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Market Shifts and Hiring Manager Education

So, you want a Lead Basket Weaver with five to seven years of experience, a bachelor’s degree in weaving techniques, no job hoppers, all for $5 an hour in the middle of nowhere Idaho?

Great.

We would love to source and find people who fit what you are looking for. But we need to start having realistic candidate expectations based upon the current state of the hiring market.

We are in a highly unique market, therefore 2021 should be deemed the year of flexibility. In this inimitable year, expectations need to shift.

To understand this employment outlook, we review three shifts in market components.

 

This is a Candidate’s Market

This is no longer a market where the candidates need and rely upon your job, this is a candidate’s market. Companies are now a product placed upon a shelf, competing amongst each other for the candidate to buy into them.

Your good company reputation and name are not enough.  Compounded by the fact that during the start of the covid-19 pandemic, many employees stayed at their jobs — resulting in a 47% drop in applications in all industries.

The market is recovering from this drop, but this means that as a Sourcer, the role of a salesperson has become an even more integral part of the hiring process.

This process can take time because it involves sourcing the candidate, making multiple reach outs, and selling the candidate on the role, the company, and why they would want to leave the familiarity and security of their current job for your role in a market that is unsure for them.

 

The 2021 Candidate is Smart

Today’s candidates are smarter than ever. With one search (and they will), potential candidates can review your company’s reviews, salary and benefits, management, culture, and work-life balance information.

Even if your company is at the apex of a candidate’s career, candidates still want to know what’s in it for them.  A lack of transparency in the salary or the nitty-gritty of the position can lead to unhappy candidates that will decline interest in the position or simply ghost.

Therefore, it has become important that not only Sourcers sell the role and the company to the candidate but provides a white glove candidate experience, including transparency for the role they could potentially step into.

 

We Are Entering a Millennial Candidate Market

By 2025, 75% of the US workforce will be Millennials. This is an important number to know because according to the Bureau of Labor and statistics in January 2020 the median tenure for all wage and salary workers was 4.1 years.

When it came to workers between the ages of 25 and 34, the median tenure was only 2.8 years. Let me repeat that for those in the back.

Millennials only stay at their jobs for an average of 2.8 years.

So, when a hiring manager asks for no job hoppers, this is a relatively small few compared to the tenure statistics of millennials. Therefore, there needs to be some flexibility when it comes to the expectations of a job description. These are not always relevant to the statistical data of the current job market.

Millennials are focused on their career growth. Therefore, the three major factors in attracting and retaining millennial talent are the ability to career path, flexible work options like working remotely, and most importantly, pay.

These are all aspects that Sourcers need to address to attract millennials for various roles in today’s market.

The current market is no longer a falsity or “what-if” scenario. It is here, it is now.

It is our responsibility to educate hiring managers on these market shifts. We are the talent professionals. At the very least, anonymously forwarding this article to them counts. As I keep saying, adapt or perish.

Happy Hunting.

Shoot Up Your Response Rate with the New Human Predictions Update

The Human Prediction tool, for those of you outside the loop, is a fantastic sourcing app for recruiters that compiles a massive pool of candidates quickly and easily. You can learn more about that in our previous post. 

With the intro out of the way, let’s talk about the latest update that was launched just a few months ago. It may not seem like a big deal since there’s only one new feature. But sometimes a single feature can make the whole experience a lot better, and luckily, this is one of those features. 

The new message sender offers two use cases: 

  • A new way to send messages: You can now send messages to prospects from within the Human Predictions tool. The time savings from this add up over time. 
  • An opportunity to shoot up your response rate: The message sender also gives you helpful tips on the best approach for reaching out to each prospect. Following best practices has never been easier! 

That outreach guiding feature is very interesting because it gives you lots of practical information tailored to the unique characteristics of each individual prospect on your list. You get fantastic guidelines on things like: 

  • The ideal message length — which varies by prospect
  • The platform where the prospect is most active in and is, therefore, more likely to respond
  • The kind of approach which is most likely to work best for the particular individual

Following the outreach best practices has never been easier. In fact, there aren’t many sourcing tools that offer you actionable tips like this to boost your response rates. 

In short, the latest Human Predictions update has made it a complete package for both finding prospects and reaching out to them in the best way possible. Try it yourself by requesting a demo today. 

15 Key Considerations to Improve your Job Search Outcomes

While job searching can be overwhelming, time-consuming, and frustrating, there are a few key considerations to help you reflect on and improve your approach so that you can be as efficient, intentional, targeted, and effective as possible.

Here are a few things you can reflect on to ensure you strengthen your approach:

Are you applying to a role that is too junior or too senior for your tenure and level of experience?

Jumping up a level sometimes can be more easily done internally within a company. While the number of years of experience on a job posting can sometimes be misleading, do your best to apply for role titles that feel commensurate with your tenure, experience level, and skillset.

Improve your Job Search OutcomesAre you applying to a role that you’re not sure is the best fit for you? 

If so, consider pursuing career exploration to clarify the best fit for role, industry and environment. Having confidence in your ideal direction will create efficiency and effectiveness in uncovering networking connections, targeting the right companies, and easily proving you are a strong fit in interviews.

Ask yourself, from 1-10, how clear are you that you’re pursuing a [role/company/industry] that is a fit for you? Are you applying to various options for roles and industries?

This is a key trigger to take a step back and ensure you learn enough about each path to prioritize the best possible fit for you.

Career exploration is an impactful process to pursue before you begin your job search journey.

