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10 Ways to Fight Back Against the Zoom Zombies

Best Practices for Leaders to Increase Employee Engagement

If you’re a fan of horror films and video games, you know the signs. The dead-eyed stare. The lack of emotions. The failure to communicate. 

Zombies.

And if you’ve led a meeting recently using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or another virtual platform, you’ve probably experienced some of the same behaviors from your attendees. It’s the unintended consequence of a year filled with screens.

increase employee engagementWhile all this virtual activity—ironically conducted while sitting still—is keeping us safe, it ultimately makes it more difficult to unite, inspire and engage our colleagues. Workplace culture is slowly being consumed by Zoom zombies.

As a chief human resources officer (CHRO) at PepsiAmericas, I managed teams spread across the globe. Virtual meetings were our only option for day-to-day collaboration.

Today, the same techniques can keep us productive and connected with our colleagues, direct reports, and customers—even family.

With these ten best practices, leaders can maximize the value of every virtual meeting to create a culture employees value.

10 Ways to Fight Back Against the Zoom Zombies

1. Plan ahead

Strong meetings have an objective and an agenda, distributed in advance. For virtual meetings, you also need to plan how each agenda item translates to a digital environment.

For example, if you’re meeting to identify and prioritize issues, be ready to screenshare a document and assign an attendee to scribe key points during the meeting. It’s also smart to master your technology platform in advance, so it can support—rather than distract from—your meeting’s purpose.

2. Be present

As a leader, your behavior sets the tone for the rest of the organization. Whether you’re facilitating or participating, the single most important thing you can do is be wholly present and engaged. Keep your camera on and maintain eye contact. Silence your phone and avoid reading email or multitasking on your computer. If you’re leading, assign someone else to monitor the chat function for questions and comments so you can focus all your attention on the conversation.

3. Set expectations

Norms for virtual meetings will develop quickly—with or without direction from leadership. To maintain your company culture, be specific about how your organization should conduct its virtual meetings. A great way to increase engagement is by asking all attendees to use their cameras. Mute mics when not speaking, and ask participants to raise their hands (the old-fashioned way) when they want to interject. This helps avoid speaking over each other. If the platform is new, provide a tipsheet or training session to help staff gain proficiency and confidence.

4. Check in with attendees

Right now, it’s common to experience uncertainty, stress, and anxiety. It’s important to open your meetings with a safe space to check in and acknowledge everyone’s wellbeing.

At Navigate Forward, we start team meetings with a quick “Fist of Five.” The number of fingers you hold up corresponds with your state of mind for the day. As a leader, it helps me engage appropriately during our virtual sessions, and know who to follow up with afterward for one-on-one encouragement and support.

Another good option is a round-robin where each attendee shares a “business best” and a “personal best” for the week.

5. Make it interactive

Few of us enjoy “watching” meetings; if we’re invited, we want to participate. Look for ways to involve multiple individuals each time you gather. You can assign different people to facilitate each part of the agenda. Or, leverage breakout rooms for problem-solving or discovery.

The chat and polling functions offer other great tools to create interactive sessions. Chat can be especially valuable to encourage introverts to share their opinions.

6. Keep it short

“Zoom fatigue” is real. Where face-to-face interactions boost our energy, too many virtual engagements can have the opposite effect. Shorter is always better with online meetings. Limit any single session to 90 minutes or less. Invite only those essential to the discussion.

Consider changing your default calendar settings to end appointments 10 minutes before the hour to allow staff (and yourself) adequate time for breaks.

7. Respect time differences

Most of us will accommodate the occasional early morning meeting or working lunch, but when it’s a regular occurrence, it can impact emotions and productivity. Be aware of attendees’ geographic locations, especially when they’re outside your headquarters.

A little accommodation goes a long way to show you value your employees.

8. Uplift each other

In face-to-face situations, we support colleagues naturally, sharing stories and laughter and making vital interpersonal connections. In virtual environments, we still need these uplifting moments, but they require more intention. As a leader, look for places to inject moments of humor and inspiration. Often, we start meetings with a quote, meme or cartoon.  

There is research that shows that “cute” pictures of baby animals can have a powerful effect on attention and concentration.  It only takes a moment, but it breaks the tension and sets the tone for a more productive session.

9. Keep it fresh

So much of our current environment can seem like a scene from Groundhog Day: wake, eat, Zoom, sleep, repeat. An occasional surprise will delight and motivate staff.

Easy options include ending a meeting early, or mixing it up with an invitation that looks serious but is actually a more informal gathering. Home delivery of treats or care packages can turn a recurring meeting into something fresh and new.

The point is to maintain the human connection that’s so easy to overlook in long-distance work situations.

10. Be open to feedback

Virtual engagement is a skill like any other; practice and constructive feedback are key to mastery. Good leaders will be open to recommendations from trusted advisors and key staff. Consider rating meetings on a 1-10 scale at the end of each session with the polling functions of the platform.

Or, simply ask attendees what would provide a better experience next time—then be willing to implement select changes to show employees their input matters.

Digital is never a complete substitute for face-to-face connections. But, when we can use our team’s time wisely and translate the best parts of our corporate culture into the virtual realm, it provides the next best thing.

 

What Job Hunters Will Be Looking For From Your Company in 2021

What Job Hunters Will Be Expecting From Your Company in 2021

While 2020 is finally in the rearview mirror (phew!), businesses continue to navigate the repercussions of the pandemic. This includes a dramatic shift in employee expectations, specifically when it comes to work-life balance and flexibility.

After almost a year of upheaval, where working conditions — and the world — changed dramatically, many people are entering the new year with new priorities. This will leave a lasting impact on the job market, as people seek out the roles and companies that have evolved in the wake of all of this change.

If you want to attract the best of the best, you’ll need to meet those expectations. Here’s how.

Remote work or (at the very least) hybrid work

As companies shifted to remote work during the pandemic, employees across the world got a taste of a fully remote workplace. Now they want more.

According to Slack’s Remote Employee Experience index, 72% of knowledge workers now want a mix of in-office and remote work. Only 12% said they wanted to return to the office full-time. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that nearly a third of U.S. office workers never want to go back to the office.

There’s been a clear shift in the desire for remote work opportunities, and this will be reflected in the job market. Candidates will seek out jobs that empower them to work where they choose. There are already entire job boards focused on remote work.

Many companies have already announced plans to move in that direction. Google, for example, shared that when it reopens its offices in the fall of 2021, the company is planning to test a flexible, hybrid work situation. Employees will be expected to spend three days per week in the office, which they say will lead to “greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being.”

By allowing employees to work remotely, even just a few days per week, you increase your company’s appeal on the hiring market — while supporting employee retention.

 

Schedule flexibility

Working from home wasn’t the only shift we experienced as a result of COVID-19. As the where of our work changed, so did the when. Things like the lack of commute, parental responsibilities, and a lack of external commitments all impacted the hours employees have been working.

Some businesses empowered their teams to start and end days earlier or later, as long as they didn’t miss meetings. Others empowered parents to squeeze in eight hours whenever it made sense to do so throughout the day.

No matter the approach, the increased schedule flexibility left a lasting impact. A survey by Adecco found that 75% of workers want to maintain schedule flexibility after the pandemic. And this desire isn’t just coming from the bottom up. That same survey found 74% of executives believe it’s time to revisit the work week’s length.

Employees are starting to question the traditional 9 to 5 in favor of greater flexibility. They want to work different hours and even different days, building a schedule that better suits their lifestyle. And they’ll actively seek out the companies that offer them that opportunity.

There are several ways you can meet those needs. You can create a daily two to three-hour period where everyone needs to be available for meetings or communication while allowing them to work their remaining hours whenever they choose.

You could introduce a weekend swap, so people are able to switch a weekday for a weekend day when required. Or you could empower employees to work only four days per week. At Unito, we did all three.

Take a look at your weekly schedule and consider how you can introduce greater flexibility, empowering employees to build their own work-life balance. This will become a huge selling point for job applicants.

