Hiring Challenges Will Constrain Tech Growth in 2020

There’s a market-share war occurring in technology and its implications are widespread, presenting major challenges to recruiters.

We’re in the later innings of an expansion cycle and market share is top-of-mind for executives. Companies have high volume hiring goals, yet the number of qualified candidates is finite and competition is intense.

We’ve identified some recruiting trends that are worth calling out to help companies achieve their hiring goals in 2020.

Sales Recruiting Is Now as Challenging as Engineering Recruiting

Finding sales professionals is critical to B2B SaaS growth. Additional salespeople result in more accounts, markets, and revenue.

Experienced SaaS salespeople are in high demand. In fact, it’s more challenging to hire entry-to-mid level sales roles (Sales and Business Development) than it is to hire software engineers (2.8% engagement rate vs. 3.1% for engineers). Candidates are being contacted by multiple recruiters, headhunters, and hiring managers at any given time and it’s becoming harder to get these candidates’ to focus on any one opportunity.

Companies are becoming more creative and flexible to combat this problem. Rather than waiting too long to mention the perks and benefits of a new offer, recruiters are presenting compensation and bonuses in initial messaging in hopes of sparking a conversation.

We’ve seen companies use remote sales offices in cities like Austin, Denver, and Salt Lake City to engage new talent as well.

Build an Entry-Level Hiring Machine

Companies often spend more time and resources on sourcing for senior or executive roles because these are high-visibility roles. The data suggests this is the wrong approach:

1) executives are almost 2x more likely to respond to a new career opportunity than entry-level candidates; and

2) there are far more entry-level positions than senior positions.

In today’s market, entry-level candidates are being overwhelmed with new career opportunities making it easy to ignore the next interview request. Candidates have so many opportunities they are ghosting companies after interviewing. Given these unique challenges, we believe companies are underinvesting in building an entry-level talent pipeline; especially at the top-of-funnel.

Companies can reallocate their recruiting resources used for senior roles since executives are more willing to engage with a company especially if an increase in title or responsibility is offered. Executive recruiting resources should be focused on creating a world-class candidate experience to ensure executive-level candidates are excited about working at your company.

Be Flexible, Consider Remote Candidates

Companies are seeking new solutions for their hard-to-fill jobs. For technology and sales roles, we’ve seen companies consider remote workers. Instead of limiting your talent pool to a specific location, companies are often allowing for remote workers.

The data shows that a remote job opportunity increases interview rates by 44%. Candidates are more open to hearing about new opportunities that provide flexibility around work arrangements.

When considering talent acquisition strategies for 2020, remote talent is an effective way to grow your team without sacrificing ambitious revenue targets or product innovation.

Data-Driven Recruiting in 2020

Recruiting will continue to be a challenge for the foreseeable future. Companies require more specialized skills to manage evolving technology, revenue targets, and industry trends. If HR teams continue to crunch the data and understand the challenges each open role presents, companies will be able to better manage ambitious growth and hiring targets.

Check out Pushleads, a brand new lead gen tool!

Find new clients with Pushleads!

We’re going to show you a brand new lead gen tool called Pushleads. The new tool is based out of the UK but uses global data that can help you find those local small to medium-sized companies you want as new clients.

In our test run, we did a search for software companies in Seattle. Just set the location and category, and run the search! When it’s done, go into past searches and then click to view leads. For our search, we got a list of 14 different software companies and it includes contact information, where they’re at, email addresses, and links to profiles. Download it all into a CSV file or use the information right within the tool.

All in all, this isn’t a bad little tool. With the free account, you get 5 free searches every month, so you can check it out first to see if you like using it. Upgrade to their paid plans with either 10 searches a month or 100 for a team account.

Pushleads could be great for cross-referencing, especially with the email addresses you can get from those searches. Check it out and let us know what you think!

~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

Guide For IT Recruiters: Types of Tests

Perhaps you have had a similar experience.

Your manager brings you a new job from a client. We need a tester! ASAP! Pronto, pronto, Andale, Andale! You get a short description, which is way more than you usually get, so you can’t complain. There is some gibberish – JIRA, JMeter, Selenium, ISTQB, UAT, Black Box… You try to decipher the description, but as always, time is not your friend, and you have to get moving. Anyway, a tester is a tester, right?

Actually, you couldn’t be more wrong. To complete the previous topic, we’ll discuss types of tests today.

When you contact a chosen candidate, the question about the type of tests is bound to come up. Manual and automated tests were already discussed so you can show off a little here. However, it is also worth knowing whether they’d be performing functional, non-functional, or maybe regression tests so you could provide more details for the potential tester. Even better, this knowledge will let you assess if the candidate you’re currently considering is the right specialist for you.

Okay. Let’s move on to some specifics. What types of tests are there?

FUNCTIONAL TESTS

They test HOW and TO WHAT LEVEL something is functional. In other words – whether the implemented functionalities work properly, in accordance with the requirements. Let’s take a simple example – a calculator – in this case, it will be addition and subtraction. Does it work? Then it’s okay.

