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Boost your inbound and outbound recruiting with conversations

As I prepared to write this article the first thing I did was go to Google and search for terms such as “inbound recruiting” and “outbound recruiting” to see if the topic that I wanted to cover had already been covered (it hasn’t, phew). And of course there is plenty of information out there on the definitions of these terms with a sprinkling of how-tos, tactics, and even hacks. But my reason for relating this rather mundane task of “googling” is less about the results and more about the fact that this is how everyone starts any process… including the job search process.

In fact, according to CareerBuilder, 75% of people start their job search on Google. And while it  is common knowledge that these searchers are visiting sites such as Glassdoor to check out reviews and salaries, LinkedIn to see who works at your company, and job boards to check out openings, they are also landing on your career site and job req pages as they do their research. Again, according to CareerBuilder, not only are candidates using an average of 16 different resources to search for jobs, but 4 in 5 of those searchers will visit a company’s career site during that search.

So from an inbound perspective, we can confidently say that job searchers are navigating to your owned digital real estate (your career site) but they are not raising their hand or knocking on your door to let you know they are there. This is what leads to what most companies are experiencing: a conversion problem. Or, put more plainly, you aren’t getting enough qualified candidates to enter into your recruiting funnel.

Let’s shelve this issue for a moment and turn our attention to outbound.

From inbound to outbound

From an outbound recruiting perspective, you also know that there are plenty of passive job seekers out there that could be convinced to join your company yet the challenge is finding them, getting their attention, and leading them to the promised land known as your company.

And while there are plenty of tools and channels that recruiters have at their disposal to conduct outbound recruiting (LinkedIn, email, other social sites, job boards, programmatic advertising, phones, just to name a few) the real challenge is getting their attention.

Two challenges, one solution

In summary, we have two different methods of finding and attracting candidates (inbound and outbound) and each poses unique challenges:

  • The challenge for inbound recruiting is conversions (or lack thereof) of job seekers once they are already on your career page.
  • The challenge for outbound recruiting is grabbing the attention of candidates, likely passive candidates, and giving them a compelling enough reason to engage with your team.

But both challenges can be solved by adding conversations into your recruiting bag of tricks. Here’s what that looks like.

Let’s talk about conversations, baby

Inbound meets conversations

When inbound job seekers come to your career site or your job pages, they likely have more questions about your company, culture, and people than can be easily presented and consumed on a web page. Additionally, and because we are social by nature, it is more natural for people to want to communicate by having conversations.

Just think about the last time you were buying clothes in the store and you had a question about sizes or colors or material. If you did, you probably went to a sales clerk who answered your questions on the spot. He didn’t hand you sales materials or send you to a website.

This same concept applies to job seekers who expect and demand that employers offer the option to start a conversation with them right on their career site. And according to our own data and experience, offering job seekers the option to start a live conversation or a conversation with a chatbot will increase the number of conversions on your career site by 40%! Problem solved.

Outbound meets conversations

Now let’s turn to outbound recruiting. Remember, the issue with outbound is getting attention, regardless of which outbound channel you are using. For demonstration purposes, let’s take a look at the outbound recruiting technique of job advertising.

Here’s how this plays out currently:

You have some open jobs that you are struggling to fill so you create job ads and send them out through job boards or other job sites. Your only call-to-action (CTA) is “Apply Now.” But passive candidates and even many active candidates aren’t willing to take the time to come apply to your job without getting to know you better. Candidates want to connect with brands that lead with the human, not with long application forms and technologies.

Here’s how this plays out when you add in conversations:

Again, you have openings and you promote them with job ads except this time your CTA is “Come chat with us.” More personal, more about trying to build trust. And we know this works because again, our data shows that job seekers are more likely to connect with your team (and continue down the hiring process) if you offer job seekers the option to start a conversation. In fact, when we follow candidates all the way through the funnel who connected with recruiters through conversations we see employers increase their hires by  2-3x compared to just offering the option to apply.

The reason being? It is similar to the above reasons. But I love lists so let’s organize this into a list:

  1. Job seekers are drawn to this communication channel because they are used to using it in other parts of their lives (see Facebook messenger, Slack, WhatsApp, text messaging, etc.)
  2. Job seekers, especially the top ones, don’t want to embark on a cumbersome and arduous application process unless they are convinced that this company is right for them. Remember – they’re going to 16 sites before applying, why not help influence their information journey?  This convincing or selling happens best through conversations with YOU, the expert.
  3. And more generally, conversations allow you to lead with the human. And we know from research that all generations, not just Millennials and Gen Zers, demand that brands communicate like they are human.

So there you go. Simple as that. If you are looking to boost your inbound and outbound efforts, give job seekers the option to come chat with your team. And I don’t mean that you should just connect them with a chatbot, I mean actually give your job seekers the option to come chat with you real-life, human recruiters (although chatbots can play a role in sifting through the candidates and only connecting your recruiters with the most qualified).

And of of this can be done with chat technology (full disclosure, this is exactly what our company offers.)

