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Sourcing from Listserv and Mailing List Archives

Sourcing from Listserv and Mailing List Archives

Let’s talk about an uncommon area to find candidates that you might be unfamiliar with: Listserv and Mailing List Archives. OK, but what is Listserv?

sourcing listserv

If you haven’t come across Listserv before, it is an electronic mailing discussion forum software extensively used by Universities within the US and Canada. Each listserv operated by a university maintains several such lists for multiple discussion topics.

A recruiter can review each listserv site of the university, see which list is most suitable and active, and then request to join it.

Once approved, you can monitor conversations and approach passive candidates. You can also post jobs for free, depending on the listserv group requirements. You can also read through the archived posts.

Listserv Etiquette

The following link lays out the rules of listserv etiquette. Please view it here prior to joining and posting.  

L-soft releases the statistics related to top listserv usage by universities in the US and Canada. Some of the popular listserv forums that I have utilized for sourcing and recruiting from my personal experience are:

Please note that all listservs have archives, but not all of them are publicly viewable without a login registration. 

 

Inside the Archive

There are several mailing list archives that one can search. Even for the publicly viewable ones, the email addresses of the discussion participants are generally hidden.

A simple search of mailing list archive Hadoop in Google does bring up a lot of results. A private organization or a motivated set of volunteers can set up a mailing list type listserv as well. 

An example of this would be BangPypers, which is a Python Users Group out of Bangalore, India. This is an easy archive you can search, monitor conversations, events, etc for candidates.

 

Recruiting in a Post COVID World

Recruiting today has sure changed from what it looked like a year ago, pre-pandemic. Yes, some businesses have unfortunately had to let some of their staff go or close their doors altogether; but conversely, numerous companies are hiring for new positions more than ever.

Human Resource leaders and their recruiting professionals have learned to quickly adapt by adopting flexible schedules and recreating their hiring strategies in order to keep the hiring process moving along smoothly.

A year later employers are recognizing the talent gaps and have started increasing their employment efforts. It’s vital for HR and their recruiters to evaluate what’s working for a company, and what’s not in these times, to make compliant alterations now.

Now more than ever, businesses are outsourcing their HR, recruiting and talent acquisition services through firms like Flex HR.

Hiring during this COVID-19 era presents its own set of challenges, which has been difficult to accomplish especially since almost the entire recruiting process has become virtual.

While the talent pool seems to be hefty, so does the work of recruiters to find candidates that measure up to what the company is specifically looking for. Core capabilities have been reassessed and the focus has been turned to an employee’s qualities and what transferable skills really make them a valuable asset to the company.

Teresa Monday, Flex HR’s Director of Recruiting & Client Success, notes “recruiting has a new meaning now that it’s been over a year in the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of employees hired in the past year have never stepped foot into their new employers’ office and have only seen their manager and co-workers through a monitor. Behavioral Interviewing has become an imperative part of hiring during this era of selecting new employees.”

Recruiters are uniquely positioned to encourage positive changes to their usual practices. Once the right individual is offered the job, onboarding processes need to run smoothly in order to ensure the new hire feels comfortable and confident beginning a new endeavor unaccompanied.

HR needs to consider pacing new hire paperwork and training initiatives for building rapport and engagement, so as not to overwhelm newcomers. Short 5–8-minute training videos spaced out over time, or days, have been shown to be effective for the new hire to absorb the information sufficiently.

Most new employees hired within the past year have not even seen inside the office so you may want to consider taking a quick video to show the new employees what your office looks like so they can get a feel for the company and culture.

Recruiting in a Post COVID WorldEmployers should also create time for virtual social interaction to encourage team building and collaboration between co-workers so that company culture remains integral.

At Flex HR, CEO Jenny Morehead arranged Zoom coffee breaks every other week to interact with staff to welcome new employees, celebrate client and employee wins and gather from afar to check in with each other.

“The company morale and encouragement since beginning our virtual coffee breaks together has really seemed to increase and lift the essence of those relationships in our office,” notes Morehead.

Start getting ahead of the changes coming next by working with your HR experts and your talent acquisition team now. Employers need to start planning ahead for the roles that will be needed in the near future.

Remote recruiting has become the new normal and is here to stay, so optimizing the candidate experience is becoming the key to nurturing that individual through the entire recruitment process.

7 Free Extensions that will Turbo Boost your Sourcing Speed

I wanted to highlight some useful browser extensions that you can use on Chrome to turbo-boost your sourcing abilities.

