Blog - Page 49 of 430 - RecruitingDaily

How to Create the Perfect Recruiting Dashboard

As recruitment becomes more technology-driven, recruiters can end up spending a significant chunk of their time collecting, monitoring, analyzing and reporting data. Recruitment is challenging as it is. Add to that the dimension of data analysis and things can quickly spiral out of control. For recruiters looking to get more value from their data and make smarter hiring decisions, recruitment dashboards are the solution. Dashboards allow you to keep a close tab on your key performance indicators (KPIs) and measure the overall impact of your recruitment strategy on the business.

What is a Recruitment Dashboard?

A recruitment dashboard is a collection of metrics, key performance indicators (KPI), and reports that provide you an overview of the recruitment funnel and process. It isn’t a motley crew of unrelated reports. Recruitment dashboards are built in a way to answer most crucial recruitment questions visually, offering instant insights for future recruitment decisions.

In this article, we’ll look at how you can create the perfect recruiting dashboard tailored to your unique needs.

Example of a typical recruitment dashboard — Figure 1: A recruitment dashboard | Image source: Geckoboard

3 Maxims to Design the Perfect Recruiting Dashboard

When starting out with dashboarding, stick to basics:

1. Less Is More

With the sheer amount of metrics and reports available in recruitment analytics software, it is tempting to include as much data as possible. But to generate actionable insights, choose your data sets wisely. Less is more. It sounds counterintuitive, but the dashboard should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.

If a metric/report doesn’t bring any value to the table, don’t include it in the dashboard.

2. Design for Insights

The purpose of dashboards is to provide actionable insights on the go. A flurry of data or tables is less likely to be helpful. Visual elements such as charts and graphs to make it easy to draw insights. Ensure that the dashboard is primed to help you make better decisions.

3. Make It Easy to Understand

Great design flows. It emphasizes both – the appearance and utility. The dashboard should answer the questions in a sequence. Straightforward navigation delivers Aha! moments throughout the experience because it is built to aid comprehension. Don’t make the user navigate back and forth to thread multiple pieces of information together. Remember the famous Leonardo Da Vinci quote, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

5 Steps to Creating a Recruitment Dashboard

Different organizations have different recruitment needs; therefore, every dashboard will have some overlapping features and a few industry-specific metrics. In this section, we look at how you can create a recruiting dashboard for your organization in five steps.

Step 1: Decide on the Utility of the Dashboard

There will be a vast difference between the information needed by a manager and an executive. Therefore, it is necessary to be clear on the utility of the recruitment dashboard. Generally, dashboards are divided into three categories:

Operational: Operational dashboards are useful to provide information for time-sensitive issues. These dashboards may provide information such as the status of the talent pipeline, open positions, job applications received during a week, upcoming deadlines, etc.
Analytical: These dashboards help you draw insights from your data. Analytical dashboards help you identify trends and draw comparisons. For example, a pie chart showing the top sources of recruitment or a bar graph depicting candidate experience to help you find out underlying trends
Hybrid: You can use elements of both – operational and analytical dashboards to create a composite/hybrid dashboard

Step 2: Ask the Right Questions

Analytics dashboards are personalized depending on the individual or team requirements. The customized dashboard you create should answer questions that are relevant to you or your team. Pick only those questions that matter to you.

We have compiled a set of questions to help you get started:

How long does it take to recruit new talent?
How many candidates does a recruiter need to interview to hire an employee?
How much does it cost to hire a new employee across different departments?
What are the best websites and platforms to hire new talent? OR What percentage of new hires come from a particular platform?
How many employees leave within a year?
How is the candidate experience throughout the hiring process?
How many candidates accept/reject the offer?
How many candidates apply for a particular job role?
What are the current open positions?
How many employees are hired by a recruiter/team during a particular period?

So, from the questions above, you can see that some questions tilt more towards operational, while others towards the analytical dashboard.

Step 3: Identify the Relevant Metrics for Each Question

In this step, identify the metrics that answer your questions. You would also need to find out pertinent data points to calculate the metrics.

Let’s pick a few questions from the list above and see how to do it:

Six questions to consider adding to a recruitment dashboard — Figure 2: Key data points for a recruitment dashboard

Step 4: Integrate Data Sources

Now, it’s unlikely that all your HR data is stored in one place. There are different applications for each function within HR. For instance, you’ll find employee satisfaction data in the employee engagement application or survey tool. For that, you may have to extract key data from the net promoter survey (NPS).

Here is an overarching list of applications an organization may have for its HR function. Make yours as well:

Recruitment: Talent discovery platforms, job boards, applicant tracking system (ATS), training and assessment, onboarding
Learning and Development: Learning experience platform (LXP), learning management system (LMS)
Workforce Management: Attendance tracking, employee engagement, project management
Performance Management: Talent management, feedback, appraisal
Compensation and Benefits: Payroll, compensation management

Some tools from the HR-tech stack might not integrate with your analytics tool. In such cases, you need to export data in a format (such as spreadsheet files – CSV, XLSX, XLS, ODS) that is compatible with the analytics tool.

Step 5: Compose Your Recruitment Dashboard

Once you have the data compiled, it’s time to create the dashboard. Every dashboard tool offers a set of data representation charts.

Keep the following considerations in mind while designing the dashboard:

Visualize the data: We are visual creatures. Aesthetics are important, but they shouldn’t precede comprehension. Use the right chart format to represent data. For example, you can use a pie chart to show the gender ratio or a bar or line chart to show trends
Decide the Layout: Compartmentalize the data/charts in grids to bring consistency. People follow the F-shaped pattern while reading the content. Keep the summary at the top to show a snapshot of the data. The layout should use the concept of drill down. Each point of information should build on its preceding data point. Keep in mind the axioms we saw earlier in the article
Go Easy With Real-time Data: Real-time data can be distracting and anxiety-inducing, therefore, you can update your dashboard on an hourly basis, but be sparing when including real-time data on a recruitment dashboard.

Tools You Can Use To Create a Recruiting Dashboard

There are three categories of tools you can choose from to create a recruitment dashboard. Let’s take a quick look at each:

1. Spreadsheet Programs

Most spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, or Google Sheets come with data visualization capabilities. You can either download free/premium off-the-shelf dashboard templates or go about designing your own. You need to populate the sheet with data to view its visual representation in the dashboard.

2. HR Software

Cloud-based HR applications like ATS, attendance tracking, employee engagement tools, etc. come with an analytics feature that allow you to build nifty dashboards using available data. A major shortcoming with these applications is, you won’t be able to get a comprehensive overview of the recruitment process unless the software offers integrations with other tools in your stack.

3. Business Dashboard Software

Business dashboard tools are perhaps the most powerful in this category. Software such as Smartsheet, Klipfolio, Zoho Analytics, Tableau, and Datapine can help you analyze heaps of data by integrating multiple data sources. However, some of these applications can be quite expensive and require an expert to set them up for you. Also, operationalizing these tools come with a steep learning curve.

