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Tech Recruiting Velocity in a Candidate Market: Part Three

Wrap It Up: Velocity in Tech Recruiting

In the first piece of this trilogy, we discussed prioritization and the steps needed to help you shift into high-speed recruiting in a candidate’s market. The second article focused on small adjustments that can be made to maintain recruiting velocity and improve candidate experience and throughput. Here, we’ll discuss how to shift and adapt in even more involved and intricate ways.

Part 3: Complexity

In addition to many little adjustments to daily behavior and the way we treat candidates, there are also changes taking place in process, financial resource allocation and the overall screening that may take a little longer to deploy but will have significant impact on velocity.

Adopt a Standardized Interview Process

Ask questions that acknowledge bias while being concise enough to indicate a candidate’s skill level without a skills assessment. Multiple interviews with hiring managers and panels, along with skills evaluation tests, will add at least another week or more to the interview process.

A recent article in the San Diego Times explained how many technology companies are foregoing technical skills evaluations and relying more on tactical interview questions along with reviews of projects and industry mentions and contributions.

For example, suppose an applicant for a staff-level engineering position can’t produce samples of the work they were asked to bring to their interview and has no professional contributions to share. In that case, they may be a better fit for a mid-level role. Hiring managers should not be scrutinized for an ineffective hire, but instead asked to adjust their interview questions to be more effective in catching a deficit.

By developing a group of position-specific questions aimed at the desired skill level, candidate responses can be weighed against each other to find the experience and skillset most relevant to that position. Asking for a project summary and perhaps an example of a sanitized work product to review can add nuance to a candidate’s relevant experience where assessments offer only a score.

Be Open To Changing Processes

Even if the old ones served you well in the past. Agility means the willingness and the ability to quickly change processes and practices to meet the market’s demands and the customer’s needs.

It is understandable why the hiring manager may feel that waiting for the results of multiple interviews and testing to find the perfect candidate is the best way to service the customer. However, the customer may feel that having their product delivered on time or having someone in the seat of their customer liaison is the important factor, even if there is a little fine-tuning to be done.

Other changes — such as reducing the number of steps in the interview process, simplifying the online application and streamlining the offer and onboarding process — can take time to design and implement but will have a notable impact on the velocity and throughput of moving candidates through the pipeline.

Reallocate Money

Move some of the money no longer being spent on AAA office space. By leaving expensive office space behind, many companies anticipate putting those dollars back to the bottom line. But in the absence of an office environment to create synergies and a buzz around your culture of inclusiveness and learning, other things must be implemented to create cohesiveness. Dollars invested in employer branding, premium job postings, blogs and virtual recruiting events will come back to you.

Money invested in hosting tech symposiums, hack-a-thons and special events to make sure tech professionals see what innovations you are working on and the demand for your product will come back ten-fold. The more tech professionals who know who you are today, the more applicants you will get for the jobs you post tomorrow.

Applicant Base and Talent Communities

Use these shifts to build your candidate database and talent communities. Yes, 30 percent of all tech professionals will change jobs in the next year, and demand for their skills will rise by nearly 100 million jobs in just five years.

This is the long-awaited digital transformation accelerated by COVID and a need for companies to maintain functionality even when not under the same roof. This will increase applicant flow, and now is the time to get ready. Expect an increase in the number of overall applicants, which will make weeding through them more time-consuming.

Now is the perfect time to consider top end-of-funnel technologies and CRMs to track prospects’ career progression and include them in communities focused on their skills and locations. There are AI software solutions that reach out to every new job seeker in real-time, welcoming their application and standing by to answer basic questions.

There are also affordable, automated Q&A and video screening applications that can ask prescreening questions created by the recruiter or hiring manager. These help the recruiting team hone-in on hundreds of applicants to the handful with the best responses.

CRMs can manage ongoing outreach campaigns and track results over time, keeping former applicants, “silver medalists” (second choices) and coveted prospects engaged with the employer brand, new products and further innovation, waiting for the day when the prospect’s situation changes, and they reach out to you.

What better way to increase recruiting velocity and throughput than to have a pool of engaged and interested talent reaching out to you every time you post a new position?

Keep Learning

No doubt there is much more that can be done to increase recruiting velocity; please share your ideas or successes in the comments. One thing we surely can agree on — there is no magic wand to increase the speed or the number of candidates who move through the process. It’s up to us to find real-world working solutions.

Surprising Expectations Around Returning to Work

While most American workers have returned to the office, roughly half say they don’t want to go back. On top of that, a majority of those currently working from home expect their employers to require proof of vaccination and implement a mandatory mask policy when they return to the office.

A Harris poll commissioned by OfficeSpace Software found a majority of Americans (54%) who work in an office setting have returned to an office full time. However, half of those who went into an office before the pandemic (51%) don’t want to return five days a week.

When asked to identify which best describes their current employer’s plans for returning to the office – whether they’re already back in the office or plan to be at some point – the survey found 48% of Americans who work in an office, and whose employer changed their working environment due to COVID-19, said their organization expects them to return to the office full time, while 27% said their employer currently requires them to return to the office for part of the week.

When it comes to how they’d like their employer to handle the return to the office, it’s a mixed bag.

About one in five Americans who work in an office (17%) would like their company to allow them to decide where they work (in office, hybrid or fully remote), while 13% would prefer their company to require employees to spend most of their time working remotely. One notable finding: Some 41% would like their employer to expect them to return to the office full time, with the office looking and operating as it did before the pandemic, with minimal changes.

OfficeSpace CEO David Cocchiara wasn’t surprised by the results. Each of his customers, he said, is faced with unique challenges and employee needs as they create safe hybrid approaches to work. “Organizations continue to be challenged to strike the right balance in what the business needs and what their employees want,” he said. “There is no single approach that works for every organization”

Safe at Home

Employed Americans who worked in an office before the pandemic are divided about returning. About 47% want to work at an office five days a week, while 51% don’t. Women are less likely than men to want to go back full-time, 40% vs. 51%.

On the other hand, Americans agree on what they want from employers if they’re expected to return to the office.

71% strongly or somewhat agree their employer should require proof of vaccination.
70% strongly or somewhat agree employers should provide incentives for vaccinated employees.
70% strongly or somewhat agree there should be a mandatory mask policy regardless of vaccination status.

In addition, 43% strongly or somewhat agreed they would leave their job if their employer required them to go to the office every day. That’s down from December 2020, when a previous OfficeSpace survey found that 54% said they’d consider leaving their job if their employer required them to return to the workplace before they felt comfortable.

Finally, about personal interaction: When asked what they miss about the workplace, many Americans said they miss social time with colleagues (37%), in-person collaboration or meetings (29%) and a dedicated workspace/assigned seat (29%). At the same time, more than half (55%) said they don’t miss their commute at all.