Talent Sourcing is defined as researching, identifying, and prospecting candidates. It takes an immense amount of time and effort to find, attract, and engage a potential lead.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to highlight some useful extension tools that I’ve used to help improve my sourcing abilities.

 

Here’s a list of Free Extensions to Review Further:

OneTab is an extension that helps improve your browser speed and storage. You can save all your tabs within one place. This allows you to easily manage your sourcing pages within the day. 

Quickli is an extension that allows you to view company information on someone’s LinkedIn profile. This only works in LinkedIn Recruiter. It gives the company size, location, and summary of the corporate company. It also recommends additional team members to reach out to. 

RecruiterWand helps auto-populate someone’s LinkedIn profile – job title, company, location, and education. It then lets you choose a Recruiter template and then auto-populates that template with that profile’s information. There are 25 customizable recruiter templates to choose from. Overall, it’s a great tool to use when you are mass messaging potential candidates on LinkedIn. 

Multi-Highlight allows you to add keyword terms within the tool. It then highlights those keywords on any website page. This is useful if you are sourcing within LinkedIn and are looking for certain niche terms within your search.

WhenX gives you the history of your Google search. When you conduct a search within Google this tool will tell you the last time you viewed that page. You can also favorite and add notes to each individual search. This comes in handy when you are creating Boolean strings and searching for resumes or profiles online.

Loxo finds contact information on LinkedIn profiles. They allow you to search and view up to 25 profiles per month. If you are new to the contact finding game then this extension is a great way to get started. The tool offers email engagement, ATS/CRM management, note-taking, and much more. 

Todoist for Chrome helps keep you focused throughout your sourcing day. You can add websites as tasks: Add a blog post to your reading list. Save an item to your wishlist. Add work tasks to follow up on. Easily plan your day organizing your tasks for the day right from the extension. 

Sourcing Requires Momentum

There are few absolutes these days. Talent acquisition is not absolute. Recruitment is the movement of people through a hiring process – and when people are involved, rules become less defined.

People are messy.

Sourcing too can be nebulous. The sourcing function itself is an obscure luxury for even the most modern organizations. I have come to set the record straight on at least one hazy subject in sourcing, and that is that sourcing requires momentum.

Momentum is defined as “mass in motion”. Simply, it quantifies motion. If something doesn’t move, it has no momentum.

When we think about momentum in sourcing, it means that we shouldn’t just dabble in-and-out of sourcing if we want to be successful. Sourcing demands the unyielding hunt for passive candidates over time.

It is a consistent force of progress.

Motion turned on and off is not momentum, it is inertia – the opposite of movement.  Sourcing isn’t a vending machine to which you submit a quarter and three highly qualified candidates spit out on demand.  There is no inventory or pipeline unless a Sourcer builds the funnel intently, with staunch momentum. A relentless pursuit. A consistent force of advancement.

In my consulting role, I see performance metrics for teams with part-time or traditional requisition-based Sourcers. The challenge I see with these Sourcing models is the starting and stopping of work.

Sourcing for multitudes of positions, in multiple specialty areas, requires the Sourcer to be good at many things, but an expert at none. When a Sourcer is assigned work via longest open requisition, they start and stop momentum for every role, shift, and location they are seeking.

The traditional Sourcer, working off old requisitions, is becoming an antiquated model.  We now know that candidates behave as consumers.  And these consumers need persistent multi-channel approaches over time before they may respond with interest.

This number varies but somewhere between five and fifteen times probably won’t surprise anyone who does the job today. If we are not insistent with our sourcing attempts over time, and managing those attempts over time, how then will momentum be built?

Mature sourcing structures have already realized the value of a pipeline sourcing model.

In this model, a Sourcer does not work via requisitions, but rather by a specialty area. Focus on one to two specialty areas allows the Sourcer to build momentum.  In a healthcare example, we would call this a Nurse Pipeline Sourcer or Nurse Evangelist.

Instead of trying to fill a physical therapist role today, and an ultrasound tech tomorrow, the Sourcer simply focuses all their energy on strong experienced nurses. Those passive candidate reach-outs have a ripple effect over time. And before long, your Sourcer becomes an expert on all things nursing, all competitors, and all the players in the region.

And most important, the momentum has garnered a robust pipeline of candidates that seemingly has no end to its ripple. I tell new Sourcers constantly, that their job is to become famous amongst the people they are trying to recruit.

An argument to switching to a pipeline model of sourcing, which allows for momentum to have a huge payoff, is that the role is too specialized. You may have to hire more Sourcers to cover the gap if Sourcers aren’t paying attention to the oldest requisitions to source, right? Not exactly.