3 Best Practices for Better Dashboard Design

Keep in mind the following tips for designing a recruitment dashboard primed for comprehension:

1. Choose the Right Chart Type

You’ll find plenty of options when choosing a chart type to represent data, and it can get confusing. Here is a simple guide to help you choose the right chart type:

Uncover relationships in the data: Scatter chart, bubble chart, network diagram
Compare different elements/values or identify trends: Column chart, bar chart, line chart
View composition of a data point: Pie chart, heatmap, area chart, stacked column chart
Distribution of data: Bell curve, scatter chart

Choosing the right chart for your recruitment dashboard — Figure 2: Choosing charts for your recruiting dashboard | Image source: UX Planet

2. Maintain Consistency

Here are three areas where you need to maintain consistency:

Follow a uniform nomenclature, data, and font formatting
Keep the layout symmetrical. Place the widgets in a way that’ll balance the grid. Follow a hierarchy while placing the widgets
Data alignment in tables should be uniform throughout all widgets

3. Use Fewer Colors

Stick to three or four colors to visualize data. While most tools have in-built color palettes, if you are designing a custom color palette, keep in mind the color theory to know how to use analogous, monochromatic, complementary, shades, tints, and tones of the chosen color. There are online color palette generators that can help you with a color palette for various colors.

Finally, know how to use contrast to highlight inconsistencies, trends, or outliers in the data.

3 Best Practices for Effective Data Management

The success of data-driven recruitment lies in the accuracy and quality of data. Follow these three data management practices to ensure that the dashboard provides an accurate picture:

1. Simplify Data Access

Data should be readily accessible to the concerned team members. Each team member should have a separate login/access to the relevant HR tools and data sources. Considering the data security issue, set up hierarchical data access rights. For instance, only executivescan have admin rights, while the mid-level management will have fewer rights.

2. Address Data Redundancies

The growing volume and avenues of data imply that the same data will be available across different applications and sources. Duplicate data will give you an inaccurate picture and introduce errors in your recruitment dashboard. To minimize this, decide the data points you want to include and their respective sources while designing the dashboard. If you find one data point having multiple sources, choose the source that provides multiple data points. The aim is to rely on fewer data channels to avoid confusion.

3. Prioritize Data Quality

The data needs to be updated periodically to get accurate insights. Sometimes, you may have to import data into the visualization tool manually. In such cases, make sure to export the latest instance of the data from the source.

3 Examples of Recruitment Dashboards

To help you get started with designing a recruitment dashboard that works for you, here are a few examples:

1. Recruitment Dashboard – Overview

A generic recruitment dashboard with key metrics and charts — Figure 3: A generic recruitment dashboard | Image source: Indzara

The template above provides a macro perspective of recruitment activity. The top row provides a summary of key recruitment metrics. The rest of the widgets drill down into each part of the recruitment funnel and its sources.

2. Candidate Summary

A chart outlining talent pipeline metrics — Figure 4: Candidate summary dashboard | Source: Dynistics

A candidate summary dashboard provides you with an in-depth view of the talent pipeline. You can see how many candidates have passed through each stage of the funnel. Along with the pipeline, the dashboard also shows the number of active and passive candidates in the pipeline, along with the salary range.

3. Job Board

A dashboard showing sourcing channel effectiveness — Figure 5: Sourcing dashboard | Source: Dynistics

Closing Words

The first step of data-driven recruitment is knowing how to use data to your advantage, and the first step to it is setting up a recruiting dashboard. As said earlier, you can find plenty of dashboard examples online that you can download to get started.

But if you are new to analytics and have very specific/niche requirements, then creating a recruitment dashboard could pose a challenge. It helps to involve an analytics expert to set it up for you because their methodical approach will help you design and optimize the dashboard.

In the end, brainstorm and experiment with multiple dashboard ideas on the side to see which one works for you.

If you have any questions about creating a recruitment dashboard, ask away in the comments below!

Build Your Prospect List and Connect With Them Through Jobin

Raise your hand if you’re looking for an all-in-one recruitment platform that finds the right people for you, provides an interface to connect with them, and helps you manage them from one place.

If your hand is up, then you’re going to love Jobin!

Jobin uses AI-assisted search to find the best leads for you. All you have to do is select the criteria that your ideal candidate should meet from 12+ plus filters, including:

Gender
Age group
Location
Required skills
Current job title
Range of availability

Once you’re entered your required criteria, it will generate a list of your preferred prospects.

On top of helping you find your ideal candidates, the tool can also help you connect with those leads. You can either send messages manually or automate your outreach using:

Custom templates
Smart fields
Automated follow-up messages
Bulk LinkedIn direct messages
Bulk LinkedIn inMails

So Jobin not only helps you build a list of your ideal prospects but also saves you time by automating your outreach.

Keeping all that in mind, if we had to describe Jobin in a nutshell, we would say it is a twin of the popular LeadMonkey as both provide virtually the same services.

If you’re interested, you can see it in action right here.

A New Reality: Sexual Harassment in the Remote Work Era

The rise of remote work has changed the way employees interact — and not always for the better. When it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace, despite a decline in in-person contact over the past year, incidents of sexual harassment did not disappear. They just changed form and environment. Sexual harassment in the remote work era is a valid and concerning matter.

More than one in four employees have experienced unwelcome sexual behavior online since the start of COVID-19. This unwelcome behavior has taken place during video calls, via text messages, email or internal chat programs.

When it comes to sexual harassment prevention training, the new work reality needs to be taken into account. And as workplaces have become more fluid and hybrid, companies need to take a different approach to create an anti-harassment culture.

Here are some of the main things to keep in mind when building your sexual harassment training program.

The Perfunctory Approach to Sexual Harassment Training Doesn’t Work Anymore

The road to making sexual harassment training mandatory seems to be a long one. As of 2021, only 6 of the 50 U.S. states have legal mandates that require employers to provide their employees with sexual harassment training, both in the public and in the private sector. Eleven more states require training for state employees only.

Yet, even in the states where sexual harassment training is mandatory by law, companies approach it as checking another box in order to be compliant. Most simply don’t invest the time to develop a training program that will resonate with the employees of today.

Handling nuances is another weak spot of the current state of sexual harassment training. The lessons tend to be black and white, not addressing the “gray areas” that often appear in everyday life. In many cases, employees themselves may not be so sure if what they just experienced falls under the umbrella of inappropriate behavior (although it may have felt that way to them). This could be solved by using real-life scenarios and examples in sexual harassment training. That way, employees would know how to identify, handle and report these behaviors.

Another way the current state of sexual harassment training is failing employees is by forgetting to account for intersectionality. LGBTQ+ women, for instance, are more likely to experience non-inclusive behaviors in the workplace. A Deloitte survey of 5,000 working women across 10 countries found that LGBTQ+ women were almost four times more likely than other women to experience jokes of a sexual nature.

Yet, when we make sexual harassment training only about heterosexual men behaving inappropriately towards heterosexual women, we miss the chance to address behavioral issues beyond the gender binary and heteronormative framework. Of course, it doesn’t help that some companies have been using the same training video to teach their employees about sexual harassment for the past 20 years or more.