The most commonly used technique here is:

Black-box testing

The specialist looks at the application as if from the outside. Are the tasks that should be performed actually performing? The tester does not need to know the programming language. In this case, you do not need to know “the inside”, i.e., the code. Okay, maybe sometimes you do… but in general, the essence is that we are not interested in what is happening inside the black box (of a given system), but we know what enters it – what data and what should come out of it – what result. Nothing more than that.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s take a blender. We put in fruits and vegetables, set the speed, time, and start the device (data). After the arranged time, let’s give it 30 seconds, we get a smoothie (result). That’s it.

STRUCTURAL TESTS

They focus on testing the application code. So the tester should have knowledge of the architecture of the whole system and, of course, the coding.

Here, on the other hand, we use:

White Box Testing

Unlike the black-box tests, where you look at something from the outside, in this case, you look at the inside of the program. You check the code and the errors that occurred in it. Therefore, the tester should know the programming language.

And back to the blender. We’re thinking about what’s going on inside the hardware. Here we know which cogs interact with which and in what order.

NON FUNCTIONAL TESTS

In general, they are used to evaluate the features of the tested system, software, applications, etc. And there are many types of them… I’ll give you a few examples:

Load test
Performance test
Security test
Reliability test
Usability test

Let’s say we are testing a banking application. Load tests will allow us to verify whether the website will work (will not “freeze”) if many people log in at the same time. A performance test will enable you to check how long the user has to wait for the “reaction” of the website, its individual elements (functions) during the performance of subsequent activities. For example, the user logs in within 3 seconds, but while making a transfer, waits 15 seconds, and we have to check if this is acceptable. Or maybe everything should work faster? The security test, as the name suggests, is to make sure that no unwelcome individual has access to information resources, confidential data. Usability test, just whether the site is user-friendly or if anything is annoying about it.

REGRESSION TESTING

Specialists testing various applications, after detecting that something does not work as it should they report it to the software developer. The developer fixes this bug. Unfortunately, there is always a possibility that by adjusting one thing… we create another bug. That’s why you should check the main functionalities after such a repair.

And here, regression tests are used to verify this. Whether the changes made caused new errors to appear or somewhere in other parts of the application. As you probably already guessed, this involves a lot of work (you have to repeat it many times), so very often, this test is automated.

3 Reasons To Not Hire Like A Tech Company

We aren’t a “–insert term here—” we are a Technology company!

Heard that line before? The first thing I would say is, don’t play along.

How do you recruit differently now that you are hiring for a “Tech Company?”

There are a number of things but I will narrow it down to three.

Reason # 1

Everyone is a tech company.

Nearly every company I’ve worked, and probably you, have worked for, says they want to be seen this way in the market. Fine okay, you are a tech company. How is that reflected in your recruiting process?

Do you have an advanced AI Chabot sourcing and screening your candidates? Do you have automated interview scheduling? Does your CRM automatically scan your ATS for candidates that might be a fit for your new roles? Do you have automated coding challenges or video interview platforms? Are you using a programmatic advertising platform for your jobs?

If the answer to those questions is no, or mostly no I would suggest that even if you are a technology company, no one applying would be able to tell. It is difficult to sell yourself as a technology company that is innovating in the market if your system still makes candidates upload a resume and then add their work history to their application.

If your hiring process looks exactly the same as it did 10, 5, 3 years ago you are losing your credibility with a candidate. It is hard to sell a candidate that this is a truly innovative place where technology is embraced if your process is nearly the same as everyone else’s for the last decade.

Conversely, if you are out ahead of the market why would you want to advertise yourself the same way as all your competition who say, but don’t show, they are a tech company? This leads me to my next reason

Reason #2

If everyone is a tech company it doesn’t really mean anything.

Now I can understand the motive here. Companies don’t want to be seen as Banks, or Government Contractors or Manufacturers because people don’t necessarily instantly think of these places as being hubs of technological advancement. However, the unchallenged thought process is that somehow adding technology would seem to make the company more innovative and thus more attractive and interesting.

Following this thought process can you even tell me clearly what a “technology company” even means? Every company on Earth uses technology to some extent to operate. Stone Axes are technology but by no means in this day in age would that also count as innovative. Additionally, if you are using recruiting’s stone axes you are going to fail at selling yourself as a technology company anyway.

I get it you want to stand out from your competition but I would suggest that the best way to do this isn’t to try to change the perception of your industry or your company. I believe the best way to get candidates to notice you is to just tell your story in your voice.

There are better ways to sell your company that will not only be more accurate but help combat the fatigue and cynicism of a lot of candidates. They are, and so are you, used to big words and promises that ultimately do not deliver. If you sell yourself as an innovative technology company from the beginning and from the beginning you are just like everyone else… for the last 5 years, you have already lost your credibility. All this does is tell the candidate from the beginning, we say things we don’t really mean. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Reason #3

If you want to differentiate yourself, be authentic and different.

Instead of saying, “we are a technology company.” Try instead, “we are a big data company with big ideas.” Or, “we are aspiring toward AI.” The way you position yourself shouldn’t just be a statement of fact but a way to tell your story in a sentence.

Humans respond to and remember stories better than they remember facts. In the US alone there are over 7 million open jobs and nearly 1 million open jobs in IT. If you want to attract the best talent you need to tell a story that sticks. We are a Technology Company isn’t a story and it isn’t going to stick. So I understand where this motive comes from but to me, it is nonsensical to work to move your company from one herd into another.

Ultimately this is your voice and if you want it to stand out it has to be different and true. If you are stuck, talk to marketing, they happen to be great at this stuff, or at least they should be. The best way to stand out is to tell a compelling authentic story, you know, your story.