Sourcers should be working on roles that are the most difficult in the organization, not to supplement a gap in the sourcing ability of over-worked Recruiters.  If an organization only has the budget for three Sourcers, the temptation will be to spread those Sourcers out to cover as many open positions as possible.

The alternative to consider now is to focus those three Sourcers on the job categorized with the highest level of openings, and the lowest level of talent availability.

Building sourcing momentum has one glaring negative. Sourcing the same roles over and over requires a repetition that most people do not enjoy. Therefore, identifying the best Sourcers can take some planning.

But we are out there. This repetition is identified by the experienced Sourcer as the specialization gratification. Specializing allows room for momentum to build and allows for the Sourcer to become an expert.

Being seen as an expert is an intrinsic reward.

Intrinsic rewards are intangible, psychological rewards that you get from a job well done, and lead to employee satisfaction on increased tenure.

And what organization couldn’t benefit from that?

LeadDelta for Pain-Free LinkedIn Connection Management

Let’s be honest. As great as LinkedIn is for building a professional network, the platform leaves you hanging when the time comes to extract any real value from your network.

Don’t get us wrong. It’s easy enough to use in the beginning. But once you enter the territory of thousands of connections—which is nothing out of the ordinary for veteran recruiters—exploring your network can feel like finding your way out of the Amazon rainforest without a compass or a map.

LeadDelta is your goodbye to that headache.

 

How it works:

This Chrome extension lets you extract all your connections from LinkedIn into a no-nonsense interface that’s designed to save you thousands of clicks every month. Remember opening up profiles to find out the occupation, location, or contact details for each of your connections? Well, not anymore.

The CRM-styled listview puts everything at your fingertips, with one table row containing all the details for each contact. You can then use the magic of filtering to cut through the noise and pinpoint the heartbeat of your networking efforts.

Want to reach out to the CEOs of Alternative Medicine organizations in Houston, Texas? A couple of mouse clicks and all the matching connections will magically pop up on your screen.

If you want to kick things up a notch, you’re going to love tags and notes. Tags let you put filtering on steroids. Think of them as adding custom attributes to your connections. For example, you can tag all the connections who showed any sign of disengagement with their current job. The next time you want to reach out to this group, you can instantly view them by putting that tag into the filter.

Notes, on the other hand, let you leave reminders for your future self. Maybe a connection loves the book you just read last month. Well, you can store that little detail into a note that will always show up next to their name in LeadDelta.

Finally, you can export all this data to a .csv file to unleash the data-whiz within you. This feature alone makes the extension worth a buy—or, in this case, worth an install—since it’s available for free on the Chrome Web Store.

Too Many Chrome Extensions? Use Extension Manager

Extension Manager: A Tool for Managing all your Chrome Extensions

We recommend a lot of Chrome extensions. There are some really neat productivity tools out there that can make your recruiting and sourcing process a LOT easier.

The thing is, you don’t want to have them all enabled at once. Your browser and extension list can start to get really cluttered, messy, and confusing.

Thankfully, there are some solutions that make managing your extensions a lot easier. This tool is cleverly named “Extension Manager,” available as a free download from the Chrome Web Store.

 

Step by Step

When you run the extension, a small window will pop-up with different icons. The colored icons belong to the active extensions on your Chrome, and the black and white icons refer to the inactive ones.

There is a default group of extensions that displays all the extensions on your Chrome. Within the Extension Manager tool, there is an option called “Group” that allows you to pool together the extensions you want to activate at a given time.

For example, let’s say you have a lot of sourcing extensions related to social media profiles. Instead of having to activate each extension one by one, this tool lets you create a group of extensions that are just for sourcing from social media.

Right next to the group that says ‘Default,’ there is a plus sign. When you click on that sign, a tab will open next to the “Default” group. This would be named ‘New Group.’ You can edit the name according to your preferences. In this case, we would name this group ‘Social Media Sourcing.’ Click on each of the desired sourcing extensions one by one to add to that group.

This makes it extremely convenient for you to access your sourcing extensions in one place.

The next time you open your Chrome window and want to enable a set of extensions, all you have to do is run Extension Manager and activate the set of extensions you need by clicking on the group’s name.

With just one click, you can manage your extensions and save a ton of time.

You Can’t Close If They Don’t Open: How to Up Response Rates

In a world where nearly everything has become quantifiable, it can be difficult to determine which metrics matter most. But when it comes to the top of the recruiting funnel, response rates reign supreme. And for one simple reason: you can’t close if they don’t open.