Are you searching for companies in the wrong industry?

If you already have proven experience in a certain role, it’s great to apply for companies within industries that you have a genuine interest in, so they see that you are genuinely interested and invested in contributing to their mission.

Are you applying for companies at the wrong size or stage? 

Consider whether you are the best fit in a smaller, scrappier organization, a large corporate organization, or somewhere in the middle.

Are you applying “everywhere and anywhere”? 

If you are applying exhaustively for too many hours a day, to numerous roles per day, not only will you feel burnout, but you will start to reduce the quality of your efforts in finding the right applications.

It’s best to choose your top 10 target companies and focus on only a few at a time, so that way you intentionally focus your efforts on pursuing companies you know would be a great fit.

Could you benefit from some upskilling to prove your interest and fill any skill gaps required for your ideal direction?

Consider which course or certification would be most interesting and most relevant to push you towards your ideal direction.

Could your branding be improved? 

Your materials should clearly align your background and strengths with your ideal direction. Your branding should be consistent, clean, simple, and clearly prove your fit. (Think: resume, LinkedIn, professional summary, video pitch, cover letter)

Could you improve the clarity and impact of your communication during interviews? 

Interview practice is massively underrated as a helpful tool. Seek out coaches, mentors, or peers to listen and give you feedback.

Are you avoiding pursuing certain elements of the job search that feel unnatural or uncomfortable? 

Improve your Job Search Outcomes

(Like networking, interview practice, etc)? Are there other “mindset” areas or hesitations you could use coaching on to ensure you feel ready, willing, open and confident to pursue a strategic job search?

Could you benefit from some guidance on job search strategy and best practices? 

If you’re not sure where to spend time, how to approach networking, how to target companies, etc, there are best practices and career coaching experts out there who can help teach you what to do so you’re not left guessing. Once you know what to do properly, consider #11 below.

Are you in need of some structure and accountability? 

Using your time wisely in job search is the key to your success. Set goals, measure outcomes, and learn from those metrics to determine where you can improve.

Consistent effort and networking volume is key, so create accountability systems that will work well for you.

Are you being creative?

Don’t forget to use LinkedIn as a means of engaging in a relevant professional conversation, prove your thought leadership,

Are you taking care of yourself holistically to ensure your mindset remains confident and positive? 

Pursuing a creative project or learning/skill development opportunity can really help during a time of searching so that you don’t forget your value.

Are you being transactional or strategic?

Try to avoid feeling like you’re “checking the box” with any job search activity. Remember that both networking calls and interviews are conversations that serve as a mirror into the work you may be doing, so consider:

  • Who do I want to talk to?
  • About what types of topics or problems?
  • Why do I care about these topics or problems?
  • How will I efficiently target these particular people or companies?

Are you pursuing the same efforts over and over again?

in a “heads down” manner, or are you iterating your approaches based on outcomes? Remember to reflect on your job search strategy, where your time is going, the approaches you’re using, and the outcomes you’re seeing, to be sure you pivot and improve the areas that aren’t serving you.

And by the way, these areas for improvement could relate to your practical strategies, your sense of accountability, or even your mindset.

Don’t forget to “interview them back.”

It’s possible you’re showing up to interviews telling the interviewers what they want to hear without truly reflecting on whether that was the right fit company or environment for you. If it wasn’t the right fit after all, reflect on what elements of a company environment are important to you and then be creative in terms of how you can find more companies that fit the culture you align with.

Depending on your answers, consider whether career coaching, peer support, or any other form of mentorship and accountability could serve as both emotional and practical support to help you succeed in your job search.

Land High Quality Candidates in Less Time with ChatterWorks

ChatterWorks is a brand new tool that leverages AI to pull insights on users from a database of 300+ million profiles. It can save you a lot of time and hassle because it’s chock full of automation.

From finding leads that meet your exact specifications to setting up meetings with them at their preferred time and place, it can handle everything for you. So it’s the ultimate tool for those of you who want to take their recruitment process to the next level.

One more thing you should know about the tool is that it has a limited-time offer. Since it hit the market just a few months ago, it hasn’t caught on just yet.

We’ve got three questions for you

  • Do you want the contact information of candidates who meet all your criteria from a database of 300+ million users?
  • To connect with your ideal candidates on their preferred channel and at their preferred time?
  • Do you want an easy-to-use software that can get you the contact information, set up meetings with your preferred candidates, and even craft personalized messages for each individual to increase your chances of landing them?

If your answer is a resounding yes to all those questions, then today’s software is exactly what you need. 

Take advantage of the developers’ offer—a 50% discount for the first 1,000 people to sign up—for the lifetime of their subscription!

The 2%: Maintaining High-Calibre Candidate Selection During High Volume Hiring

The reality is this: you’re a busy talent acquisition professional who simply doesn’t have enough time to interview absolutely everyone who applies for a job posting. Sorry, not sorry.

You’re juggling multiple job openings and hiring deadlines, all while trying to coordinate stacked schedules for several rounds of digital interviews. 

It’s no surprise that only 2% of people get job interviews.

98% of Applicants Won’t Land an Interview

Ouch. Most applicants don’t get invited for an interview. A 98% rejection rate is discouraging for job seekers, but it’s also bad news for recruiters and hiring managers. Why?

Because chances are, within that high percentage, there are some great candidates who were just filtered out too soon.