In Summary

The goal should not be universal attraction.

It is okay if your brand doesn’t appeal to everyone. Culture fit works both ways. It is heartbreaking to hire a candidate only to watch them suffer and eventually leave because they don’t enjoy the work or the environment.

The point is not to be universally appealing but appealing to your audience. Sounds like good marketing to me right? A good example is SpaceX. If you interview there you will be told, our mission is to get humans to Mars and we work crazy hours to do that. If that is your mission we’d love to have you if that isn’t your passion we wish you the best of luck. Guess what? Everyone knows who they are and what they do.

Also, and more importantly, it has helped them assemble a team of genuine enthusiasts who are engaged. This isn’t just a matter of branding and talent attraction it really is a matter of company performance. In July 2009 SpaceX launched its first rocket. It exploded. By February of 2018, they had not only launched the second most powerful rocket in human history, but they had also invented reusable rocket technology. In this case, having the right people literally made a world of difference. In less than 10 years they went from being worth 0 dollars to more than 33 billion dollars. They don’t have to sell people that they are an innovative technology company. Everyone knows who they are, what they do and what they are about. After all, isn’t that the point?

Is Your Recruitment Model Reactive or Proactive?

“Oh, I wish I had called the candidate sooner. He got an offer from somewhere else!”

“We need to start from scratch the candidate we offered the job has ditched us!”.

“We can’t find candidates for these skills!”

Does this sound familiar? If so, maybe because your recruitment model is reactive and not proactive? Meaning, you are competing with a thousand other companies who are also looking at the same talent pool just like you. You are part of the fastest finger first competition and your chances of winning are as much as that of any of your competitors. If you want to win, you would want to shift to a proactive recruitment model to attract top talent.

Gone are the days when there were limited means to find and to reach candidates. Today, candidates get to know about a job opening at the tip of their fingers. With digitization happening all around, companies have many ways to reach potential candidates.

So, how do you stand apart in the candidate-driven recruitment market where there a steep competition to acquire the best talent. How do you make sure you reach the best candidates before your competition? The answer is to switch to proactive recruitment. So, what is reactive recruitment and proactive recruitment?

What Is Reactive Recruitment?

If your search for the candidate starts right after the new job position is created, then you are using a traditional reactive recruitment approach. Reactive recruitment practices are passive in nature.

Disadvantages of Reactive Recruitment

Reactive recruitment is often high pressure, time-consuming, and redundant in nature.

High-Pressure Situation Lead To Bad Hiring Decisions

When a new position is created, hiring managers want to close it as early as possible. Recruiters start with the easiest approach either by start sourcing from the job boards or outsourcing it to recruitment agencies. Recruitment agencies anyway start sourcing from job boards. In this reactive recruitment model waiting for the candidates to apply for the job could take longer.

When you are sourcing from the job board you are competing with every other company that is looking at the same talent pool. You have to call most of the candidates to know if they are interested in the job opportunity. After you source candidates who are interested, line managers will screen resumes to select a few for the interviews. If you end up offering a job to a candidate then you need to wait for the notice period that the candidate has to serve with the current company. The whole process easily takes away anywhere between 16-18 weeks. If you are lucky you may find good candidates for an interview sooner. However, in most cases, it takes a few iterations between sourcing candidates and screening resumes until line managers find the right candidates. In this situation, the pressure is mounting on the line manager as he or she needs to assign additional responsibilities to other team members. If it takes longer to source or interviews the right candidates, management may start thinking that they can do away with the open position. Similarly, the recruiters are under pressure for sourcing the right candidates.

The pressure situation pushes the hiring manager to compromise on the quality of hire. At times making the bad hiring decisions.

Reactive Recruitment Is A Recipe For Redundancy

Most companies hire for similar roles throughout the year. Companies could have multiple openings for the same job profile. Sometimes these openings are for the same or different departments. However, because of the reactive approach, most of the time recruiters fail to coordinate with their other team members and end up processing the same talent pool. It leads to obvious duplication of work where the same resumes and candidates are screened, contacted over and over again.

What is Proactive Recruitment?

Proactive recruitment is about planning ahead. You anticipate or forecast the roles, skills you are going to need in near future and you plan for it. You work on building talent pipelines much before you start hiring for the job positions.

Proactive recruitment is also about reducing the noise from your hiring process. It means you want to engage the best candidates, organize interviews swiftly and make sure of great candidate experience. In other words, you want your hiring team to focus their energies on hiring and not get burnt out because of mundane, repetitive tasks.

How Does Proactive Recruitment Work?

Proactive recruitment is about building your audience. You want to focus on both active and passive candidates. The main building blocks of proactive recruitment are

Find – Figure out the kind of candidates you need to hire
Attract – Engage candidate with the right content
Nurture – Keep your talent pool hooked with the right information
Source – Source right candidates for the right job
Convert – Find your employee

Find

In order to find the candidates, you need to first figure out the roles you are going to hire for. Use recruitment metrics from the previous year, previous quarters to understand the roles that you generally hire for. Hold discussions with line managers for capacity planning so that you know how many candidates you need to hire.

Look into the kind of candidates you successfully hired in the recent past. It will help you to build the persona of candidates you want to hire. After that, figure out the platforms where you can find these candidates. For example, you may find great tech talent on platforms like GitHub, StackOverflow.