The training content many employees offer is outdated and out of touch with workplace changes and present attitudes towards harassment.

Even worse, in many cases, sexual harassment training is completely non-existent. In a survey conducted by TalentLMS and The Purple Campaign, 25 percent of people were screened out from the survey because their employers had not provided them with any sexual harassment training. This means that one out of four employers does nothing to raise awareness and address the issue of sexual harassment in the work environment.

Today’s Employees Have New Needs They Expect to be Met

As times and situations are changing in this new world of work, employees’ short-term and long-term needs are also shifting. In order for them to feel valued and cared for by their employers, these needs have to be addressed.

So what are these needs? Some have resurfaced in the aftermath of the pandemic: things like the need for flexible working hours or the more practical need for employers to provide remote employees with a stipend to purchase office furniture.

Other needs are more generation-specific. For instance, millennials and Generation Z value workplaces that promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). But some needs are being reported across the board; employees of all generations rank “the organization cares about employees’ wellbeing” in their top three criteria. Focusing on team member wellbeing means providing opportunities to thrive and creating a strong company culture that uplifts everyone.

Creating a working environment that’s safe for everyone would be conducive to employee wellbeing.

There Are Many Benefits to Offering Harassment Training to Employees

According to the survey conducted by TalentLMS and The Purple Campaign, sexual harassment training makes employees, both men and women, feel more valued as individuals. They become more productive and are more likely to stay with their company.

But 20 percent of respondents claim they either cannot remember when they received sexual harassment training from their employer or had only received sexual harassment training once since being hired, showing that regular, infrequent or circumstantial sexual harassment training is not enough.

It needs to be a part of your regular employee training program. Human brains are not wired to remember the things they’ve learned for a long time; to retain knowledge, information needs to be repeated and refreshed often. When it comes to establishing positive and respectful behaviors at work, frequent, positive reinforcement is needed.

The responses of the same survey highlight a clear path on how to move forward with anti-harassment training. Employees feel more comfortable receiving their training either from their HR department, an external company or an NGO. Employees need training material that is not outdated and addresses the nuances of what constitutes harassment. That training should be gender-inclusive and focus on awareness and prevention.

Bottom Line

Training has an overwhelmingly positive effect in educating employees on the fundamentals of sexual harassment in the workplace. It improves understanding of the type of conduct that is acceptable and unacceptable in the workplace. And even though there is still a long way to go in educating employers and employees, over 75 percent of women and 85 percent of men report they feel safer at work after having received training.

Sexual harassment training needs to be a part of every company’s yearly curriculum. As employees start heading back to the office, whether full-time or in a hybrid working capacity, it will make all the difference towards creating a work environment that’s safe for all.

How to Build Relationships in a Virtual World

“How did you learn about me?” the woman asked. The man explained that he had found her through a Facebook ad, which is a common scenario in today’s virtual world. According to marketing experts, thousands of these conversations are started every day, but not many are leading to sales.

Social media ads are considered well-performing if they reach a conversion rate of a mere 2% to 5%. Yet, every year business owners spend billions of dollars advertising their products and services on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. In 2020, in the U.S. alone, $40 billion was spent on paid advertising via social media.

Now, consider a different conversation that begins with the same question: How did you learn about me? Imagine if the answer was, “My best friend Sarah is one of your customers, and she raves about you so much I just had to reach out.”

Research shows that 92% of consumers believe and act on suggestions from friends and family more than any other form of promotion. As a business owner, which conversation would you prefer?

Ads are great for brand awareness. But when it comes to attracting ideal customers, personal relationships are queen and reign supreme even in this present moment of social media infatuation.

Here’s how you can build a relationship-driven network that delivers results for your business:

Be More Interested Than Interesting

Flashback to 2017. I was fresh onto the networking scene when I connected with an uber-successful attorney. She agreed to meet for coffee. When she made her entrance into the neighborhood cafe, heads turned. Not because she was beautiful and impeccably dressed, which she was, but because she was genuinely happy to see all the folks there. I felt underprepared, bracing myself for an awkward conversation or, worse, the typical sales pitch. As she slid into the booth across from me, my nerves were calmed by her warm smile.

The conversation that unfolded over the next hour was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It transformed my approach to networking. From the start, she took a genuine interest in my business, asking a lot of questions. She leaned into the areas that were exciting to me, inviting me to tell her more. Sixty minutes flew by, and I barely got to ask her about her business. I apologized as the coffee chat came to an end. I’ll never forget how she laughed and said, “I’m far more interested in you. I spend a lot of time with myself.”

The conversation left me feeling invigorated and inspired. I felt valued, seen, appreciated even. Our time together wasn’t about what was or wasn’t said. Over the course of the next year, I referred clients to her every chance I got and all because of how she made me feel. I knew if she took a genuine interest in me, I could only imagine the level of care and attention she provided to her clients. The bottom line: Be more interested than interesting.

Focus on Relationships

The term “networking” is just a fancy word for helping people. I’ll never forget the first time I had a sales quota to hit. The weight of it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, a pressure that was ever-present. I wondered where my next sale would come from. When I achieved it, I felt a flood of relief. Then came excitement, followed by a terror that I had to start immediately preparing for the next month.

When you have a sales quota to hit or a revenue target’s looming, it can be tempting to put on the sales full-court press. Don’t do it. Here’s why: no one likes to be sold to, but everyone likes to be helped. Focus on developing relationships over the long term by consistently showing up for the people in your sphere. Here are a few small actions you can take to create value for someone else:

Make an introduction to a mutually beneficial connection.
Pass along a potential client or warm lead.
Send a note of encouragement, kindness or support.
Not sure how to help? Reach out and ask them how you can.

Collaborate

In a world where businesses obsess over follower count and make marketing decisions based on “likes,” it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of human connection. One of the most powerful ways to create connection is through collaboration — people and businesses coming together, sharing their resources to create something new.

Collaborations have a unique value proposition for your business. First, they offer you access to a new market through cross-promotion. Second, they can be used as an approach to innovation, energizing your offerings with a new way to serve your clients. Lastly, collaborations are a point of leverage. Sharing the work often leads to better results.

What makes a good collaboration? For starters, one that’s never been done before. Think beyond the obvious partnerships that are typical in your industry. Reach across industries, locations and business models to bring a fresh perspective. The foundation of a solid collaboration is a shared objective. Make sure both parties are in alignment with the goals of the project. Next, consider the work to ensure it’s fairly divided. No one wants to partner with someone who isn’t committed to the outcome.

Start with these tips and you’ll soon be on your way to building a business built on relationships — genuine, authentic connections that deliver an unmatched return on your time and investment.

Create High-Quality Prospect Lists with the Incomparable LeadMonkey

Although it’s promoted as a prospect list builder, LeadMonkey is actually a lot more than your average prospect finder. “An all-in-one sourcing tool” is a term that best describes it. You can use it for all kinds of sourcing-related tasks, ranging from list building to reaching out to prospects to boosting engagement.