  1. In some cases, candidates may be filtered out because their resume isn’t ATS-friendly. Regrettably, some resumes aren’t formatted properly, making them difficult for your applicant tracking system to read.
  2. Other times, candidates simply don’t jump off the (web)page. For whatever reason, their resume falls flat. The applicant hasn’t done a good enough job “pitching” themselves for the position. Maybe they downplayed strengths or overlooked transferable skills. The resume simply doesn’t speak to how their experience is relevant to the job.

It’s especially likely for promising candidates to be overlooked during high-volume, high-pressure hiring. When you’re trying to hire a large number of employees in a short amount of time, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

There never seem to be enough hours in the day to interview as many candidates as you’d like. But by limiting the number of people you interview, you risk missing out on top talent.

How to Interview More People in Less Time

It turns out this high-volume recruitment dilemma is a very solvable problem. The secret is simply removing the barrier of time.

We’re all adults with busy professional and personal lives. Schedules rarely line up. When you’re free for an interview, the hiring manager has a conflicting appointment.

Maybe the candidate isn’t available during business hours because they’re already employed elsewhere. You can either work late in hopes of aligning schedules, or you can remove the need to meet in real-time.

Inviting people to record answers to your interview questions allows you to give more candidates a chance—and still hire in less time. Because while you and hiring managers may not have time to schedule dozens of interviews, you likely have time to watch short videos of candidates introducing themselves. Fast-forward or skip over responses as you see fit.

Since 93% of communication is non-verbal, you can learn so much more about applicants by watching a recorded video than you could from a one-dimensional resume. And that leads to better hires.

The benefits of asynchronous (not occurring at the same time) interviewing for hiring teams are obvious, but will job seekers like it?

Persuading Applicants to Participate in Video Interviews

As a recruiter, of course, you want the candidate experience to be positive. Your employer brand and your future workforce depend on it. If you’ve heard rumblings that job hunters aren’t keen to complete asynchronous interviews, think again.

First off, lots of people are totally willing. At a time of historically high unemployment, people are looking for work in mass numbers. A little camera shyness is not going to stop them from making a case about why they’re the person for the job.

Secondly, people who outright refuse to participate in a pre-recorded video interview may be:

a.) Under informed about the benefits this type of interview offers them (of which there are many)

b.) Headstrong rebels just waiting to defy other work processes and become a thorn in the side of the HR department

That’s why I’m calling BS on applicants who resist video interviews. Completing a video interview on candidates’ own time is an indicator of their willingness to follow directions, and, frankly, their appetite for the job.

When you think about it from a candidate experience perspective, pre-recorded video interviews offer complete convenience, empowering applicants to complete it when and where is best for them.

Total freedom

  • Record interview responses 24/7. Applicants can do it in the morning if they’re an early bird, or late at night after the kids have gone to bed.

Home-field advantage

  • Similar to how athletes tend to win more often when competing at their home base, job applicants also have this advantage. They can minimize interview nerves by reducing distractions and creating an environment that sets them up for success.

High visibility

  • The easy shareability of the recorded videos grants applicants unique opportunities to introduce themselves to hiring decision-makers sooner in the game. Otherwise, it’s unlikely applicants get the chance to get facetime with senior management that early in the hiring process.

Unless the videos are being analyzed by a computer (c’mon, that’s just weird), real recruiters like you review them!

Educate and reassure applicants that asynchronous interviews are not the same as artificial intelligence (AI). That’s a common misunderstanding and not a reason for job seekers to resist pressing that record button. It all comes down to positive positioning.

Accelerating High Volume Hiring Without Compromising Candidate Quality

Finding top talent and accelerating recruitment are often considered two opposing factors. But recruiters don’t need to compromise candidate quality for speed of hire. You don’t have to settle for lesser-quality hires simply because you need to recruit quickly.

Removing the barrier of time is a foolproof approach to mass hiring that maintains forward momentum without sacrificing the quality of your hires.

 

How To Overcome Burnout In The Hiring Process

If 2020 was about transitioning to remote work, 2021 is about transitioning to new work. Organizations are likely to see higher than usual turnover, with employee burnout a primary cause. According to Korn Ferry, employees continue to report high levels of stress and burnout.

Six months ago, more than 45% of employees – essential and remote workers – reported suffering from burnout.

Why could churn be higher this year? As the U.S. slowly emerges from the pandemic, people feel their lives are becoming more predictable and under control again, creating the mental bandwidth to consider a job change.

There’s also more freedom. Geographic location is no longer a driving factor during a job search, thanks to the virtual work trend that is here to stay in many industries. Talent pools have truly become nationwide, if not global.

It’s vital for organizations to consider that while everybody is in this same storm, we are not all in the same boat.

To reduce burnout for high-performing employees and get acceptance on job offers, organizations need to find new ways to relate to employees and candidates that demonstrate genuine empathy.

 

Recharge to renew motivation

Supporting employees in overcoming burnout is important for everyone in the organization. Try these strategies to help reduce stress and elevate outlook in your workforce:

Help employees stay challenged intellectually. For some, taking on new responsibilities and having the opportunity to learn will recharge them and keep them motivated. Find ways to focus less on the minutiae of a job description and more on enabling employees to use their skills and passion to help move your organization forward.

At Modern Hire, we encourage our team members to consider internal mobility options to shift into other areas of the company that interest them or take on projects that get them excited. Taking on different job responsibilities, even on a short-term project basis, can break up the routine.

It also contributes to professional development.

Encourage employees to disconnect and recharge. Because people were unable to travel for vacations last year, many opted to not take time off. Even if not traveling, PTO is essential to unplug from work, recharge, and avoid burnout. At Modern Hire, for instance, we regularly encourage our employees to take time away from work and truly disconnect.