How to Up Candidate Response RatesSure, getting a prospect to respond is the first in a series of steps, but any possibility of a relationship is done if they don’t. Not responding is a response.

It’s a deliberate decision not to engage. And so, response rates work as a measure of effectiveness.

On a recent episode of Sourcing School, I sat down with hosts Brian Fink and Ryan Leary to discuss response rates and how to move the needle.

Truth be told, early in my career, my rates were low, hovering around 13 percent, but over time, through trial and error, I learned what works and now boast a 68 percent response rate. Brian, acknowledging that his rates are somewhere in the 30 percent range, asked for tips so others might learn.

A Fact-Finding Mission

My story starts in a familiar place, sending out detailed messages to potential candidates, giving them background on who I am, the company I work for, the job opening, and more.

But despite all the time I spent crafting these messages, the rate of response wasn’t great, and I grew frustrated. Using that irritation to my advantage, I decided to go a proven route and turned to AI-powered email personalization with SeekOut.

More like, “Hi, I’m Jackye, a recruiter at Y company. I am very impressed with your skillset and wanted to talk to you about X job. Are you interested in learning more?”

Pretty quickly, I saw a pattern emerge as I ramped up these communications and tracked my campaign results within SeekOut. According to data provided by the software, it was clear responses went up when I kept my messages more personalized and asked for permission. My current method relies on this approach, and it’s a theme I carry through each interaction.

The reason I ask for permission is that prospective candidates aren’t always excited to hear from recruiters. That type of thinking is assumptive. It’s a common mindset and one that recruiters likely need to move away from.

Instead of presenting as all-knowing, I use curiosity to get the conversation going. That means including a few basics and a call to action, one that asks for permission to follow up. Doing this helps establish credibility and introduce trust, a critical factor for today’s job seekers, particularly those actively employed.

My goal is to get to them to take the next step and track what’s working along the way so I can always improve my response rates and build a robust talent pool for the role I’m hiring for.

Once contact is made, and a response is received, SeekOut automatically removes the candidate from the campaign, so I don’t have to do that manually. I save time on admin tasks and devote more time to creating a thoughtful response. 

The second message should explain the why. This is where I take a step back and offer up pertinent information about the job in question. It’s where I explain that I have a position in mind and am working to find the right person.

Again, I ask their permission before getting presumptive about their intent.

 

Additional Ideas

Building on this format, I have found success with a few additional tactics. SeekOut‘s intuitive AI-powered talent intelligence platform includes suggestions for subject lines, the best time to send, and information from candidates’ unified profiles.

Use these if and when you see fit:

Everything should be a separate email until they answer

Rather than “circle back” or look to passive-aggressive cliches like “Per my last email,” I keep each email separate until there’s a reply. An email rarely gets lost.

By sticking to the same thread, I might wind up reminding my prospect why they didn’t engage in the first place. Whereas when I reach out with a new message, I might find they’re in a different place now, one where they don’t even remember my earlier attempt.

But instead of assuming a candidate never saw it, I can prove they haven’t opened my emails because SeekOut tracks my outreach so I can validate my strategy with data. 

Set a correspondence day

For me, correspondence day is Thursdays. I dedicate this day to doing outreach, follow-up, next steps, and updates, and by earmarking one day a week, there’s never an excuse for not getting this part of the job done.

It creates a precedent and adds structure to my process so everyone involved knows when they will hear back (if there’s something to share).

Leverage the OOO

This is a personal favorite because I see out-of-the-office and auto-responder emails as intel, especially when they include vacation information and, hopefully, a return by date.

Once the person gets back in the office, I send an email inquiring about the trip, knowing that they’re easing back into their routine and will likely be excited to talk about their experience.

 

Closing Thoughts

Ultimately, I’ve found that we need to move away from the expectation that prospects are sitting around waiting for your email.

Instead, it’s up to recruiters to stay curious, be empathetic, leverage actionable data from solutions like SeekOut, and work to understand potential candidates rather than try and make them understand you.

It’s in a shift in perspective, cadence, and nuanced messaging that the magic happens – and rates go up. Ready to improve your candidate response rate? Learn more about SeekOut.

 

 

Critical Questions to Ask on U.S. Equal Pay Day

Wednesday, March 24, 2021, is U.S. Equal Pay Day. This date symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year.

It is a day for raising awareness of the gender pay gap (which indicates that on average, women earned $0.82 for every dollar men made in 2019), and the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) ‘s appeal to employers, advocates, legislators, and individuals to help close the wage gap by getting involved.

This year, the date has deeper resonance as we come to terms with the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on women and that if we don’t take action now, we will see a disproportionally regressive effect on gender equality.