 

Mental health benefits

For many, the past 12 months have been the most challenging of our lives, and they’ve taken an extreme toll on our mental health. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed over 5,000 adults and found symptoms of anxiety had tripled and symptoms of depression had quadrupled. Feelings of isolation, work and family-related stress, and grieving loved ones have put people through the wringer.

While a vaccine might spell the end of COVID, people will come through this experience with an increased focus on mental well-being. As a result, businesses can expect an increased demand for mental health benefits among candidates.

This might include access to therapists, allocated time off for mental health, or even access to apps or other technology that can be used for well-being. At Unito, in addition to mental health benefits coverage, we offer each employee a wellness fund of $1,000 per year. They can use it for anything that benefits their mental or physical well-being.  

Even if you can’t immediately make a large investment in mental health technology or programs, simple recognition of mental health’s importance can go a long way. Give time off when needed. Don’t ask for details when someone needs a mental health break.

Provide resources where teams can get professional help. All of this will go a long way in showing potential candidates that their well-being matters to you.

 

A commitment to diversity and inclusion

Though COVID-19 is without a doubt the dominant storyline of 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement also made waves. After high-profile police shootings claimed several unarmed Black Americans’ lives, racial inequality was once again put under the microscope. And inequalities within businesses are part of that discussion.

People of color still get paid less than their white counterparts in the same job with the same qualifications. Racial bias affects starting salaries and promotion opportunities, and roles more frequently occupied by Black Americans are widely undervalued.

Candidates with “black-sounding names” receive fewer callbacks than those with “white-sounding names.” The list goes on.

This is no longer an issue that companies can remain neutral on. If your business isn’t actively working towards improving diversity and inclusion, you are without a doubt missing out on awesome candidates. And if you don’t adequately address issues of racial inequality, that reputation will follow your company.

Bring in professional trainers and make training sessions mandatory for staff. Provide resources. Hire someone to lead diversity and inclusion initiatives. Audit your hiring practices to see how you can eliminate opportunities for bias to leak in. And make all of these changes public, so candidates are aware of the steps you’re taking.

 

Becoming the workplace candidates want

In 2020, businesses had to adapt on the fly to accommodate forced remote work. But now that the dust is starting to settle, you cannot return to the status quo. Employee expectations have changed forever. To succeed, you need to invest in all of your employees’ well-being and become the company that job hunters are looking for.

Flexible schedules, hybrid work environments, mental health benefits, and diversity and inclusion aren’t just recruitment tools. They also lead to greater employee happiness, which in turn drives productivity, motivation, and retention. That means you’re not just making it easier to attract new talent; you’re doing a better job of nurturing the talent you have.

The new year is the time for a change. But instead of just worrying about what’s on the scale or in your savings account, take the opportunity to set the stage for a successful 2021. By addressing these developing candidate expectations, you can stay ahead of the curve, establish yourself as a progressive organization, and watch the resumes roll in.

 

Team Still Remote? Six Digital Tools and Resources to Try in 2021

 

The COVID-19 pandemic started shutting down U.S. businesses almost a year ago, which means countless employees are still logging on each day from their remote offices. According to surveys by McKinsey and Co., most people think Americans will reach herd immunity (effectively ending the pandemic) by Q3 or Q4 of 2021. This means your workers will likely continue to stay remote through most of this year—if not permanently.

During the initial shift, your company may have invested in some emergency “band-aid” solutions for remote work. However, it’s time to look into real infrastructure for your distributed office. Consider these six tools, resources, and ideas to improve your team’s effectiveness in the coming year.

1. Screensharing and Recording Tools

While Zoom calls can be useful for connecting with employees and sharing screens, there are times when you want to record training sessions or provide feedback without setting up a live meeting. This is where recording tools come in handy.

Loom is one of the most popular options for recording apps, and for good reason. You can walk your employees through your presentation, moving from screen-to-screen as you provide feedback for a project or introduce a new client. Your face is also included in the presentation for a more personal experience.  

These screen-sharing tools are exceptionally valuable if you manage remote workers in different time zones. You can record a session or provide feedback during your business hours and send it to an employee to watch when they clock in.  

 

2. A Cloud-Based UCC

If your business handles sensitive information or even generalized client information, consider how secure your internal communications processes are. Your remote team may benefit from a cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platform. By keeping your data in the cloud, your team can work wherever they are while ensuring all information stays secure.  

The experts at 4psa explain the multiple benefits of a cloud-based UCC:

  • Improved and secured collaboration for remote workforces
  • Extensive video conferencing capabilities without expensive hardware or complicated software  
  • Collaboration with multiple (including external) stakeholders
  • Your choice of preferred public cloud system (i.e., AWS or Azure)
  • Opportunity to quickly and easily scale

 

3. Remote Attendance and PTO Management

Do you ask your employees to check-in each morning on Slack or Google chat? It may be time for a more professional system. Consider a tool like AttendanceBot, which syncs up with Slack and Microsoft Teams and allows managers to track who clocked in and when. Managers can evaluate absences and understand who isn’t working that day and why.

Because this tool syncs with your existing collaboration software, you won’t have to compare the PTO requests in your email or internal HR tools when determining why someone hasn’t clocked-in.  

 

4. Project Management Platforms

Project and task management tools help employees tackle big-picture strategies for clients/customers as well as day-to-day tasks. You may already use some form of task-management, or your staff might have their own digital to-do list preferences. By implementing a company-wide enterprise version, you can get your entire team on the same page. However, you want to ensure that you choose a platform (whether its an app or software) that will aid in both prioritization of internal tasks as well as client- or customer-facing projects.

To find the perfect task management platform for your team, check out these popular options.

 

5. Employee Recognition System

If you’re having a hard time motivating employees from afar, look into setting up a remote bonus system that engages and incentivizes your workers. For example, Bonusly is a tool that allocates a certain number of daily points per employee, then allows them to cash them in for gift cards and other perks. For even more employee recognition software options, refer to these G2 reviews.

The key is to set up concrete bonus goals (i.e., sales benchmarks, leads captured, recruiting KPIs, etc.). Then include a mix of less tangible goals related to day-to-day operations. For instance, you can give team members points for nailing a challenging presentation or meeting a tight client deadline. Using a digital recognition system clarifies goals as well as gamifies productivity and performance.  

 

6. Remote Office Allowances

You don’t expect your in-office workers to roll in on their own chairs or set up their own printers. However, many organizations left employees to develop their own home offices when the pandemic hit. This was fine as a temporary solution, but you can’t expect your employees to remain effective at their dining room tables a year later.

Consider implementing a “home office allowance” or reimbursement for materials bought during the pandemic. This allowance prepares employees to set up their offices for success and get the items they need to work distraction-free.

CBNC recently profiled companies doing this, including both Shopify and Twitter giving each employee $1,000 to invest in a home office set up. Talk with your financial team and see what’s feasible given your budget. It doesn’t have to be as extensive as what the big tech firms can afford, but it will still show your team you appreciate them and want to improve their remote home office—as well as their overall morale!

 

Time to Invest in Your Remote Workplace

As employees continue to work remotely, managers need to rip off the temporary bandaids and focus on more permanent solutions. Instead of just “getting by” with your current process, identify tools and resources you can use to thrive.

HR Predictions: The Top 3 Recruiting Trends for 2021

COVID-19 disrupted the workforce, unlike anything we have experienced previously. Social justice and DEI, unemployment, public health issues, and remote work became just a few of the many headlines of 2020 that have shaped the way we work and interact today.

We are at an inflection point that will help determine what the next decade of work will look like, and a few significant trends are emerging for 2021. The aftermath of COVID-19 will usher in a hybrid workforce and a hybrid method of recruiting for talent acquisition teams that will reshape the way job seekers engage with career opportunities and ignite competition for top talent.

In addition, hybrid recruiting will break down barriers to diversity and equity in recruiting, extending opportunities to more diverse candidates and driving a job seeker’s market.