Apart from external platforms, every company has their own candidate database they have built over time. Use the candidate database to discover the right candidates.

Attract

Once you know where you can find potential candidates, it’s time to catch their attention. You could attract your audience by writing informative articles, blogs, sharing job posts on social media platforms, sharing your achievements, etc. Basically, you should work on branding your company well.

Make sure you create or curate content that is most relevant for your audience. You could ask your audience to subscribe to newsletters or new job openings. These activities will help you catch the attention of passive candidates too. Remember, passive candidates, are the best kind of hire!

Nurture

Once you have an audience that follows you or subscribes to your content, make sure you keep your audience hooked. Share about new work, projects that your company is working on. Share about technology or market trends. Build on your brand. Write about your company’s work culture. Invite them to webinars that reflect on the business your company does.

Source

At this stage, you should have a sizable audience with whom you have built the relationship. Share job posting with them. Use social media, emails, text to reach out to them. Build a talent pipeline for various roles and skills.

Convert

Once you get the candidate to apply for the job, make sure they get the best candidate experience. Remember, you have built a relationship with these candidates over the period and they are interested in your brand. Candidates apply for the brand rather than the job position. Hence, you need to take care of the candidate experience. Irrespective of whether they join or not, they are also the people who will help you grow your brand by sharing your job post and various other content.

How To Implement Proactive Recruitment Model

Proactive recruitment is about anticipation. You need to first figure out what you need before you seek it. You could use past data to forecast your future needs.

The recruitment world is adapting to the marketing concept of “inbound leads”. It means, companies want to rely more on candidates who apply for the job. It saves many days from searching for candidates and then competing for them. Not to mention there is always a factor of uncertainty if the candidate would join or not. However, in order to work on “inbound leads,” you should be able to reach a larger group of potential candidates. And that is the key to proactive recruitment.

Let’s look at the factors that will allow a company to implement a proactive recruitment model.

Use Recruitment Automation

Use recruitment automation to capture data and then to use that data for intelligence. Recruitment software like ATS or CRM can help you organize your recruitment process. You can gather all the details of candidates like resumes, contact information, communication details, notes, interview feedback, etc. in one place. Build recruitment analytics using this data. Find out which sourcing channel works best for what kind of role. Find out about the cost of acquisition. Calculate the attrition rate. All these numbers will help you in forecasting your future needs, the time you would need and the budget you would require.

The advancement that happened in recruitment automation over the last 3-4 years will help automate things intelligently. For example, AI recruiting software can automatically post jobs to different platforms, screen resumes, discover the best matching candidates automatically from your database, can contact them using email or conversational chatbots. Recruitment automation will eliminate most of the noise from the recruitment process. It certainly brings efficiency by automating mundane tasks. It will help recruiters focus on the most important things like engaging candidates.

The greatest advantage of using technology for recruitment is that it helps you to quickly adapt to ever-changing situations.

Recruitment automation will help you to move in the direction of data-driven hiring which will help you to anticipate your future recruiting needs.

Build Relationships

Another important aspect of proactive recruitment is building relationships. You definitely need to build relationships with potential candidates by attracting, engaging and nurturing them. However, building a relationship with your hiring team is equally important.

Recruiters must build good relationships with hiring managers and vice-versa. We often see a strained relationship between recruiters and hiring managers. It is also because of the reactive recruitment model which as we have seen creates a stressful environment. Recruitment is a highly collaborative process and it is important everyone gels with everyone.

Recruiters and hiring managers should work together for capacity planning. Hiring managers can share if they could need more resources on the basis of their work estimates.

Get Creative

We are already seeing companies are using various approaches to attract the best talent. For example, many tech companies or big giants organizing events like Hackathons to identify top talent. These companies may or may not be hiring but they still keep on building their talent pipeline.

Companies that are into campus hiring, organizes many philanthropic team events where they try to identify their future employees.

We Use Recruitment Technology – Are We Using Proactive Model?

Just because you use recruitment technology will not transform your recruitment model from reactive to proactive. Many companies invest in recruitment tools, however, they use it in the reactive mode. For example, companies look into recruitment analytics to understand how the year went by but not for proactive planning.

Even if companies come up with numbers they need to hire in the future they don’t gear into proactive mode. Their recruitment process still starts after the new vacancy is created.

Proactive recruitment would be extremely difficult without using technology. At the same time recruitment technology will not alone change things for you if you do not use the technology actively. It is a process change that you will need to drive to make it successful.

Summary

The proactive recruitment model saves you time, money and efforts. It reduces redundant efforts and keeps pressure from mounting. It keeps you more agile. Because you build relationships with potential candidates you receive more qualified candidates. So, even if candidates want to turn down your offer at the last moment, you would still be able to recover quickly from it as you would have more options. With a proactive approach, you do not have to rush in hiring people and hence it reduces bad hiring decisions significantly.

Chrome Extension: Infotelligent can help you research companies with one click

Chrome Extension Infotelligent, is like a little web assistant that helps you research companies with one click.

Infotelligent helps you research companies with one click!

We have another free Chrome extension to show you! This brand new tool, called Infotelligent, is like a little web assistant that helps you research companies with one click. Grab it today off the Chrome Web Store!

