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How can Artificial Intelligence Help Recruiters

How can Artificial Intelligence Help Recruiters?

The role of AI across industries and sectors have crossed the stage of being an in-trend technology. The time when businesses were incorporating AI to emerge as a tech leader has been replaced by a time where businesses are using AI to survive and come steps ahead of the competition.

The inclusion of AI in recruitment is no different.

The technology is making the process of finding the best candidate and making them a part of the team an efficient, unbiased process.

As you deep dive further into the article, you will find that the AI tech trends is poised to be a gamechanger in the recruitment domain not just in the current time when the world is finding use cases for its incorporation but also in the time to come.

Ways AI can make the recruitment process more efficient:

Automate sourcing of candidates

Identifying talent begins with sourcing candidates and developing a pipeline. Even after the presence of social media, job boards, and forums, this can be a challenge and a time-taking task.

The role of AI in the process of sourcing candidates revolves around automating the sourcing process and extending reach around the same time. There are systems that can analyze over 300 million + social profiles.

In addition to finding candidates, AI systems can also be used for sending personalized messages to the candidates kept in the pipeline.

Matching candidates

Another use of artificial intelligence in the recruitment domain can be seen in the candidate matching process.

Modern AI systems can skim through thousands of resumes and CVs and establish the best match condition by looking into the keywords and skills that the employer is looking for.

Lower bias

The recruitment process has been covered with bias. More than 44% of the applicants have experienced discrimination in the hiring and recruitment process.

Lowering unconscious and conscious biases in the hiring system continues to be a top priority item with over 85% talent acquisition leaders feeling the pressure of bettering diversity.

A slew of new tools has emerged in the market to eradicate biases from the hiring process. An example of that can be seen in the Textio tool which helps companies curate inclusive job descriptions. There’s also an unbiased chrome extension that enables recruiters to toggle off photos and names from talent pool size to remove unconscious bias.

Personalized Employee Value Propositions

Most of the companies tend to have a fixed set of employee value proposition: benefits which the employees receive in turn of their skills and experience that they bring to the organization.

However, in recent times, this has become questionable. After all, every employee is different – meaning there is no way to guarantee that every employee would get motivated by the same set of EVPs.

With AI’s analysis capabilities, it will soon become possible for the organizations to offer EVPs that are custom designed for every individual employee. This, in turn, will play a huge role in retaining good employees in the company.

Bettering engagement

Chatbots, over the past few years, have made a huge impact on businesses. After establishing its capability to enhance relations between customers and businesses, it has seeped into the recruitment domain as well.

Let’s take the Mya platform as an example. The AI-based platform automates over 75% of the recruitment processes. By answering applicant’s questions, verifying their qualifications, and keeping them updated throughout the process.

Analysis of facial expressions

Video interviews tend to be a great way to gauge someone’s energy, how they present themselves, and their confidence level amongst other things. The model helps in making the interviewer and candidate connect with each other. While making them comfortable to understand each other’s objectives better.

The inclusion of AI in aiding the results of video interviews while still an uncharted territory can be a great way to judge the candidate’s mood towards the job offering, assess their personality traits, and even tell if they were lying in the interview.

Now that you have gotten a preview of how AI can make the hiring and recruitment process better, let us look at the tools or platforms which are supporting the rising adoption of the technology.

The best AI recruitment tools 2020

Fetcher

The platform takes in your job requirement and then uses machine learning for finding relevant candidates. They are then engaged through email or text. In a short span of time, it has become one of the most reliable top of the funnel recruitment tools.

Seekout

The AI-based talent sourcing engine helps build customized lists of candidates on the basis of job description. A list that they shortlist from their 500 million talent profiles.

Companies also use the tool for sending out personalized messages to outreach the candidates.

Pymetrics

The platform enables companies to use AI technology for vetting potential employees. It makes your current team take tests using which the system builds an algorithm to develop an ideal employee persona. You can then have the candidates apply for the same test.

Summary

Hiring and retaining talents is one of the prime responsibilities of every flourishing company. However, achieving it with efficiency can be a challenge. A challenge that can be solved through a smart solution – AI.

What is important to remember, though, is that human connection lies at the center of the process. Meaning, as you move on the upper funnels, you will have to find greater ways to ensure human connection and interaction.

Chrome extension: Recruiter Wand by WizardSourcer

I have a new free Chrome extension to simplify your candidate outreach. Recruiter Wand was created by Jonathan Kidder (aka the WizardSourcer). What this neat little tool does, is pulls data off of a candidate’s LinkedIn page and places it into an outreach message template.

When you click on the “Get LinkedIn Data” button, the tool will pull out the person’s name, current company name, skill set, location, and education for you. You can select from a wide variety of templates preloaded into the tool. Or, you can add your own. This is a great time-saving tool since you can easily copy and paste the generated message into InMail or an email message.

In summary: Recruiter Wand is quick, simple, free, and it works!

Addressing Old School Resume Protocol

I read a lot. I enjoy mysteries, but I also read for work: to stay on top of trends in talent acquisition, to discover new technologies in Sourcing. And, I read to be informed on recruitment marketing drifts.

The talent acquisition profession had years of sluggish growth that has been replaced with technological systems and workflows. Recruiting uses software in the form of ATS, CRM, referral and reference software, as well as advances in artificial intelligence candidate matching tech and chatbots.

Coupling old school recruiting process with new technology means talent professionals now will be required to update as fast as the software changes. Therefore, shouldn’t our modus operandi in recruiting change too?

Why are we holding on to resume etiquette and other outdated practices? I’m willing to argue some of these practices be put to bed.

Is a good resume only two pages long?

Sigh. I’m working on my doctorate. In my early days of the program, I pestered my advisor daily for advice on the proper length of a doctoral dissertation. Surely someone somewhere could give me an average measurement. One hundred pages? Three hundred pages?

The answer I always received was “it takes as long as it takes”. That is the advice we should be giving candidates who ask the question of resume length. Noting a resume should be two pages was just an arbitrary number that stuck. I don’t care if its only half a page resume for a new graduate or a twelve-page cv for a research scientist with publications.

It takes as long as it takes.