2021 Will Usher in a Job Seeker’s Market

As more and more companies make the transition to permanent remote or hybrid models, competition for talent will become increasingly difficult. Companies that are moving to remote workforces offer employees a chance to relocate (now an in-demand benefit), and these companies can tap into talent that is located anywhere in the world, as well as in their backyard.

For well-established brands, this likely means access to more talent. For everyone else, it means more competition for their traditional talent pools. Talent acquisition teams will need to find new ways to compete, such as offering competitive benefits, extending their talent search beyond their own geographic walls, and adopting a virtual recruiting strategy.

While hiring and retaining top talent will likely become a key challenge for companies as they rebound from the initial impacts of the recession, it will become a welcomed shift in the tide for job seekers who were laid off in 2020.

A job seeker’s market not only benefits individual households and communities but also helps stimulate the economy and drive competition between companies.

Companies looking to hire and retain top talent will need to find ways to ensure candidate experience remains a top priority. Part of the solution is to ensure recruiters focus on the basics:

Timely follow-ups after phone screens, virtual career fairs, and virtual interviews, near-constant availability to answer questions, and properly setting expectations with candidates throughout the process.

The other part is an investment in technology that creates an immersive candidate experience. Impersonalized methods of communication such as emails and chatbots likely won’t be enough to engage candidates and will leave too many holes in the recruiting process, increasing the chances that top candidates slip through the cracks.

 

Virtual Recruiting Will Spike

March 2021 marks one-year of COVID-19’s initial impact on the US, and for many, the start of the remote workforce. People who have become familiar with the reimagined workforce and are unhappy with their current roles will put themselves back in the job hunt.

As a result, job seekers will participate in more virtual interviews than ever before – not only will companies need the tools in place to facilitate efficient and productive interviews remotely, they’ll also need to put their best virtual foot forward.

More robust virtual recruitment tools that contain a suite of features like pre-screening capabilities, video interviewing, and seamless follow up features will likely be a more effective option than video calls and emails alone, and will offer an enhanced virtual interviewing experience.

Since most interviews will likely take place virtually in 2021, I am confident a spike in virtual recruiting will not be a flash in the pan, but rather an indication of what the future of work and recruiting will look like.

 

DEI Initiatives Will Empower Recruiting

DEI hiring initiatives are at the forefront of talent acquisition teams’ minds as companies are held accountable for the lack of diverse talent and inclusive participation across their organizations. In 2021 and beyond, companies will need to make an even greater investment in DEI to attract and retain talent that will upskill and transform their workforce.

Virtual recruitment technologies, such as virtual career fairs and interviews are allowing HR and talent acquisition teams to reach, engage with and hire more job seekers from more diverse talent pools located across the country and world.

No longer limited by geographic location, virtual recruiting breaks down barriers to diverse hiring, allowing recruiters to engage with candidates no matter where they are located. Virtual recruitment offers employers a seamless way to deviate from their traditional recruiting playbooks, such as recruiting from the same schools, job boards, and networking events.

Similarly, this offers more opportunities to job seekers in underrepresented and underserved communities and brings fresh, diverse perspectives to organizations.

The job of the recruiter now comes with a new set of challenges and barriers in our remote and hybrid-remote work environment. Recruiters will be more dependent than ever on technology and forging meaningful relationships virtually with job seekers.

Promoting competitive perks and flexibility, prioritizing DEI initiatives, and making investments in virtual recruitment technology will be the core pillars of success for talent acquisition teams in the coming year.

Not only will recruiters have to sell candidates on great work culture, but they will also need to deliver on the promise of diversity in recruiting, a seamless hybrid or fully remote work experience, and an engaging candidate experience.

The future of work is distributed, and recruitment must reflect this shift in workplace culture moving forward.

8 Recruitment Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

Recruitment marketing refers to the whole process of promoting the value of a position at a company. It employs different marketing strategies to engage and interact with potential employees or attract them towards the position.

Along with being a strategy in itself, recruitment marketing is also a career for many. Broadly categorized under the HR and marketing department, it is a field addressing specific needs of a company, i.e., implementing relevant marketing tactics to add to expand the human resources of a company relevantly.

With that said, like all other careers, there are several mistakes that professionals or aspiring professionals of this field may commit (often without even realizing!). And so, here we have condensed the top 8 recruitment marketing mistakes that you ought to avoid at all costs.

 

1. Setting Unrealistic Expectations

Perhaps, the first and most common mistake that all recruitment marketers commit is formulating a job-description without any practical grounds. You cannot demand under 30 and 5+ years of experience as HOD at once! That’s impractical and unrealistic.

Instead, you can include your must-haves and screen for candidates that meet most of them. Advertising for the ideal candidate who meets all stated requirements is not a wise move as it will unnecessarily restrict your candidate pool.

 

2. Not Using Visual Content

We live in an Instagram-ruled world. Need we say more?

Visual content, such as pictures, infographics, or picture boards, can promise increased engagement and attention. Given the success of YouTube, a short video regarding the office environment or a day at work can also increase engagement substantially.

We know it can become difficult to keep creating newer content all the time. So, what you can do is repurpose content, which technically means recycling older content. Use the text data of your previous brand-building or other similar posts for creating newer visual content. In this way, you don’t repeat the exact stuff and still keep your audience regularly updated.

 

3. Ignoring SEO

Let us put this plain and simple. You just CAN’T do this. It is the biggest mistake if internet marketing is all that your company relies upon.

We live in a world driven by search engines, at least speaking of the present day. It gets you connected to your prospective clients in the fastest way possible. Alternatively, you may find yourself investing bulks of resources only to yield minimal results. So, better make the best possible use of search engine optimization!

 

4. Coming to Life during Hiring Season Only

You cannot expect the best results if you don’t intend on investing time and energy, especially when it comes to gathering qualified people to get the job done. Your staff and their performance will be determining the degree of your success. And so, you ought to invest in them generously, i.e., all round the year.

Well, yes. We mean that. Recruitment marketers need to stay in touch with potential employees even when not hiring. A consistent presence online can add to confidence and trust. It also reflects the company’s stability. Thus, bringing in better candidates.

 

5. Designing Fancy but Confusing Application Process

Often, recruitment marketers fail to meet the most common and obvious criterion of job applications, i.e., comprehensibility. Sure, all those sign-in forms, double-verifications, and intricate web structure make your company seem fancy. But it could drive your candidates away if the application process is too complex! Keep it simple and minimalistic. Maybe direct them to a single page with minimal but relevant requirements.

 

6. Not Hiring Immediately

No, we don’t mean that you should be hiring the next day. Or when marketing a position to get it filled in an hour. We realize shortlisting and evaluation demand time and attention. However, you ought to focus on minimizing the gap between the applications and hiring process.

To make it more specific for all the recruitment marketers reading this, you need to put up the job post or communicate about the open position when your company is all set to jump into the employee evaluation process. Or perhaps, when your company is ready take a member on board.

Do not begin advertising only when the idea of a new role is under consideration. You know, all the talent out there gets hired way too quickly. And repeated non-responsiveness to ideal candidates can damage your reputation significantly.

 

7. Not Promoting the Brand Enough

In our attempts to utilize our limited resources most effectively, we often forget to promote the brand enough. No matter how well you design the job description or interact with your potential candidates. If they visit a website or a page with zero to negligible content, it will shake their confidence greatly. They may not entrust you with their future, keeping you deprived of their valuable services. Thus, working on brand promotion and identity is just as important.

 

8. Neglecting Your Email Subscription List

Today, Email Marketing is holding a great degree of value in the marketing department. No HR department can successfully survive without it. However, regardless of the known importance, several recruitment marketers overlook the very aspect.

The constant growth of the email subscription list contributes to stronger relations with a clientele. It also promises greater brand awareness with each message. Thus, becoming a bridge between your company and potential talent. Hence, we recommend working on it regularly.