To use, launch the extension in your browser. When you’re on a company website, a side window will provide you with information like the main telephone number, domain, number of employees, annual revenue, LinkedIn profile URL, and more. Even better, within the People tab there is a list of people that work at that company. This list is also searchable, which is pretty useful!

You get 5 free credits per month to unlock the contact information, or you can use the provided info to find them on your own. Within the other tabs, you also get access to company demographics information and a list of similar companies. If you want access to their technotelligent report and the email pattern, you will have to upgrade.

Bottom line: It’s free, easy to use, and we think there’s a lot of great information in this tool. We recommend checking it out!

~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa.

Hate to Say I Told You So: The Latest Insights about Gen Z

Gen Z is changing the candidate communications game. While it seems unlikely any of them realize that job postings once went in the newspaper, it’s not surprising that they want to see potential employers in addition to hearing from them.

Over the last few years, I’ve covered Gen Z a lot. I’m talking articles, webinars, speaking engagements – you name it. To the extent that some have questioned my authority on the subject, given that I’m apparently not a member of the latest youth generation. As shocking as that may seem, I am reasonably confident in the research that exists about Gen Z and my ability to draw conclusions from it. Even so, it’s important to stay on top of this as these young workers are still just trickling into the workforce. They’re as new to us as work is to them, and as a result, our understanding of one another is bound to change.

Cut to the 2019 World’s Most Attractive Employers report out of Universum. If you never looked at it before, the findings include survey responses from upwards of 200,000 business and engineering/IT students from the 12 largest global economies. It’s a substantial piece of research that gets a lot of play for the brands it highlights, but that’s not our objective today. Instead, let’s spend some time digging deeper into the other insights it covers, which come directly from the source in question – Gen Z.

Economic uncertainty is a real thing –

One thing we hear a lot about this population is that they’re eager for job stability. An upward trend in the Universum research, his year’s respondents, ranked “To be secure or stable in my job” as their number two career goal, right behind “to have work/life balance.” In thinking about it, this answer makes perfect sense, with Gen Z growing up during the Great Recession, and witnessing first-hand the impact it had on their parents. At the same time, the goal of having an international career continues to decline steeply, with Universum citing trade wars, tariffs, and rising nationalism as possible reasons why.

An online upbringing coincides with innovation –

Another Gen Z trope is the digital native storyline. It goes, while Millennials started using desktop computers in school to learn MS Paint and Oregon Trail, their younger counterparts came out of the womb, tapping and swiping the touch screen of their smartphones. This one is funny because it’s true. To reiterate these are business and engineering/IT students, and even when you look at the survey, you see that the option to be entrepreneurial, creative and innovative edged out being competitively or intellectually challenged. The question is who will be the next Mark Zuckerberg?

Visual communication is key –

As a result of this time spent online, Gen Z is changing the candidate communications game. While it seems unlikely any of them realize that job postings once went in the newspaper, it’s not surprising that they want to see potential employers in addition to hearing from them. Seriously, they’re spending more time on YouTube than Netflix, and when it comes to their online presence, Instagram reigns supreme. So in asking these 247,235 students about how they want employers to communicate with them, social media, employers’ career websites and online job boards placed near the top, with IRL (that’s in real life) career fairs also of interest.

Gen Z be shopping –

Of course, the WMAE list is really about employers more than it is these potential candidates. Year after year, Google naps the top spot because, well, it’s Google, and even bad press about doesn’t seem to hurt their reputation. But in the background, further down the list, exciting things are happening. Automotive brands are growing in prestige, with these employers rising in the ranks or staying consistent (except poor Volvo). And there’s also a growing interest in e-commerce and retail is holding steady despite what your local mall tells you. Could this be Gen Z’s individualistic nature and personal preferences influencing their opinions? Maybe.

Gen Z is an interesting lot and the first generation that will live its entire life online. Unlike the Millennials who got backhanded by the media as they graduated from college, Gen Z has been an object of intrigue and fascination for years at this point. That’s why it’s so helpful to hear from them directly, learn more about what they want from the world and their employers and have the opportunity to prove or disprove all of the speculations. If anything, this latest slate of research might prompt more questions than it answers, like Will Google retain its grasp? Is Bezos behind the bump in e-commerce? Do we need to recruit with Snapchat and TikTok? Is Gen Z taking lessons from the last recession and starting their savings now? Or are they all out buying BMWs? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

5 Reasons Everyone Should Attend the Hiring Success Conference

Be a part of history and help shape the future of talent acquisition.

Hiring Success is just around the corner! On February 11th and 12th, over 1,200 talent acquisition leaders from across the world will gather together at SmartRecruiters’ annual conference to learn from industry leaders, engage with peers, and dive deep into the most important topics in the world of talent acquisition.

Take note. Hiring Success is not a user conference. During two days of interactive sessions and networking, conference-goers will collaborate and innovate as they explore topical issues in recruiting with over 100 expert speakers from top tier brands like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Twitter. With three stages and 30+ sessions, there’s an abundance of thought-provoking content that will equip attendees with new knowledge and insight that they can directly apply in their professional lives.

“Hiring Success is a superb event series. It’s so good, it’s become a movement,” says Hung Lee, CEO at WorkShape.io and Curator of Recruiting Brainfood. “Think: hiring best practice, cool product updates, a clear theme of diversity and inclusion, and a great community of talent acquisition folks. I don’t exaggerate—it’s a life-affirming event.”