Organizations must foster a culture that respects and values time away from work, so employees get that mental break.

Support work/life flexibility. One of our company values – Invest in People – centers on providing employees with the flexibility to focus on what is important when it is most important. Sometimes the most important thing is finishing a big work project with a looming deadline.

Other times, the most important thing is cheering on your kid at their soccer game, taking care of your ailing parent, or dealing with any of life’s other demands. Trust your people.

Give them the flexibility they need to attend to all the things – work and personal – that are important to them.

Consider office reopening plans from your employees’ view. It’s not easy to maintain your culture when everyone is virtual, but you’ll do damage if you require people to come back when they say they aren’t ready. Many people don’t want to give up the flexibility they’ve built into their lives.

Some organizations are asking for volunteers to begin the return to work; others are giving hybrid work schedules a test.  

 

Make it easy for candidates to accept your offer

As organizations rebuild for the future, they need to translate their concern for employees into the hiring experience for candidates.

Here are a few hiring strategies that will show candidates you care about eliminating burnout and ensure you’re extending offers to the right candidates:

Be clear on your reopening plan. Solid communication on this will highlight your attention to employee burnout. It also helps ensure candidates who are hired during an all-virtual mode aren’t caught off guard by a mandatory return to the workplace. Your entire interview team should be consistent with this message.

Understand why candidates are looking. Are they running away from the same factors that will cause job fatigue with your organization? Are they settling for you because they just need to leave a current employer? You want to make sure they are joining your team for the right reasons.

Offer candidate-centered hiring experiences. Give candidates a window into your organization and treat them fairly, with dignity and respect, in your hiring process.

A science-based virtual hiring platform can provide the tools your team needs to create the right job-relevant experience by:

  • Streamlining and building on the candidate’s journey, so they are not asked the same questions in every step and have more opportunities to use their own words rather than answer multiple-choice questions.
  • Enabling efficient and easy hiring team collaboration, so interviewers are well-prepared not only about the role but about each candidate’s background.  
  • Inviting candidates into your process with an honest look at the role and your organization during pre-hire assessments, so they can make informed decisions about their fit if you decide to extend an offer based on the assessment data.

This pandemic forever changed how people and organizations think about where, how, and when work is done.

Successful companies won’t try to turn back the clock, especially when there are new opportunities for organizational and personal growth, and different challenges to solve with employee burnout.

They will continue to evolve their culture, their messaging, and hiring processes. Employer-employee relationships of the future will be more human-centric than ever.  

Consider Your Default Settings

Do you consider the default settings on your application form? Or the search engine on your corporate careers website? You should, as most of your visitors and applicants never change them.

Dutch insurance giant Achmea for example gives their applicants the opportunity to decide on the method of communication. The candidate gets to decide if the recruiter should call, WhatsApp, or e-mail.

Turns out 80% never changed the default status of phone.

Of course, this wasn’t tested in an A/B test, so maybe people like to be called. But we see this everywhere and there are actually a lot of good psychological constructs for this behavior.

  1. The default sets the norm and most people don’t like deviating from the norm.
  2. A conscious choice costs mental energy. If a choice is already made for us, that’s easy.

GDPR compliance

So do we see this on other aspects of the careers website as well? Yes. For example, GDPR compliance checks in Europe. Most companies have a “check the box” but some offer the candidate the choice of when to have their data removed—between 28 days or 1 year—after the application process is finished.

No matter whether it’s 28 days or 1 year, the default option gets selected about 70% across the board according to Dutch ATS Hirevserve.

Not just online 

In case you’re now wondering: maybe people just don’t care enough about these things. Let’s take a choice that could decide between life and death: organ donation. That’s an important one, and one you would think people care deeply about right?

Well, Germany and Austria have pretty similar cultural norms, yet the number of organ donors in Austria is twice as high as in Germany. Why?

The default option at registration in Austria is yes and in Germany is no. In Austria, you have to make a conscious decision to unregister. In Germany, you have to make it to register.

What defaults do you have? 

So what defaults do you have on your careers website? Do you have a range in your search bar? If so, what made you decide that is the right default?

Do you send job alerts at different time intervals? If so what’s the default interval?

And in case you think you don’t have a default because they always need to select something, you forget that the first option you offer is the one selected most often.

The effect isn’t as strong as a pre-filled default, but it’s still there.

Defaults matter

There is no wrong or right with defaults. But never forget you have the power to nudge people. Or actually, by definition, you will nudge people.

So whatever choice you make, make a conscious one, as your choice unconsciously affects those of many.

How VR Can Make Your Hiring Process Truly Equitable

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been buzzwords in the HR space for the last several years. And rightfully so — companies that don’t recruit, hire and mentor diverse candidates are leaving talent and skills on the table for the competitors to snatch up.

But even with major efforts at many companies, there is still quite a way to go before we are truly able to say we have achieved parity. One technology that can be used to speed up this process is virtual reality (VR), which allows both employees and employers to “try before they buy” and can both screen unfit candidates and allow those with skills who have non-traditional backgrounds to rise through the ranks.

How Virtual Reality Can Make Your Hiring Process Truly EquitableRecruiters are busy people with high targets, and often it is easier to just present a candidate with a linear, traditional path for a new role than someone who might have a more interesting skill set but a non-traditional path.