How Google Became Google and the Case for the Four-Day Workweek

Tee-Shirts and the Four-Day Workweek

As was documented by the BBC, “Google’s success originated in one simple insight from its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They realized in the late 1990s that the sprawling, chaotic mass of material that was cascading onto the World Wide Web could be tamed by ranking search results according to their popularity.”

They took something complex and they made it simple. It was a morse code-level breakthrough. Now that they had their business idea, they needed people to make it work.

Not just people. People with very specific skills. People that they could not afford.

Does this at all sound familiar?

Pour Me a Pint

So Google did what innovators do. They simplified and streamlined part of the work environment. Don’t want to wear a tie or heels? Come to Google. We wear jeans in the office, like maniacs right, or so it was thought. How you dress determines how you behave, was the reasoning. Google disrupted corporate culture as much as it did search.

Google was able to see something beyond the employee satisfaction survey blind spots of the time. People didn’t want casual Friday. They wanted casual every day.

Google became Google by finding and exploiting the blind spots of its competitors. They found a way to give their customers, in this case, the talent they needed, something they didn’t know they wanted until the very second that they heard it. Casual every day and beers in the fridge.

And yes, this was 100% not just a thing but the thing. When I started my career as an agency recruiter back in the stone ages known as the early 2000s, I wore a suit and tie to the office every day.

Google said, come in a t-shirt, flip flops. We have a pool table and stocked beer. And you know what? For the price of allowing people to wear what they want and a few brews, they got some of the best minds available and were able to turn Google from an idea into a multi-billion dollar empire.

“Don’t be evil.”

So, What’s Your Point?

So how does that relate to the market today? I’m sure many of you already know. The next Google is out there thinking, I’ve got this very specific idea to take something very complex and make it very simple, The problem is, I need people. And not just people, but people with a very specific set of skills, skills I can’t afford.

Didn’t we just leave this story? How do I get Google’s talent so I can become the next Google? What can I offer that won’t cost me any more than flip flops, t-shirts and a few beers… oh, I know.

Enter the Four-day Workweek

This may come as a shock to those of us in TA, but serious companies and serious people have already begun to explore a four-day workweek.

Many of us in the industry are familiar with Microsoft’s experiment with a four-day workweek in Japan in 2019. The old proverb, “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” seems to runneth over to your bottom line.

Microsoft publicly shared that their productivity increased by 40%

While the idea has been around for a while it is worth noting that the intensity of talk about this has increased even in the last 30 days.

Specifically,

Kickstarter will test a four-day workweek in 2022, will your workplace be next?

Followed by,

The 40-hour workweek isn’t working. Reducing it could help with productivity.

Then,

Eidos Montreal becomes first AAA studio to adopt a 4-day workweek.

Those of us who grew weary of the analogy of “the war for talent” will hear nothing more than the familiar sound of mortar fire. Thud. One start-up goes to a four-day workweek. Thud. Another one does. Thud. Another one does.

This is a war of attrition and anyone who has read “The Innovator’s Dilemma” knows how this story ends. If you don’t, ask Sears, K-mart, Blockbuster…

The Good News

This isn’t a war for talent; this is a war for change.

For those of you who don’t have the time at the moment to read “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” the point of the story is this: The best-run companies in the world are ultimately undone because they become too good at delivering for their customers.

They become symbiotic, and the thing about symbiosis is that in developing that connection, you don’t spend the energy or focus on innovating. You simply iterate and what inevitably ends up happening is that someone else is able to give your client something new, something they’ve never experienced before, something they didn’t even know they wanted until just now.

What Do We Want?

What workers at Google and Facebook and the K-marts and Sears of our day want is something different from what they thought. The surveys all say the No. 1 thing that people want in a job is compensation. There is a blind spot in the survey. Time is never given as an option.

What the innovators have rediscovered is that the thing they can offer is time. This has been masquerading as “work-life balance” in the survey, the same way casual Friday masqueraded as the actual desire for casual every day.

In modern parlance work–life balance translates to, “I’m reclaiming my time.”

Time!

Google made billions of dollars saving humanity trillionths of a second. What will the company that saves humanity eight hours be worth? E = MC2. The physics of innovation suggests that we exchange our time for money.

If I can’t climb Mount Money to get the talent I need, what can I do to attract it? I know the one thing I have as much of as Google. The one thing we all are equal in.

I can offer you time.

This idea is hardly new. We typically think of a five-day workweek as being “standard,” but that was not the case for most of history. Before the worker riots that are memorialized by labor day in the U.S. took place, a six-day workweek was standard and workplace safety was not a phrase that existed.

Innovation doesn’t necessarily need to be new, it just has to be different. The smartphone is an example most of us are familiar with.

The (R)Evolution at Hand

Over 150 years ago, Charles Darwin outlined the same principle in his book “The Origin of Species,” where he said, “It is not the strongest of the species (corporations) that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

The lesson of history is that large, well-run companies fail because they are unable to change their delivery as fast as their customers change what they demand. After a disaster, there is always a rapid period of change.

We Want it Now (or Pretty Soon)

Humanity has suffered a collective trauma the likes of which has not been experienced in most of living memory. Humanity has had a moment of pause. We stopped for a minute and when we did, the sky cleared up and the animals returned and we had time to notice.

And after all, wasn’t that the sales pitch for technology all those thousands of years ago? The point was to give us time. Time when we didn’t have to focus on taking care of our immediate needs or the needs of others. Time to explore, time to relax, time to connect, time to sleep, time to think.

Oh look, it’s something new, something you’ve never experienced before and something you didn’t even know you wanted until just now. The demand for talent is going to make us appreciate the value of time. And now O. Henry and Alanis Morrissette, behold your baby.

Why Talent Retention is the Competitive Differentiator in Today’s Workforce

The Escalating “Talent War”

Attracting and retaining top talent has become more challenging than ever with the labor shortage and people leaving the workforce due to COVID-19. Optionality around where to work, competitive pay and benefits and work/life balance have become bargaining chips that translate to employee satisfaction and reduced costly turnover for companies.

“The Great Resignation” is top-of-mind for HR professionals as employees are quitting their jobs and switching companies, and even career paths, in droves catalyzed by remote work and the pandemic, both of which gave employees the time outside of the office to reflect on what’s best for them when it comes to a career.

This shift has all but forced employers to prioritize employee satisfaction and flexibility of choice or risk losing top talent to another company that will.

Numbers Speak

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, hiring lept back up in August 2021, with monthly job growth averaging 586,000. But job openings continue to rise, and the time to fill these roles lengthens.

Among the unemployed, the number of job-leavers (unemployed persons who quit or voluntarily left their previous job and began looking for new employment) increased by 164,000 to 942,000 in the summer.

