trying to hire is sifting through thousands of CVs with large numbers being completely unqualified for the role. Over 40% of resumes sent to hiring managers tend to be from people without the required skills. With intelligent resume screeners, you can quickly clear out the chaff and get a reduced number of resumes sent to the hiring manager.

It might be worth also looking at adding a chatbot to your jobsite to gather some basic information about the candidate to give you some extra oversight into their suitability which means you spend more time actually focussing on genuine candidates.

Pre-Employment Assessments

Any university graduate will tell you that one of the things they need to look into when applying for graduate positions is the pre-employment assessment, tests that check if you actually have the skills needed and will make a good fit for the company as a whole.

Common assessments tend to be typing tests, cultural fit assessments, situational judgement and cognitive ability testing. This can easily remove candidates who may have the skills needed on paper, but would be a bad fit for your company.

Interview Scheduling and Candidate Communication

An invaluable streamlining and time-saving tool is creating an automated scheduler for interviews that checks availability on your calendar and can even allow the candidate to self-schedule their interview.

While you want to take a more personal approach with candidates at final hiring stages, automating responses to applications and assessments allows you to make sure everyone gets some form of feedback, even if it’s not detailed. A large number of applicants may feel reluctant to apply to your company again when they have not gotten any response that the application was received or that they had been disqualified.

Talent Pools

One of the worst things that can happen is you have an excellent candidate for your company but this job is just not for them. Keeping up with them and letting them know about other opportunities can be difficult and are easily missed due to human error. Automation allows you to create talent pool databases that keep the information of these potential future hires and you can even automate communication to them for appropriate positions.

You can widen this database by having automated referral requests that allows your current employees to recommend potential employees for the company as well as keeping track of agency referrals. This reduces human error again and gives employees a feeling of being a key part of the company.

Background Checks

Once you have a candidate that you want to hire you need to run background checks to make sure there’s nothing hiding in their background that means you shouldn’t hire them. The good news is that this can be automated as well by using things like name-matching technology to quickly find red flags and quickly remove false hits. Just remember, AI isn’t completely infallible and it’s worth still having a human eye look over a check if red flags are raised.

Hiring automation is all about working smarter and keeping all applicant details organized. It allows you to give all applicants some form of feedback and reduce the number of candidates your hiring team will deal with directly.

This actually provides a fantastic benefit that it allows you to take the time to focus on those candidates that look like they’ll make a good fit and lets your hiring team spend their time building up personal relationship with them.

There is just one last warning about automating your process: don’t forget human oversight. Make sure to test your system on a regular basis to check the system’s inputs are correct and all information is up-to-date.

If you do this, then the amount of time saved will be invaluable and you may even find that candidates feel better about your company as they’ve had a positive application experience.

Personal Posts are a Win-Win on LinkedIn

With over 800 million users spread across 200 countries, LinkedIn projects a daily growth rate of two new members joining every second. Taking their exponential growth potential into account, the professional connection possibilities are endless.

According to Hootsuite, almost 44% of LinkedIn members are active on a monthly basis with as many logged in daily. Any professional in 2022 knows using LinkedIn is an essential part of their job description; not just having a LinkedIn profile but knowing how to use it.

From engaging with your network, sharing content, commenting on other people’s posts to searching for candidates and clients, LinkedIn’s list of benefits for recruiters is endless.

With that being said, the question often asked is, “Is it best to share content on your company page or your personal LinkedIn page?” Our answer is: Your personal brand on LinkedIn will always be the most effective and here are some reasons why.

People Buy From People

We aren’t saying you need to completely write off your company page, but your audience is far more likely to engage with a personal post as opposed to a formal one from your organization.

If your company page is being managed with scheduled and shared content, you can easily share these posts directly to your personal account along with your own comments in the caption to encourage your followers to interact with the post.

You’re far more likely to receive engagement in the form of likes, comments and shares by posting content directly from your personal LinkedIn page, especially if you ask for feedback in the caption. Why? Because people buy from people. Your connections will prefer to strike up a conversation with a person, instead of shouting into the abyss that is the comment section of a post on a company’s page.

People Connect with People

Your overall company messaging can reach and speak to far more people on LinkedIn by individually connecting with them through your personal profile than by trying to get people to follow your company page. Through your personal profile interactions, your company page has better potential to organically grow.

Asking recruiters to share on social media or trying to get recruiters to share company content isn’t always a straightforward task. However, if they are building LinkedIn connections effectively with their target audiences and sharing relevant and interesting content, they will be able to build up a community of people who are more likely to engage with their content in the future.

Therefore, if you are trying to educate your recruiters on the importance of employee advocacy and sharing content, let them know they are far more likely to build a network of candidates and clients on LinkedIn by sharing their own content than they are by liking the occasional company page post.