However, what really sets LeadMonkey apart from other contact finding solutions are its following four perks:

Email verification: All emails are verified in real-time. So when you reach out to a prospect, you can rest assured that your message is sent to a real address that won’t bounce and ruin your email reputation.
Cancel anytime: Unlike most other contact-finding software, LeadMonkey doesn’t ask for long-term commitments or contract lock-ins. You simply pay month-by-month and cancel your subscription anytime you want.
50% cheaper leads: Starting at 0.20 USD per lead, LeadMonkey’s pricing is 50% lower than most of its competitors. So you get high-quality leads at affordable prices.
Multiple channels: LeadMonkey extracts all mediums of contact, including personal email, work email, cell number, direct dial, landline, and multiple social profile links.

Furthermore, LeadMonkey also has built-in integrations for other CRM and outreach tools, including:

LemList: A cold emailing tool popular among sales teams, agencies, and B2B companies.
Reply.io: A sales engagement platform that helps you automate and scale multichannel outreach.
Crelate: A flexible recruiting software for staffing and recruiting agencies.

It’s safe to say that LeadMonkey is designed to fit every sourcing-related use case. From sales professionals and recruiters to marketers and CEOs, everyone can benefit from it!

If you’re interested, you can get started for free right here.

Reducing Your Time to Hire

Balancing The Flaws in the Traditional Recruitment Process

We live in a world that values speed. This year’s Tokyo Olympics magnified that, with Sydney McLaughlin, Karsten Warholm and Jasmine Camacho-Quinn praised for setting new world records in a series of athletic events. We also see a need for speed in hiring — reducing time to hire — especially in today’s job market.

Companies are borderline obsessed with reducing time to hire without sacrificing quality or increasing costs. At the same time, many of these organizations rely on traditional recruitment methods to power the process, finding themselves struggling to remain competitive.

If the one-year postponement of the Olympics taught us anything, it’s that we can no longer rely on traditional methods of training. In order to succeed and end up faster, stronger and more competitive, creativity is a must. In fact, the same is true with the recruitment process. It’s not that the traditional approach doesn’t work anymore; it simply wasn’t built to focus on speed.

That said, let’s consider common challenges and how to strike a balance.

Know Thyself

Everyone needs a benchmark, whether it’s on a sports team or in the office. It’s impossible to know where to start without understanding where your time to hire derails. Conduct a self-audit to see what’s happening on the inside from your initial point of contact through to the offer letter. Where are you losing the most time? What’s causing the bottleneck? Is it a person, a product or a process? From there, it becomes possible to envision a solution (or series of) to fix your workflow.

Stop Fishing

While it’s every TA pro’s dream to build a healthy pipeline of interested job seekers to tap at any given moment, the reality of recruiting in 2021 is much, much different. In our current landscape, many candidates have options, able to pick and choose between potential employers. They’re definitely not waiting around for you to pick them from the abyss. As such, skip the “phantom job” posts and concentrate on what you need to fill first.

Filter Out

Of course not every job seeker will align with your actual openings – nor should they. To avoid an influx of applicants – and extra work for recruiters – get savvy about self-selection. Says this definition from Personnel Today, self-selection is “where a job seeker is given information about the negative aspects of a vacancy and employer as well as the good points, to better enable them to make an informed decision about whether to apply for a job.”

Introduce Automation

To support time savings as well as candidate empowerment, apply automation to the recruiting process. You’ve got options here. Some chose to automate job advertising with programmatic solutions. Others use chatbots or virtual recruitment assistants to facilitate pre-screening and populate completed applications. You might want to get pre-employment assessments and background checks out of the way upfront before advancing qualified candidates. Automate as much or as little as you choose.

Screen Smarter

As candidates enter deeper into the funnel, think about how you’re screening them – and how much time you’re spending between scheduling, phone calls and the like. If this is a particularly onerous task for recruiters, look for ways to streamline screening through the use of video or other tools. Make it easy to engage by enabling candidates to complete screens on their time and terms, helping reinforce the idea of self-selection.

Rethink Interviewing

Likewise, interviews don’t always have to take place on-site in some bland conference room. There’s nothing more nerve-racking for a candidate than sitting across the table from a tribunal of interviewers who are all there to judge their fitness for the job. With asynchronous video, you can take some of the pressure off, allowing candidates to relax and speak freely without the hours it takes to coordinate and collaborate behind the scenes.

Measure Everything

To speed up your processes, you need to improve upon the benchmark discussed earlier, and this is where that saying work smarter, not harder, comes into play. Finding the right balance will take some trial and error, which is why it’s absolutely critical that you continue to measure everything involved in hiring: time to hire, cost per hire, quality of hire and so on. Compare and contrast the findings in order to tweak accordingly.

Some may argue that Recruiting under the best of circumstances is just as challenging as competing in the Olympics. Trying to make a traditional process work in an untraditional market makes it that much harder.

If you’re interested in reducing your time to hire, you will need to adapt and evolve the way you interact and engage candidates from start to finish. That means prioritizing authenticity, integrity, and collaboration in conjunction with advanced strategies and solutions. If you’re willing to do so, the end result will be an agile process that elevates the candidate experience and promotes successful outcomes – faster than the competition. Some companies have seen up to a 60 percent improvement.

That type of speed might even win you a medal or two.

Diversity Hiring: Translating Positive Intent into Actions and Results

Diversity, equity and inclusion are top-of-mind for today’s business leaders.

The 2020 Deloitte CEO Survey revealed that 96 percent of CEOs agree that DEI is a strategic goal. To meet that goal, 90 percent of those CEOs are prioritizing and investing in talent recruitment, development, advancement and retention, and 72 percent are prioritizing and investing in DEI data and transparency.

However, many organizations are struggling to bring new employees from different backgrounds into their workforce. According to GEM’s 2020 Recruiting Trends Report, 49 percent of talent acquisition professionals say “finding more diverse candidates to interview” is their biggest barrier to improving diversity.

SeekOut’s AI-powered Talent 360 platform helps you translate positive diversity hiring intentions into meaningful actions and results — and become the diversity champion in your company.

In this article, I’ll share how to make data your ally to meet your diversity hiring goals.

Set Realistic Diversity Hiring Targets

Too many companies set broad diversity targets for their overall workforce that aren’t based on data. If you want to make a significant difference, first gain insight into what diversity currently looks like in your organization, then benchmark that data against the talent pools you hire from.

Perhaps, you already know Black/African Americans are underrepresented in your workforce. That’s a great start, but you can get more nuanced from there.

Explore Black/African American representation in specific teams, roles and levels of your organization, and compare that data against your peers and the regions your employees are located. You can then determine the best opportunities to improve diversity in your company.

For example, if data from similar companies and your regional talent pools show a higher percentage of Black/African American data scientists than your company employs, you can set a realistic target to hire more talent from that group and plan your recruiting strategy accordingly.