Further, a recent poll of US workers found that 95 percent of workers said they are thinking about looking for a new job, indicating the job market could continue to present hiring challenges for HR and talent acquisition professionals for the foreseeable future.

Remote Benefits

A recent survey from Brazen found that 39 percent of respondents would look for a new job if their current employer did not offer a remote work option. Remote and hybrid work flexibility has emerged as a highly coveted and expected benefit for employees, along with excellent healthcare plans (including mental health), more PTO and sick time, maternity and paternity leave and long-term health leave.

Offering employees the option to work remotely has become all but imperative, however, the distributed workforce has made recruiting more competitive, with employers no longer being limited to local talent pools. In this employees’ market, these perks are quickly becoming non-negotiables and employers need to listen.

Engagement and Retention

Employee turnover is incredibly expensive for employers, and according to Glassdoor, the average company in the US spends about $4,000 to hire a new employee, taking up to 52 days to fill a position. Further, an average company loses anywhere between 1% and 2.5% of their total revenue on the time it takes to bring a new hire up to speed.

As companies are increasingly hiring and onboarding new employees virtually, talent acquisition teams need to ensure candidate engagement and experience remains a top priority for talent retention and success.

For candidates, the first impression with a company is crucial. If candidates leave the interview feeling refreshed and excited by the new role, that positive experience will carry into the onboarding and day-to-day work life, and serve as a key tool in retention.

Revamp the Interview Process

Recruiting is an important, and often overlooked first step in retention, and talent acquisition teams that make interviewing a thoughtful, engaging and positive experience will build stronger and withstanding teams.

Some tactics for making the recruitment and interviewing process pleasant and memorable include:

Timely Follow-ups

Don’t make the candidate hunt down the recruiter for updates and next steps. Be proactive, transparent and communicative every step of the way.

Be Approachable & Available

Make candidates feel welcome and comfortable to follow up with questions or feedback following the interview. In the moment, important questions may slip their mind, but having the opportunity to get back in touch could determine if the candidate ultimately takes the job.

Share Company Values and Mission

The interview is the first impression for candidates to get to know a company and vice versa. Recruiters should share company values and mission statements early on to attract people who align with them and can enhance company culture.

Leverage Talent Network Groups

Connecting with employee resource groups and diversity networks helps recruiters tap into new talent pools and build diverse teams from qualified and engaged sources of talent.

It’s important for recruiters to also look for signs of dissatisfaction among employees once they’ve joined the team, such as information overload and burnout. These are serious and common outcomes of a remote workforce, and it’s important for employers to create a culture that is transparent when it comes to communicating expectations and boundaries around work/life balance.

Maintain It

While remote-enablement and internal communications technology can be distracting and lead to burnout if used wisely and with firm boundaries, it can be an incredible asset to a company and help employees feel engaged and connected with their peers. Additionally, clear internal communication results in a better learning experience, and ultimately a more engaged, productive and satisfied workforce.

Today’s hiring landscape is more competitive than ever and losing out on top talent literally impacts the bottom line, as a company’s output is only as good as the talent behind it.

For those companies that do experience high levels of post-pandemic turnover, time and money will likely be sunk into new employee training and onboarding, all while working to prevent burnout and further turnover with the existing employees picking up the slack of departed peers and ramping up new talent.

As we sit at the tip of the great resignation iceberg, there are a few crucial steps companies can take to retain talent at a time when it matters most. Leverage virtual technology solutions, embrace the hybrid workforce and offer other coveted benefits, spot burnout and listen to the wants and needs of existing employees.

Tech Recruiting Velocity in a Candidate Market: Part Two

Agility and Velocity in Tech Recruiting

Welcome to part two of a three-part series written to help you shift into high-speed recruiting in a candidate’s market.

In the first piece of this trilogy, we discussed prioritization and the steps needed to put recruiting at the top of your team’s list. “Executive leadership must declare that recruiting takes precedence for both the short-term and long-term ability to meet customer needs and company growth demands.”

Here, we’ll focus on the small adjustments that can be done to maintain recruiting velocity and improve candidate experience and throughput.

Part Two: Agility

Agile. This means the ability to adjust to current market conditions and customer demands in real-time in order to deliver results quickly while maintaining quality and service standards.

In other words, turn on a dime for the sake of satisfying customer demand, even if that means abandoning prior processes and so-called “best practices.” These pointers can seem like common sense in an agile mindset and are simple to initiate. However, they can feel like major overhauls to organizations married to the structure.

Keep these concepts in mind:

Goldilocks Syndrome

This one’s too tall. That one’s too small. This one’s too high. That one’s just right.

Like Goldilocks, companies are looking for a perfect fit for culture and skills. Let’s face it — not everyone in the workforce is “A” talent, but that does not mean that every position at every level has to be filled by an “A” candidate to perform the job’s duties.

Companies spend a disproportionate amount of money and time compared to their return on these methods of evaluation. In this market, don’t expect to see an endless tunnel of candidates. Too often, amply qualified candidates are lost while employers wait for more applicants and directly sourced prospects. Either they possess the skills and experience to perform the duties of the position, or they don’t.

If they do, hire them.

What You Say Matters

Job postings, correspondences during the interview process and even rejection letters matter — a lot. What a candidate perceives defines your company.

Cluttered job postings with biased language, jargon and industry clichés can drive off the most talented and diverse individuals. Bias is real, and though you might not overtly say anything inappropriate or mean-spirited, your tone, innuendo and nonverbal communication on a Zoom interview can be just as loud.

Having a clear and concise job posting that has been checked for bias will encourage a better quality of candidates to apply and reduce the number of non-qualified candidates, each of which has to be reviewed and rejected by a recruiter.

A requisition that gets several hundred applicants can take hours to read through. These are hours that can be spent sourcing or giving a candidate more of a concierge’s level of service.

On the other end of the process, no one loves rejection letters, but wording such as “have decided not to move forward” seems finite and discourages applicants from applying again — ever. Instead, leave the door open and invite them to keep looking. “We found someone who was ideally qualified for this opening, but keep looking. Chances are at some point there will be an opening ideally suited for you,” is an honest but open-ended approach to letting a candidate know they are no longer being considered for a particular role they applied for.

Concierge Service for Candidates

A candidate-driven market means that companies no longer call the shots. It is estimated that most professionals in tech are getting 10-15 recruiter touches each week. That’s as many as 60 per month. When you think about it this way, you’ll understand why we are addressing maintaining velocity in the process.

Every day that passes allows at least one or more new opportunities to be presented to your applicant.

They will also want to know why they should work for your company. If this is not addressed throughout the entire interview process, those companies that do present well will win over the talent.

We have to make candidates feel as important as they are. If the hiring manager wants to draw in a prospect, have them reach out early in the sourcing outreaches. In a candidate-driven market, interviews for all candidates should take on a sales feel more than a traditional grilling over every possible aspect of the job.