But how many of those linear candidates glided upwards because their dad made a phone call or they went to the same business school as the boss, and they aren’t actually that good at their jobs?

Likewise, how many under-represented candidates are stuck in the shadows because they didn’t go to the “right” school or had to work to earn a living and missed out on the chance to do the free or underpaid jobs that are often the ticket into many industries?

A virtual reality simulation can help weed out the candidates who spent their lives failing upwards while allowing the qualified quiet to prove their mettle. It would look something like this: a candidate puts on a headset and is asked to choose from a series of options when giving feedback to someone they manage.

If they manage the process with grace, they can move ahead; if they scream into the headset, that’s probably a sign they’re not a good fit. The simulations can be written and filmed to conform to a company’s culture and written with a level of subtlety that makes it hard to “cheat,” and the realism of VR makes the user feel like they are actually talking to another human.

VR also allows for a uniform process, unlike human interviews. We all have biases and will gravitate towards people like us — it’s just human nature. But the VR simulation doesn’t care that the candidate is from your hometown or went to college with your cousin — all it cares about is their ability to get the job done.

The screening process works across industries and job categories. Entry-level customer service workers, for instance, can go through a screening process to show that they can do the work no matter their background — a potential boon for non-violent offenders getting out of jail and looking for work, or people who’ve been out of the workforce for a while.

You can teach someone how to use a cash register much more easily than you can teach them kindness, problem-solving, and empathy. Likewise, you can screen out senior leaders with great results but a penchant for screaming at subordinates and spare yourself the hassle of being on the receiving end of a Ronan Farrow expose.

The best part is that this stuff actually works. My agency, Friends With Holograms, built a piece for child welfare workers that resulted in a 31% reduction in employee turnover in one agency, with a cost savings of over $20 million.

The same piece resulted in a 75% decrease in training costs in another agency, with results that were the same as, if not better than, traditional in-person training.

While it was cutting-edge five years ago, VR is now very much part of the mainstream, being used by companies like Walmart, Amazon, Target, Lowe’s, and Verizon, to name a few of our clients. The headsets have come down in both cost and complexity and been used by people of all ages and backgrounds with resounding success.

The key to creating a great experience for your employees is working with someone who has experience making virtual reality — scripting and filming for VR is vastly different than creating content for in-person or online screening and training.

Virtual reality can help make hiring processes more equitable by removing bias from the equation. Once you start using this technology, you’ll likely see more diverse candidates advancing and those who slid by and abused their direct reports being called out.

The time to start using VR is now — not when your competitors have hired the stars and left the dregs behind.

 

Can’t write Boolean Strings? FellowMonk Can Help

If used correctly, Google can be a great tool for recruiters. Now you’re probably thinking, “But wait… Is there a wrong way to use Google for finding prospects?” 

As a matter of fact, there is.

It’s performing a simple search instead of using a Boolean string. The latter offers so much more precision, nuance, and power.

But how do you create Boolean strings?

Well, you don’t have to. With the help of the FellowMonk Sourcing Bot (FMSB), you can get Boolean strings generated for you within seconds.

FMSB is a self-proclaimed recruitment assistant that works like this:

  • Once you open the website, it will give you two options, “Boolean” and “Technology.” Select “Boolean”
  • Next up, select what kind of developer you’re looking for from the drop-down list.
  • Type in the languages you want the prospect to be proficient in.
  • Now, hit enter and FMSB will create a Boolean string for you.
  • Copy the string and use it on Google. If you’re using another sourcing tool, the string will work there as well.

Besides generating Boolean strings for you, FMSB also provides you with a library of simple definitions for technological jargon. So if you ever get confused by an IT term, just head over to the official FMSB site, select the “technology” option, and type in the term to get an easy-to-understand definition for it. 

Since it’s an online tool with no downloads, you can try the power of Boolean strings by letting FellowMonk build one for you. 

Here’s What You Need to Know About the Upcoming Quickli Update

Upcoming New Features from Quickli

When you’re sourcing leads for your own recruitment business, you want to know as much about them as possible. Quickli, as the name implies, lets you quickly grab some important facts about your prospects. We’re talking about details like the company size, location, and field of work. 

If that sounds too barebones, the upcoming update is about to change that without sacrificing the simplicity of this tool.

Just take a look at the list of all the features that are going to be added soon: 

  • Profile Peek
  • Basic search download
  • Recruiter search and project download 
  • A feature that will allow you to find similar profiles on both basic and “Peek” profiles
  • A “Desk” feature that’s essentially the same as the old clipboard feature from LinkedIn Recruiter
  • Batch details downloaded that lets you source information from a list of LinkedIn URLs in bulk

So if you appreciate the simplicity of Quickli but wish it could do more, be sure to grab the upcoming update as soon as it’s out. You can follow the developer himself to get the latest news and updates on his Patreon page. 

P.S. Quickli is one of 7 free extensions that can turbo-boost your sourcing speed. Check the others out here!

drip, Drip, DRIP! The Talent Tsunami Has Begun

You’ve been reading about it for weeks: as the pandemic eases, a tsunami of people will look for new jobs.

According to the recognition company, Achievers, more than half of employees will look for new jobs, way up over last year, mainly in search of better work/life balance and pay/benefits. A Microsoft study found that many workers are simply out of gas, tired, and looking to leave.

Hiring has quickly become much more difficult. Diginomica explains why: Inability to get vaccinated; health fears; concerns that co-workers will be lax about safety; government support; and the kids still schooling at home.