But don’t just take Hung’s word for it, here are 5 of the top reasons why #Hire20 is the must-attend recruiting event of the year.

Check out the full agenda here and make sure to take advantage of early bird pricing until January 13th!

1. The fantastic speaker lineup

The Hiring Success Conference is all about the amazing speakers who inspire and inform. Last year, attendees were lucky enough to welcome leading practitioners like Sam Sepah, Organization Development Program Manager at Google, Anita Grantham, Chief People Officer at Pluralsight, Tara Strebe, Senior Director Global Talent Acquisition at Visa, alongside industry veterans like Lou Adler and Bill Boorman.

2. The chance to network (and party) with industry leaders

Hiring Success provides attendees with a unique opportunity to make meaningful connections with the best of the best in TA under one roof—global heads of TA and HR, seasoned recruiters, analysts, thought leaders, just to name a few. One of my personal favorite aspects of networking at the conference is the Smarty Party, which takes place at the end of day one and gives everyone the chance to relax, talk freely, and have fun. If every happy hour event were on par with the Smarty Party, the world would be a better place.

3. There’s something for everyone

The Hiring Success Conference is built around three thematic tracks, which means there’s something on offer for everyone’s professional ambitions and interests. Jump around or dive deep into what matters most to you:

Hiring Success—Case studies and hiring hacks from practitioners who have #BeenThere and know your pain points.

Innovation—Catch a glimpse of the latest products in recruiting tech and see firsthand which tools you can integrate into your workflow to streamline productivity and boost outcomes.

Diversity & Inclusion— Stories of success and inspiration from hiring practitioners showcasing the manifold advantages of a diverse workforce and inclusive work culture.

4. The chance to give something back

At Hiring Success, not only do you get the chance to better your professional life—but the chance to better the lives of others through SmartRecruiters’ CSR initiative Reverse Recruiting. The program aims to connect overlooked candidates to jobs at scale. At Hiring Success EU in October of last year, 300 interviews simultaneously took place between audience members and hopeful job seekers, including formerly incarcerated individuals, refugees, transgender people, people with disabilities, and more. These impromptu interviews offered them a chance to practice their interview skills, make connections with current TA professionals, and boost their self-confidence in finding gainful employment. This-meet-and-greet-format created new bridges of friendship, mentorship, and jobs between our communities. Hiring Success is doing it again— this time with 1,000 potential candidates!

5. You could win $10,000 in sponsorship

The Hiring Success Hackathon is back and better than ever in San Francisco. Teams will have 24 hours to produce an original add-on to the SmartRecruiters platform and attendees will vote to decide the winner.

At least year’s conference Optimizely took home the gold with an app that solved for task completion lag time (a feature now available in SmartRecruiters’ ATS). Will they take home the first place prize once again or be unseated by a worthy opponent? The chance to reign for one year as the champion of SmartRecruiters Hackathon is, in and of itself, a reason to attend Hiring Success. The fact that the winner of the competition gets to take home $10,000 in sponsorship is nothing to scoff at, either.

~Sponsored

Do you have a good email reputation?

What’s your email address reputation score?

This site emailrep.io is a tool by Sublime Security that provides a fast and easy way to find out an email address’s reputation score. How does it do this? It analyzes associated activity for that email address as well as social media accounts around the web that use it.

It’s going to check if it’s a deliverable email address, whether or not it’s been blacklisted for phishing or fraud, potential compromises to the account, and online presence. It will take all those factors as well as many others, and then give a reputation for the address.

Email addresses that have a high reputation are ones that are unlikely to be a throwaway account. You can use this to check up on your own accounts, and make sure you aren’t blacklisted for some reason! Or, use it to detect throwaway accounts, integrate it into a signup process on your site to prevent abuse. Perform a check on your email address used for outgoing campaigns since lower reputation addresses will most likely be directed to spam.

Additionally, use it to check on an email address that you may need more contact info for. You’ll be able to see what social sites are associated and then head over there to find more information about them.

Bottom line, it’s free, easy to use, and could be pretty useful. It’s also an open-source project over on GitHub. Check it out!

~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

My Obligatory 2020 Talent Acquisition Trends Article

I’m looking for three major Talent Acquisition Trends to occur (or further develop) in 2020. In no particular order…

Talent Acquisition is more thoughtful about candidate micro-experiences.

The candidate experience has been talked about in one form or another for years. Here are 4 that we’ve shared previously. That’s a nice umbrella but it’s just an umbrella. Turns out, when you turn an umbrella upside down you discover to a ton of moving parts. For folks involved in the hiring process, those parts are micro-experiences. For instance, as a candidate, you receive a DocuSign offer letter.

Sign here, thanks for playing.

That’s about as sterile as it gets. Now, the same situation, I’ve learned (because I asked questions about your hobbies and such whilst getting to know you) that you love growing exotic variations of roses. Now I’ll send your offer letter via FedEx with 10 packets of exotic rose seeds. It’s personal. It’s scalable. It’s ridiculously lazy not to care enough to dazzle candidates at each and every turn in the hiring process.

Dazzle. That’s the game.

Turns out, we’re in the dazzle business.

We learn that speed eats quality for a late brunch.