Adding References to a Resume

“References Upon Request”. We can stop typing this at the end of a resume. There is technology for reference checking now. Not that I don’t like adding your references to my CRM and calling on them for jobs of my own later, because I will. It is just no longer necessary.

An ATS or reference checking software will ask candidates this information at the appropriate time. However, as an industry, we need to be better about practices that do not benefit the candidate. References on the resume is one practice that no longer aids the candidate. It exploits the references for unscrupulous recruiters to leverage.

Work Authorization

Add it. I’m all for helping a candidate note their authorization to work in the US if they are getting declined too often from recruiters due to visa assumptions. We need to do better at recognizing our own unconscious bias to candidates with names or locations that lean to foreign national status.

Until then, the candidate needs to fend for themselves and do what is necessary.

Address

I really do need to know where you live as a Recruiter or Sourcer. This is tied to relocation and geographic searches. But I’m fine if you want to leave off your street address, just the city and state is now acceptable. We aren’t mailing decline letters anymore via snail mail, so removing that information is now standard.

We still need email and phone number, but a candidate need not announce it. I know anything with an @ symbol is an email address.

Colorful, Graphic-Heavy Resumes

Go for it. Decorate that resume to your heart’s content. We don’t scan resumes anymore. Years ago, the scanning software was the reason behind plain resume text and fonts. The scanners couldn’t pick up details and decorations in a resume to be stored accurately. The sophistication just was not there.

Today, a modern ATS can upload any kind of document. Imaginative resumes are not just for graphic designers and creative roles anymore.

You go, buddy, you do you. Job descriptions are now becoming graphic. Resumes will not be far behind.

Objectives

Objectives are necessary should you be switching careers or just starting out. There is no reason to have an objective if you are full on into your career where the trajectory is obvious. If after thirty years in talent acquisition you want to switch to working in social services, then absolutely add an objective.

If your objective reads as an inane cliché to what you think people want to hear, then you have permission to delete it altogether. Ask yourself, is this objective a value add?

I am not advocating that we throw resume decorum in the trash. I still believe in formality, procedure, and rituals. 2020 has been a hard year, and I have seen humans act in self-regarding ways.

Modern thinking and change should not be filed away as venal and privy to shortcuts. Change is about accepting different thoughts, ideas, and actions that make our lives more fulfilling and less stressful. Let us not be overly aggressive into ideals that have run their course.

It is a new day for candidates, and we need to come along for the ride.

6 Steps to Help Recruiters Manage an Increase in Job Applications

The job market has changed dramatically as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. There has been a surge in the number of job applications, making it a prime time to advertise vacancies. However, even though this is a positive change for employers, it doesn’t come without its challenges.

At the moment, there’s so much discussion in recruitment about the huge numbers of applicants for each job. About the burden this creates on talent acquisition teams and the risk of negative candidate experience. So, it’s no surprise that this is the most challenging time many recruiters will have in their careers.

Protecting your employer brand is really important, so making sure candidates have a good experience is vital. Not only does it take time to respond to all of the applications you receive, but also to review new applications, shortlist and prioritize candidates of interest. If candidates are left waiting, this could lead to poor candidate experience.

Not only has there been an increase in job applications, but an increase in irrelevant applications. Mass job losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a surge in job searches.

How do you manage this increase in workload effectively?

Employers I know have progressively released their reliance on advertising to generate applicants over the last few years and instead are much better managing their own talent pipelines.

There might well be more candidates available to you at this time but your total addressable market is the same size as it was 12 months ago. What that means is, if you’re advertising rather than direct sourcing and managing pipelines, you’re currently going to be doing a lot more work for the same outcome.

Employers taking the best approach, in my opinion, are setting up simple and very effective decision tree workflows that ask potential candidates a lot of questions and automatically stream them based on their answers to those questions AND their behaviour online.

This is automated, simple to implement, and saves vast amounts of human assessment time.

If you are overwhelmed with the number of job applications you’re receiving, stop advertising and start pipelining. You can do it today. You probably have loads of suitable people in your ATS already.

Talent pipelining can help through the use of forms and progressive profiling to stream people automatically into different pipelines and segments. The alternatives to this are AI sourcing solutions which are untested when it comes to bias.

The smartest way to strip out the increasingly large manual workload associated with applications overload is being able to identify “best fit” talent.

You can do this by using technology to:

Help recruiters prioritise applicants that are the best match and most engaged.
Automate communications to those that are not a good fit.

Even though we’re now in an employer-driven job market, recruitment is still fast-paced. Candidates can leave the market as quickly as they arrived. Being able to identify and secure the best people is made possible by acting quickly.

Here are 6 steps that will save recruiters a LOT of time by reducing the workload coming from too many applications.

Move all your existing ATS candidates into simple folders or a talent pipeline system.
Email information about new jobs to each pipeline when they go live.
Encourage interested candidates to answer some questions using forms that will determine their potential for the role.
On your careers site or recruitment agency website, make sure there’s a prominent form that encourages people to sign up for your talent pipelines to access future opportunities.
Over time, use social media and job board display advertising to build up your talent pipelines.
Over time, share useful, relevant content with people in your talent pipelines so they are informed and inspired continuously.

This isn’t complicated.

What is complicated is dealing with 300 applicants for every advertised role. It’s a big candidate service risk and a huge waste of time. By taking the right approach and investing in the right technology, you can save yourself a lot of time. In order to keep up with demand, recruiting technology is essential. It is important recruiters are equipped with the right tools to handle the increase in job applications.

Chartloop Update

Let’s take a look at this update from Chartloop. (If there’s anything better than finding great tools, it’s an update that makes what you already have better.)

Chartloop is a research tool for company org chart creation of the top-level people in the company you specify. It will provide a link to their LinkedIn profile for you if available. If you aren’t familiar with Chartloop and want to know more, take a look at our last post on this tool.

What did they improve?

You can now add engineering, finance, and marketing to your org charts. Plus, find people at the Director levels and up or filter out for senior leaders. You can now filter by geography as well.

This tool is simple, easy, and they will continue to add more and more to functionality.