Businesses can take the first step towards tackling pay gaps and achieving pay equity by examining whether their H.R. and pay practices treat all employees equally.

Many are doing this through a full equal pay audit, and a WorldatWork and Korn Ferry 2019 Survey of Pay Equity Practices indicates that 60 percent of organizations are now taking action.

A complete pay equity audit can take time, but here are five quick check-ins you can do right now that will help to improve pay equity.

 

Do you disclose the hiring range during recruitment?

The talent acquisition process is a key touchpoint in the employee lifecycle. It’s the point at which an employee’s salary history with your company begins and can set the wage bar for the rest of a career, perpetuating any initial inequity.

Advertising roles with pay range data is a more transparent approach and can ensure offers are based on qualifications and where a candidate falls in range based on legitimate factors that should drive pay variance (like relevant qualifications, years of experience, and geography).

Having ranges out in the open means you can eliminate negotiation (where men tend to fare better than women) and also allow candidate self-screening from the process.

 

Do you apply the same rigor to setting pay for internal promotions?

Emerging salary history bans (that now exist in over 30 U.S. States) mean it’s no longer OK to ask for previous salary information from new hires.  This legislation aims to tackle gender pay gaps by ensuring that low pay doesn’t follow women from job to job.

But the same principles can be applied to internal promotions or job moves, and many leading employers are extending this practice and not disclosing internal candidates’ pay. Again, rather than simply up-ticking salary on promotion by a small percentage, you give candidates the correct and fair rate for the job.

 

Do you measure bonus pay gaps as well as base pay gaps?

Pay Equity analysis often focuses on base-pay, but a study by ADP showed a vast percentage difference between female and male compensation originates from a difference in bonus pay.

Some of this is because when incentive pay is derived as a percentage of base pay, you just carry forward inequities that already exist. But also, wherever discretion is applied, there is an opportunity for biases to creep in.

That’s why it’s important to track bonus gaps as well.  Even a simple count of bonus allocation by gender can be quite telling.

 

Have you considered whether performance criteria used to determine compensation have bias built-in?  

Many compensation plans include performance metrics to bring rigor to reward allocation with the aim of removing subjectivity.  But even this approach can fuel gender inequity.  

Historically many schemes are based on metrics that, for all intents and purposes, rewarded the amount of time you spent in the office, be it billable hours or volume of output. Women, who more often bear the burden of caring responsibilities and work reduced hours, can simply be qualified out of achieving against such metrics.

Reviewing the criteria on which pay is determined to ensure each employee can contribute in a meaningful way is another tactic for maintaining compensation equity.

 

Are pay systems cloaked in secrecy?  

All too often, how pay gets allocated and who gets paid what is cloaked in secrecy. But transparency in pay systems is essential in uncovering and addressing unlawful pay discrimination.

The more complex and less transparent a system is, the more vulnerable it will be to pay inequalities. But employers still feel uncomfortable disclosing pay ranges. If your processes are fair, you should have nothing to hide, and the right pay framework should be easy to explain because it obviously aligns with how you attract, retain and reward talent.

It’s easy for pay inequity to creep and spread across your business. A commitment to ongoing monitoring and evaluation is needed to make sure this does not happen.

On this Equal Pay Day, why not play your part and start a conversation internally on one of these check-ins!

 

Recruitment Marketing in Today’s Climate 

Hello 2021, and so long 2020! I’m sure that I’m not in the minority when I say that 2020 was a very trying year. While it had a huge impact on all of us personally, it also had a massive impact on the world of work as we know it.

I was happy to see the much-needed systematic changes to our system, but there’s still much more work to be done. As it relates to recruitment marketing, the change couldn’t have come at a better time.

Below are my tips on how you can evaluate your 2021 strategy so that you’re sending out the right message, sharing the right story, and getting the most out of your campaigns.

Ad Strategy and Goals

In my opinion, the ad strategy has changed for the best. Before, it was pretty simple for any company to put out jobs that simply said “We’re Hiring”, and then proceed to list the roles and teams that were hiring. The year that was 2020 completely changed all of that and for the best.

Your ads should mean something to you and future talent that you want to join the company.

Here’s a couple of questions that you should ask yourself that job seekers are likely asking that you should have answers to:

  • What does your company stand for? Examples: Being yourself, bringing all of you to work no matter when/where, D&I, Authenticity, etc…
  • What real-life problems does your company help solve?
  • What’s the goal behind the campaign? Are you simply just looking to hire anyone and everyone?
  • Are you still pipelining to build up your talent pool that you’re not ever gonna utilize? Really?