It’s challenging to find nursing assistants, IT specialists, nuclear engineers, and more. McDonald’s are understaffed. There’s a tight market for digital jobs, solar jobs, and manufacturing jobs.

The head of talent acquisition for a Native American nation is seeing a “huge decline in applicant flow.” 

It’s time to think about whether long-standing talent traditions are contributing to these challenges. For example:

Come on Back. Oops!

One company we’re familiar with has emailed its employees to tell them that while remote work was useful for a while, it’s time to come back to the office in July.

Many employees have essentially told the company: “Make me!”

They’re e-mailing HR and managers to say, “We’re way more productive working virtually, whether at home, with customers, coworkers, at events, or wherever we need to be on a given day, instead of spending our time commuting.”

Many employees are flat-out refusing to come back.

The company can pick the people it can live without, and who are refusing to return to the office, and can fire them. But:

1) That’s not a good option; it’s an invitation to a variety of lawsuits; for example, an employee might argue that the work environment or travel requirements are unsafe, using the “public nuisance doctrine” and other laws.

2) It’s going to make it tough to recruit, as ex-employees spread the bad word.

3) There is an intense, growing competition for talent. Replacing people will be tough as the economy is heating up rapidly.

The company got itself into a pickle.

Now, I’m not against being in the workplace. We have customers who need to be in stores, at the bottom of mines, and in offices. At Eightfold, we’re shopping for some new office space ourselves.  

My point is that rather than assume that people are replaceable, you need to think about your talent first, as they will make or break your business.

Who Has Done This Job?

The typical way to hire someone is to find a candidate who has done the job before. They are doing the job at another company. So, let’s hire them to do that role at our company.

That doesn’t always work anymore.

Take, for example, this quote from the recent 2021 HR tech market report from the analyst Josh Bersin:

I recently interviewed the head of talent acquisition for a large pharma company, and she told me that the science of genetics is advancing so fast that they can no longer recruit for specific positions or jobs. Rather, her teams now look for people with advanced scientific expertise and recruit them into jobs needing these skills. This is a big trend in AI, machine learning, and cyber, where the core disciplines are advancing so fast that companies can’t hire for specific positions.

Increasingly, we need to hire for potential. Not based on whether we’d like to be stuck in an elevator or airport with someone. Or whether they wrote the best resume or faked it the best in the interview. Or, whether they have done the exact job before, at least as it exists today.

Artificial intelligence, combined with a massive amount of data, can show a company what’s needed to succeed in a role, whether for a pharma company or a self-driving car company.

Let’s say, for the latter, it’s necessary to have expertise in trigonometry. The job candidate with this trig expertise may be a great fit, based on their potential, despite not working on self-driving vehicle technology before.

AI can help with hiring for potential and with “adjacent skills.” You may not know x computer language, but what we really need is someone who can learn it. AI can tell us that if you know language y, you’d be enormously likely to be able to pick up language x.

Maybe the detail-oriented person with a background in accounts payable has all the potential for a user-experience role. Maybe the middle-school teacher would make a good product trainer.

This line of thinking gets away from “who has done the job before?”

Top Schools = Top Dollar

Let me give you a choice. You have two candidates. You can hire the person from your alma mater, or you can hire someone from … let’s call it Lovely University.

Given the choice, I’m thinking you’d pick your alma mater.

Well, as it turns out, Lovely U is real! It’s in India, so you may not have heard of it.

This is how we have hired for a long time. We hire what we know, or what college is supposed to be “best.” But this can create a diversity problem: as we said before, “many high-potential students get accepted to higher-ranked universities but attend less-expensive schools because it is financially responsible for their situation.”

If we’re going to truly move the diversity needle, we need to calibrate every open job carefully, thinking about whether the educational requirement we are inclined to list is really necessary, or if it’s actually the skills that are needed.

Could someone have all the right skills and potential, but we’re ignoring them for no reason? Like we don’t know what people do in the Air Force, where they’ve spent 20 years?

We now have the technology to stop doing that.

AI technology has progressed to the point where that Air Force veteran could have a bare-bones resume, and we still know a lot about them. The same goes for a customer service rep. Or a writer, designer, miner, accountant, or software developer.

We need to stop doing quite a few things, like hiring based on who’s living in the best location for us, or who has the best resume, the best interview, our perception of the best school, and the best ex-employer. And start hiring for potential.

Those who start rethinking their hiring will have a leg up on fighting the tsunami.

Increase conversion by at least 50% by removing ‘Register to Apply’

In my home country of the Netherlands, we see less and less ‘register to apply’ on corporate careers websites. In the most recent research of Digitaal-Werven (2019), only 11% of all major Dutch employers had this ridiculous application process, but it’s still very common in the US and the UK.

And even though Taleo and Workday still have this as their default option thankfully more and more Talent Acquisition managers are changing the process and recent data shows this is the smartest move you can make.

Increase conversion

Career site system Attrax was kind enough to share some data with me recently on sites that used their system to get rid of the ‘register to apply’ option—and turn it into a decent application process. Here the applicant simply enters an e-mail address and then uploads a resume that is parsed for data. Or enters a few data fields.

With register to apply at engineering firm SNC-Lavelin only 49% of the people that clicked the apply button finished it.

That’s a loss of over half of all applicants.

After this friction was removed, 76% finished the process. That’s an increase of 55%.

This is the LOWEST conversion increase they shared with me.