Suppose the impression is that the environment is hypercritical or presents as elitist. That will repel a variety of talent groups and personas who are exceptionally skilled but overly critical of their own work.

Expand Your Perimeters

The shift toward working at home permanently has opened entirely new pockets of talent to be explored all over the world.

In the U.S. many tech companies were huddled around a few cities, often higher cost of living areas, offering higher comp and incentives to be competitive. But there are highly skilled professionals in other areas of the country that are not as expensive, such as Raleigh, Charlotte, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, to name a few.

Even more remote locations like Bloomington, IN, or Binghamton, NY, have pockets of talent to feed giants like IBM. The Global market is the same, opening talent pools outside of the high-cost cities of Paris and London and the competitiveness of Bucharest and parts of Asia.

Fresh applicant pools mean less competition for more motivated, equally skilled, less expensive talent, increasing the throughput and velocity.

Stay Fresh

Deeper talent pools, personalized care for your candidates, not only watching but actively eliminating bias and staying open-minded to fit will all strengthen the agility of your hiring process. When considering velocity, agility will help push your team forward during The Great Recession and beyond.

Stay tuned next week for the third part of this three-piece series, where we’ll discuss how to shift and adapt with more complex situations.

Hiring Plans Go Beyond Great Resignation’s Impact

More than three-quarters, or 78%, of businesses plan to increase their hiring during 2021’s second half, according to a survey commissioned by Greenhouse. At the same time, 68% expect attrition to increase, and more than half, 53%, agree that the primary cause of turnover is employees wanting to have better work-life balance.

This surge in hiring goes beyond making up for lost headcount and resignations. Over 60% of the C-suite leaders and HR executives surveyed said they plan to increase headcount by 50% or more during the second half. While 33% of new job postings are meant to return staffing to pre-COVID levels, 60% will be for new roles.

The concern about hiring goes all the way to the top. Some 84% of the business leaders believe that hiring is a top priority for their CEO.

That’s all well and good, but any rumors you’ve heard about this being a candidate’s market are true, the survey found. “With demand for talent so high, the power is now in candidates’ hands,” Greenhouse said. That means employers have a new set of demands to address if they want to find people to hire. Of the most popular benefits candidates mention, the survey said, 63% want a flexible work schedule, 57% want the option of hybrid or remote working and only 12% are looking for in-office perks.

Realistic Recruiting

To keep themselves afloat, businesses need a structured process that’s also up to date, said Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait. “Businesses that have a copy and paste strategy are bringing an old playbook to a new game,” he said. “It’s a recipe for disaster, and cuts out many great candidates.”

Meanwhile, as companies lay out plans for the post-pandemic workplace, employees aren’t prepared to stick around if businesses don’t take an approach they consider reasonable. Disagreement with company return-to-office plans could be a leading cause of attrition, with 33% of respondents predicting this will have an impact on employee churn, the survey found.

What steps are businesses taking to combat churn within their ranks? Almost three-quarters, 71%, intend to increase or expand existing benefits, while 59% plan to introduce a new bonus scheme and 56% are considering giving employees more time-off.

“Leaders need to understand that people have more choices [of] where to work than ever before,” said Chait. “Your hiring strategy needs to create a culture of purpose, where people feel they belong and can express their identity. Ultimately, your hiring problems become your retention problems, and vice versa.”

The Great Big Distracting Wave

When we talk about the progression of COVID-19, we often talk in terms of waves. The first wave, the second wave and so on. Parallel to this thinking, we’ve seen narrative waves take over the media and public consciousness. Last year it was the “she-cession,” as women and caregivers exited the workforce en masse. This year, it’s the “Great Resignation.”

If you attended the 2021 HR Technology Conference, you already know that this cringe-worthy turn of phrase would make for a dangerous drinking game, based on the number of times it was repeated throughout the week.

The problem with the Great Resignation is that it goes deeper than the blatant abuse of branding. It’s distracting from a much larger issue – there’s a labor uprising taking place. Now, usually, when we think about uprisings, our minds wander to images of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, newsies singing about “papes” or soot-covered workers striking in the streets.

In the words of Gil Scott Heron, the revolution will not be televised. What’s happening with today’s workforce is less overt but just as real, and here’s why: The pandemic forced the collective realization that we can’t continue to work under the conditions we’ve created. Read that again.

We created these conditions – conditions that left workers with few choices and even less autonomy. Employers expected engagement with minimal benefit to employees beyond basic survival. The global health crisis only exacerbated an already dire situation – to the extent that some workers had to choose between their health and safety and paying bills. It’s a modern-day struggle akin to the battle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

So why are we overlooking what’s really going on? For one thing, we keep hearing from the wrong voices. Much of the Great Resignation storyline quotes the C-Suite, rather than workers, organizers, recruiters or HR professionals.

Case in point: A recent spate of articles that featured insights from Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. The coverage pointed to a speech Houston gave about the end of the 40-hour workweek, where he said, “The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person.”

There’s a lot of context missing here, with Houston’s comments geared toward knowledge workers, the folks who can work from anywhere, anytime and don’t apply to trade or service industry jobs. But worse, these comments intentionally exclude the majority of the workforce impacted by the so-called Great Resignation, and that’s a problem. No wonder there’s a revolt in progress – subtle as it may be.

A recent Vox piece attempted to reframe the resignation narrative, citing Tim Brackney’s opinion that we’re experiencing a “great mismatch” in terms of desires, experience and skills. Brackney is president and COO of a management consulting firm, and while his take gets us a little closer to what’s going on, it’s not quite right. If Houston was too narrow, Brackney is too broad. At the conference, Marcus Buckingham presented the “Great HR Reset and Reinvention,” while Ben Eubanks called it the “Great Reprioritzation.”

The reality of this moment is somewhere between these expressions, representative of the need to disconnect work from life. Does that make this the “great disconnect?” No. The disconnect has existed for decades, the struggle to separate our work from our worth is nothing new – the pandemic is simply the agitator.

So, while women are giving up their careers, men are opting out of college and people everywhere are checked out or burned out, all the C-Suite can talk about is how people resigning affects their organizations. Further complicating matters is what candidates know and understand about the use of technology in the workplace, particularly in hiring.

Headlines like “Automated-hiring systems are excluding many people from job discussions at a time when additional employees are desperately needed” are contributing to the idea that it’s us vs. them, employer vs. employee, recruiter vs. job seeker. Some within talent acquisition are rallying against this – likely why we heard little about AI at this year’s conference. There’s a need to connect and protect, and that requires more humanity.

How the world worked before 2020 is no longer relevant, and most employers are struggling to come to terms with that. At the core of what’s going on, the problems remain the same. It’s that disconnect that’s growing faster. In practice, the technologies we use for recruiting, retention, culture, engagement, experience and so on are all good and well if people’s needs get met. If we fail to establish a solid base, the entire structure will fall, and fixating on the Great Whatever feels like one more wave that will wipe us out.