Every team has to pipeline for roles that require an influx of talent, but please do not setup your job seekers. There’s nothing worse than applying for your dream job, only to find out that it’s a pipeline role that drops you into a meaningless talent community. If you’re going to attract talent, provide them with the common courtesy of having your TA Team review their CV.

In other words, be intentional with what you’re doing in a good way. Job seekers aren’t dumb and can see right through your strategy.

Photos and Videos

As practitioners, we love sharing our culture. Photos and videos are some of the easiest ways for us to do this. Having said that, there should be a lot of consideration that goes behind this.

What worked before the pandemic certainly doesn’t work anymore. Ping pong tables and beer kegs were all the rage before but were already quickly making their way out of the employer brand narrative.

Here are a few things to consider when you start working on your quarterly plan:

COVID

When you’re sharing your photos and videos, be mindful that we have a little thing COVID-19 that is still running around the world.

Showcasing the office environment that once was present is very one-sided and not representative of what everyone is experiencing at the moment.

If your team is working remotely, your photos and videos should reflect that.

If you’re still showing people high-fiving, hugging, and not social distancing, you’re completely tone-deaf to the situation at hand.

Diversity & Inclusion

Please, please, please, revisit what you’ve shared in the past. Is it inclusive of your workforce and the people that work there? If your goal is to attract great people to work at your company, they want to see people who look, feel, and think like them.

Unbeknownst to employers, job seekers may have been impacted by COVID, but they have more options than before. If you’re not showcasing your diverse workforce, ERG and Infinity Groups, that’s a huge red flag to anyone and should give them a reason to pivot and look elsewhere.

Stock Photos

Yes, the thing that everyone loves or hates still shouldn’t be used. While 2020 knocked down many barriers and gave way to much-needed change, stock photos are still not the way. Stop using them in your strategy. They weren’t cool before, and they’re certainly not making a comeback anytime soon.

In closing, your recruitment marketing strategy is more than just a strategy. It’s an extension of your employer brand and should authentically share stories that reflect who you are as a company. Doing so will ensure that you’re attracting and hiring the right talent.

Onboarding Should Be Like a Five-Star Hotel

Five Critical Considerations for Optimal New Hire Experiences

The excitement cannot be contained. You just signed the offer letter for your new job, and it’s a world full of promise and opportunity of what lies ahead. You have been courted by this employer and in awe of the company you are joining. It’s that magical moment of what is possible, and you are sure you made the right choice.

Everyone who has ever started a new job knows how awkward it is at first.

Day one usually entails a slew of paperwork, half of a day of pre-recorded benefits presentations, and possibly a perfunctory walk around the office.

If the employee is lucky, they’ve got a working computer. If not, well, sit tight. IT is working on it – hopefully.

Half the time, that’s where onboarding ends, and from there, they’re left to fend for themself.

The thing is, the issues with onboarding run much, much deeper – and employees only get to see what’s on the surface. And as far as first impressions go, most aren’t great, especially considering the weeks and sometimes months spent just trying to get the job.

Which begs the question: Why does onboarding suck so much?

On average, companies lose 17% of new hires within the first three months, and 15% of those who resigned said that a lack of effective onboarding played a part in their decision to leave. New hires are already undergoing a major life change, and an unorganized or difficult onboarding process doesn’t reassure them of their decision to join your organization.

Companies are beginning to realize the role that a good onboarding experience plays in employee engagement, productivity, and retention. However, a surprising number of businesses still lack an intuitive model to change these outcomes.

There is a silver lining: It’s possible to fix onboarding and make a new hire’s first day like walking into a five-star hotel.

 

1. Bring personal back

You know how when you walk into a five-star hotel, they hand you your favorite fruity drink, a cold towel, and already know your name? We need to bring personal back.

To make an impact on a new employee, consider customizing their welcome into the organization. William Tincup talks about these as “micro-experiences” and advocates for making onboarding memorable.

We dazzle employees in the recruiting stage – why should it stop there? Get to know the employee, their interests. The pre-hire stage is the perfect time to learn about people beyond what their resume says.

They might share an interest in home cooking, a passion for pinball, or a love of tequila. How can you incorporate these findings into their onboarding experience? Maybe along with their logo swag, include a cookbook or gift card to the local pinball arcade.

 

2. Use digital conversations to your advantage

How cool would it be if you got a text the first day welcoming you to the company about how excited they were for you to join? Or, if there was a way for new employees to ask questions, whether that’s where they park on their first day or if people bring their lunch or dine out.