Understand your Talent Pools and Create Appealing Job Descriptions

As a talent acquisition professional, you’re likely used to hiring managers having multiple must-have requirements they want included in the job description. Excessive role requirements not only restrict the number of candidates you can consider — they also prevent diverse candidates from applying.

A Hewlett Packard internal report found that men will apply for a job when they have 60 percent of the qualifications, but women tend to apply only if they meet 100 percent of the role requirements.

SeekOut gives you the data you need to have productive conversations with hiring managers about how talent pools stack up against their role requirements. You can view aggregate data on every candidates’ jobs titles, skills, employment history, educational background, diversity and more.

Using these insights, you can work with hiring managers to craft reasonable job descriptions that appeal to qualified, diverse talent — ensuring no viable candidate is left behind.

As Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape, once said, “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Data is objective and removes opinions from conversations about role requirements. Use it to be a strategic talent advisor to hiring managers and help them see the best path toward finding their next great team member.

Create an Effective Sourcing Strategy

Now that you’ve built a job description that appeals to your talent pool, create a detailed profile of your ideal candidate and strategy for building diverse slates.

Use your talent pool insights to determine where qualified candidates are located and what it will take to make a successful hire. Will you need a relocation budget? Is remote work an option for the role? You might need to get creative and consider how to put your company in the best position to connect with diverse candidates.

You can then use keywords, Boolean strings, filters and AI matching in SeekOut to cast a wide net and build a pipeline of diverse candidates who match your profile.

Reduce Unconscious Bias in Candidate Assessments

Even the most open-minded people are influenced by biases they’re not aware they have. These unconscious biases can cause recruiters to make assumptions about a candidate based on details unrelated to the role requirements.

For example, it’s common for people to speculate about a candidate’s intelligence based on the college they attended. Even worse, talented professionals with uncommon names can be passed over for job opportunities, simply because the recruiter doesn’t want to go through the awkward experience of figuring out how to pronounce it.

With blind hiring mode in SeekOut, identifiable details such as a candidate’s name, photo and education are removed from their profile. Your sourcing team will only be able to consider skills and experience, preventing unconscious bias from influencing candidate assessments.

Discover and Engage Diverse Talent

You’ve built a pipeline of talented, diverse candidates. Now you need to get their attention and pitch the opportunity to them.

Up to this point, you’ve been strategic and data-driven. But candidate outreach requires a more humanized approach. Instead of sending the same generic, cold email to every candidate you’ve sourced, personalize the message to pique their interest. Reference what about their background impresses you, whether that be specific skills, a project they’ve contributed to or a company they’ve worked for.

Lou Adler calls this outreach approach “hiring for success.” A personalized touch helps your outreach message stand out and increases the likelihood the candidate replies and agrees to move forward in the hiring process.

DEI Starts — But Doesn’t End — with Hiring

An effective diversity hiring strategy brings people from various backgrounds into your company. However, it isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to DEI. If two diverse employees are exiting for everyone you hire, your recruiting efforts are ultimately meaningless.

Diversity cannot work without inclusion and diversity and inclusion cannot be sustained without belonging. The LinkedIn 2018 Global Recruiting Trends Report sums it up nicely: “Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is dancing like no one is watching.”

DEI is nuanced and multi-faceted. It starts with hiring people from different backgrounds but comes to life when you build a culture and workplace where people feel like they belong and can be their authentic selves at work.

Request a SeekOut demo today and learn why our AI-powered talent search engine is rated the #1 diversity recruiting tool by G2.

Was the Coca-Cola Company Ranked Unfairly on Fortune 500 Diversity List?

Talenya Ranks 3 Beverage Giants on Diversity

Fortune Magazine publishes a report on Fortune 500 Companies’ Diversity and Inclusion Performance and ranks them every year. Fortune uses different parameters to measure diversity, including quantitative data, such as the participation of women and minorities in the companies’ workforce, as well as qualitative, yes/no parameters such as Board of Directors policy on diversity and Daycare services.

Talenya decided to create its own ranking for Fortune 500 companies, using only quantitative parameters that are indisputable and can be tracked over time to identify trends.

In this article, we compare the diversity breakdown and overall score of three beverage giants: The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc.

World’s Largest Non-Alcoholic Beverage Company

The Coca-Cola company offers over 500 brands in more than 200 countries around the world. PepsiCo is Coca-Cola’s biggest competitor in the non-alcoholic beverages industry, with Keurig Dr. Pepper as another leading rival of hot and cold beverages.

The chart below compares the three companies in terms of revenues and number of employees, as well as their Fortune and Talenya respective ranking.

Coca-Cola: Ranked as 262 or 2?

While PepsiCo and Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc. are close in their Fortune and Talenya rankings, The Coca-Cola Company is far apart. While Fortune ranked it as number 262 among all 500 companies, Talenya ranked it as number 2!

Here’s Why Talenya Ranked Coca-Cola Much Higher

The Coca-Cola Company was ranked only below Altria and above Walmart. Talenya and Fortune use different parameters to measure diversity.

Talenya ranked Fortune 500 companies according to the following parameters:

Percent of Black/African American
Percent of Women
Percent of Hispanic/LatinX
Percent of Asians

Fortune combines the percentage of all minorities in the workforce into one parameter, while female participation is measured separately. Talenya measures each diversity category and women, separately.

Like Talenya, Fortune uses Diverse employee participation in Managerial Roles as one of its parameters for measuring Diversity; however, Talenya uses three additional parameters not used by Fortune.

Talenya’s Additional Parameters

Average Tenure

The percentage of diverse employees who stayed for more than two years in their companies. This parameter reflects employee satisfaction and impacts churn.

Internal Mobility

The percentage of diverse employees who have had more than two jobs in the same company. This parameter also impacts employee satisfaction and churn.

High Churn Risk

The percentage of diverse employees who are at high risk of churn within the next 12 months.

After this, Talenya takes the ranking of the companies across all eight parameters and gives them an overall diversity score. The overall score is used to rank the company compared to all other 499 companies.

The participation of Black/African Americans and Women in the workforce received a relatively higher weight, while all other parameters received equal weight.

As can be seen from the chart above, Coca-Cola received a very high ranking for Black/African American participation in their workforce. They also had a high tenure among their employees. All three companies had a low score in the participation of Asian employees, but Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc did not have other high scores to make up for these shortcomings, other than participation in Managerial Roles and High Risk of Churn.

The only parameter where PepsiCo excelled was Internal Mobility of diverse employees.

On the other hand, Coca-Cola had low scores in both Asian employee participation and High Churn Risk, but it had relatively high scores in the other parameters.

So contrary to its ranking on the Fortune 500 list, Talenya concludes that The Coca Company is one of the best-performing companies among Fortune 500 as far as diversity and inclusion.

Read the Full Talenya Bi-Annual Diversity Report Here

The Secret to Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is likely the most coveted style of leadership.

A transformational leader is someone who enhances motivation and morale among followers. In terms of the workspace, they are someone who is able to inspire each employee to work for a collective good, and not just for their own self-interest.