The State of Online Recruiting 2020

What trends and challenges are keeping today’s employers and job seekers up at night? According to recruitment platform iHire’s newly released 2020 State of Online Recruiting Report, 77.1% of employers say their top challenge when recruiting online is finding qualified, relevant talent.

As recently unemployed professionals return to the workforce, this issue will only intensify. 16.2% of employers expect an influx of applicants to be the single biggest trend impacting their ability to recruit through online platforms in the coming year.

On the other side of the recruiting equation: iHire’s report suggests that job seekers are most concerned with a lack of employer communication. 18.8% said their No.1 challenge when searching for a job online is not hearing back from employers after applying and/or interviewing.

Other top responses included the inability to find jobs in one’s desired location (17.2%). As well as the struggle to find positions they are qualified for (12.1%).

For more insights from iHire’s survey of 3,184 U.S. employers and job seekers, check out the full report.

Recruitment Lessons From Some Of The Biggest Tech Brands

If the average business owner could choose just one thing they could get exactly right, what should they pick? Their brand, maybe, or their fundamental business model. Perhaps their core product or service — that’s a solid notion.

But no. If they had to make that decision, the choice should be obvious: their recruitment process. Solopreneurs can only get so far, after all.

Sooner or later, talented professionals are needed to lighten the load and introduce new options. And in the long run, every business is more profoundly shaped by its range of employees than by the person (or people) who founded it.

Do you want to run your company for the rest of your life? Or do you want to retire one day, safe in the knowledge that your cherished business has a bright future because of the remarkable team you assembled and your talent pipeline?

Great recruitment certainly isn’t easy, though. So it’s hardly surprising that big businesses invest so heavily in attracting the best workers. This is particularly true of huge tech brands, as they’re generally more forward-thinking and willing to break from norms.

In this post, we’re going to look at what some top tech brands can teach us about recruitment. Let’s get started.

How people think matters more than their answers.

Google heavily prioritizes what it calls GCA, which stands for General Cognitive Ability. In other words, what matters is how you can solve real-life problems. Having great qualifications from well-regarded academic institutions is nice. But is nowhere near as significant as it’s often made out to be by elitist employers (who ironically don’t end up hiring the most elite candidates).

After all, every piece of work that comes along will bring fresh challenges with it, pushing workers to develop new skills, refresh old ones, and adjust how they operate in general. When you’re hiring for your business, don’t worry so much about what people have done before. A commitment to forming your own opinion will let you find some overlooked diamonds.

Self-starters and risk-takers are highly valuable.

Lori Goler of Facebook wants to hear from people who’ve made big mistakes “in the pursuit of big ideas.” Or, people who won’t stick to safety when there are new tactics to try. This isn’t unique to Facebook, though. You could say something similar about the other big tech companies.

The dominant brands have long concentrated on acting quickly. (And failing just as quickly if failure is unavoidable. which is why the apocryphal “fail fast, fail often” mantra became so influential.) This is a stance that we’re now seeing reflected in up-and-coming tech companies, which makes sense (why wouldn’t they want to emulate such immense successes?).

The team behind task management software GetBusy, for instance, uses the initialism BSU. Which stands for Blow Stuff Up! (exclamation point included)

But not all professionals are capable of adopting that approach. When you find candidates with clear track records of — to borrow that metaphor — blowing things up, you should bring them in and let them loose.

Using multiple interviewers adds a lot of clarity.

Microsoft does something interesting with its hiring process: it has interviewers work in pairs. The classic sole-interviewer setup has been around for so long that it sounds quite odd. It’s certainly not the most practical tactic. Interviewers need to be trusted senior employees, meaning that taking up the time of two instead of just one is something of a commitment.

It may well be worth it, though. Having two (or more) interviewers offers much greater clarity. Even with the best of intentions, biases and gut feelings can lead interviewers to favor certain candidates over others for no compelling reasons. The freedom given to reach verdicts can allow them to place offers without having to defend their choices.

If two interviewers with different temperaments team up on an interview, each can moderate the other’s biases and challenge their assumptions and conclusions. And if they’re able to agree on the first-choice candidate, that recommendation will be significantly more meaningful.

Top talent is always worth paying extra for.

Everyone has an opinion on Elon Musk. Whether you love him, hate him, or find him utterly perplexing, it’s hard to argue with his level of success — and the innovation achieved through Tesla and SpaceX. What’s more, something that I think really needs to be highlighted is his determination to hire the absolute best.

Top pros are much more expensive than merely decent candidates and much harder to find. But if you can afford to hire them, then you undoubtedly should. Why? Because just one or two truly exceptional employees can prove utterly transformative, adding more to the company than a hundred mediocre workers ever could.

There you have it. Some key recruitment lessons from some of the world’s most successful tech brands. You might not have the budget or extensive resources of a massive corporation, but that doesn’t mean you should settle for a weak hiring process. Make it your biggest investment, and it’ll pay off hugely down the line.

Stopping Covid-19 Spread: Implement These Workplace Controls

Organizations around the world are preparing for the eventual return of their employees to work. Many organizations have resumed operations already. After all, we cannot suspend commercial activities indefinitely.

According to health experts, the majority of people infected by COVID-19 are asymptomatic.

Just one asymptomatic worker in the workplace can prove to be a silent carrier of the novel Coronavirus and potentially infect dozens of others within a day if necessary controls are not in place.

Therefore, when you finally decide to have your employees return to work, it’s important to plan and implement various controls to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Prioritizing employee health during the ongoing pandemic is among the top HR lessons learned by organizations worldwide.

The workplace controls described here in this post can be used to control person-to-person as well as the surface-to-person spread of COVID-19 within a workplace. All of these control methods are within the guidelines of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Elimination Controls

This is the most effective control method.

But it isn’t always possible to completely eliminate exposure to a hazard such as COVID-19. For instance, it isn’t possible to permanently or conclusively remove COVID-19, once it enters an office building or manufacturing facility.

As part of the elimination control method, many companies have over the last few months moved their employees to work-from-home schedules. But, you cannot always have your entire workforce work from home to keep everyone safe from COVID-19.

For most businesses, such as restaurants, repair shops, manufacturing units, service centers, etc., remote work is not an option.

You can temporarily close your business, downsize operations, and if feasible, ask some of your employees to work from home. Keep in mind that you will need to support your work-from-home team.