 

Final Thoughts

So, by avoiding these eight mistakes, you can enhance and improve the results of your strategies in no time. We realize that some of these mistakes are difficult to avoid, having an alternative too-demanding. And so, we suggest the use of task management software for efficient management.

Be it in terms of preplanning content, timely publishing, checking emails and responses, or assigning relevant tasks to team members. Task management software can help with all. Alternatively, dive deep into planning and sorting. And, of course, avoiding these major mistakes. Good Luck!

To Screen or Not to Screen

As talent acquisition professionals, we can get hung up on tradition. Little has changed within hiring operating procedures or employment laws over the last 10 years. Candidates still must apply online. Talent Acquisition professionals still screen, interview, and make offers.

Our corporate organizations still have compensation teams and onboarding groups. We are predictable.  But what has changed for the candidate?  Technology has changed but applicants aren’t privy to the behind-the-scene monotony of the talent acquisition process.

We still make candidates jump through fifteen-minute-long applications, six interviews, and long waiting periods of uncertainty surrounding the status of their application.

We can debate the entire employment process at another time, but for now, I want to focus on what an individual contributor Recruiter/Sourcer can control, and that is the applicant/prospect telephone screen.

Speaking the Same Screening Language

There are several types of phone screens.  The most common is a telephone interview and Human Resources screen, conducted by a talent acquisition team member or company representative as a gatekeeper.

But even before a candidate reaches the gatekeeper, there may be an introductory call with a resume screener or sourcing professional. Later, there can be a call with the hiring manager too.

These calls benefit mostly the employer. The employer gets to ask qualifying questions, verifies education and certifications, and can assess for culture with questions about the candidate’s behavior.

The myriad of telephone screens is usually required as a prerequisite before an in-person interview (pre-Covid).

 

So, What’s the Problem?

Talent acquisition decisions should be calculated from the candidate’s perspective.  Why?  Because getting a job is still a two-way street.

Some organizations have sacrificed a candidate phone screen for one-way video platforms (recorded answers to prechosen questions), email prescreens (knock-out or other screening questions via email), and artificial intelligence screening via chat-bot.

While our sometimes-titanic moving profession is welcoming in new technology like chat-bot and video interviews, we must use caution and remember the end-user, the candidate.

Technology makes the process efficient for talent acquisition, but it can limit the relationship building and engagement with the candidate.

Ask yourself…Will this technology or process allow the candidate to ask their questions about the role? Limit candidate engagement? Allow our culture to shine? Does this process or technology make the candidate feel important?

 

Does this Mean Still Screen Candidates?

Personally, I don’t want to see the candidate phone screening step go away. Does it mean I’m part dinosaur holding on to an antiquated process, maybe? The predictable and boring phone interview and screening call between the candidate and hiring professional is meant to help sell the role to the candidate, answer their questions, and ascertain skill or culture qualifications.

A. Two. Way. Street.

What must change about screening prospective hires is the return of the conversation. A conversation is a talk between two or more people.  It should not be one-sided.  A prospective new employee must be given an avenue to ask questions.

This is not just the right thing to do, it is unequivocally required for a candidate to accept an offer. How will an applicant be able to assess an organization without a platform to express concerns and questions?

The psychology of candidate interest is not complex.  Negative aspects in the current job will have to be alleviated by something that a new company is offering before the candidate will accept an interest in a role.

Failure to resolve the negative issues will lead to candidate declines. Declines for screening, declines for interviews, declines for referrals, and declines for offers.

Bottom line, screening is a necessary and vital part of the candidate hiring process.  Just don’t forget to bring the candidate along for the ride.

Screening candidates the old-fashioned way can increase candidate engagement and improve interest in the company’s overall brand.

Happy Hunting.

4 Ways to Improve Your Recruiting Strategy With AI and HR Software

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment has resulted in HR software solutions that have already started to revolutionize talent acquisition. From sourcing to interviewing and more, there are programs that can make the entire hiring process much more time-efficient and successful.

The fact that nearly all Fortune 500 companies use some kind of recruitment software speaks volumes about the importance of smart application of technology, especially AI-based, in talent search.

Here are four ways you can boost your hiring efforts with the use of AI-powered HR software.

Tap Into a Wider Pool of Candidates

AI can help you in talent sourcing by making your job requisitions smarter and expanding the pool of candidates you dip in. Having more candidates doesn’t necessarily have to be a good thing, but an intelligent AI engine can ensure that you only get quality applications.

A successful hiring process starts with a carefully worded job ad that targets the right people. This can be a delicate task, especially for highly technical positions that recruiters are not intimately familiar with. An AI-based program can help you expand your search by using more industry- or job-specific jargon. This kind of ad can reach beyond your initial words — it can interpret your intent and help you adjust your wording.

An intelligent system can analyze many tidbits of data and infer valuable meaning from them, which would otherwise be easy to miss. For example, a candidate may not have listed the exact skills you’re looking for in their resume. However, the software can determine the probability of that person possessing the skills in question by analyzing their previous work experience.

What’s more, with every analysis, AI-based systems learn, which means your search gets even more refined as the software figures out various associations between different data points.

 

Automate Resume Screening

Myriads of resumes probably go through your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) all the time, wherein ATS becomes a kind of purgatory for candidates of different levels of potential. Employee selection involves sifting through endless amounts of data, which can be tiring and ineffective.

However, there are AI programs that allow you to automate the entire screening process and make it much faster and efficient. In fact, HR managers say that AI-enabled automation saves them 14 hours a week on average.

An important aspect of AI-based software, i.e., machine learning, allows the program to recognize patterns and rules when you feed it large amounts of varying job-related data. For example, aside from hundreds of resumes, competencies associated with different areas of expertise, your current employees’ ratio of success to years of experience, you can factor in external sources of information as well, such as official job classifications.

In time, your machine-learning system will have perfected the employee profile you’re looking for and will be much more successful in screening potential candidates than human recruiters alone.

 

Redirect Quality Candidates Who Are Not a Match

If a candidate is not suitable for a specific position at your company, the HR software could cross-reference their data with other job requisitions and recommend another position to them. This way, if a quality candidate comes by who doesn’t fit in the exact position they applied for, the program could allow you to keep them.

 

Let Chatbots Handle Time-Consuming and Repetitive Tasks

Conversational AI bots are powerful tools that have many uses across a range of industries, and you can apply them in almost any aspect of your business operations. Just like they can successfully replicate a customer representative, they can also take on some of the recruiters’ more time-consuming tasks.

Candidates can interact with your intelligent chatbot on a conversational level and obtain whatever feedback they need without having to go to the hiring manager. The benefits of this type of digital assistant are numerous, ranging from improved candidate engagement to reduced recruiter-candidate interaction time.

Thanks to the advanced AI technology known as Natural Language Processing (NLP), these bots can understand natural human language to great extents and engage in meaningful interactions with people. This property, coupled with other technological features of AI, allows chatbots to become even better at understanding us.

AI chatbots can be linked to any other system, which would enable them to provide candidates with accurate information and even pull out forms to be filled and other documents in seconds. They are also available 24/7, which means candidates can get accurate information and assistance instantly and at any time.

 

Eliminate Bias With AI-Assisted Linguistic Analysis

AI can go much deeper than scanning what the candidate has carefully put down in their resume or another document. It can perform thorough analysis even during an interview and assess the suitability of an interviewee based on numerous factors.

There are systems that scrutinize vocal inflections and facial expressions, but these can be as partial as a real person, considering not everyone shows emotions in the same way. If you’re looking for ways to eliminate bias in your recruiting process, you should favor programs that perform linguistic analysis.

These programs look for words and word clusters specific to certain jobs and can add and subtract points for “positive” and “negative” terms the candidate uses. This way, the focus is on the actual content of what the person is saying, rather than other qualities, such as the dialect they speak.