As it positively impacts innovation, transformational leadership has a high payout. The effects of this style of leadership are desirable for both the organization and the followers.

It increases job performance and satisfaction, as well as organizational performance. When compared to transactional leadership, the transformational kind can easily be seen as the holy grail of leadership.

The 4 I’s of Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership has 4 components. We often refer to these as the 4 I’s. All the secrets to transformational leadership revolve around these 4 elements.

Intellectual Stimulation

A transformational leader is someone who is able to stimulate creativity and innovation among their employees.

They can do this by empowering team members in decision-making processes, encouraging bottom-up and upward feedback, driving employees’ share of voice, and allowing mistakes.

Individualized Consideration

Offering encouragement and support to individual followers is also a key component of transformational leadership.

Personal attention to employees’ needs helps drive better relationships in the organization, enhance employees’ development and growth and develop trust among the organization’s members.

Inspirational Motivation

A transformational leader has a clear vision for their organization and is able to communicate it to their team. Moreover, they can help employees’ experience the same passion and motivation for bringing this vision to life.

Idealized Influence

Team members emulate their leader and internalize their ideals when they trust and respect their leader.

A transformational leader knows how to serve as a role model for the members of their team. They know how to embody the qualities they want to see in their followers. For instance, they will always put their followers’ needs above their own.

Coaching for Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership skills can be developed through executive coaching. But an organization needs to work with an executive coach who is also a transformational leadership expert.

Many companies rely on executive coaching and believe in its benefits. Most of these organizations think that executive coaching should focus on helping key leaders achieve high performance. But what they really need is a coaching culture that enables everyone to perform at their peak.

By working with an executive coach who can leverage their skills to create a transformational leadership style, instead of just coaching a leader to improve their own performance, an organization will achieve a greater return on their investment.

In a sense, the goal should be for the coachee to become a coach. As mentioned, taking an individual approach to followers’ growth and development is a key element of transformational leadership.

As personalization is crucial for employees’ success, every leader should also be a coach to their followers. When a leader is helping employees find their own solutions, they are strengthening their employees’ trust in them as well as creating a skilled team.

Creating an Ethical Climate

A good transformational leader is someone who shapes the ethical climate in their company. Transformational leaders are responsible for achieving organizational alignment with the core company values. They can achieve this through consistent workplace communication.

One of the biggest prerequisites for organizational success is to have everyone on the same page. And transformational leaders are the ones who know how to link their followers’ personal values with their organizational values.

Moreover, great leaders continually work with their employees to uphold high moral standards. Oftentimes, they pay more attention to employees’ moral standards than their performance.

Allowing Freedom of Choice for Employees

Communication still flows one way in many organizations. Meaning, there isn’t a way for the employees to share their own opinions and engage in daily, company-wide, conversations.

Transformational leaders should encourage employees to share their voices and empower them to make their own decisions. Followers of transformational leaders feel free to speak up, express their needs, raise their concerns and come up with their own ideas.

Using Persuasive Appeals Based on Reason

Many leaders don’t have the ability to reach their employees with the right messages. Some leaders don’t even know why a certain change is happening.

Transformational leaders should drive acceptance among team members during times of change, as most people are resistant to change. Transformational leaders are good at articulating the reasoning behind specific actions taken by their company.

A good transformational leader is someone who can clearly explain why the change is happening, through proper corporate communication, and how the change will benefit them as individuals and the company as a whole.

Promoting Cooperation and Harmony

Many employees don’t have clear guidance on how to achieve goals. Moreover, many employees don’t even understand what their specific goals are.

To be successful and articulate in explaining these goals, and showing their employees how to achieve them, transformational leaders need to have a solid understanding of the necessary goals.

Workplace harmony and cooperation are impossible to achieve without consistent, frequent and transparent interpersonal and organizational communication.

A transformational leader is responsible for building harmony in the workplace. It is their job to create a culture in which everyone strives towards achieving the same goals.

They have the ability to create the passion and energy that help fuel cohesion among team members and peers.

Transparency

A leader should be completely transparent with their followers. Otherwise, employees might lose trust in their leader and their company. Leaders should always keep their team informed about how the organization is doing and where it is heading.

According to a study by Slack, 80% of employees want to know more about how decisions are made in their company. Keeping employees in the loop is key to building trust among employees.

Emphasizing Positive Development and Intrinsic Motivation

A transformational leader who empowers their followers to keep investing in themselves throughout their careers clearly understands their own role in driving business success.

They treat each member of the team as a valued individual and take the time to learn what motivates them, rather than just patting them on the back for a job well done.

When used appropriately, the transformational style of leadership is highly effective. Assessing your current leadership style is one way to improve your own leadership skills. You will be better able to play to your strengths and improve your weaknesses by evaluating your own skills.

Boost Candidate Engagement with the Hiretual Email Extension Addon

Did you know the Hiretual chrome update has an email add-on? That means you can now use Hiretual for both finding talent and getting in touch with them.

The new email add-on offers a lot of useful features. The five most impressive are:

Email in Bulk

Using this feature, you can schedule and send bulk emails to a group of candidates with one click.

You also get the option to personalize each email by inserting tokens, such as the first name of the receiver or their company’s name.

Engagement Insights

As you type your emails or insert a template, you receive live tips and information on predicted email performance. This can be a tremendous help in making your emails more engaging.

Email Delegation

You can send the emails on behalf of a team member or hiring manager to add a personal touch.

Real-Time Email Tracking

This feature allows you to view candidate opens, clicks, and replies in real-time.

Engagement History

This tool is useful for people working in teams. It allows you to view the engagement history of candidates to ensure different members of your team won’t reach out to a candidate with the same message.

Boost Candidate engagement

Those tools can help you boost candidate engagement by as much as 2X — which isn’t some random number we’re throwing at you. The Hiretual team actually conducted a case study with Kray Blanding, a technical recruiter at Apptio, in which Kray reported seeing a 2X increase in his response rates.

Pretty impressive, right?

So if you’re looking for an ultimate engagement-boosting tool, Hiretual’s email add-on is the one to go with. You can add it to your Chrome browser right here.

Nurturing Present and Future Women in Tech

The gender gap is no news. While efforts in attracting and nurturing present and future women in tech have taken strides, we know this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And as the pandemic continues to unfold, business leaders need to roll up their sleeves if they want to reverse this trend that plagues the tech industry in a bid to eventually close the gender gap once and for all.

Women and Salary Increase

Let’s take salaries as an example. A recent report carried out by Nigel Frank International revealed that only one in four female tech professionals felt comfortable enough to ask their employer for a salary increase. A further 31 percent specified they’d feel uncomfortable asking for a raise, with a lack of knowing how to ask and feeling that their employer should value them enough to offer one being amongst the most-cited reasons.

These statistics, combined with the ever-present gender pay gap, weigh heavily on female talent in the tech industry. It’s no wonder that another study by Accenture and Girls Who Code found that women are leaving tech roles at a 45 percent higher rate than men.