It is also important to ask individuals who are at high risk of developing severe illness due to COVID-19 to either work from home or remain on leave.

Substitution Controls

Such control methods work by replacing a hazard – whether an object or environment – with something less risky.

You can, for instance, replace the shared work environment where workers interacted with each other or worked together on a regular basis.

Engineering Controls

Engineering controls can help stop the spread of COVID-19 without having to rely on employee behavior. Implementing engineering controls is one of the most practical and cost-effective ways to minimize your workers’ exposure to COVID-19.

Fundamentally, such control methods involve isolating workers from a hazard.

Depending upon the design and type of the facility or workplace you have, various engineering controls for COVID-19 are:

Install physical barriers such as transparent plastic sheets or sneeze guards between work desks or cubicles; such temporary barriers can be placed in all areas in the workplace where workers are likely to come face-to-face for an extended duration of time
Setup a drive-through window for servicing customers
Use high-efficiency air filters in the workplace; investigate existing air-filters before your employees return to work; if necessary, consider upgrading them
Raise ventilation rates in areas where several employees are likely to be present whether it’s a corporate office or a manufacturing unit
Remove community amenities such as common rooms, community sitting area, break rooms, lunch halls, snack plates, teacups, etc.

Administrative Controls

These controls require specific actions either by the employee or employer. Generally, such control methods for preventing COVID-19 involve changes in work procedures or policy changes to minimize exposure to the virus. Implementing such controls is likely to be one of the common ways HR departments respond to the ongoing crisis.

Some of the most common examples of administrative controls for COVID-19 include:

Maintain social distance (at least six feet) in the workplace
Draw floor markings in customer service areas to promote social distancing
Ask sick employees to stay at home; encourage them to inform their supervisors if someone in their family is sick or has tested positive for COVID-19
Minimize gatherings in the workplace to reduce the possibility of respiratory transmission of COVID-19; substitute face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings to minimize contact between employees, clients, vendors, and suppliers
Prepare emergency communication plans and create dedicated helpline for employees to raise concerns about their safety or seek help if required; businesses should be keen to help employees cope during the ongoing crisis.
Educate workers on how to protect oneself from COVID-19 through hand and respiratory hygiene through email campaigns
Train workers on how to correctly use gloves and masks
Disinfect high-touch surfaces such as countertops, tables, phones, doorknobs, stair handrails, elevator buttons, etc. frequently on a daily basis with EPA-approved disinfectants; researchers say the novel Coronavirus can remain active on such inorganic surfaces for up to three days
Provide soap and water or alcohol-based hand rubs (with at least 70% concentration of ethyl alcohol, as recommended by the CDC) in the workplace to promote hand hygiene

Develop a Policy for Identifying and Isolating Suspected Cases

Despite these workplace controls, it is possible exposure to COVID-19 would occur. On such occasions, it is important to quickly identify and isolate potentially infected workers.

It is the critical first step you can take towards protecting workers, vendors, visitors, and other people at the worksite. You can either move potentially infected individuals to isolation rooms or ask them to self-quarantine at home.

You can ask such workers to wear a mask to reduce the spread of their infectious respiratory secretions. In most workplaces, isolated workers would need to be asked to leave the worksite at the earliest.

Screen All Visitors

Besides implementing elimination, substitution, engineering, and administrative controls, organizations also need to control access to their operations by external parties such as vendors, suppliers, delivery personnel, truck drivers, maintenance/service technicians, etc.

Final Words

Do keep in mind that some of these workplace controls cannot be implemented in all situations. But, these control methods are recognized by organizations directly involved in either protecting workers or stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Due to the wide number of different scenarios, the possibility of community transmission, employee populations, office/work-site designs, local labor laws, public health advisories, and government restrictions, it may not be possible to practice each workplace control described above.

The 5 Steps of Remote Recruiting

Remote recruiting may have started off as a buzzword, but it is here to stay. With multiple benefits, 99% of employees want some remote work capabilities. And, 83% say remote work increases happiness. Therefore, it is hard for companies to deny the endless possibilities remote work can have on both their company culture and employee experience.

In fact, 16% of companies exclusively hire remote workers. But how can companies who are just now jumping into the world of remote work go about implementing new remote recruiting practices? Below are five steps to follow when recruiting or hiring from a distance.

Post and promote

To post open positions anywhere and everywhere, HR teams first need to make sure they have an engaging job description that can sell both the role and the company. However, writing attention-grabbing roles can take a lot of time. Instead, save HR teams time and effort by using customizable job description templates to help kick-start the recruiting process.

From there, posting and promoting job positions can be the sweet spot for finding the best candidates for the job. When posting open positions, try looking for niche, remote, and diversity job boards. This can help increase the chances of finding those perfect candidates. Especially for remote work.

Bonus tip: Don’t hesitate to ask current employees to promote the postings on their own social media sites and to their own networks. Companies never know who they might find through these connections.

Quickly screen applicants

With remote work no longer a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. It is incredibly important to adjust the recruiting process and hiring questions to adapt to these requirements. Use automated questionnaires at the beginning of the application process in order to quickly screen applicants. Make sure each candidate can meet these remote work needs.

Ask questions to gain insight around if they know how to use the technology needed for the role. Or if they will be available during the allocated times. Gathering this information upfront will save time down the line and make sure candidates have the proper skills, tools, and availability for the job.

Video assessments are another great tool to use when going through the remote recruiting process. Not only do video assessments help to get to know each candidate better from afar, but they also provide insight for screen-presence. It is crucial to see how candidates compose themselves when interacting through tools like Zoom or Google Hangouts. Especially with customer-facing roles.

Simplify the scheduling

The best remote interviews are the ones that have the human touch to them. While still keeping everything simple and to the point for both the hiring team and the candidate. Scheduling the interview can and should be done in one simple click.

Here are some tips and tools to help combat scheduling fatigue:

Self-schedule links can be used to connect team members’ calendars without having to ask and confirm availability before every interview. This helps candidates plan their availability without the stress of back-and-forth communication.
Automated reminders through texts or emails are incredibly helpful in making sure everyone is on the same page and shows up on the right day and time for the interviews.
Use live video meetings to still get face-to-face interaction even while remote. These two-way live interviews are crucial in keeping the human touch a part of the recruiting and hiring process, while being effective and efficient in learning more about each candidate.