Healthcare technology firm IQVIA: + 63%

Telecoms giant Vodafone: + 76%

Pharma company ICON: +68%

My assumption is because SNC-Lavelin recruits lots of construction workers, who might be willing to put up with a lesser candidate experience that their increase is the smallest, and still about 50%.

To turn this into actual numbers, SNC-Lavelin in 2019, pre-pandemic when the labor markets were still very difficult, got over 10.000 more applicants finishing their application because they got rid of the ‘register to apply.’

The Careers Site Multiplier

I’ve said it many times before. Your corporate careers website is a multiplier, either on your conversion or your budget. All your other recruiting efforts are affected by it.

Your advertising, your sourcing, your (virtual) career fairs.

Research shows over 90% of all candidates will at some stage look at your careers website. You’d better make it awesome.

Most careers websites I look at, especially in the US and UK, are all about looks. It’s more like a campaign with some good pictures and nice movies than about the stuff that matters.

An awesome careers website isn’t just about the looks, it’s about the jobs and the process. The job descriptions matter. Both in looks as in text.

My Dutch clients see on average between 70% and 90% of all traffic on job-related parts of the site.

Most people never see anything but the job description.

And after that, it’s the application process.

Your corporate careers website should be like Amazon—not just an interesting homepage, but nice product pages (job descriptions) and a really frictionless ordering (application) process.

Got Nothing More than an Image? That’s Enough for Image Raider

If you’ve got nothing more than an image of a prospect and you want to find out more about them, Image Raider is the tool you need. Here’s how you can use it:

  • Go to their official website
  • Paste the URL of the image you want to find out more about or upload it if it’s stored in your computer
  • The tool will scrape the web and find out everything about the image, including its primary source and all other pages where it has been posted

You can then check those pages to find out literally everything that’s been posted about the image on the internet.

Furthermore, the tool also crawls the web for other information, including:

  • The name of the person in the image — which is displayed at the top of your search result
  • The location where the image was taken — which can be found near the bottom of the Image Raider page.

While Google offers a powerful reverse image search already, Image Raider still makes for a decent addition to any recruiter’s toolkit. That’s because the hit-or-miss nature of searching images online means it’s never a bad idea to run through multiple tools. 

You can do a test search right now as there are no registrations or downloads needed on the Image Raider website. 

How HR Leaders Can Use Data to Hire and Retain Black Software Engineers

Executives at major companies have been promising to focus more on improving DE&I. Companies like Facebook have announced a new effort to increase the representation of people of color in leadership by 30% — in the next 5 years.

However, 6 years after the initial diversity reports began at tech giants like Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, little progress has been made.

In fact, Black tech professionals only accounted for 9% of core technology roles in the U.S. last year.

Many companies are trying to increase the percentage of Black employees in their workforce. However, a common perception that is hurting Black candidates’ prospects is the misperception that Black employees tend to change jobs more frequently.

For example, a recent CTI shows that Black professionals are 30% more likely to leave a job as compared to non-Black employees, with more than a third intending to leave a company within two years. The study points to many factors, such as barriers for advancement at their jobs, limited access to senior leaders, and experience of prejudice in the workplace.

In our study, the claim that Black employees tend to “job hop” more often than non-Black employees was put to the test. We analyzed over 1 million profiles of software engineers as a case study because it is speculated that the sheer demand for engineers contributes to their ability to move to bigger, better, and higher paid positions.

After comparing the average tenure of Black employees to that of non-Black employees, it was found that Black engineers are actually very similar to non-Black engineers in their tendency to “job hop.”

The table below shows the % of candidates from each group in each tenure category.

We found that both Black and non-Black engineers average 35 months in their tech jobs.

When looking deeper into the data, we also see that only 5% of both Black and non-Black software engineers are likely to leave a job before their first-year anniversary. However, there is a negligent difference between the two groups when looking at the likelihood to leave their jobs between 12 to 36 months on the job.

After 36 months on the job, 62% of Black employees are likely to leave their jobs compared to 59% of non-Black employees.

The research results suggest that companies need to pay more attention to Black engineers during their first 12-36 months of work in order to retain them.

Furthermore, to increase diversity and improve retention, tech companies must strive for better inclusion and appreciation of all employees. For example, companies need to look at their internal mobility.

Research shows that when employees see potential for promotion and advancement in their career working at their current company, they are more likely to stay.

HR leaders should also evaluate the participation of diverse talent in managerial roles.

Employees who see that the percentage of their racial group in managerial roles is similar to their representation in the total workforce, tend to feel more encouraged that they have an equal chance to be promoted to managerial roles.

Another way that HR leaders can increase representation in their workforce is by recruiting candidates in cities with a more diverse talent pool.

Many companies failing to fill and retain diverse talent have attributed their limited access to qualified and diverse talent on their location. Companies can more easily source great talent from anywhere with the benefit of remote work.

To explore this further, we performed a study identifying the percentage of Black software engineers in major US cities. While according to the data, only 4% of all computer programmers are Black, certain cities have more candidates for recruiters.

While the tech scene seems to be booming in cities like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, they’re home to a much smaller overall percentage of Black software engineers than other cities, with only 2% in San Francisco and New York, and a mere 1% in Los Angeles and Boston.

Companies that wish to increase representation of Black software engineers should capitalize on the current remote revolution and recruit in other cities. 

Our study shows that these cities are home to the highest number of Black software engineers. 

  1. Atlanta, GA – 8%
  2. Charlotte, NC – 5%
  3. Dallas, TX – 4%
  4. Detroit, MI – 3%
  5. Raleigh, NC – 3%

In summary, Black engineers are loyal to their employers as much as non-Black engineers. In fact, our data indicates that a greater percentage of Black engineers actually tend to stay longer in their jobs.