Let the employee have a safe space to ask these questions, and what better way than with a technology safe space to do so?

 

3. Take a peek under the hood

Onboarding brings together aspects of HR and benefits, IT, finance, and more. Not exactly an easy feat when you think about all of the content sources and systems involved on the backend plus business processes in place.  

The question is, are these processes efficient, or do they just check the proverbial box? If the latter, lift the hood and change it. Stat.

 

4. Talk to your existing employees

What did they think was good about their experiences? What was bad? What would have helped them more? And then ask how they are today. Keep recruiting and courting the existing team. Find out what else you can do for current employees.

Have the actual conversation multiple times vs. a survey. Take the feedback and make the adjustments.

 

5. Create community

Likewise, relationships don’t form overnight. It’s tough being the new kid on the block, even as an adult and especially when working from home. In most cases, onboarding is limited to the immediate, need-to-know people, with the expectation that employees will meet others along the way.

Rather than limit interactions, assign them a new hire buddy outside of their day-to-day to make a point of expanding networks early on and introducing new hires to other newbies, senior leaders, potential mentors, and other teams. There’s no reason to keep them a secret from the organization and vice versa.

To fix onboarding, organizations need to acknowledge that there’s a problem – and that the problem impedes the success of their employees. The sooner that’s accepted, the sooner the process improves for everyone.

 

Double Your Response Rate: 3 Quick Tips on Email Deliverability

3 Quick Tips on Email Deliverability

Check out this video I put together with 3 quick email deliverability tips in just over 3 mins.

  1. SPF, DKIM + DMARC matter. (Some definitions but I explain them!)
  2. Follow-ups matter. If you’re only sending one email to a candidate, you’re losing out on a lot of replies.
  3. Personalization matters. A lot.

Have you already put all three of these into practice? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

P.S. Don’t forget to go back and check out my other videos on whether to use links in email outreach and an FAQ on spam filters!

[VIDEO] To Link or Not To Link in Email? That is the Question

To Link or Not To Link in Email? That is the Question

There are mixed thoughts out there about whether or not you should include links in your email outreach. Some say only share one. Others say you should never share a link. 

In this video I share my insights and tips on using a link in email outreach, answering the following questions (and more):

  1. In general, should I use links or not?
  2. Should I add a scheduling link to my outreach?
  3. What about link tracking?

 

Watch the video below to find out what not to do and the best way to use links if it is a part of your email outreach strategy.

 

P.S.: If you missed yesterday’s video, I answer 3 of the most frequently asked questions on spam filters! Watch it here!

Stay tuned for another video tomorrow in this email performance series.

 

[VIDEO] 3 FAQs About Spam Filters with Steven Lu

3 FAQs About Spam Filters with Steven Lu

Let’s talk about spam filters. Senders hate them, recipients love them, and everyone wants to know how to get past them.

As a subject matter expert on all things email deliverability and spam filters, here are 3 frequent questions I get asked all the time.

  1. How do I avoid being blacklisted?
  2. What can I do to stay out of spam?
  3. How do I know if I’m actually landing in spam or the inbox? 

In this quick video (it’s less than 5 minutes), I cover all three of these questions in-depth and then some. 

 

Check it out below & stay tuned for another video with more tips tomorrow!

 

Look Up Caller Names with This Free Chrome Extension

We have another free tool to show you today, and this one is really simple and easy to use. Especially if you’re dealing with unknown phone numbers, this tool can make your life a bit easier. Whether these are candidates calling you from an unknown number or you’re getting a million spam phone calls, see who is calling or texting you using Caller Name Lookup.

 

What is this tool about?

It is a free reverse lookup service that helps in identifying both mobile numbers and landlines. It hunts through databases of listed personal and business phone numbers that have been submitted through various social platforms.

This tool helps in finding the name of the person under whom that number that you type in is registered. It also provides additional information by simply clicking on the button.

 

Key Features:

  • It is very quick and simple to access this tool. You just have to type in the number and it will provide known details.
  • It’s verified from various sources. Verified Owners are called for any alterations to reduce any misleading or faulty information concerning their numbers to make sure that it is most accurate.
  • Get additional information about the number you type in.
  • It also provides you with the call history accurately and in a detailed form.
  • It also provides the IP address which is one of the coolest features available with this tool.

 

This tool helps you find the person to whom the number is listed. It is available free in the Chrome Store. So if you feel like you missed an important call, use this tool to find out the person to whom the number belongs to.

Don’t want to install another extension? Look phone numbers up through their website instead.