Add the chat options directly on your career site or job pages and start chatting today with those qualified candidates you so desperately need.

What Online Reviews Really Say about Your Company (and How to Learn from Them)

Online Reviews

These days, online reviews are a natural part of our decision-making process. Whatever we do, we frequently go online to find out what other people are saying before committing to a decision. This is especially true for my wife and me as we prepare for the impending arrival of our first child. With so much technology on the market today, searching for a smart home nursery camera has turned me into a tech-geek-dad-to-be.

When reading reviews, I wanted to learn what parents loved about the camera, but I also wanted to see what they didn’t like and if it was something I could either live without or didn’t care about. You’ll be glad to know the baby’s room is now safely guarded and notifies me every time there’s a passing car.

For some reason, employers (and video camera manufacturers) strive for the elusive five-star rating. But as experienced shoppers, we understand that no company or role is perfect. We all have areas where we can improve — and that’s what makes us vulnerable and trustworthy. When you see a company without a single negative review or rating, would you believe that it’s just too good to be true? You’re not alone.

Let’s take a look at what online reviews are telling you about your company, what you can learn from them and how you can achieve a more authentic employer brand.

Does your company rating accurately reflect your company?

Perfect may not be possible, but we all want to aspire to be the best workplace possible. So how do you manage your reputation and strive for the authentic positive reviews that will push the needle forward for your company?

First, look where your reviews are coming from. Are you only getting responses from past employees who left the company or candidates who weren’t offered a job?

Most company reviews either fall into the “rant” category or the “probably written by HR” category. Many times, people provide feedback after having a less-than-ideal experience and take to the internet to vent their frustrations. This is normal. We’re all human.

However, while you can get ahead of negative reviews by proactively asking new or current employees (those employees in the happy medium category) to share their experiences, you do not want to appear like you’re requesting favorable reviews. When you ask for honest feedback, you can integrate it organically into your new employee onboarding or at natural touch points in their timeline at your company — think anniversaries, performance reviews, bonuses or promotions.

This helps ensure your reviews highlight all the good things that are happening at your company every day, along with all of your areas of opportunity.

How can you put a positive spin on a negative review?

Ping! You get that notification email, and it’s a bad review — now what? My first piece of advice is not to worry too much; we all have areas that need improvement. Even the companies with the highest ratings have a few negative reviews. The bigger question becomes: what are you going to do about it?

A recent survey shows that over 70% of job seekers were willing to change their minds if employers responded to a negative review. Every review offers an opportunity to gain feedback about your company. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of the review, use the feedback constructively to highlight the positive aspects of your business. Responding to the review not only shows that you’re reading what people are saying about your company but highlights that you’re constantly listening and improving whenever possible.

Here are some solutions for these hard-to-have conversations:

Feedback:Great management, but I’m way underpaid for the work I’m doing.
Response:Hi, we appreciate you sharing your perspective. We’re always working to ensure our team members receive competitive pay and benefits. In fact, we’re constantly performing competitive analyses to help us evaluate our pay levels in each market globally. If you have questions or feedback about your pay, we encourage you to speak with your manager or confidentially message HR directly. Thank you.

Feedback:I’m worried about my opportunity for advancement. It’s unclear how to be promoted or advance on this team.
Response:Hello and thanks for your feedback. We’re sorry to hear that your experience has not been reflective of the culture of learning that we strive to provide. We focus on growth and development for all of our team members, regardless of background or experience. We also believe that every team member has talent and growth potential, and we support them in achieving their best selves. We encourage you to meet with your HR representative confidentially to address your concerns and talk about the path forward.

See what I did there? Acknowledge. Validate. Empathize. Call to action.

How can you use reviews to influence change in your company?

When was the last time you read reviews of your company? What decisions did you make after reading them? Third-party sites like Indeed Company Pages offer a platform where you can show employees that you’re listening. This not only provides opportunities for brand storytelling and fosters engagement with your audience (aka potential hires), but it offers constructive feedback that can inform change within your company.

At Indeed, my team meets regularly with our HR leadership to read our reviews. It’s a collaborative approach where we read the insights from employees, look for patterns and discuss what changes can be made at the organizational level to address their concerns.

Great progress has been made from the feedback we’ve received and cross-referenced with regular internal employee surveys. For example, we noticed patterns in our reviews where employee development was a common theme. Our internal employee development resources were updated to offer different career-planning tool kits to help guide career conversations with managers, track career growth and explore future opportunities.

Conclusion
Your company reviews create a genuine brand experience for potential candidates. Be sure to read your reviews carefully, listen to what employees are saying, respond to their successes and concerns and use them as a guide to inform organizational change.

As beneficial as reviews are for candidates looking for their next job, they’re equally as valuable in teaching you how things are working within your company. So don’t wait for your next employee survey to get the feedback you’re looking for — jump into your reviews, respond and share that critical intel with your leaders.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my baby camera just reminded me that it’s garbage pickup day, and I think I can still make it.