Manufacturers Pursue Gen Z Employees by ‘Aligning’ With Candidate Needs

Members of Gen Z want to work in places where they have a sense of belonging, can develop a career path, and feel valued and trusted. Many believe they’ve found what they’re looking for in manufacturing.

Research by HCM solution provider UKG, in partnership with IndustryWeek, found that 92% of the Gen Z talent employed within manufacturing are satisfied with their current careers.

Kylene Zenk, director of UKG’s manufacturing practice, said that 88% of manufacturers view attracting Gen Z as a high or very high priority. “Many of [them] are straining to build a talent pipeline while nurturing their current workforce and navigating their recoveries from the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

Gen Z and HR Align

Manufacturers face intense pressure to attract and retain next-gen workers, the report said. Three in four say finding and keeping talent (75%) and keeping it (74%) is difficult. Just more than a third (34%) feel like they lag behind their peers.

For all the pressure on talent acquisition, the report said HR’s job has grown particularly difficult because Gen Z expects a wide range of benefits and opportunities. Gen Z considers all of these to be “extremely” or “very” important: good pay (75%), opportunities for advancement (72%) and work-life balance (71%), having a great boss (71%), schedule flexibility (70%) and competitive benefits (70%).

The report, titled the 2021 Future Manufacturing Workforce Study examines comments from HR leaders and Gen Z employees throughout the industry. The research informs five key HR strategies to succeed in recruiting and retaining Gen Z:

Create a seamless onboarding experience that rolls into an actionable training and development plan. Clear goals and transparent career paths drive job satisfaction for 67% of Gen Z, while 28% say opportunities for advancement are “extremely important.”
It’s not all about pay: Prioritize work-life balance by offering competitive time off and flexible work schedules. Work-life balance ranks high on Gen Z’s career wish list. More time off (31%) and flexible scheduling options (22%) are among the top three reasons an otherwise-satisfied Gen Z employee would change jobs.
Use HR and workforce data to examine catalysts for Gen Z turnover. The majority of HR leaders (77%) report that between 11% and 20% of their Gen Z workforce turns over annually. For example, understanding whether turnover is higher in a certain location or under a certain supervisor enables organizations to reverse unfavorable trends.
Engage digital natives with modern, consumer-grade technology. In their personal lives, Gen Z has always had access to information when and where they need it. That means it’s imperative for manufacturers to satisfy workplace expectations for technology. But there’s a long way to go, the report found: Only 41% of manufacturing’s Gen Z employees can swap a shift or check work schedules from a mobile device.
Create more opportunities for Gen Z to interact with management and build trust on the job. In seeking advancement, Gen Z wants recognition and respect (70%), and to receive feedback on their performance (69%). Only 35% feel that they get adequate face time with their direct supervisor.

“A one-size-fits-all approach to hiring no longer works,” said Zenk. “It’s imperative that HR is tailoring its messaging and recruitment initiatives depending on who they’re targeting.”

Among HR leaders, the most common strategies used to attract Gen Z involve collaboration with local schools and colleges, said Russell Richey, research director at Endeavor Business Media, IndustryWeek’s parent. “Fifty-three percent are involved in developing programs and coursework that help teach students real-world technical skills related to manufacturing work. This bodes well for the future of manufacturing.”

You can download the report here.

iCIMS Launches Marketplace to Aid Internal Mobility

iCIMS announced the Internal Opportunity Marketplace, a new module that connects employees to internal job opportunities and helps them build a long-term career within their current company. The Marketplace is designed to help talent professionals and hiring teams improve internal talent mobility programs and agile talent deployment, the company said.

The solution is designed to remove the complexities often embedded in talent advancement to help improve an organization’s retention and reduce the potential cost of turnover. Essentially, iCIMS has taken its candidate experience and applied it to the employee experience, then added capabilities to improve retention and reduce “mobility friction.”

New capabilities within the Opportunity Marketplace for employees will include:

Opportunity insight from employee-generated video that provides a look at opportunities and team culture.
Better employee engagement with iCIMS Digital Assistant, which will automatically engage employees for potential opportunities and skill development.
Employee control over career paths and journeys with skills and opportunity management.

For hiring managers and talent teams experiences:

Skills-based employee-opportunity matching to automatically identify ideal internal candidates for new opportunities, reducing manual efforts.
Greater visibility into employee skills.
Improved insight and support for organizational DEI initiatives.

“With job openings up nearly 80% and job applications only up 5% since the beginning of the year, employers are feeling the impact of the most significant restructuring, redistribution and rehire of labor in history,” said ICIMS Vice President of Portfolio Marketing Mark Brandau. “In this unusual labor market environment, employees have many options, making it crucial for talent leaders to stay connected to current employees and prioritize employee experience.”

In research presented by iCIMS, Deloitte reported that 49% of employers lack the processes they need to identify and move employees into different positions within the organization. Research from IDC’s 2020 Annual Talent Acquisition Buyer Survey found that 57% of buyers view internal mobility and talent marketplace solutions as a high priority investment for 2021.

Tech Recruiting Velocity in a Candidate Market: Part One

The pandemic has proven that digitalization has been here all along. We simply needed to use it. With the sudden radical call for new technology to support hybrid and remote workforces, there has understandably been an explosion of demand for tech talent. Considering the requirements for talent, standing beneath a looming Great Recession has undoubtedly peaked concern in the tech recruiting industry.

It’s not going away anytime soon, either. A Microsoft report earlier this year stated “tech-oriented” jobs would increase from 41 million in 2020 to over 140 million by 2025.

There has not been a higher requirement for tech professionals since the 1990s web boom. And with more companies adopting work-from-home and hybrid models, talent is on the move. Some estimate that 30% of the entire tech workforce will change jobs in the next year.

This will create chaos but, simultaneously, an opportunity to snag new talent fresh on the market. The competition in this candidate-driven market is fierce, forcing companies to rethink how to put the candidate experience first, how they recruit and who they hire, sometimes turning to training and apprenticeship programs.

Agile organizations who are willing to part with legacy processes and adopt new, candidate-focused recruiting and hiring practices will surely reap the benefits.

Velocity means just that; how long it takes a candidate to pass through any single step will directly affect how many actually complete the interview process and even get to an offer stage.

This is the first of a three-part series that will help you shift into high-speed recruiting.

Part One: Prioritize

Executive leadership must declare that recruiting takes precedence for both the short-term and long-term ability to meet customer needs and company growth demands.

Put these policies in action:

Adopt a 24-48 Hour Response Time

We’re all busy, and it’s easy for work to pile up. Before we know it, we are a page of email behind. But when a position goes unfilled, a full inbox can become a tsunami and affect overall productivity and customer satisfaction.