Employers worldwide need to step up their game to ensure inclusive policies are in place to create an unbiased (as possible) environment, unconscious or not. This way, all employees feel valued and empowered with the confidence needed to succeed. Undoubtedly, this will conceive a more comfortable space to ask for a raise.

Mass Workforce Exodus Among Women

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s been a massive reduction in the number of women who make up the workforce.

The New York Times found that 900,000 of the 1.2 million American parents who have had to leave their jobs in the past year were women. So as businesses build post-pandemic plans, it’s of utmost importance they warrant their strategies to tackle the unjust effects of this crisis, ensuring they don’t lose women talent along the way.

Offering benefits such as homeworking, flexible hours and additional vacation time can be a good starting point for businesses to attract and retain more women, particularly those who also want to raise families. And while companies worldwide are doing some great ED&I work, these numbers are a clear indicator that more can be done — or can be done better.

The Importance of Communication and Mentorship

I can’t help but emphasize the importance of communication when discussing benefits and initiatives. Assumption is no longer a good enough solution.

If employers want an engaged, productive and happy workforce, they need to get ready to listen. Whether that’s frequent one-on-one meetings, anonymized surveys, workshops — or a mix of all — asking your employees for feedback will help you see blind spots in your strategy, particularly in light of the statistics above.

Improved or reviewed communication is just as essential as its frequency, particularly when it comes to the leaky pipeline to female career progression. Even if they choose to remain in the workforce, 66% of women have reported that there is no clear career path for them at their current companies.

Studies have found that women are more likely to receive vague feedback and personality criticism during their evaluations, making it more difficult for them to imagine a future in their careers. Without the ability to envision personal progress, employees are far more likely to quit or maintain a stagnant position within their field.

Mentoring is another support giant. Women mentors can guide mentees up the corporate ladder, creating a support network to this equip people with tools to deal with particularly challenging situations in the workplace that could be hindering them from progressing or remaining in their careers.

So facilitating the creation of mentorship within businesses creates a win-win situation — women workers are guided and empowered while companies simultaneously retain valuable team talent.

Creating an Equal, Diverse and Inclusive Industry

We all stand to win in an industry that’s truly diverse, inclusive and equal for all. Not only will we finally close the damaging gender gap in tech, but we’ll stand a chance to close the ever-growing tech skills gap. This has never been as crucial, as more companies are undergoing digital transformations at an even more accelerated pace.

We’re not exactly sure what the future of work will look like post-pandemic, but if there’s one thing we do know, it’s that it’s changing. We’re going to need everyone on board. To do so, companies will fail if they do not ensure everyone within their teams has what is necessary for them to be their best selves.

This is the only way we can face the challenges that the future holds and turn them into opportunities for all.

Access Everything OSINT with the Paliscope OSINT Toolkit

Imagine having a single toolkit that contains all the software you, as a recruiter, could ever need for OSINT investigation. But then, why dream about something when you could be using it right now?

We’re talking about the Paliscope OSINT Toolkit. It’s essentially a library loaded with tools for just about any open-source intelligence task you can think of.

With the team promoting their “200 best tools” on the download page, it will take a book-sized guide to cover each. So let’s talk about our favorite 3 so far so you can get a glimpse into what this library holds for you.

1. WhoIs Lookup

The practice of creating a blog or a personal portfolio is more common today for talented candidates than ever.

So with the WHOIS lookup tool, you can plug in their website domain name and get a bunch of details about them. Things like their first name, last name, email address, location and phone number.

2. Smart Image

If you’ve ever tried to reverse search an image, you know it’s a hit or miss. Where one search engine might find nothing, another comes up with a match. The best approach then is to search on multiple image search engines.

With the Smart Image tools, you can reverse search images on Google, Yandex, and Ging at once. This may not seem like a big deal. But when you add up the hundreds or thousands of searches you’ll perform in a year, this tool will make a lot more sense.

3. Phone Number Finder

If you would like to have a conversation with a prospect but don’t have their phone number, this tool can help.

It has a success rate of over 50%! Meaning when you enter the name or email address of a prospect, there’s a fifty percent chance this tool will find their phone number for you.

Those three tools are just the tip of the iceberg. As we mentioned earlier, the Paliscope OSINT toolkit packs a plethora of tools. You can download and use the entire library for free.

Asynchronous Video Interviewing

The Impact on Hiring and Turnover Reduction in 2021 and Beyond

Disrupted, transformed, uprooted. Use whatever buzzword you want, but there’s no denying hiring has come a long way over the last 18 months. Traditional methods were cast aside under pandemic conditions, making way for next-generation solutions – like asynchronous video interviewing – to take hold.

Now we’re at a crossroads, one evidenced by the ongoing push and pull between candidates and employers, with one side advocating for a whole new system while the other wrestles with what that means in practice. Somewhere in the middle of this tug of war, there’s asynchronous video, an often discussed yet underutilized balm that soothes frequent hiring woes.

Recognizing the role asynchronous video played – and continues to play – it is poised to positively impact hiring and turnover reduction in 2021 and beyond.

Here are six reasons why.

Candidate experience comes full circle.

In today’s candidate-driven market, employers need to do everything they can to make the process easier and more accessible. Given the pre-recorded nature of asynchronous video, these interviews empower candidates to respond to interview requests when and where they’re able to record.

This type of communication allows candidates and interviews to stay in touch without having to align calendars or chat at unfriendly hours. In turn, candidates get the chance to express themselves when it’s convenient for them, not when the company says they’ve available. Local or remote, active or passive, asynchronous promotes and preserves a solid candidate-employer connection.

Competition remains fierce.

Likewise, the current hiring landscape means that employers need to come prepared for every candidate engagement – and that takes the right arsenal of solutions.

Back in February 2020, Aptitude Research found that less than 60 percent of companies surveyed used video interviewing in their hiring processes, compared to 74 percent just two months later. By October 2020, research from Gartner showed 89 percent were using video for recruitment.

These huge gains highlight the value video offers, a value that’s reinforced when resources are tight and competition remains fierce.

Data informs everything.

Metrics are everything, whether you’re scrambling to match candidates with roles or just keep business moving forward.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant recently explained, “In a stable world, it’s best to be data-driven. In a changing world, it’s best to be data-informed. Data can reveal patterns from the past. It takes judgment to predict how those patterns will evolve in the future. Data shouldn’t guide decisions. They should inform decisions.”

Asynchronous video interviewing solutions capture the data needed to inform multiple facets of recruiting, from learning about the candidates to attract to objectively screening and filtering.

Mitigate bias through increased collaboration.

In theory, asynchronous might seem like an interview without an interviewer. But in reality, asynchronous video interviews introduce more interviewers into the mix, helping boost collaboration between stakeholders. Whereas meeting with a single interviewer might allow bias to creep into the process based on their personal opinions or beliefs, asynchronous video enables multiple interviewers to get involved, review candidates and share their differing thoughts and feedback.