Okay, I have your attention. I’m not talking about “time to fill” metrics. Yawn. I’m talking about how our candidates are faster than we are. We find them. We reach out. We fumble along with our normal hiring process and that wonderful candidate that you fell in love with has three offers already and has picked one of them. She starts at NewCo on Monday.

It’s okay to cry sad panda. We should all mourn the loss and then create ways to get faster.

We need to analyze how fast each step in our hiring process is AND how we can make it faster. Think of your hiring process as a 4×100 relay and the finish line is the candidate. We have to be faster than all the other teams racing to the finish line.

If you like losing, don’t change a thing. Meritocracy loves the company. Candidates are decidedly faster than we are. Repeat that 100 times before you go to bed tonight.

We finally discover that the link between recruiting and HR is closer (not further) to one another.

Whoever thought that recruiting should or would break off and join marketing should be punched in the throat. Not once but at least 10 times. I’m not promoting violence, it was a dumb idea, to begin with, and candidates today have made it an even dumber idea.

Candidates ask HR questions whilst being interviewed by those that hire: what’s next (internal mobility), how are you going to make me better (training/learning & development) and how will you know I’m better than my peers (recognition, performance, feedback). These are old fashioned churched up HR questions. Full stop.

The problem that we must address is that the candidates aren’t going to change (if anything, they’ll ask deeper more probative HR questions without even knowing it).

Truth is, we have to change and get great at connecting the dots between these two disparate functions. Let me illustrate an example of connecting the dots. During the hiring process (again with the personal questions of candidates we aspire to hire) we learn that you as a candidate have two real passions:

Drone racing
Full-stack development

These are golden nuggets that we should pass to the L&D team so that while you’re in the midst of your onboarding process, a clear path development plan is already in place for both your personal and professional passions. See what I did there. I sneaked in personal passions. It’s our little secret but that’s what hardcore HR people call engagement.

Color outside the lines, it’s okay, I’ll write you a doctor’s note.

Lastly and most importantly, predictions are like assholes, everyone has them and they usually stink.

So, there you go.

((Life*AND of) AND (“a Sourcer”)) OR #LifeofaSourcer

It’s that time of year again. Where we stop and take a measure of our lives and plan our path forward. As I think about my #LifeAsaSourcer I wanted to reflect on some of the lessons I’ve learned from both the experience and mistakes I’ve made. I’ve also taken the time to understand what sourcing is and what value we ultimately add.

Lesson #1

Learning to say no in an appropriate way. I think sourcers can feel pressure to say yes because they are rarely measured on hires but on qualified submittals. However, there is rarely a case where the sourcer is told exactly how many submittals are required in order to justify your paycheck. The other pressure comes from some in the market that think of sourcing as an entry into full life cycle recruiting.

Again it can be but my career progressed in exactly the opposite direction. A skilled Sourcer or Recruiter who is good at sourcing is the most valuable asset to a TA team. Although we do a lot of work there are only a few actions in TA that are truly value add. One of the major value adds is finding, qualifying and submitting candidates into the pipeline that would not have otherwise applied on their own. In fact, with 7 million open jobs posted in the US alone, it is clear that TA would fall on its face and fail entirely without at least some sourcing.

Everything else a Recruiter or Sourcer does could technically be done by anyone in HR. After all, it doesn’t take a skilled and trained Recruiter to schedule an appointment, meet with a hiring manager and give them an update (your system is up to date with all of your activity so anyone could understand it right?) or update an ATS. The two value ads of TA are actively identifying talent that would not have applied and then closing that talent. Nearly everything in between is administrative.

What I’ve learned from this is that my value as a sourcer is determined almost solely by the number and quality of candidates I submit. One thing nearly every recruiter needs right now is sourcing support and because of the aforementioned dynamic if a Recruiter asks for sourcing support it is nearly impossible for the Sourcer to say no, even when we should.

This leads me to my second lesson learned. The way to say no, in a professionally appropriate way, is to share the data. It may seem like your sourcer has a low req load when they have 5 roles assigned and the average Recruiter has 25 but the truth is sourcing candidate directly takes more time. What I’ve had to learn to do is to document my capacity and share the amount of time I’m going to dedicate to sourcing on a particular role. I have thought of several possible solutions but they all have one thing in common. That leads me to the next thing I’ve learned.

Lesson #2

It’s all about the data. This was a lesson I learned early on in my career. However, as I progress I understand how critical the data is not just for reporting purposes but for strategy purposes. I’m not just talking about the business strategy I’m talking about TA’s. I’m sure you’ve all been in a meeting where it was announced that a number of jobs are going to be opened and you are expected to fill them in an unreasonable amount of time for a salary that is below the market. You aren’t asked what it will take to accomplish the task, what resources you will need or how much time it will take you are simply given a deadline. I can think of no other function in a business that operates this way.

There are a lot of reasons we find ourselves at the short end of that particular stick in TA. Frequently and it is caused by a systemic lack of understanding about the data. If you aren’t being consulted about large staffing projects have you ever stopped to ask yourself why? I believe one of the major contributing factors to this conundrum is that TA has no pertinent data to add to the conversation, only opinions. Operations people do not discount opinion but they are going to choose theirs over yours every time.