Adopting an agreement between all persons involved in the interview to agree to 24-48 hours of hiring process reduces bottlenecks.

It’s up to managers to enforce this and practice it, as well. Candidate reviews should be returned to the recruiter in that 48-hour timeframe. Any delay means another company has a legitimate shot at snagging a potentially great prospect.

Show Up and Stay Engaged

Recruiters, hiring managers and interview panel members should equally understand that if they reschedule, they lose time and velocity. Plus, a candidate may perceive that they’re not a top contender and move along because, well, they have options.

Keeping your appointments and making people feel valuable and important during the interview process is critical. But in a candidate-driven market, we must allow flexibility to make sure we don’t spend a week waiting for an available time slot.

Candidate engagement is crucial. Hiring manager outreach is an effective ice breaker because it allows a high-level, low-key assessment of the individual. It also allows the applicant to communicate on a deeper level and gather enough insight to ask detailed questions about the position, which could spark more interest or shift them to withdraw earlier in the process.

Prepare Offers and Negotiations

A real offer is often the first time your candidate will stop and weigh their options. Give the recruiter a little power to negotiate so time is not wasted in the approval process.

In this heated race, don’t be surprised if four or five offers hit a candidate at once and stall acceptance. Sign-on bonuses for key roles can help solidify more urgent offers. Even consider offering to double the sign-on amount if they accept on the spot and show up the first day of work.

You’re Optional

No one likes to hear those words, but it is the harsh reality of a candidate-driven, tech recruiting market. Much like any other relationship, prioritizing and staying considerate of your candidates’ time, interest, attention and value helps create confidence and a better candidate experience. To say that this dynamic is critical now more than ever is an understatement.

Stay tuned for part two of this three-part series, where we’ll discuss agility, bias, demographics and more.

Aligning Benefits to a Post-Pandemic Reality

As HRTech opens doors and digital portals for its second conference of the COVID era, there stands a big unmasked but most likely vaccinated elephant: The Great Resignation. Fifty-five percent of the American workforce are looking for another job. It’s a stunning stat.

Departments responsible for employee engagement and retention are managing an especially difficult environment, in which more than half of their employees have openly disengaged.

This would put a crimp in anyone’s trip to the metaphorical blackjack table this week. In reality, the Great Resignation presents a serious existential challenge to HR.

In contrast, HRTech offers an excellent opportunity for Human Resources to reset the agenda for the remainder of this year and into 2022. Perhaps our radically shifting workforce is simply a result of the prominent challenges facing HR departments. COVID threw us all for a loop, and most of HR has been at the center of trying to keep businesses functioning.

This all begs the question: Can more holistic benefits stem the tide of employee disengagement and stop the Great Resignation?

Putting It in Perspective

It’s helpful here to paraphrase NBA coach and general manager Pat Riley, who won championships with the LA Lakers and Miami Heat, and overachieved with the New York Knicks. He was referencing the importance of preparation. For our purposes, let’s say that “innovating around benefits may not keep your employees during this period, but without them, you don’t stand a chance.”

Riley, even when paraphrased, is spot on. This vast stagnation will only perpetuate the Great Resignation. But first, let’s take an honest look at how we got here, because it provides some clues to the future.

At this time in 2019, COVID wasn’t even a rumor. The Conference Board reported that job satisfaction was at its highest level in two decades — 54%. However, the reasons people liked their jobs were fascinating: 60% said it was because of the commute, and 60% said it was because of the people.

Just six months later, one of those would be erased, and the other would be relegated to computer screens.

Here’s What Happened

In 2020, job satisfaction went up to 56.9%, because in the presence of crisis and the absence of people, benefits became the most important job reward. They enhanced the lifeline between employee and employer. In some ways, they became the salvation between a team member and mental, physical and financial health.

Now the world finds itself in the precarious position of psychologically moving past the pandemic, even though it is still lurking in some regions and is still as lethal as ever in others. The areas that have moved on are the business centers: major cities — outside of the American South — that perpetuated high vaccination rates and low infection rates. It’s no surprise that resignation rates are high there, as well.

So back to the question at hand: Can benefits stop the Great Resignation? We believe they can. With that said, we can’t continue to push the same old benefits packages.

The Great Resignation has been arguably caused by the most sweeping societal and business disruption since World War II. HR must respond in kind. Your employees’ work lives and personal lives have been changed dramatically.

We gather that the following three actions will provide a good platform to produce the bold actions necessary to make benefits a more positive retention factor.

Quantify The Potential Problem

Take a data-driven approach to the problem. The national job departure average is 55%. That doesn’t mean your employees are looking to walk out the door, but you should act as if they are. Be honest. Act like you have a retention crisis and identify at-risk employees. Are they taking a lot of personal days? More active on LinkedIn? These behaviors would indicate a level of dissatisfaction with their current job. Maybe HR could form a cohort to study and match with benefit package upgrades, such as spot bonuses.

Also, understand that the past year has accelerated some logical trends. According to the Harvard Business Review, resignations have been driven by employees who are in the middle of their careers. That could possibly be because they’re easier to train in a remote environment, whereas new hires need to hit the ground running. HBR also found that withdrawals are higher in the tech and healthcare fields, where burnout has been the most intense over the past 18 months.

Expand and Customize

A lot of benefits packages give lip service to “the whole you” or “a holistic approach to benefits.” It’s time to walk the walk.

The pandemic has shown intimate detail about every employee and their needs, as well as their family when relevant. Post-pandemic benefits plans should capitalize on this. Remember: “Disruption” is the operative word.

If data shows that 36% of your workforce has accessed mental health benefits during the pandemic, consult with professionals as to how those benefits should be upgraded for those who are continuing with counseling.

Likewise, earned wage benefits are more critical for employees at the lower end of the salary spectrum or for those with larger households. Provide dashboards to help them do the math and build financial management plans.

Get Your Team Together

Post-pandemic perks are not an HR problem — they are a cross-departmental opportunity. HR and Payroll can provide spot bonus programs, automatic savings programs, earned wage access, on-demand pay and other features that turn payroll into an experience over a transaction.

HR and the C-suite can transform the old school town hall into a more interactive practice with an open discussion about benefits. Say the quiet parts aloud. How can we help you recover from the past 18 months? What’s important about your work experience now that wasn’t important two years ago?

Bottom line: Get on the case. The Great Resignation will most likely level off — but don’t miss the opportunity to align benefits with the new reality of the post-pandemic workforce.

LeadGrabber Pro + LinkedIn for Bulk Prospecting

LeadGrabber Pro dons itself as “the world’s best B2B prospecting tool” on the market. It allows you to find contacts who match your model customer or candidate profile using various applications. In terms of sourcing, it’s the veritable bee’s knees, allowing you to pull from websites and job listings en masse without breaking a sweat.