Algorithms Prioritize People

Have you noticed when you check LinkedIn in the morning, you see posts from people you often interact with at the top of your feed? That’s because the LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes people over company pages, as well as the people you engage with the most.

LinkedIn describes itself as a place where you can “manage your professional identity” and “build and engage with your professional network.” Nowhere does it say, “LinkedIn is a place for companies to be more popular than individuals.”

Quite the opposite— the entire platform is built around connecting people. Consider what you’ve seen on LinkedIn over the past week. In fact, open LinkedIn and view your recent activity. Who or what have you engaged with the most? Have you liked, commented or shared anyone’s posts?

If so, was most of it shared by an individual or an organization?

We can almost guarantee it was originally posted by a person. Individuals will always have more connections and people looking at their profile than that of company pages.

Getting Recruiters to Share Content is Simple

If your organization has been prioritizing sharing content on your company page because it’s the easiest way to distribute, don’t worry, we understand. Historically, trying to get recruiters to share content on LinkedIn has never the easiest of tasks.

As soon as you ask a recruiter to share their own content on LinkedIn to develop their personal brand and engage with their audience, they’re likely to interpret this as needing to write three blog posts a week and share a video every morning.

Be sure to tread lightly when encouraging recruiters to share more content on LinkedIn and reassure them that they don’t need to produce all their own content. Simply sharing external news or their company blog posts is enough, as long as they’re adding their own comments or perspective whenever possible.

The best part is, they don’t have to manually login and share something daily. (There are several companies that simplify social media, so posting daily is no longer a chore. My company, Paiger, for example, sends users a daily email with tips, news and other relevant content to help them share posts directly from their inbox.)

At the end of the day, simplifying social media posting is a win-win solution for everyone, allowing recruiters to share content on LinkedIn with a keystroke to create organic growth for your overall company page.

Search GitHub For Top Tier Developers With Grep.app

As any experienced headhunter can attest, the best coders are usually the most passionate about their profession. These are the folks who keep their heads down and get things done. They don’t do it for a paycheck, they work because of their unconditional love for coding. So the next time you want to source one of these big dogs for a client, a prudent strategy might be to search GitHub.

This begs the question, how does one find hard working, project oriented developers? GitHub is cool and all, what with being the world’s largest repository of independent developers, but trying to manually search GitHub repos is pretty tedious, right?

Fear not, as all of that primo talent could just be a Grep.app search away.

Take the Easy Street and Search Github With Grep.App

Luckily, you don’t have to deal with the headaches of glaring at endless lines of code. By using Grep.app you can select the programming language and skills you’re looking for along with some relevant keywords. Near instantly, the tool will present a massive list of repositories that match your requirements. Now you can effectively search GitHub and find those elusive code hoarders.

From there, it’s only a matter of finding the most active and promising devs. Once you’ve got your list ready, you can easily use a GitHub email finder to extract their addresses and start some conversations.

Grep.app supports regular expressions as well, which are those nifty advanced search functions we all love so much. As boring as they may sound, regular expressions can supercharge your hunting by letting you utilize sophisticated search patterns.

To read up on regular expressions and how to take full advantage of them, GitHub has you covered.

One thing to note, if you already have a developer in mind this is also a great place to look up their coding history. Any developer, independent or otherwise, should have at least a morsel of code on GitHub. Check out what people have to say about their code. The proof is in the pudding, and code never lies!

Links and More Goodies from RecruitingDaily

Run your first search right now by visiting Grep.app!

For a deep-dive into snagging talent from GitHub, head over to Sourcing School for our episode guest-starring Jonathan Kidder, AKA the “Wizard Sourcer.” You can listen to the discussion here.

Dean Da Costa loves search tools more than some people love their families. His tools are vital to success in this ever-expanding sourcing universe. See his talent in action this February 24th!

ATS, Your Most Important Moment of Truth with Every Candidate

The job application process is about one thing: facilitating a job application from a candidate who intends to apply for that job and your ATS can improve that experience.

The candidate expresses their intention to apply for the job opening when they click the apply button. Whatever happened before a candidate clicks apply—such as the job searches, company research, passive interactions and numerous impressions that built the intent to apply—is largely the result of valuable and precious work done by talent acquisition, employer brand, recruitment marketing, employee referrals, job advertising, etc.

It is not just sheer luck that there was a candidate waiting and wanting to click apply. You helped drive that candidate to your job application.

The problem with the application process right now is that 90 percent of the people you spent time and money cultivating intent in leave because the application process treats them like schmucks.

HR spends a lot of time “warming up” candidates to the prospect of working for their company. Repeated messages pulse out in all the right places: “We have a great culture, do interesting work, have inspiring values, early Fridays, etc.” And then the harsh reality of the apply flow throws a bucket of ice water on them.