New software can also analyze the candidate’s personality, and this feature is often based on the so-called OCEAN model that contains five major personality traits. The presence or absence of these traits can tell a recruiter a lot about the candidate’s enthusiasm and suitability for the position.

 

The Future of AI for Recruitment

As you can see, AI-based HR software has advanced significantly, and it offers solutions for HR professionals that can automate large parts of the recruitment process and find suitable candidates on their own.

Technology will never be able to fully replace a human hiring manager, but it can enhance their capabilities and allow them to spend more time with candidates in-person, leaving AI to interpret raw data and translate it into actionable insights.

6 Ways Mobile Apps Are Impacting HR and TA

There isn’t a single element that has remained untouched by the digital transformation that is prevalent in the business world. When we counter in aligning the business process with changing customer needs, it becomes equally important to consider the changing needs of internal stakeholders – employees.

Gone is the time when technological transformation within HR was limited to employees filling their timesheets on an HRMS platform. The sector is finding a number of ways to include a technology that is a lifeblood of the present generation in their operative processes – smartphones.

In this article, let’s look into the many ways HR and TA departments are using mobile apps to increase effectiveness.

 

1. Mobile Recruiting

The number one reason why businesses invest in a mobile solution is recruitment. The platform, time and again, has proved to be a great source of employee attraction, engagement, and conversion.

With more than 89% of job seekers saying that mobile applications have become an important tool in their job search process, mobile recruitment apps have become necessary for businesses to connect with prospective employees.

The advent of mobile applications in the domain has shifted the time when recruiters used to rely on phone calls and emails to engage with the candidates. These “old-school” methods have now been replaced by mobile-friendly career websites that are built on responsive web designs, making it easy for the candidates to find job opportunities and apply for them right through mobile devices.

 

2. Better Payroll Processing

An HR app enabling mobile management of the payroll process can offer a lot of effectiveness to both employees and employers. In addition to offering transparency among the employees in terms of their leaves, attendance, and taxation, it acts as a single-stop solution for the employers when the tax season comes.

Most crucial of all, the best payroll apps enable everyone to access their payslips in real-time.

 

3. Improving Internal Communication

An application that streamlines company updates, news, employee information and events in one place helps with delivering a transparent and clear picture of the business. Backed by a real-time update of content related to business updates, the application can help create an open place for employees to break the hierarchy barriers.

Moreover, such communications help with the improvement of organization and employee bonding, especially at times when teams need to work together as a single unit towards the betterment of the company. 

A mobile application can serve both as a bulletin board and a news feed – helping employees be in real-time know-how of how things are moving in their organization.

 

4. Making HR and TA Operations Digital

Making operations more smooth is one of the primary considerations for any business organization. Nowadays, a number of organizations across sectors and locations are investing in micro apps for various HR and TA centric functionalities like onboarding, timesheets, interview scheduling, appraisals, etc. The movement of these activities from offline to online mode makes the processes easier to manage.

While the creation of several micro apps can be a good starting point for businesses, which truly helps is the creation of a single solution containing all the different facets of the process. Take for example the Zenefits solution which blends in a range of HR functions: payroll, time tracking, insurance, etc. in one place.

 

5. Improving Team Efficiency Through Removal of Mundane Tasks

When we talk about the benefits of enterprise apps, the one that tops the list is the ability to get work done faster. So it is no wonder that better efficiency is in fact one of the biggest reasons why businesses invest in HR apps.

The applications can help the HR team save a lot of effort and money involved in documentation. Today, all the domains from marketing to accounts and personnel have crossed the stage of paper-based record keeping towards a smarter, faster, and real-time mode of documentation.

Thanks to mobile applications, the delegation of tasks has also become an easily achievable task. Managers can find it very easy to communicate deadlines with their team while tracking the project status and time taken for every activity – all within a single application.

The ease of work management is not just to expedite the delivery process, but also to improve team efficiencies by filtering out unnecessary communication between managers and their teams.

 

6. Keeping Track of Employee Analytics for Better Process Formation

Gaining necessary insights into employees can help businesses improve not just the hiring or HR process but the overall morale of the office. A mobile application designed specifically for this purpose can help optimize the employee experience and improve performance.

By staying connected with employees, these analytics applications can learn about employees’ pain points, turnoff points, and triggers. By taking these considerations into mind, you can ensure that your employees are not facing roadblocks to success and reduce turnover.

Conclusion

To wrap up, I hope now you see how certain mobile apps can make HR and TA processes more effective. And, by facilitating and improving your processes, they can also help make your organization a true employee-first business.

Identifying Recruiting Budget Wants and Needs

It’s no secret that 2020 probably didn’t turn out the way you or your organization expected, especially when you were drawing up plans and drafting budgets way back when. Few industries and companies were left unscathed (though folks like Zoom, Amazon, and DoorDash may feel differently).

Even so, by taking stock of the craziness experienced and focusing on the data, it’s clear there are lessons to learn – lessons around the metrics, measurement, and KPIs likely to support recruiting success going forward.  

But after nearly a year of navigating pandemic conditions, we need to acknowledge the big learning of this experience: nothing is certain.

If you haven’t already factored the unexpected into this year’s recruiting budget, start by taking a quick look back to explore the following (and if you have, feel free to jump on down to the next section).

Monthly and quarterly cost-per-hire over the last 12 months.

Chances are there were some peaks and valleys, especially during the calls to lockdown and shelter in place that many areas experienced.

Your top-performing recruitment methods and sources. 

Once upon a time, this might have meant in-person events and career fairs. Now you might be making headway with paid ads and social media. Prioritize accordingly.

Monthly costs associated with recruiting for the past year. 

That should include the obvious costs such as background checks and candidate screening plus anything “hidden” like relocation fees or technology licenses.

The average time it took to fill each position. 

The labor market shifted dramatically, and yet, because of an increase in candidate volume, many teams are taking longer to hire. So, are you spending more or less time to find talent?

The status of existing tech investments.

Gartner found that COVID-19 significantly delayed most tech deployments, leaving teams to work with what they had. Is it time to upgrade? Check to see if your current solutions align with your current goals.

Digging into the Numbers

Knowing the answers to these questions will help put numbers behind initiatives – once you know what that means, which for many though, is easier said than done. The use of adaptable, data-driven methods, like programmatic, will further support these, particularly when it comes to digging into the results and adjusting as needed.

Given the likelihood that we’ll witness more of the volatility in the coming months, KPIs such as cost-per-hire, time to hire, and quality of hire will prove particularly useful.

A programmatic approach to job advertising allows you to make decisions about where you’re investing your resources and energy while providing a real-time look at various engagement metrics.

Using this example, here’s how to look at the three KPIs mentioned above in an actionable context:  

1. Cost-per-hire (CPH)

Programmatic recruiting is built so that, in a single click, job listings post to hundreds of sites. Natural language processing “reads” and classifies the job ad description, while historical data finds the best sources based on the job type.

This adds precision to the process, allocating costs, setting limits on the number of applied, and leveraging predictive data to maximize spend.

That is to say, programmatic goes beyond the simple deployment of ads and enables real-time autonomous decisioning and intelligence based on campaign performance – provided someone qualified is looking at the numbers (it isn’t a given that everyone will know what to do with this information).

In turn, you reduce CPH across all jobs, rather than having to nickel and dime along the way.

2. Time to hire

With the number of candidates on the market, you may be receiving too many applications, delaying the process. To avoid this, you want to hit the right distribution methods with the right messaging faster to attract the right candidates and repel the wrong ones.

AI and automation found in programmatic technologies create variants for you while tracking down that right source. Over time, campaigns get smarter and learn what performs best, helping you filter through the applicants and move onto screening and scheduling, and ultimately, hiring.

3. Quality of hire

Quality can be harder to pin down, especially since there are no guarantees that a candidate will work out. There are, however, two factors that determine quality hiring: the biases and actions of the hiring team, and the technology that delivers the candidates. These need to be measured separately and together to identify trends and differences among and between hiring teams.