Efficiently evaluate candidates

A company’s hiring process requires a team effort. From HR departments to the team members who will be working with the potential new employees, there are a lot of eyes, ears, and opinions on these virtual interviews. So making the evaluation process quick, easy, and efficient is incredibly important.

Team collaboration and insight into the hiring process should be fostered through messaging, emails, and scorecards that are all housed in the same place so nothing gets left out, lost, or forgotten when it comes to discussing candidates.

Automated reference and background checks can also be utilized to keep the recruiting and hiring process flowing smoothly without taking the time out of HR teams’ day. With reference and background checks automatically sent out, the human side of hiring can stay a priority while tactical requirements are handled through your ATS.

Follow up with emphasis

The candidate experience should still be at the top of priorities, even when hiring remote. In fact, 50% of candidates say they have turned down a role due to terrible experiences in the hiring process. Communication is incredibly important for all candidates, whether they are moving forward or not.

Following up with each applicant and making them feel as if their time was valued, even if they didn’t get the job, can be as simple as sending a quick email and providing some brief feedback. Just because they didn’t get the job this time around, that doesn’t mean they won’t make a great fit later down the line.

Keeping the lines of communication open for these opportunities in the future can emphasize a company’s candidate experience and keep the hiring pipeline open, full, and efficient.

Hiring from a distance isn’t easy. Remote-focused tools and processes are important in order for HR departments to keep the recruiting and hiring process moving efficiently and effectively. These steps can help companies take on the challenge of remote recruiting the best talent all from the comfort of their laptop.

Why is Online Presence Necessary During a Job Search?

The world we knew once has come a long way. From commuting to work every morning to getting the same done literally from anywhere. It is now dominated by an interconnected system where information is readily available in a structured way. This has now allowed organizations to recruit candidates virtually. That is why job seekers should now start paying more attention to building their online presence. (Rather than shooting resumes with identical cover letters.)

As a job seeker, you might think that since you are already active on social media you’ll get easily noticed by recruiters. However, it is not that simple. It doesn’t work like that. Social media platforms only help you replicate your identity in the virtual world. Building an online presence mainly depends on the type of information you are sharing publicly.

So, what does having an online presence actually mean?

Online presence is nothing but the digital footprint that you leave behind after sharing any meaningful content about you or your work. Done through various mediums where information is publicly available. Based on the type of information you share, the algorithms will present it with individuals having similar interests. That’s how you get discovered online.

It can be a blog post about you or your work, a tweet, photos on Instagram, or your comments on a public forum. All these manipulate the way you appear in the virtual world. Moreover, it also gives you a chance to stand out in the crowd if you follow a few basic guidelines that I’ve shared below.

But before proceeding to that: let’s first know why building an online presence has become the need of the hour.

Importance of Creating a Great Online Presence for a Job Search

The virtual identity of a person has become one of the most valuable assets. In the cyber world, you are exposed to millions of people who are willing to connect to the right person. This means that there are many opportunities waiting for you to get discovered. And the only way it is possible is by strengthening your online presence.

Many recruiters now prefer shortlisting candidates based on their online persona. Which is now more powerful than a resume. Suppose you are an individual who is really good at computer programming. If you are regularly posting your thoughts by sharing projects on various platforms, it establishes you as a person who is really passionate about his or her work in front of the digital headhunters looking for the best talents.

Further, the stronger your online presence is the higher will be your credibility which would help you easily connect with individuals sitting at the top position.

How to Improve Your Online Visibility?

Every great thing takes time and the same applies while you’re creating a great online presence. Your online presence depends on a number of things which include personal branding, networking, and presenting yourself as a problem solver rather than a normal job applicant.

A few basic guidelines that you must follow for enhancing your online visibility:

Define Your Area of Interest

When building your online visibility you cannot act like the jack of all trades and master of none.

You must be clear on your mind about the field of work you want to be in. When you clearly define your interest, the web algorithm automatically identifies it and matches you with similar prospects.

This allows you to build a strong career-oriented path where you can apply your skills to get the job done efficiently.

Create Meaningful Content

After defining your area of interest the next step is creating meaningful content. This can be in the form of a detailed blog, infographics, or just a simple post regarding your work.

You can also share details about your projects or findings that will help your followers gain new insights and present you as a qualified professional.

Reach Out to Like-Minded People

The third step in the process of building a good online presence is to make connections with as many people as possible belonging to your line of work. Once you start reaching out to people you’ll come to know about the various demands in the industry.

It’ll allow you to learn from experienced professionals and hone your skills to grab the desired opportunities whenever they knock your door.

Offer Free-Solutions

Another great way to grab attention in the virtual world during your initial phases is by helping others with your skills without thinking of any monetary returns. This will help you gain in-depth knowledge and experience which massively boosts your credibility.

Once people start noticing your dedication they’ll automatically start connecting with you and refer you to those searching for passionate problem-solvers while building a team.

Keep Yourself Updated

You must always keep a close eye on what’s happening around you and how it is going to impact your industry. For this, you can either join some online groups and take part in forum discussions where you can keep your thoughts.

This increases your chance of getting discovered by expert professionals who could be looking out for young talents like you to work with them.

Share Your Achievements

You might have a lot of achievements to your name. But they won’t bring you goodwill unless you share it publicly. Whenever you post your wins and achievements on online platforms. Like LinkedIn for example, it displays your willingness to keep on learning and progressing.

This presents a very good image of you in front of your online audience by validating your skills and abilities which every employer looks out for in a potential candidate.

Be Consistent in Your Efforts

Consistency is the key to success when you’re creating your online presence. Once you’ve started building your virtual profile there’s no looking back or stopping at a certain point. You constantly need to put out great content. Keep building connections, and repeat the same things to stand out in the crowd.

Once you see that your profile is getting constant hits and the views on your posts are increasing, you can be sure that you’re heading in the right direction.

The Proxy Problem

As recruiters, we use proxies. A lot of proxies, not real data. We use a lot of proxies and usually, we’re not even aware of it.