Why is it acceptable that one piece of technology whose sole purpose is to take job applications online is permitted to undercut the majority of the valuable work done by recruiters, thus, preventing them from hiring many of the people they built up intent to apply in?

Your ATS is a Transactional System

The sole purpose of an ATS is to receive and advance a candidate’s job application. It is one of a chain of many transactions or interactions that candidates will have with your company. Some are human-to-human interactions, others are human-to-machine-to-human, and some are human-to-machine — such as the apply moment.

What is a transaction? Simply, it’s an exchange. We transact with information systems all the time in our lives. When it works well, the technology is completely transparent and the transaction provides a positive, efficient experience. When the technology gets in the way of people’s goals and anticipated outcomes, it creates a depth of friction that frustrates people, subverts their intentions and damages brands.

The quality of experience of this transaction – the job application – depends on attention to detail, what questions are asked, how long it takes, are you being asked to repeat yourself by re-entering the same data over and over? Is the system you are interacting with easy to use or does it encourage you to make mistakes, etc.?

When the ATS experience makes candidates feel like you don’t respect them or their time, all the effort put into building intent and driving qualified candidates is put in jeopardy. Is their intent strong enough to propel candidates to “run the gauntlet” of a bad candidate experience and get to the finish line? Maybe yes. But why take the chance? The likely scenario is that almost all will disengage.

The level of effort required to submit a job application should never be considered a screening mechanism to gauge candidate commitment or fit. That is the job of your employer brand, recruiting campaigns, talent assessments, and your recruiters and hiring managers.

What Drives the Quality of the Application Experience?

Some of the factors influencing how candidates experience the transaction of applying for a job are impacted by your internal process and policy (required questions), while some are controlled by the ATS. Many of them, however, fall outside of either.

If you focus on just one of these levers, your candidate experience is going to fall short. Right now, we see leading companies are using every lever at their disposal to attract and hire the people they need to thrive

Here’s what we’ve learned from our customers:

- There is no magic number for how long or how many questions is appropriate. It depends on your organization, your hiring goals, your roles and other factors. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
- Rather than fixating on length, focus on quality. We frequently find adding the right steps and information to an application process increases candidate conversion. Things like rich media content and videos from hiring managers, a welcome page that lets candidates know what to expect, how long the application will take and what information they will need on-hand to complete it.
- In many cases, though, there are questions that are no longer needed or not used by recruiters at this stage of the process, which should be cut.

We also leverage many consumer UX innovations that people use and love daily on their favorite e-commerce sites. In some cases, simple things like address autocomplete, responsive HTML, live form validation, touch-friendly controls, WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility, etc.

At the foundation of the experience are user-centered design principles, analytics and A-B testing that enables organizations to identify and remove the unnecessary friction that is causing qualified (and needed) candidates to leave from the apply flow.

We work with recruitment marketers to ensure that all the handoffs between the different candidate-facing systems are seamless, simple to use and non-repetitive.

Fixing the Apply Flow Will Fix Everything That is Wrong with the Candidate Experience

Sorry to disappoint, but no, it won’t. One fix won’t resolve systemic problems with candidate experience. We will never say that it does, either.

Fixing the apply flow will have a lot of positive effects, though.

- You’ll hire qualified people for your hardest-to-fill roles faster.
- You’ll have to spend less money advertising and promoting your open roles.
- You’ll get more applications from the people who want to apply using their phone, which today, is virtually everyone.
- The candidate experience provided by your ATS will align with your employer brand and culture.
- You’ll have happier candidates that think more highly of your company, whether they get the job or not.

Search Platform iseek.ai Turns Raw Data Into Insight

The search platform iseek.ai promises to enhance content discoverability and search speed for professionals from across a variety of sectors. This tool is the best of the best when it comes to removing irrelevant data from searches. Get ahead in the sourcing scene with this giant focused laser beam of a search platform. The only question is, can you handle its power?

Understanding the strength of a search platform:

An easy way to wrap your head around a search platform is to think of it as Google on steroids. Taking data across the internet, it’s grand design is to facilitate rapid search and filtration of information. This industrial sized vacuum scoops up all sorts of data, with emphasis on spitting out profiled aggregated data. This advanced tool is not just a search engine, it’s an all in one platform. You have control over presenting this data how you see fit, filtering out all sorts of meaningless info. Whether it’s identifying gaps and redundancies in content or linking concepts with natural language, it has you covered. Iseek.ai is so multi purpose that to give you a specific definition of what it does would not be doing it justice. It is a platform that excels in converting chunks of data into meaningful insight.

For example, typing someone’s full name in this specialized search engine will get you a list of all their profiles over the internet. These are things like their social media profiles, any publications they contribute to, any projects they’ve put out into the world, and so on. But like we were saying, iseek.ai does a lot more than just track down a person’s social media profile. To some extent, having iseek.ai hunt specific people is a laughably simple task compared to its full power.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, here are some features of this multi purpose platform:

When should you use iseek.ai?