Likewise, measurable factors embedded in programmatic, like conversions, can speak to what’s working and what’s not. The better your targeting, the better your outcomes, and gaining access to the historical performance of job ads will determine where you need to be.

Once there, you’ll see time and cost savings as well as improvements to the effectiveness of your efforts.

In Closing

Programmatic works to optimize your recruiting budget by honing in on KPIs and creating efficient pathways to talent.

Of course, other factors are likely to impact your plans, some easy to predict and others completely unforeseen. But with programmatic you are better armed to make budget adjustments in this volatile market.

Developing a budget goes back to figuring out what you want versus what you need.

Concentrating on a few useful metrics, rather than boiling the ocean month after month and year after year, will enhance your ROI and find your team better equipped to handle whatever the future holds.

Remote Employee Onboarding Made Easy

We live in a very different world of late. Remote is a common word thrown about, donning a mask is now a fashion accessory, and remote employee onboarding needs to be embraced.

When employing staff and onboarding them, an essential part of recruitment, we don’t always have the luxury of in-house engagement and physical face-to-face contact.  Employers now need to consider remote employee onboarding, and many are struggling with this process.  

A challenge, yes, but not impossible.  

Essentially, you can draw on your existing employee onboarding methodology but with a few effective tweaks.

Consider the home environment

When a remote employee has to work from their home, they may also have the added considerations of kids at home and partners also working from home. Plus, other various interruptions, such as garden services arriving at inopportune times, interruptions from home deliveries, and the like.  

These situations all need to be taken into account with an open mind from both the employer’s and employees’ sides. While employers can’t be expected to totally accommodate their staff’s remote lives, fitting in with school runs, homework times, and gym visits, there can be a conversation had so that all parties are working within a reasonably comfortable agenda based on output.  

For new employees, especially those who are not used to remote working, you can offer assistance with planning around their personal schedule.

Job Shadowing

Job shadowing can still happen but with some creativity. Most of the work is online with remote-style jobs anyway. So a video call with a shared screen can work wonders and be just as effective as in-person. Where there is a manual element to the work and is remotely managed by the new employee, the staff member or manager handling the job shadowing can still use video to show and tell.  

You may even find that remote job shadowing will be more effective than when an employee is in the office. The job shadowing time in an office often leaves the new employee with many hours of twiddling thumbs, waiting for the assisting employee or manager to come to fetch them.  

With remote job shadowing, specific times can be plotted out for online training and the hours outside of that can either be filled with a list of tasks or reading/study time.

Be sure to plan effectively here as job shadowing is an essential part of onboarding. If this doesn’t form part of your onboarding processes, sit down right now and include it.

Group Video Calls

For regular meetings, group video calls work well and serve the same purpose, if not more effective, as in-person group meetings.  It has been shown that group video calls are generally more productive with less chit-chat than before. People know that having a group video meeting without an agenda will frustrate and irritate the attendees.  

In-office group meetings also need a plan, but for most, they try to wing it.  Not ideal in any circumstance.  

Ensure you include the remote workers here as much as possible. Schedule the meetings regularly and ensure they are stick to the agenda. Allow for question and answer time within your agenda.  

Even consider keeping an open group video call going at certain times in the day. Here, all employees, who are connected in departments, keep working but are still bound by the video to simulate an in-person office environment.  

This will be much like they are in an office together.  This works well where workers are used to open-plan workspaces and where this type of arrangement is beneficial to their actual work.  They can call out to each other, and there can be a camaraderie which is good for morale.

A Go-to Buddy System

It is a good idea to pair up remote workers, where they can have that someone to go to instead of bothering their superior every two minutes. Consider pairing a more mature or rather a long-standing employee with a new employee for this to work well.

In ending, remote employee onboarding can work and work effectively. It is the planning before and during the period of onboarding that makes all the difference.

Don’t Ignore MarTech

Having been involved in digital marketing since 2009, I can say one thing with certainty- there’s no shortage of shiny new tools and platforms at our disposal. And the list of available options continues to grow each year.

How much has it grown, you might ask? Well, in 2014, just a little over six years ago, there were under 1,000 solutions. By April of 2020, there were well over 8,000; 1,936 in the category of Content and Experience alone.

Scott Brinker of Chiefmartec.com has created a beautiful infographic that shows just how large this ecosystem is.

When I transitioned from the world of talent acquisition and HR into digital marketing, one of the differences I quickly noticed between the two fields was around technology, specifically how quickly marketing technology is developed to meet new needs as the space evolves at lightspeed.

As I’ve become more interested in the topic of recruitment marketing over the past year, I’ve noticed that RecruitTech is growing, which is great to see. But, it still lags far behind the MarTech ecosystem.

Keep in mind, RecruitTech isn’t comprised of technology solely intended for recruitment marketing, so that realm is still very limited and small.

And that’s a good thing.

Marketing is Marketing

I see this as a good thing because, at its core, marketing is marketing. It doesn’t matter if you’re marketing software, automobiles, or the next step in someone’s career.

You’re offering a solution to a problem and are making change happen.

As a result, many MarTech solutions can be used for recruitment marketing. Why recreate the wheel if something already exists to solve your recruitment marketing problem?

I also understand there are fundamental differences between talent acquisition and the marketing of products and services, but how the marketing is done (or should be done) is mostly the same.

It may be surprising to know that many CRM’s are not very good at email marketing at scale.

Does this sound familiar?

As a result, numerous bolt-on services can perform these tasks better.

Regardless of whether we’re talking marketing or recruiting, it’s challenging to find a platform that’s good at everything you need it to do. That’s why there are over 8,000 MarTech solutions available.

 

Don’t Recreate the Wheel.

As I’ve interviewed and talked with people throughout the writing of my book, Think Differently: How Recruitment Marketing Gets You Noticed Above the Noise, I’ve realized that some people and teams are trying to “recreate the wheel” or duplicate something that already exists in the marketing world.

There may be some solutions on the market that work great and are specifically for recruitment marketing. However, email marketing is email marketing. To some degree, a CRM is a CRM.

The point I’m trying to make is if you’re building a recruitment marketing program, there’s probably an inexpensive MarTech tool or platform you can start with, eventually graduating to something more robust. If you’re not a large enterprise, it may never make sense to graduate to something else.

For example, you could quickly level up your talent communities by incorporating MailChimp, Emma, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign.

Want a CRM you can use as you nurture candidates? Why not use HubSpot or Zoho? They’re both free. Later, if you need something more robust, export your data between your old CRM and new solution.

Have you ever wanted to create landing pages but have a heck of a time getting the development resources needed to spin them up and down quickly?

You could quickly build them yourself, on-demand, with something like Unbounce or LeadPages.

The good news is if you’re wracking your brain, trying to figure out a better way of doing something, there’s probably a marketing solution that already exists.

 

“But it needs to work with my ATS.”

You may be thinking, “this is great, but I need these things to work with my ATS.” Guess what? You’re in luck – that is, if you have an ATS with an open API.

If you don’t, I would upgrade to something more modern and functional as soon as possible and make sure it has an open API. Greenhouse is an excellent example of an ATS with an open API.

Open APIs have been the driving force in the MarTech explosion. You can plug-and-play almost everything that’s developed.

Sometimes a pre-built, native API connection will exist. Salesforce has a plethora of pre-built API connections with many MarTech solutions. Greenhouse offers several native integrations with third-party tools such as Calendly, a scheduling solution, and numerous social media and job posting platforms.

 

Zapier is Your Secret Weapon

But what do you do if there isn’t a pre-built connection?

Zapier is your answer.

Zapier transfers information between two web applications through the open APIs that exist.

Do you want to build a next-level email marketing and candidate nurturing program and connect it to Greenhouse?

You can do that with Zapier by connecting any of the email marketing solutions I previously mentioned: MailChimp, Emma, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign.

You can connect HubSpot or Zoho CRM.

Remember those Unbounce or LeadPages landing pages I mentioned you could build? You can connect those to Greenhouse, too.