In this video, Dean Da Costa covers LeadGrabber Pro plus LinkedIn. The tool claims to speed up LinkedIn sourcing up to 20 times faster than professional researchers. In addition, LeadGrabber states it delivers a 30 percent higher rate of verified, or clean, information.

What’s more, Leadgrabber Pro + LinkedIn allows you to narrow your contact lists by title, location, industry, connections, company — you name it — to build highly targeted niche leads.

There is a lot more to this tool than what we can list here without robbing you of your Dean Da Costa video experience, so have a look and let us know what you think. And if you missed our last video, check it this humanpredictions update Dean covered last week.

LeadGrabber Pro + LinkedIn

As an overview, LeadGrabber Pro + LinkedIn enables you to:

Identify & reach your ideal contacts faster
Custom build targeted contact lists with verified information in minutes
Eliminate copy/paste with instant CRM/ATS transfer
Save a load of time and money

Download their 50-contact free trial here, request a demo at the bottom of this page or navigate to the LeadGrabber product page for a list of all tools and updates.

Keep an eye open for upcoming LeadGrabber Pro strategy videos from Dean.

Is Slack’s Green Light Causing Anxiety for Your Team?

The Green Light Isn’t an Indicator of Productivity

Green lights like those found in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Skype have become a staple in the world of remote productivity, but it’s at best a superficial measure of productivity and, at worst, a major distraction.

Employees can’t focus on their actual work if they are constantly worried about their green light. Many managers are worried about the productivity of their remote workers and want a good way to measure it, but it’s much more complicated than simply checking to see if someone’s green light is on.

Problems With the Green Light Method

As the green light has become a measure for employee productivity, there have been tons of articles about how to keep the green light on and memes about how distracting the platform can be. Some people are even building or employing applications or other creative solutions to move their mouses every so often to make themselves look productive.

But it’s important to remember that an employee’s green light will always be on if they’re just chatting on Slack all day. Clearly, that’s not productive behavior. If you’re measuring by their green light, though, they may seem like your most prolific employee.

On the other hand, very productive employees may not always be “on.” They may be in other applications that cause them to appear “away” on Slack or Teams, even though they’re really hard at work.

How To Make Slack and Similar Apps Less Distracting

Luckily, it is possible to limit some of the distractions that Slack and similar apps can cause. One option is to mute channels, especially any that are just for fun, so you won’t get distracted by the notifications. This allows you to keep notifications on for important updates, but new memes won’t interrupt your flow. If you need to, you can also turn off all of your notifications.

Another option is to use status updates to let coworkers know when you’re unavailable. Some people use them to denote deep work, so their colleagues won’t send them messages unless it’s an emergency. Others use them to let their team know they’re away from their desk, so they’ll understand why they’re not getting a response right away.

Building Good Communication in the Workplace

Productivity goes far beyond whether or not someone is available on Slack or Teams, though. It also comes down to good communication.

As a manager, you have to set clear expectations early and stick to them. Put them in writing or even add them to a policy guide, but make sure all of your direct reports know what’s expected of them from day one.

It’s also important that companies use the right channels for different messages. If a message isn’t urgent, email is a great option, so employees can get to it when they have time. And for complicated topics, you should probably hop on a call or schedule a meeting.

For instant messaging platforms, don’t tag someone in a channel unless it’s urgent.

Setting Healthy Boundaries at Work

As a manager, you need to lead by example and set healthy boundaries at work, so your employees know that they’re well within their rights to do the same. Instant messages don’t necessarily require instant responses. Non-urgent requests can be ignored when you’re focused on something more important.

A boundary like this can help you be more productive and feel less frustrated during work. Additionally, remote work requires some level of trust. Don’t micromanage your team or bother them about it if their green light does go out.

Trust is an important part of making employees feel valued. If they’re tediously being controlled, your employees are going to feel tense and underappreciated.

Distinguishing Between Productive and Busy

Busy and productive don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. If a chronically busy employee isn’t consistently getting their work done on time, then they aren’t being productive, regardless of whether their green light is on or not. Similarly, an employee who regularly provides quality, punctual work is a productive member of your team. It shouldn’t matter if their green light is always on.

5 Ways Talent Acquisition Leaders are Solving Real-World Talent Challenges

ATAP Talent Acquisition Leaders

It was a pleasure to celebrate Global Talent Acquisition Day speaking to such an engaging panel of talent acquisition leaders. Among Moderna’s April Eldred, Kathy Erickson of Financial Force, Shelley Jeffcoat of LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group and Tom Hopcroft, president and CEO of Mass Technology Leadership Council, we discussed the uncertainty the past 18 months have brought for talent acquisition functions.

The complexities surrounding establishing achievable DEI goals, attrition, communicating values and culture and moving on from traditional but increasingly ineffective ways of recruiting were all debated. In a corresponding poll we conducted, it was found that 44 percent of talent leaders felt that their biggest challenge was sourcing talent fast enough, and the panel agreed.

However, it’s fair to say that among such a great panel of talent acquisition leaders, the solutions and innovation discussed were by far the highlights. Here are five key takeaways that really stood out.

April Eldred

Vice President of Talent Acquisition, Moderna

“We know as a business that traditional ways of recruiting just aren’t going to get us where we need to go. The past year and a half has been a time of extraordinary growth. We ended 2019 with more than 800 employees, and today we have more than 1,800, having gone from one country to more than a dozen countries in that time.

“To manage talent acquisition during this time, my team and I have used a data-led approach, looking at the market and at talent data. When you need to make a billion doses of a vaccine, and there are only so many people with a skill set that you need, it’s essential to find out where the skill sets live. We’ve leveraged data in order to differentiate and get in front of the right talent. It’s been extremely effective. We’ve been able to bring the business along on our journey, showing them the data, how we’re going to pivot and the results of our data-driven approach.

“Data is also fed into our online digital virtual event platform, which we’ve been using since the pandemic began to conduct interviews remotely. We can do pre-interview, Artificial Intelligence-driven candidate assessments so that we have the data we need in order to inform hiring decisions faster.

“The digital virtual event platform itself has been a real differentiator. When you have hiring managers who need to hire dozens, if not hundreds, of people, and they have limited bandwidth for interviewing, the ability to host virtual interview rounds featuring branding and information for candidates is invaluable. It has allowed us to personally connect with a large volume of candidates whom we would not have been able to accommodate in-person via a seamless platform.”

Shelley Jeffcoat

Director of Employer Brand, LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group

“With the market saturated with more jobs than talent, we saw an opportunity to adjust how we’re looking at our internal talent pools. So often, the focus is on external candidates. We can prioritize internal mobility as another key focus of our recruitment strategy. Before you can do that, you need to be clear and authentic about who you are as an employer and then use your corporate differentiators (i.e., values, culture and employee offerings) to retain and grow the talent you have.