The first place to start to get that seat at the table is to bring and share relevant data. Some of this you should have on your own however in “The Educating of a Hiring Manager” I outlined some of the sources of external data that I have used to gain credibility with my hiring managers. In a recent intake, I presented the same 3 slides I share in my article with a hiring manager. His response was, “oh my God I had no idea, what are we doing about this?”

The very first part of moving from a transactional vendor to a trusted partner is to provide accurate, up to date information about your area of expertise. This simple step taken with multiple hiring managers over time will help you get that seat at the table. You will know you are making progress when your hiring managers start to consult with you before they open a role or start a project. When the business starts to solicit your input beforehand you are on the right path.

Lesson #3

Not everything is about my day to day work. It can be easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees in this job but not everything and every day is about wash rinse repeat. It is important to volunteer for projects that lay outside of the scope of your day to day work. Volunteering has allowed me to gain the experience of sitting on corporate committees that are not directly related to recruiting, it allowed me the opportunity to build a successful college recruiting program, to speak publicly, to lead a global vendor evaluation and implementation program and to write and share my pain and promise with the community I’m a part of. I have often referred to the 90/10 rule for a career. 90% of your time and effort should rightly be focused on your day to day work but if you ever want to truly rise in your filed and be seen as more than just an order taker you have to lift your head up from your reqs once in a while and take a look around and report on what you see.

Lesson #4

Never stop learning. I feel this is one that could apply to almost any profession but in sourcing, I feel it is especially true. There are a large number of things to learn in this profession in order to just be competent much less good. Reading books on sales, marketing, psychology are actually great ways to learn more about sourcing.

As a Sourcer you are expected to learn and understand the nuanced and niche roles you are sent to fill. If you want to do that well you are going to have to talk to people and learn what they do. We are expected to know how to get hard to find talent to speak with us, we are expected to know advanced Boolean searches and have exotic ways of sourcing candidate information that a typical recruiter does not have.

Finally, the technology in and around sourcing is constantly evolving and we are expected to keep pace with the advances. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had an email from a hiring manager or my boss or a recruiter asking me if I’ve heard of XYZ. The only way to keep up with this demand is to constantly read, attend conferences and speak with others in the field as well as develop relationships with vendors. Keep learning, keep asking questions. None of us knows it all and there are always areas we can improve on.

Lesson #5

Sourcing is sales. If you have come from an agency background this one is a no brainer for you. However, it is something I’ve had to remind myself of constantly. Do you know one thing every company on earth does? Spoiler alert, it sells! All business sells something. Good salespeople are the most valuable human capital that a company has. Without sales, there is no company. If you don’t believe me talk to the CEO of a start-up and ask them how much of their time they spend selling.

Sourcers are the full-time sales professionals of the Talent Acquisition world. Likewise, I believe that sourcing is the most valuable part of Talent Acquisition. Without sourcing, you aren’t going to be able to hire the salespeople, operations people, and leaders you are going to need in order to succeed.

What I’ve had to learn to do is to find out what makes the job I’m working on interesting, different or unique and then use that as my sell to the benefit of that sell to my prospect. Sounds like sales 101 doesn’t it? An important lesson I’ve learned from many a sales book is that selling isn’t about me, it’s about YOU. I’ve learned to customize my message to what my audience thinks is interesting not what I might think is interesting. After all, I’m not going to be the one doing this job. That means this isn’t about me, it’s about….

Lesson #6

Learning to listen to understand, not respond. Personally, this one has been very difficult for me. Maybe it is because I started in a sales agency environment but it is my instinct to want to try to respond in a way that gets the candidate closer to saying yes. However, this can be counterproductive. One of the best ways to learn to listen to understand and not respond is to repeat the information you just heard. It only takes a few seconds to say, what I think you are trying to say is…. Is that correct?

That simple question has made the difference of a candidate moving forward or not countless times in my career. When I first started asking the question I was shocked by how often I didn’t truly understand what the other person was saying. If you want to look at it another way, it is hard to sell a solution when you don’t truly understand the problem. I know it is hard to do and it goes against your instincts but training yourself to ask that question early in a conversation with a candidate or a hiring manager leads to a more efficient and pleasant experience for everyone.

These are some of the things you experience living the life of a sourcer. Hopefully, it’s a good life that with practice, education and effort gets even better!

How to find people using exercism.io!

A quick example of how to find people using exercism.io!

We have a new tool to go over with you! We are showing you a new site called exercism.io. The site was built to bring together developers, as a community for learning, like many others that we’ve reviewed. What can it do for you? Well, let’s poke around together and see what we can find.

At first glance, we have all these categories, broken out by programming language. One cool thing you will notice is that they have designated mentors for each category. We can assume that these people are good at what they do, and are probably experts in their field. Good to know!

The mentors do have profiles with links and contact information, but it’s not proving too easy to get to other member links. Don’t get discouraged! Let’s get a little creative. We are going to take that profile base URL and use it for a little X-Ray search and see what happens:

“site:exercism.io/profiles java”

Would you look at that! We have a search result of almost 100 profiles that have Java listed. But what now you ask? When I click on these profile links, we don’t see any contact information. Look closer, and notice that it gives us a photo and a name. We take that photo and do a little Google image search, add the person’s name with it.

Boom, we get a GitHub profile result with a profile, title, company, email, and social links. Done!

So that’s it! This is how simple it can be to find people, literally anywhere. Put this one in your back pocket.