For example, we use education as a proxy for intelligence. In continental Europe, we look at a university degree, as in most countries there is no difference in quality.

In the UK and the USA, they even look at what university someone has attended. This is however a proxy with two problems. The first problem is that for many jobs the university does not measure the right traits and second, it’s a terrible proxy even for what it intends to measure.

Two examples:

Air traffic controllers are people that need to be able to handle sudden stress. At what time during your education is this tested? It’s not. So when the Dutch air traffic control started testing applicants with game-based assessments on their stress resilience, they did away with the educational requirements. Quality of hire went up as fewer people dropped out of the training, saving millions. This is an example of education not being a good proxy for being good at every job.

One Dutch municipality had an overload of applicants for their traineeship and decided to use an IQ test to measure the quality, as they found based on earlier current employees that had finished the traineeship this was the differentiator between the good and not so good trainees. Turned out that 60% of all applicants with a university degree did not reach academic IQ levels according to an academically validated IQ test. So apparently you don’t even need to have academic smarts to get an academic degree.

So an academic degree doesn’t guarantee a good hire and isn’t a great proxy. It does however exclude a lot of talented people. Another example.

Accounting firm Grant Thornton in the UK stoped with educational requirements for trainees in 2013 and replaced them by aptitude testing. This resulted in hiring a lot more people from a very diverse background that had all the qualities to become a good account, just not the right education or even the right grades. School grades also depend on the hours you can spend studying, something that’s a lot easier when you don’t have to work two jobs to pay for college and when you have a safe home environment.

Grant Thornton measured the results of these ‘diversity hires’ and it turns out they stay at the company longer and have more billable hours per year. In 2018 Grant Thornton won the Queen’s Award for improving social mobility.

Overqualified

This article by the BBC talked about the new hiring problem post-COVID-19. Too many applicants and many overqualified. This one retail shop had ‘people with Ph.D.’s apply, way overqualified’. But since when does a Ph.D. make you a great retail salesperson. The qualities you need for a Ph.D. have nothing in common with the qualities you need to be a great retail salesperson.

A Ph.D. might have these qualities, but there is no guarantee what so ever. This person isn’t overqualified for the job, she has qualifications that match different, usually better-paying jobs, better.

Quality of English

Some companies in continental Europe that are very internationally oriented want every employee to speak at least a decent level of English. That’s why they use English job descriptions and demand an English CV.

This excluded a lot of people that just don’t search on Google or Indeed for the English version of a job title and of course no IT professional with 7 jobs to choose from will spend two hours translating his or her CV. Interestingly enough when I quested these recruiters if they actually tested the English of the candidate? If the job interview was in English? Or if the candidate had to do an English test the answer was no.

So they still had plenty of hires with poor English skills who had a friend translate their resume and write their cover letter.

Let’s do better

Other proxies we use are former employers, job roles, courses, hobbies and we can go on and on. I remember one recruiter telling me she wanted to know the sports someone played as you could see if it was a team player or not. Soccer? Team sport, team player. Tennis and golf? Not a team player.

We need to stop using proxies and start actually measuring skills and traits. There are excellent tools that can assess someone’s written and spoken English for example, fully automated and bias-free. AI doesn’t have a preference for certain accents like humans do.

We need to actually test a candidate on his or her competencies and traits with digital pre-screening assessments that are relevant for the job. So not general intelligence tests, as those are not legal in the USA either, but job-specific tests that measure the skills or traits you need.

And you know what the amazing bonus is? Everywhere I’ve seen these tools implemented in the right way diversity has gone up. Turns out there’s a lot more diverse talent out there if we stop using proxies to assess talent.

Fireside chat with William Tincup & Daniel Fellows of Get-Optimal

I’ve known Daniel for years now. We’ve orbited each at different jobs and have talked on the phone, ahem, Skype, ahem, Zoom more times than I can count. He’s one of the genuinely good people in our industry and he’s trying to solve a real problem.

While he was at Indeed he noticed something about job ads that weren’t quite being addressed. We all know job ads (generally speaking) are horrible. With advances in technology, like Textio, we can make the language and performance of a job ad better. Cool.

And, with the societal conversations from #metoo #loveislove to #blacklivesmatter, it seems like we know that job ads should focus more on diversity, inclusion, belonging, equity, and equality (DIBEE). Again, cool.

So let’s say that all that is true for a moment. That fancy new job ad is a glorious tree in the middle of the forest. Cool. Well, that’s where the opportunity is for Daniel & Optimal. If no one sees your glorious tree, then so what. Seriously, so what.

Optimal is in the game of making it easy for folks to find your job ad. Think SEO for job ads and you’d be close. Optimal is in the business of optimizing your job ad. Turns out, the more people that consume your lovely job ad, the better. News at 11.

A bit more about Daniel…

Daniel is the founder and CEO of Get-optimal. Probably the most excited individual on the planet when it comes to the humble and heavily neglected Job Ad. From his time at Indeed and now with Optimal, Daniel knows a great deal about the global problem his business is solving. He previously worked on solving technology challenges at behemoths; Nokia, Microsoft, Vodafone, LifeWorks, and most recently held a Director of Marketing role at Indeed.com – the world’s largest search engine for jobs.

The happiest digging in his record crates, Daniel lives with his wife Ali and two energetic boys in South London.

It’s important to note and make clear that not only do I like Daniel and Optimal, I’m also an advisor to him/his company. That’s how much I like the opportunity. My involvement shouldn’t change your opinion of Daniel/Optimal one way or the other. I think it’s (more) ethical to disclose these things.

With all that said, let’s get to the interview.

Q1: Work-related, what’s keeping you up at night these days?

People losing their jobs and livelihood on a massive scale is very troubling on many levels. We all know how work provides structure, enables us to explore our passions and gives financial stability, and improves our mental wellbeing. Get-Optimal like all startups fluctuates, having started in the middle of Brexit and now being in the eye of a global pandemic it’s undoubtedly tested our vision, strategy, and character.

Get-optimal automates and optimizes Job Ads online, whether you’re recruiting five folks a year or 95,000 like our largest client, we’re well placed as companies move into automation and recruitment technology adoption.