“In looking at the partnership between Talent Acquisition and DEI teams, it’s also essential to consider whether your DEI goals and initiatives are achievable when trying to hire the talent you need. If your goal is to hire 10 percent more diverse sales professionals, there needs to be a clearly articulated strategy to go along with that. For hiring managers, this may involve looking at expanding your recruiting channels to access diverse or niche talent pools, reviewing your interviewing practices and making sure employees have some level of transparency to these roles so that they can help drive an employee referral program.”

Kathy Erickson

Global Head of Talent Acquisition, FinancialForce

“It’s important to us to prove to our existing talent pool how much we value them within the company. We are dedicated to nurturing our existing workforce, as well as external candidates in this competitive environment, and if the internal candidate doesn’t get the job, it’s important to have the conversation with them even if it’s a difficult one so that they continue to feel valued. People are not expendable.

“It’s this sort of transparency that is needed, and it applies to DEI as well. Companies need to measure their candidate slate to determine whether it is diverse, and if it’s not, they need to understand whether this is justified and if problems of bias need to be addressed. We’ve certainly got that transparency that allows me to get on a call with a hiring manager when I am alerted to any potential bias. We’re empowering our teams to make that call and to have these conversations to open up these challenges and address them intentionally.”

Tom Hopcroft

President and CEO of Mass Technology Leadership Council

“It may seem that there are a lot of structural barriers to having a diverse workforce, but DEI starts at the top. What do you as an organization stand for, starting with those in the C-suite and the boardroom all the way down through the organization? It can’t just be about signing a pledge for social justice; it’s about really making commitments and getting CEO or executive buy-in at the top.

“Over the last few years, we’ve seen companies take DEI more seriously, and we’ve seen a real sea of change. But a good analogy is this: when the tide goes out, the rocks are all more visible. And we need to address those rocks, which go all the way back to our investment in education and addressing structural issues in the community.

“Tech is not a very diverse sector, but the one thing about change is the opportunity it creates for innovation. There’s a big opportunity here to refresh tech organizations with a more diverse workforce and to do that, we need to initiate discussion.”

A Final Word

Last, but not least, here are some final thoughts from me. The last year has brought significant uncertainty for talent acquisition functions. Employers have had to adapt quickly as budgets have been scaled back, only to have to get back up to speed faster than ever before.

Many businesses, especially tech businesses are looking to scale at unprecedented rates. Understandably, talent acquisition leaders are often unsure as to what hiring resource model to take in such an uncertain market.

Building a flexible and resilient talent acquisition strategy that can weather uncertainty and scale up and down is paramount. In some businesses, there are so many open positions that hiring managers simply cannot handle the volume. Many of these companies are looking to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) to help their internal talent teams focus on what they do best.

This type of flexible, future-proof model allows for the ebb and flow that companies truly need right now, lending agility when needed and scaling down if needed.

Three Surprising Ways AI Can Drive More Successful Job Searches

Job seekers have been using technology for decades – but has the career equivalent of online dating really advanced with the times?

Today, most job seekers rely on popular search engines to direct them to open positions that align with their preferred location, role and salary. They type in a couple of basic search terms like “engineering job near me,” wait to be served up a list of open positions, trawl through them and apply for those they feel are the closest fit.

If someone’s out of work and needing an immediate position, they might apply for jobs that aren’t quite what they’re looking for, hoping that if they cast a wide enough net, they’ll increase their chances of success. Then, they sit back and wait, hoping they’ll receive some form of positive response to at least a few of their applications.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I believe many people are so used to this formula that they don’t grasp how broken and unsatisfactory it really is. If you take a step back and contemplate it objectively, you’ll see that it’s a deeply inefficient and somewhat bizarre courting ritual.

Given the super-charged, data-infused digital world we live in, you might be forgiven for thinking, “Surely there’s a better way.”

Enter AI.

For most people, the term AI conjures up images of robots and machines crunching numbers somewhere in the cloud, endless lines of code and speeds and feeds. That doesn’t seem very “human,” right?

But the truth is that AI is more human than you think, and it can play a helpful role in building your career – if you let it.

Let’s go back to the broken job-search ritual so many of us get caught up in. What if we could approach job hunting more intelligently?

The good news is, we can.

Three Ways AI Can Help

1. Candidate-Company Matchmaking

What if, rather than simply connecting with job openings that meet your (basic) keyword searches, you could connect with companies that have positions open in your line of work and where you’d be a good fit based on your skills and experience?

With an AI-powered analysis of your resume, you can do just that.

Job boards that leverage technology to help their members find the perfect employer have features that allow you to upload your resume so it can be read by AI. The information on your resume is then combined with that of millions of other job seekers.

With the resulting data set, AI can compare your skills and experiences with those of members similar to you, and see where those members found a good company match. Instead of simply looking for open positions, AI assesses the fit between the person who’s looking for a job and the companies that have relevant positions available.

2. Workstyle Games

The best job boards take this a step further by using AI to understand your ideal work style based on an engaging personality test. When you sign up as a member, you’re invited to play a “workstyle game.” While you’re playing, advanced algorithms observe your keystrokes and how you interact with the game.

The AI platform merges this information with open positions, then suggests which companies would offer you the best work style, personality and cultural fit. This is a critical addition to the AI analysis of your resume.

Job seekers should be matched with companies that not only align with their skills and previous work experience, but with their long-term goals and ideal work environment. This ensures that job seekers find a fit for their skillset and their personal and professional preferences, leading to a more harmonious pairing of employer and employee.

3. Follow My Leader

AI can give you visibility into the career journeys of other workers who have skills and personalities similar to yours. It also lets their paths inspire and guide you.

Say you’re a software developer whose ultimate goal is to work at Apple. You can check out the companies where people now at Apple worked before they took on their job, and after they moved on to next. This allows you to create a shortlist of companies that would be an ideal fit in terms of culture and skills, and on which you should concentrate your job search.

This functionality also allows you to become more intentional about taking the “long view” to your career. Doing that helps you plot out a series of stepping stones (and potential employers) that will ultimately let you arrive at your preferred career destination.

What Are the Odds?

AI opens the door to a holistic, less linear approach to job searching. It also helps you expand your thinking beyond “the next job.” It allows you to reconsider what it is that you really want to do instead of trying to shoehorn yourself into positions that might not be right for you or align with your personality, work style and long-term goals.

Ultimately, a machine that has access to billions of data points has a far greater chance of success in predicting what your next career choices should be. It certainly has a better chance than relying solely on intuition.

Of course, career decisions are always going to be personal ones. Whether or not you choose to explore the opportunities that AI surfaces is up to you. But most of us would probably say we were glad to have options we didn’t pursue rather than never even knowing they were there for the taking.