Remote Hiring Across Borders: The Talent is Always Greener on the Other Side

If there is one thing that we learned in 2020, it is that remote work is easier than we thought. Since hiring an in-house team is not always the best option, it makes sense to consider remote hiring across borders. The fact is that there is plenty of talent across the globe. 

It is only a matter of time until remote hiring becomes the norm. Not every business can afford to work remotely. However, remote work offers tremendous potential. With over 40 percent of the American population working remotely, there is a reason why remote work is so popular. 

If you are having trouble deciding whether you should opt for remote hiring across borders or not, you have come to the right place. This post takes a close look at why talent is always greener on the other side.

 

1. More Acceptable Candidates

When you take the remote route, you open up the doors to a huge influx of qualified candidates. The chances are that finding talent in your current location is harder than you thought. You can easily find more candidates by offering remote work opportunities.

Businesses that are operating in locations that do not offer access to talent can hire talent across borders by providing qualified candidates with the opportunity to work from their respective countries.

Remote work is especially suitable for service industries, such as software development companies that develop websites and apps for small businesses, recruitment firms, media houses, and digital marketing firms, etc.

2. Improves Quality of Hires

The further you expand your net for hiring talent, the better the quality of your hires. Straying away from the regional hotspot can help open up a much larger talent pool. It pays to ditch your backyard for greener pastures. 

Besides, the less you compete with local companies, the better. Going remote provides you with the opportunity to expand the hiring strategy. Thus, the talent pool would grow in overall quality. It means that your team would no longer be dependent on those candidates that can apply for a job in person. 

Now, you can source employees from outside your state or even country. Some notable countries which offer outstanding talent include Germany, Brazil, and Pakistan. As the recruitment process will be done remotely, you will get to source employees from beyond your country lines.

3. Anyone Could Prove To Be Perfect

The truth is that there is no secret technique to finding the best talent. Anyone could prove to be perfect for the job. Finding talent is similar to finding flowers. There is no such thing as barriers. A good candidate could sprout from just about anywhere. 

There is no reason for you to restrict your search based on location. There are different factors that affect the growth of a candidate. The location simply has no significance in the world of today. 

With high-speed internet becoming the norm in Asian countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is possible to source talent from just about any part of the globe. 

The only thing that you need to look for is communication skills. If the candidate has superior communication skills, you should have no trouble working with them. Geographical borders hold no importance as we live in a digital world. 

Moreover, the online world has everything to offer. Coding language boot camps, diploma courses, international online university degrees, and remote crash-courses equip interested individuals with the skills needed to work any job they want. 

As the knowledge gap has decreased considerably, remote workers can handle anything that a local worker can. 

4. Gain Competitive Edge

When you employ a remote workforce, you gain a competitive edge. For instance, you could hire workers who speak a variety of languages such as French, Urdu, Persian, Malay, and Korean, in addition to English. 

By hiring global talent, you get to hire employees who have a diverse set of skills. Thus, you would be in a better position to compete in your market. With competition on the rise, you need to use every opportunity you can get to stand out. 

5. Operate in a Globalized World

To operate in a globalized world, you need a global workforce. This is possible by hiring remotely across borders. Gain a unique perspective from each worker to better cater to your customers. You can take advantage of your global workforce to enter new markets and more.

Companies today need to have employees that speak multiple languages and are able to work in different time zones. The best way to handle the increased pressure is by hiring workers to work remotely in different locations.

6. New Ideas

A great benefit of hiring remote workers from different countries is that you get to explore new ideas. You might have not even thought about doing things a certain way, and a new employee could help simplify things for you.

Similarly, the unique experience of each employee could open a world of unlimited potential for your business. Brainstorming will be a lot more effective, and you will get some amazing ideas which you can immediately put to good use. 

7. Easy to Manage a Remote Team

Managing a remote team is very easy, especially since there are plenty of remote collaboration tools available such as Slack and Trello. You can use these tools to manage your team and monitor their work effectively.

Each remote collaboration tool offers a ton of features such as scheduling, setting deadlines, sending messages, and more. By using any one of the tools, you can get started with remote work. The best thing is that it barely costs a few dollars to use them.

8. Cost-Effective

Finally, remote hiring across borders could prove cost-effective. It is possible to hire an outstanding employee for a fraction of the cost from across the globe. Therefore, you can easily cut down costs by hiring a remote workforce. 

Remote Hiring Across Borders

Remote hiring is the future. It provides unlimited opportunities to businesses that are able to manage a remote workforce. From finding more acceptable candidates to affordability, remote hiring is the way to go.