Not to be generic or misleading, but literally whenever you’re doing a narrow search. Iseek.ai doesn’t like to do generic searches; the more specialized the better. If you’re having a hard time pinpointing a specific individual or want to learn more about the online presence of a company, unleash the full power of iseek.ai. It allows users to orchestrate a networked ecosystem of bots, agents, and advisers. These wizards are on standby to help, so you don’t need to have any tech background. We recognize the horsepower at your fingertips with a tool such as this, so bear in mind with great power comes great responsibility.

To get started, you can visit iseek.ai and request a demo by filling out their online form. We understand the accessibility of paid tools such as this. If you are more keen on free comprehensive search tools check out Dean Da Costa’s review of OSINT Essentials. For a list of everything posted by the Search Authority Dean, check out all his content here.

How to Reduce Bias in Hiring and Recruitment Processes

Despite the best intentions of hiring managers, unconscious bias still exists in the recruitment process. A recent Harvard study found employers routinely favored applicants from higher socioeconomic status households and that firms in STEM fields rated minority and female candidates lower than white males.

These results are rather shocking but echo an infamous 2004 study that found clear evidence of racism and prejudice in the hiring process.

Nonetheless, recruiters and hiring managers have worked hard to combat bias. But what more can be done to ensure that your company isn’t affected by bias in the hiring process?

Utilize AI Technology

When you’re skimming through a vast net of applications, it can be almost impossible to give every application the attention it is due. Your assessment might even be affected by your mood or how busy you happen to be on that particular day. This makes it all but impossible to remove unconscious bias while reviewing applications and heightens the need for automation.

AI technology can give hiring managers a head start in the review process. It can also ensure that your diversity and inclusion initiatives aren’t accidentally undermined. This is because AI programs are proven to follow ethical, objective assessments that reduce bias and ensure that all candidates are assessed on the relevancy of their materials.

Be Intentional

Knowing that unconscious bias exists is one thing, doing something about it is entirely different. As a hiring manager, you must actively seek to combat industry biases when hiring and should intentionally translate positive intent into actions and results.

Here are a few ways you can be intentional about addressing bias during your next hiring phase:

Set Diversity Targets

Your hiring and recruitment team must intentionally seek diverse candidates who are traditionally underrepresented in a particular role within your company. You can do this by viewing your competitor’s hiring data, to see where exactly you are lagging.

Advertise in New Venues

Not all candidates use the same job boards. You may unwittingly be missing out on attracting diverse talent simply because they aren’t aware of your opening. To overcome this, you should research job boards that promote diversity and should consider attending new kinds of career fairs that help employers overcome bias in the hiring process.

Educate Yourself

The standards that hiring managers held ten years ago are outdated and often harm diversity and inclusion efforts. To overcome this, you must understand that candidates are choosing to present themselves and their identity in different ways, as gender-fluid fashion is helping folks become more accepting of themselves and their identity.

As a hiring manager, you should always strive to better yourself and your understanding of people. As such, you can dive into learning about diversity in recruitment by learning from experts and can start to read or listen to social thinkers and authors like Judith Butler, Ibram X Kendi and Robert Mcruer.

Avoid Microaggressions

Recruiters and hiring managers often forget that DEI in the hiring process is about more than “looking good,” it also ensures you attract the best talent to your business. However, to ensure that you don’t put off the best candidates from applying to your company, you must become aware of microaggressions and how to avoid them.

Of course, you should always respect the candidates that walk through your door. But microaggressions usually occur when you act on stereotypes that stem from unconscious beliefs about a person’s race, gender, disability or sexuality. To avoid microaggressions, work towards a universal set of questions and should think twice before making any assumptions about an applicant’s personality or ability based on their identity.

Take a Standardized Approach

You want to give yourself the best chance of accurately assessing candidates based on their ability rather than irrelevant areas of their identity or application materials. To do this, you should take a standardized approach to your materials and assessments.

The easiest way to achieve this is to use a blind assessment. This means that you will remove all identifiers from a candidate’s materials and will only use a pre-formatted CV that allows you to focus on an applicant’s relevant skills and experience.

You should also change the way you advertise for a role, as gendered or unnecessarily exclusive language will put off applicants who would otherwise do well in their role. To do this, you must review application materials and look out for unnecessary language that might seem like “fluff” or puts candidates off.

Finally, be sure to structure and standardize your interviews long before an applicant walks through your door. This will ensure that unconscious biases won’t affect the interview and will help you intentionally direct the conversation towards the applicant’s abilities and experience, rather than their identity.

Conclusion

Reducing bias in the hiring process is all about educating yourself and making intentional efforts to combat unconscious bias. You can do this by standardizing your interview questions. Partake in diversity targets which will make it clear that your company has a clear commitment to improving diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.