Q2: What’s your short term (>3 years) vision for Get-Optimal?

We’ve accomplished stage 1 or 3 stages which were launching, testing, and iterating our on-demand Job Ad optimization platform. Get-Optimal has a growing global client base across staffing, direct employers, and small to medium-sized businesses.

Stage 2 is to automate and scale; within the next 12 months, our R&D team will take Get-optimal onto the next step of our journey, and launch our Saas Machine learning AI platform which will enable Get-Optimal to meet the demands of optimizing millions of Job Ads in near real-time across many global partner platforms.

Q3: What’s your long-term (<3 years) vision for Get-Optimal?

Realizing stage 3 of our journey combined with contributing to tangible equality of opportunity and representation in our workplaces. D&I is part of the DNA of Get-Optimal. Professionally I’ve been hugely frustrated at the inertia and acceptance of ‘that’s just the way it’s always been’ while at previous companies. All of our data and research work prove and demonstrate that gendered wording commonly employed in Job Ads maintains gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations.

Our awesome technology team at Get-Optimal built and launched a Gender Decoding tool back in November 2019. Our gender decoding tool analyses and removes subtle gender-coded language and unconscious bias from your Job Ads. Get-Optimal takes care of inclusion for you. The gender decoding is included in every Job Ad we optimize, it’s part of our main product.

We optimize Job Ads for inclusivity alongside ensuring your Job Ads are optimized for SEO.

Q4: You’ll know Get-Optimal has reached its full potential when?

When I’m working less than 16 hours a day, and the grey hairs decrease. Aside from that, when folks realize that the humble Job Ad is the most critical piece of marketing recruitment collateral they have. We have a collective responsibility to do better, to care, and to ensure all gender and racial bias is removed at source.

Q5: What advice do you give leaders regarding evaluating technology?

Seek the experiences of the users and customers of the companies you’re evaluating. 100% of Get-Optimal customers are referenceable. That’s one of our core values, not just a statement framed on a wall.

Also, how does that technology fit into your recruitment technology stack, what problem is it specifically solving, and will it enable my team or me to do more? Is it measurable or nice to have? In my experience, I work with folks that I like and have shared values with.

How to Retain High Potential Employees

How to Retain Young High Potential Employees

The term “War for Talent” was coined in 1998 in a popular report by McKinsey Consulting, referring to the growing competition between companies for the best employees.

According to this concept, because people are the only sustainable competitive advantage for an organization, it only makes sense that companies would focus on being as attractive as possible to the most elite employees as a part of their broader business strategy.

The Lure of the High Potential

Enter the early career-high potentials. These individuals demonstrate solid performance in their current roles. But, more importantly, they have the raw ingredients to be successful in leadership roles in the future.

For organizations that are focused on building a competitive advantage long-term, the attraction and retention of high potentials should be a key piece of the talent strategy.

However, retaining high potentials is easier said than done. After all, ambitious young professionals are often actively courted by other employers. And, tend to be less tied down than the workforce as a whole. They are therefore more willing to make significant changes in their lives to accommodate a new career opportunity.

One study found that young, promising employees were leaving for other opportunities after an average of only 28 months. And that 95% of them were engaged in job-hunting activities like sending out resumes.

While some companies engage in short-term tactics to retain high potentials like offering flashy perks like Friday happy hours and ping pong tables, these methods are ultimately unsustainable. The only way companies can keep their high potential employees is to give them what they’re looking for: Excellent opportunities to grow and develop.

It’s a bit paradoxical. To keep high potentials, act like you’re preparing them for their next role. Whether it’s with the organization or not.

If given consistent professional growth opportunities and support, they aren’t likely to leave.

Strategies for retaining high potentials

If you’re serious about retaining high potentials for the long haul, here are some things to consider doing:

Provide mentoring from experienced, capable mentors.

High potentials are hungry for mentoring. Additionally, mentoring is critical for their development.

Studies have demonstrated that mentoring helps employees in many ways. From skill development related to things like problem-solving and communication to helping them grow their network with the people they need to build relationships to advance their careers.

It’s often the sponsorship and relationships developed through mentoring that helps propel individuals to higher levels in the organization. Rather than the development of technical skills.

Give high potentials autonomy in their role.

When looking back on their careers, many successful executives recall that some of their most effective learning experiences were mistakes made in their early career years. To grow to the fullest extent, young professionals need to have the freedom to make meaningful business decisions. Even, sometimes, the wrong business decisions.

Through making mistakes, young professionals build confidence, resiliency, and gain hard-won lessons that they aren’t likely to forget in their later career years.

Provide competitive rewards, and review them frequently.

The market value of a high potential can grow quickly. Compensation policies that don’t allow for substantial salary increases can negatively impact the retention of high potential employees.

For example, if an early career high potential employee recently finished an MBA or other certification, took on additional job responsibilities, or moved to a new and more challenging division, they might warrant a substantial increase in their compensation. However, if the company typically caps annual raises at 5%, the high potential can quickly become underpaid.

The money-motivated high potentials will often jump from job to job to get raises. Using the tried-and-true method of switching jobs every 2-3 years to maximize their earnings.

This strategy works because of the existence of a “loyalty discount” that tends to penalize individuals who stay with one employer.

High potentials should never be dissuaded from or blamed for pursuing their worth in the job market. Instead, companies should review their compensation frequently to make sure that they are still paying a competitive salary.

Tell high potential employees that the organization considers them such.

Some studies have suggested that by simply telling employees that they are considered high potential, they are more likely to stay with the employer. After all, if the organization is signaling an increase in investment in the individual, the person is likely to want to stay to reap the benefits.

This may seem like common sense. However, many organizations avoid telling employees that they consider them to be high potentials because they don’t want to demoralize the employees who aren’t.

Organizations that want to keep this information under wraps tend to have a more subjective process of identifying high potentials. Therefore they can’t really defend it. Make sure the criteria for being a high potential are clearly defined, fair, and job-related.

While retaining high potentials can require some attention and resources, it’s an investment that can really pay off. These individuals can grow into tomorrow’s leaders for the organization.