The highest risk of losing engineers is between their first year to their 24th month of employment, so HR leaders should focus their efforts on improving the onboarding experience and showing appreciation to retain talent.

Once companies hire a remote employee, they should be extremely deliberate in the hiring process and maintain consistent communication of company culture and benefits to ensure these new employees feel included.

If companies cannot find enough qualified candidates in their location, they should leverage remote work options in cities where there is plenty of qualified and loyal talent. By widening your search to a remote workforce, companies can open the door to great hires. However, it is on the HR leaders to make sure these employees stay connected.

Remote work is here to stay, and companies need to start looking more strategically at how to change their recruiting strategies and fill more remote roles if they truly want to hire and retain more diverse talent.

Leadership in the Age of Gig Economy

Running a business today is a lot different than it was only a decade or so ago. The spread of the gig economy has changed the employee-employer dynamic, work environment, and what we want from work.

Today, 35% of the global workforce are freelancers, and companies are increasingly relying on their services. Some organizations have a core of in-house employees and outsource any peripheral tasks, whereas others rely on independent contractors entirely.

However, freelancers are not permanent employees, and they can leave whenever they want. So how should leaders entice them and make the collaboration with them work?

 

What Do Freelancers Want?

Freelancing has numerous benefits compared to traditional work. If you think only people who can’t find traditional employment become gig workers, you are sorely mistaken. In fact, 61% of freelancers say they’re independent workers by choice. Most of them wouldn’t go back to the nine-to-five grind if offered the opportunity.

Hiring independent contractors is therefore much different from recruiting traditional employees. You need to cater to an entirely different set of needs. Well, almost.

First of all, freelancers value their independence and flexibility over everything else. A survey has found that the top three reasons people turn to freelance work are work-life balance (70%), flexibility (62%), and freedom (56%).

Once you hire a gig worker, you can’t expect to boss them around or micromanage them. You have to respect their time and trust their skills. It’s in their best interest to do a great job.

Of course, if a client is fair and respectful, freelancers are happy to start a lasting business relationship with them. If you’re striving for this kind of arrangement, there are several things you can do to make freelancers happy to work with you.

 

Streamline Your Recruitment Process

If your talent acquisition funnel is too lengthy, clunky, and tiring, you will deter many potentially amazing freelance workers. They’re not looking for steady employment at your company, so they probably won’t waste their time going through numerous steps and waiting forever to get a yay or nay.

You need to make your recruitment process for contractors much more efficient than that for your regular employees. In other words — speed it up! Think about any redundant steps and leave them out. Also, be sure to let the candidates know what they can expect and when. Eliminate the guesswork, and they’ll be much more likely to wait.

 

Be Clear About What You Want Them to Do

Again, independent contractors are not your full-time employees, i.e., they don’t know how your company does things. So when you reach out to them, they don’t care about the job title you’re advertising — they want to know what kind of work they’ll be doing and what you expect of them.

Once they start working on your project, you should provide them with detailed instructions and make sure you’re on the same page from the get-go. This will eliminate the need for intense supervision and room for mistakes.

 

Consider Offering Employee Benefits

Now, just because freelancers don’t want a traditional job, it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like the opportunity to enjoy some standard employee benefits. They’re just rarely offered any, so they need to fend for themselves. By extending your healthcare insurance, for example, to your contract workers, you’ll get much more than a job well done — you’ll get loyalty. Here are some benefits you could offer them.

Health Insurance Coverage

Having health, vision, and dental coverage is a freelancer’s dream come true. They have a much more difficult time finding these options for their type of work, and they’re indisputably extremely important to everyone.

You can buy them insurance or offer to cover the health insurance plan they already have. This move will undoubtedly make you a much more appealing client than the competition. You can also provide access to your group plans and even reduce your benefits premiums this way.

Retirement Plan

Planning for retirement is another pressing issue freelancers tend to face. They need to set up their own pension plan and try to contribute toward it as much as possible if they want to be able to comfortably retire one day.

You can offer them a savings plan and contribute to their accounts. This type of care on your end will make them much more likely to stay with you for a long while.

Certification and Training

As self-employed and often self-taught people, freelancers are always on the prowl for new opportunities to further their knowledge and marketable skills. Therefore, another great way to incentivize them is to offer some sort of educational resources to them.

These could be seminars, training, various programs and courses, and anything else you might be able to offer. This way, you also show that you don’t think about them as disposable and you value their work.

Various Discounts

If your business enjoys any kinds of discounts, such as those for travel expenses, gym memberships, professional equipment, or anything else, you could extend this benefit to your contractors as well.

They may find these incredibly useful for their own professional development, and it once again shows that you value them and consider them part of your business ecosystem.

 

Build a Strong and Inclusive Company Culture

Thanks to advanced software options for small business communication and smooth operations, you can make even remote-working contractors feel part of the team. If you nurture a culture of diversity and acceptance and give opportunities to a variety of people, you’ll build a strong company core.

Your core is what keeps all the different elements of your organization together and unites them. You might have outside partners, full- and part-time employees, independent contractors, office and remote employees working for your brand. The best way to have them all working as one toward the common goal is to have strong company values they can relate to.

Ultimately, a strong leader in times of the gig economy doesn’t rely on rigid authority and hierarchy but rather on the ability to unite the fragmented workforce through the understanding of everyone’s needs.