You can connect over 2,000 different apps or solutions to an ATS like Greenhouse through their open API.

 

Start Simple, Keep it Small, Then Evolve.

As you can see, the options you have at your disposal to next-level your recruitment marketing and tap into the vast MarTech ecosystem are massive.

Over the past six years of managing the digital marketing strategy for a B2B company, I’ve learned to start small, experiment, layer on, and then eventually grow to something more robust and all-encompassing (if it exists). Doing this allows you to have the workflows and processes to understand better what features you need in a solution before you upgrade.

As you begin to use different tools and platforms, you’ll start to push the edge of their capabilities, or you’ll end up using them in ways you had not initially intended.

It’s OK to evolve and move on to something else at that point. Sometimes you need to start small to be able to uncover what you don’t know.

Whatever you do, don’t spin your wheels and waste your time and resources recreating something that already exists. Think outside of the talent acquisition box and more like the marketer that you are. There are over 8,000 opportunities to create a better recruitment marketing tech stack.

TA Folks: Stop the Bullshit

This time last year you were probably gearing up to receive your annual bonus. Times were great, less than 4% of Americans were unemployed; there was even a talent shortage. One year later, things are bleak.

We are in the midst of a global pandemic, unemployment rose higher in three months of COVID-19 than it did during the two years of the Great Recession, and job candidates are being treated very poorly.

Last year, many organizations finally started to realize and embrace employer branding, talent/recruitment marketing and have a genuine interest in improving the candidate/employee experience. My, how things have changed.

The amount of bullshit that candidates and even employees are currently facing is sickening. It’s time to stop the bullshit and put the human back into human resources, the key function in which talent acquisition and retainment resides.

Full disclosure: I, like many of you, have been impacted by COVID-19, as well as many of my friends. The horrors you read below are completely true and unexaggerated.

 

1. Put the human back into human resources and focus on relationships

I love tech – especially HR tech. Candidate engagement software, vendor management systems, applicant tracking systems – you name it, I love it – when used properly in coordination with live human interaction.

Did you know that employers can schedule an automated phone screen via a popular job board? This is how it works: a link arrives in a candidate’s inbox to conduct a phone interview. The phone interview is simply a computer screen with a text box that asks the candidate a question and then the microphone records the answer.

As a candidate, this raises many red flags – am I just a number to this company, and are they too busy to actually call me to have a conversation? If this is how they treat me during the hiring process how are they going to treat me if I become an employee?

You know what another technology is equally as bad for the candidate experience? On-demand video interviews (aka one-way video interviews). It’s the same premise as the phone screen, just through a video platform.

Recruiting is based on relationships and unfortunately, even the best bots can’t yet feel feelings. Thus they lack emotional intelligence, and therefore there can’t be a real relationship formed.

TA folks: focus on forming relationships! You will be surprised at all of the great outcomes that can be achieved simply by picking up your phone, or even better, hosting a video call.

 

2. Have clear expectations for the role – and make sure everyone is on the same page

A friend recently interviewed for a role. They had five interviews to be exact. On the fifth and final interview, with the C-level decision-maker, it was brought to the candidate’s attention that the c-level executive had never read the job description in which they had been using to conduct the executive search and it didn’t describe the hire she was trying to make.

The candidate had wasted countless hours preparing for interviews and attending interviews. All for a job that wasn’t actually what the decision-maker was hiring for.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the organization was having an internal battle of which cost center was actually going to pay for this hire, so the department and supervisor were also unknown at the time of all of these interviews.

The lesson is for all decision-makers to be on the same page.Have a job description that details exactly what skills and experience you’re looking for the hire to have and what their main job responsibilities would be; know what department the new hire will join and have all of the budget allocations figured out before interviews even begin; only involve those necessary in the interview process.

 

3. Do you really need to conduct FIVE interviews to make a hire?

Using the example above, the question remains: Do you need five interviews to make one hire? I would bet in most circumstances, the answer is no.

If you know that there are five people that need to interview the candidate (which still seems excessive), schedule a panel interview to save everyone time, accelerate the hiring process, and provide a better candidate experience.

 

4. It’s 2021: Remote work is here to stay.

It’s 2021. Remote work should be more common now than ever before. If you’re hiring for remote workers, why must they be located within commuting distance? Also, if you’re hiring for a position that will be remote until the pandemic improves, why can’t this person stay remote?

While not all jobs can be performed remotely, it is estimated that at least 40% of all jobs can be. There are so many benefits for employers to hire remote workers, including access to a global talent pool, cost-savings, increased productivity, and more.

 

5. Treat others how you would want to be treated

The golden rule in life: Treat others how you would want to be treated. This applies to everything, but especially to talent acquisition.

If you were a candidate, would you want to receive canned email messages with a link to a phone interview where no other human (or even a friendly robot) was present on the other end of the line? Would you want to be offered a job and then have it rescinded because people in the organization weren’t aligned? Or would you want to spend countless hours preparing for numerous interviews with the same organization?

I bet the answer is no. Instead, practice kindness, empathy, and understanding.

 

Bonus:

You have the power to change someone’s life. If you work on forming relationships, even if a candidate isn’t the right fit for your organization or the role you’re currently working on, it doesn’t mean you can’t help to open a door for them.

Share their LinkedIn profile with colleagues who are searching for someone with their skillset. Comment on posts they make on LinkedIn to help them get noticed by others. Share their resume with a client as a skills marketing exercise without the expectation of receiving a fee. Let the candidate know if you hear of any jobs. If you know them or have worked with them, write them a LinkedIn recommendation and offer to be a reference.

The ways in which you can open a door simply by showing kindness is limitless. Wouldn’t you like someone to do the same for you?

 

Free Sourcing App CandyJar adds ATS for Candidate Tracking

You may remember that we introduced CandyJar a few months back. It’s a free Chrome extension to help you source developers by source code assessment on GitHub and integrates into LinkedIn.

We mentioned that they were working on some new features, and they are here! CandyJar has added a free ATS integrated into their tool.

First, do your candidate search. Another new feature is filtering your search for candidates outside of LinkedIn. That could have been an update all on its own.

Take your sourced candidates and move them into the ATS where you can add your own hiring process steps. Create your vacancy, add your candidates, and then organize each candidate into the corresponding step.

Whether that’s outreach, the interview process, or any step that aligns with your own internal process. Additionally, there are areas to add notes on each candidate.

CandyJar’s ATS seems to do a really good job and if you don’t have an ATS, this is a great solution. Plus you can’t beat the price.

How Digital Transformation is Helping Recruiters in 2021

Amid the once in a lifetime crisis, COVID-19, the sudden economic slowdown has brought a foreseeable global recession that transformed business strategies and the labor market. In such uncertain times, organizations have to adopt an agile workflow to survive. Business owners need to change their priorities according to the needs of the consumers.

Creativity, innovation, and the ability of real-life problem solving are still the most precious skills in today’s economy!

As the lockdown rolled over the world, numerous companies had to transition to remote work quickly. The worst thing is most of them were unprepared. This gave an immense rise to the need for digital transformation. However, you may still ask, what does it have to do with the talent recruitment sector. These stats will certainly provide you an answer:

  • According to a report by Glassdoor, every corporate job receives at least 250 applications on average.
  • A Deloitte survey shows that more than 50% of companies are trying to adopt digital tools for their hiring team.
  • According to a report by Financial Times, the world’s witnessing the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

With such an unprecedented transitioning recruitment process, talent acquisition departments and HR also understand the need for effective and reliable digital solutions to aid their hiring process in this ever-evolving labor market. The organizations that already have digital recruitment strategies have a great edge over their competitors

So, how is digital transformation helping recruiters to shift towards virtual hiring? Let’s read on to find out more.

Digital Transformation in Recruitment – What is it?

Digital transformation refers to the acquisition of data solutions and technology to eliminate or simplify admin tasks while increasing the efficiency of operations across various departments of a company, including the hiring teams.