Never Waste A Crisis

For any business with volumes in the thousands and hiring in single-digit %, automating screening and assessment is something they have no choice but to do.

Using AI in recruitment has also become much more mainstream. With research validating the positive impact these tools can have on your EVP.

But, HR also is now responsible for what is now the most critical problem to solve – how to interrupt bias. So, let’s consider the stats on how HR has dealt with the limitation of non-contactable hiring in the first half of this year.

Video platforms are going off. Which only makes things worse given that video is a petri dish for bias.

Blind screening is the only way to truly interrupt bias. That’s what a chat interview offers.

It’s often thought that blind screening means you can’t track the bias, but that’s not the case.

Smart reporting can show you where the bias is:

Which team
What manager
The location

Any good HR person will tell you the easiest way to check for bias is to look at the hired profile vs. the applicant profile. We do this, not by asking the candidate for this information.

You can see the bias by using an external service like NamSor to derive ethnicity and gender from candidate names for reporting and testing. Forensically. You can make your leaders accountable for that bias.

How can you not have this…

AI allows you to see things you can’t. You can process all of that information. Giving you, the hiring manager an immeasurable advantage in your decision-making.

Using AI to screen people has to be motivated by more than efficiency. Whilst no one’s time is served well by screening thousands of CVs, 100% blind screening for hiring and promotion makes business sense. And it’s the right thing to do.

It’s giving everyone a fair go. Democratizing opportunity in a world of structural inequality.

It’s maddening how that aspect of AI vs. human screening often gets neglected when evaluating the merits of the technology by the media.

In Australia, the indigenous community represents 3% of the population, yet they are nowhere close to that representation in leadership roles. Being a job seeker in today’s environment is incredibly hard.

Being a member of a minority group and being a job seeker in today’s environment is way more challenging. Imagine if the way you hired and promoted made it easier and fairer for those groups.

Easier because you don’t need to sit in front of a video for judgment.

Fairer, because the only thing that matters is who you are. Not what you are.

At PredictiveHire, we pride ourselves on helping organizations reduce bias at the top of the recruitment funnel through an online interview process that is fair and equitable for everyone. We’re passionate about giving everyone a fair chance and giving organizations the tools to realize their goals of true diversity and inclusion in the hiring process. While we can’t control for bias within the organization, we can manage bias at the start of the recruitment process, and work with organizations to raise awareness of bias through the employee lifecycle.

Monster hiring report: August 2020 snapshot

Slow and steady, the economy is looking up, at least for now. We saw this in the latest release of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) monthly jobs report, which showed that the labor market continued to bring back more jobs last month. And with more jobs, the number of job searches conducted by candidates on Monster trended upward in July as well.

All in all, July’s gain of 1.8 million jobs is a good sign of a rebounding economy and reflects similar activity in the job market that Monster has been tracking all month. Here are some of the sectors having big impacts right now.

Hiring in health care tests positive

Non-emergency, elective medical and dental surgeries and procedures resumed during the month of July, leading to an increase in job growth, particularly in offices of physicians and dentists, hospitals, and home health care. These gains were seen not only on Monster, but also in the 126,000 health care jobs that the BLS reported were added to the labor market last month.

On Monster, jobs for medical assistants, opticians, physician assistants, healthcare support workers, dental assistants, and physical therapists saw healthy increases in offices of dentists and physicians. According to the BLS report, employment increased by more than 45,000 in these types of establishments last month. Likewise, job searches for “physical therapist,” “physician assistant,” and “dental hygienist” positions increased month-over-month on Monster.

The hiring bug spread to other health care institutions as well. In hospitals, Monster data shows monthly increases in job postings for medical and clinical laboratory technicians, surgical technologists, and phlebotomists. Meanwhile, home health care businesses hired for more personal care aides and nursing assistants throughout the month.

For the full story, visit Monster.com

The Monster Poll

We are in the 20th straight week where unemployment has surpassed 1 million people, and new jobless claims this week are at 1.2 million.

In a poll conducted among employees, Monster tapped into its audience to determine how many people are still searching for new work amidst COVID-19. The results revealed that there is still a large portion of people who are desperate for work. Of those employed, nearly half are desperate for more flexibility and higher pay.

Polling Data

Desperate for Work Schedule Flexibility | Source: Monster poll conducted among employees, July 24, 2020; 2607 U.S. respondents

When asked if they had taken on more work responsibilities amidst COVID-19, nearly two thirds of respondents (60%) shared that they do not currently have a job. The 23% who are employed and are taking on additional responsibilities, attribute it primarily to staffing decreases within their company.
Surprisingly, of those who are currently employed, the majority (85%) are still considering searching for a new job amidst COVID-19, stemming from their desire to have flexibility in their work schedule (47%) and a pay increase (44%).
Interestingly, of those who are unemployed, an overwhelming majority (89%) are willing to consider a job outside of their current industry.

Employment Trends

Job Seekers Remain Persistent | Source: Monster data, April-July, 2020.

Candidates felt desperation to find a job in early April, and even an urgency to “pivot” industries through mid-May, according to our Monster community of job seekers. With this trend remaining consistent through the latest poll results, the new reality of finding a job during the pandemic is full of compromise and resilience.

Industry Data

Source: Monster data, July 2020

Education: July saw some of the highest levels of education job postings since the country entered lockdown in mid-March, nearing pre-COVID levels.
Healthcare: Registered nurses, nurse practitioners, nursing assistants and medical assistants saw upticks early in the month and RNs and nurse practitioners continued the upward trend throughout the month. Overall healthcare jobs saw a steady increase throughout July on Monster.
Transportation and Warehousing: Stock clerks held steady in the top 10 jobs posted on Monster throughout July. Additionally, light truck/delivery saw an uptick mid-month and ended July in the top 10 jobs on Monster. Packers and packagers (hand) are at their highest new job posting volumes in July compared to other months since the start of the pandemic.
Professional & Business Services: Jobs such as loan officers, loan interviewers, and clerks saw a jump in the second week of the month and stayed steady throughout the rest of the month. Similarly, business operations specialists remained in the top five jobs posted to Monster throughout the month. Positions such as secretaries and administrative assistant, bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing saw fluctuations throughout the month with a slight uptick by the end of July.