As a result, various team members contribute, supporting the likelihood of selecting for culture fit (and ensuring no one person calls all the shots).

Speed and quality in equal measure.

Right now, with a high number of jobs to fill and willingness and desire to find the best candidate for the position, speed of hire and quality of hire is in equal measure. As such, companies need tools that bring balance into the fold, letting them save time without cutting corners around their interactions with candidates.

Asynchronous video gives candidates the opportunity to showcase who they are beyond what the traditional resume affords. Employers can see for themselves how candidates will contribute and if their goals align with the company’s, all while cutting 60 percent off of their hiring time.

Better hiring, less turnover.

With employers fretting over the ongoing “Great Resignation” and “Turnover Tsunami,” talent acquisition has become about more than making hires. It’s also about retaining them. And turnover reduction goes back to how companies approach recruiting – and culture fit.

When companies hire for culture fit (and train for any specific skills that may be lacking) they create better alignment, helping to promote happiness and long–term retention. Asynchronous video is much more useful for culture fit than any other means, working throughout the talent acquisition lifecycle to make interviews fair, flexible and objective, while providing structure, removing bias and delivering benefits to both sides.

By introducing rigor and consistency, asynchronous video helps recruiting teams learn more about individual candidates, candidate pipelines and themselves. In turn, processes grow more efficient, and ultimately, decisions become more effective, encouraging hires that suit candidates and companies for the foreseeable future – not just today or tomorrow.

Get Your B2B List from LinkedIn In Less than 5 Minutes With Quiklist

Wouldn’t it be great if someone just handed you a list of your ideal B2B prospects along with their contact information? Well, let us introduce you to your next favorite Chrome extension. With Quiklist, you can get a list of B2B prospects from LinkedIn in less than 5 minutes!

Here’s how it works:

Once you install it, all you have to do is open it and enter the criteria for your ideal candidate. Things like their qualifications, industry, location, and so on. Quiklist will take it over from here.
Next, the software will take a couple of minutes to compile a list containing all the information you need about each prospect, including their name, location, and email address.
Once your list is ready, you can download it in any format you want. CSV, XCL, PDF, TXT, and JSON—take your pick and the program will put it out for you.

Quiklist goes one step further by verifying each email address so you won’t get flagged for trying to hit invalid accounts. Saving time and improving your send rates makes it a double-dose remedy for email-induced headaches.

In summary, Quiklist is like a swiss army knife. It’s small, but you’ll be surprised by how much this little package has to offer.

Plus, at a price of £12 per month, you can’t go wrong with it. But if you would rather test it out first, be sure to get the free featherweight package today.

This Way of Working Will Transform Your Company and Its Culture

The way of working referred to in the title is a form of “going slow to go fast.” Obviously, it’s not my idea, and it can mean a multitude of different things depending on the context it’s applied to, but what we’ve found in our company is that some extra focus and intentionality in the present can eliminate a whole lot of agony down the road.

The phenomenon is described well by a McKinsey & Company blog post in which the authors state that when top teams slow down, “they eventually go deeper and faster into achieving their objectives. They deal more effectively with increased complexity and challenges – and they use less energy.”

Setting Intention

So how does this work and why? And who can use it? I’ll do my best to paint a picture that answers all of the above.

Since our transition to the “slow down” method, meetings in our organization go a little differently; in fact, they look like workshops. They generally consist of around 8-12 people and a whiteboard (these days we usually use something like Mural) and are facilitated by someone who is not wed to the outcome.

The concept is based on the A3 template from Lean Enterprise Institute, which is a prominent practice throughout our organization when you need to bring people together from different business units to address an issue. We very deliberately address every prompt, without fail, starting with the question, “What problem are we trying to solve?”

That might sound like an obvious thing you could afford to skip right over but asking really epitomizes the concept of slowing down. Often, we find that the real problem is not the one that most of us had in our heads. The way Deacom CEO Jay Deakins puts it in his Forbes column is, “Take a step back and try to understand the essential elements.” Once we can all agree on what those are, the stage is set for healthy cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The major benefit to this careful, methodical approach is something I like to call “upfront buy-in.” It empowers a diverse group of decision-makers to co-create the best overall solution. When they agree, or “buy-in”, from the outset, it’s like the path to development and execution is automatically cleared; the course is flattened of any hurdles that often come up when you have to “sell a solution” internally after the decision has been reached.

Buy-In vs. Buy-Out

To understand the value of going slow, you have to contrast it with the more traditional way of doing things. A person, department or team moves quickly to innovate a solution but does so within a silo, which means they then have to go and get the buy-in from every other arm of the business. It’s a terribly inefficient process when you think about it, and it also creates the potential for friction when someone takes it personally that they weren’t invited to the conversation sooner.

Most people want agency, and what the going slow method shows is that giving it to them early in the process is much more useful than giving it to them later on when they might have an idea, good or bad, that undoes all the work leading up to that point.

The solutions that are created using the slow method are often better ones, to boot. In my experience, that’s simply because we’re often biased toward our interpretation of the problems and their answers. In many cases, the most innovative ideas come from someone who, in a more old-school setting, might not have been asked, but whose perspective turns out to be invaluable.

This is also the basis for how going slow to go fast can positively affect your organizational culture. In our “slowed down” meetings, people learn from, respect and collaborate up and down the business hierarchy. The ladder is removed – a tough task when it’s being shared by executives and junior employees – and the volume between voices becomes equalized.

What helps this process even further (at least in the new, remote paradigm) is the ability to submit ideas anonymously, which can be a huge boost for less-confident or marginalized participants. Likewise, so is the realization that the CEO or CMO they’re in the meeting with doesn’t necessarily have the answers, either. Everyone comes to the meeting prepared to learn and be open to everyone’s ideas, no matter where they originate.

Recruitment and Staffing

What does all of this have to do with Human Resources? Sometimes, it’s HR that gives us the most challenging problems to solve! We like to talk about client relations, but the reality is always that employees are the first clients of any business, and in the context of the fast-paced shifts that COVID-19 has required companies to make regarding HR, taking a “slow” approach to tackling issues is even more valuable.

Do people continue to work remotely, do they come back to the office or is a hybrid approach best? What does that mean for benefits, worker’s comp and culture? When our company first tackled these kinds of questions, we quickly realized that the slow method of decision-making was the best one suited for such complex issues.

In a more direct way, slow to go fast is relevant to the people in an organization because it facilitates the kind of cohesiveness around strategy and implementation that is tough to find in most businesses. Through empowerment, employees become more engaged and more fulfilled, increasing productivity and reducing churn. The ability to co-create solutions and give input that is truly valued fundamentally changes the relationship between business and employee.

Bottom Line

There’s a saying in creative circles: process over product.

Focus on the process, in other words, because that’s where all the intrinsic benefits are found. Focusing on the product instead tends to limit our creativity, blind us to opportunities and lead us to get ahead of ourselves. And at the end of the day, what is business, if not a creative endeavor?

Final thought: it’s not about slow and steady winning the race. It’s about slowing down now to go fast later.