Keeping that in mind, digital transformation in recruitment is the use of technology dedicated to solving the numerous challenges in the process such as the increasing volume of candidates, fluctuating hiring needs, budget cutbacks, and inability to arrange in-person interviews and meetings. Companies use digital transformation in recruitment to reduce new employee turnover.

It’s also a no-brainer that during COVID-19 and once it ends, a lot of companies might witness a decrease in their recruitment budgets. If you want to continue keeping your recruitment process effective and budget-friendly, your business must undergo digital transformation and hire remote developers for the proper functioning of the operation side of the process.

It’s still very fascinating to see how strategies such as online video interviewing, digital candidate experience, and digital assessment changed from “nice to have” to ‘business-critical’.even when you just need to hire remote developers.

 

How Digital Transformation Positively Impacts Recruitment

Now, here’s the time to look at the bright side of digital transformation for recruitment.

 

1. Analytics On The Go

Recruitment technology provides you exclusive access to real-time and up to date data overview. It allows you to locate any areas of improvement that help you to execute the finest recruitment strategy. Additionally, it’ll also provide you real-time updates and data on the things happening with the employees that allow you to adjust and make changes in the processes as per your requirements.

These technologies also have simple and easy-to-understand dashboards that allow you to view key metrics and make faster conclusions. This also allows you to make necessary changes faster in your recruitment strategies. With the help of the data received through recruitment technologies, for instance, online assessment scores, you can automate interview schedules.

While this is one example, there are multiple other ways AI is helping automate the interview scheduling and other recruitment activities.

 

2. Recruitment In High Volume    

Digital Recruitment technology also allows hiring managers to manage a large volume of applicants. By the end of 2015, the number of applicants per opening on an average was 59 and it went down to 30 as 2019 arrived. This was all due to a booming economy and a fall in unemployment. However, for 2021, it’s predicted that an estimate of 200 million full-time workers has already lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

With that said, recruiters must already prepare to receive a plethora of job applications. With the help of the appropriate technology, your recruiters can easily sift through the applications and shortlist the most eligible candidates. It also allows you to maintain your high standards of hiring, regardless of the volume of applicants.

There are a lot of technologies that can help you manage bulk applicants easily such as pre-employment testing and interview scheduling.

 

3. Data Security

Recruitment through digital transformation not only implies the use of technology to hire people, but it also means to enhance the skillsets of team members to benefit your organization from the transformation.

Cybersecurity challenges arise with every technology, such as confidential information of candidates, payment records, etc., which should be kept safe, without any risk of security breaches or data leaks.

While using digital transformation it is imperative to put such cybersecurity at the top of your priorities. With risk management, it is easy to balance fast service and potential threats, what is required is the modern way and awareness amongst the team members regarding digital security.

This way digital transformation helps in boosting security policies and procedures and provides a cloud-based infrastructure to efficiently deal with the increase in candidate traffic and storage demands.

 

Are You Ready for Digital Transformation in Recruitment?

A great number of areas in business have sped up their digital transformation because of numerous factors (including COVID-19). E-commerce is growing like never before. Meetings and events are happening online. And, people are spending more on collaboration tools.

This certainly makes it clear that recruitment is no exception. If you want to keep the recruitment department of your business on the top, you must take advantage of the technology available. In the remote working space these days it is beneficial to hire remote developers for any kind of queries or problems faced.

 

Developing a Company Culture that Fosters Healthy Leadership

Any human resources professional knows that a business’ success is the result of the collective efforts of the entire staff. A well-oiled machine that keeps every aspect moving smoothly. However, for that machine to function efficiently, it needs to be guided by strong, agile, sensitive leadership. This doesn’t just mean those at the very top of the organization, but those throughout each department.  

The thing is, for healthy leadership to be a core aspect throughout your company, you can’t just put your efforts into recruiting the perfect leaders. There needs to be a culture of healthy leadership throughout the business so that current management and other members of staff can develop into the right influencers of your ongoing success.

As with any matter in business, this isn’t a quick and easy route to guaranteed triumph. However, focusing on making healthy leadership a core aspect of your culture not only ensures that your business can thrive, but also that it is sustainable for years to come. Let’s take a look at a few core aspects that you can focus on to help get your leadership culture on track to greatness.

Focus on Values

Your company’s values should be at the heart of everything you do. They help to inform the direction of the company and encourage the trust and confidence of staff and customers alike. As such, the approach to leadership needs to reflect your mission, and what is most important to all those connected to the company.

As an HR professional, you need to make sure that the conduct of leaders always epitomizes the central tenets of the business’ values. When leaders’ conduct falls short of this in making decisions, dealing with clients, or even the daily operations of the business, this needs to be highlighted. After all, how are employees and customers to consider your values authentic if those at the top fail to meet them? This feeds into the theory of behavioral leadership. In short, the focus for leaders is less on individual traits and abilities and more on actions and approaches.    

The behavioral theory also makes a useful tool for employee development; taking emphasis away from gaining specific qualifications, and leaning more on learning through experience what the optimal way to lead your business is. One of the core HR tools that can help this from the very beginning is the code of conduct. Use the company values to shape these guidelines. This helps ensure that all members of the company — from entry level to leadership — adhere to values-centric actions. Make it explicit how aspects including social media usage, ethical conduct, and company representation should be undertaken with the company mission in mind. This helps you to establish values-optimized behavior as the basis for daily life, progression, and leadership from day one.

 

Prioritize Relationships

While it is certainly important for leadership to assert their seniority, a healthy approach is not dictatorial. Rather, it tends to be more effective to focus on building relationships both horizontally and vertically throughout the organization. Great leaders understand that forging genuine, positive connections with staff can inspire them to achieve and innovate. This is the key behind the transformational theory of leadership — that charismatic, caring leaders can encourage individual team members to transform and become better performers.  

As an HR professional, it’s important to understand how this translates to leadership in different positions and departments throughout the company. Organizational leadership is, after all, a dynamic field — involving different types of interactions with teams and workers. One approach to relationship building is not going to suit all circumstances. Encourage leadership to explore how to shift their interpersonal communication to suit the types of relationships they need to build to better transform employees.

This applies to the hiring and development processes too. Even when recruiting entry-level candidates, seek to assess how they approach building relationships and their openness to learning how to do it better. One of the requirements in discovering high potential employees is being able to assess whether they can be trained to suit the needs of the company. This goes as much for abilities as leaders, as it does for hitting metrics. Consider not only whether they have the potential to develop new leadership traits, but also inspire transformation in others through their influence.

 

HR as Leadership

HR professionals too have to see themselves as leaders of the organization, helping to influence staff and even executives toward more healthy and effective methods of operation. As such, you need to epitomize the situational theory of leadership — understanding that no one approach to leadership is necessarily better than someone else’s, but that it can shift through situational variables. You need to guide both future and current leaders to develop in ways that best suit the business and the situations they’ll face.

Formalize Progression

Make certain that there is documentation for all levels of the organization that shows clear routes to progression throughout the company. Use these to provide staff with guidance as to how they should be forging their leadership skills and advice on how to get to the next level.

Own the Leadership Pipeline

Any business is fluid, and this goes for leadership too. Management comes and goes, executives will retire. It is your responsibility to build a pipeline program that takes the long view of the business, and to position staff in ways that help to serve the future and changing needs of the business.

Link Personalities to Styles

The HR department is in the unique position of being able to gain a deep understanding of the value of each member of staff. Through personnel reviews and ongoing assessments, you can identify where their strengths lie, and what approaches to leadership would best suit their personality and general work ethic. This can then be parlayed into talent development programs that capitalize on their strengths and fill in the soft and technical skills gaps.

 

Conclusion

A culture of healthy leadership can help a company thrive well beyond the tenure of its current senior executives. As an HR professional, you can influence the direction of the company by ensuring leaders are values focused, forging strong relationships, and effectively guided to reach their full potential.