Using Free VPN While Sourcing

Free VPN allows you to change your virtual location

Free VPN, or Free Virtual Private Network, is a free Chrome Extension that helps you mask your true IP address and location. This makes it more difficult for sites to track where you are searching from, and grants you access to sites you may not otherwise be able to see.

When you open Free VPN, you see the very simple user interface.

  • You can easily turn on the VPN with the click of a button.
  • Your current IP address is prominently displayed.
  • From a simple drop-down menu, you are able to select a new location and IP address for your VPN.

The tool really is that simple; there are no complicated options or requirements.

While this tool may not seem directly relevant to recruiting, it can prove to be very useful. For example, LinkedIn and a variety of other sites use your IP address. Using a VPN on these sites may allow you to access the information you would normally not be able to. Additionally, if you happen upon a site that you are not given access to based on your location, all you need to do is figure out which locations will work with the site, change your VPN, and you’re good to go.

Free VPN is not only incredibly useful but also incredibly fast. It’s a brainer to add to your recruiting tool belt and may come in handy more often than you think. ~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

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RecruitingDaily Fireside Chat: William Tincup & Erik Kostelnik, Founder CEO of TextRecruit

William and Erik have known one another for longer than either wants to admit. Recently we sat down to talk about the industry and get his hot takes on what’s going on. Erik is both smart and extremely approachable. If you see him at a conference, make sure you say hello. If you don’t know Erik, this is official bio – Erik Kostelnik is the co-founder and CEO of TextRecruit, a candidate and employee engagement platform that leverages text, chat, and artificial intelligence to help companies hire better people, faster. Prior to TextRecruit, Erik served as the Head of Sales at Wrike from 2014 to 2016 helping it reach #116 in 2015 Deloitte Fastest 500 and ran sales as VP at Identified through its acquisition by Workday in 2014. He acts as an advisor to startups including Eatify.com and Outreach.io, was named an Upstart 50 Inventor by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and lives in San Jose with his wife and three kids.

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

I’m always thinking about the latest technology and how it will impact the way that employers and job seekers communicate. With these technological advancements come big responsibility – compliance. There’s a lot of sensitive information that’s exchanged throughout the recruitment process. Employers require candidates to hand this data over to begin the application process, so I consider TextRecruit and other HR software providers to be true gatekeepers of that information. We have an obligation to handle personal data with care so that job seekers don’t have to spend their time worrying about security risks. Instead, they should be empowered to focus on the task at hand – finding a job.

With GDPR having gone into effect in May of 2018 and the new California Consumer Privacy Act which slated to go into effect in January 2020, there have been some positive shifts in data protection law. Whether or not an organization is dealing with international or California-based candidates, the issue of processing and storing personal data has been brought to the forefront of the recruitment landscape, and it’s shining a light on some very real concerns. We’ve had to ask ourselves a few questions: are we doing our part in ensuring that job seekers are in control of their personal data? Do we offer an opt-in/opt-out option? Does our software support professionals in editing or deleting their information? Thankfully, the answer is yes – and we’re committed to keeping it that way as we adopt emerging technology.

Q2: How have candidates changed since you started in the profession?

Candidates’ expectations and preferences have evolved over time with technological advancements. TextRecruit was founded on the observation that in order to stay relevant, businesses need to adapt to the way consumers’ communication preferences have evolved.

A few years ago, it was evident that people were relying on their mobile devices more and more. Shortly after this technological shift happened, texting entered the recruiting scene as a quick and easy way for recruiters to connect with candidates. This resonated with job seekers – in fact, in a recent survey conducted by iCIMS, 86 percent of respondents agreed that it would be beneficial to receive text messages during the job application process.

While texting has become an integral part of the recruiting process, the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning brought with it a whole new wave of candidate communication. Employers in the food and beverage sector are using our technology to enable visiting customers to initiate a job application with a simple text, that then connects them with an automated recruiter and takes them through a quick application process, where an interview can be put on the calendar for the very next day. Employers are also using chatbots, which leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence, to provide candidates with access to 24/7 communication while on their career site, instead of waiting for hours on the phone or for several days for an email response.

Fast communication is key throughout the entire recruitment process. With record-low unemployment rates, it’s more important now than ever before that employers are in tune with what job seekers consider to be a positive candidate experience, and that they are able to hire quickly, before they are scooped up by their competition. In this kind of job market, speed is everything.

Q3: Working for iCIMS (and TextRecruit) you’ve interacted with hundreds of TA professionals, what is one piece of advice you’d give to TA leaders?

Start texting now. If you aren’t communicating with candidates via text, you’ll be quickly categorized as a company that’s behind the eight ball, and that’s not the employer brand you want to project in today’s tight labor market. Instead, you want to position your company as an attractive and innovative organization that’s up on the latest trends and technology. You also want the application process to be easy and for job seekers to have quick access and communication channels to your recruiters or automated recruiters whenever, wherever. If you’re calling yourself an employer of choice, you need to walk the walk – and that starts with prioritizing candidate communication.

Q4: What’s the future of text recruiting and/or communications with candidates?

When I think about the future of candidate communication, I see an opportunity for tremendous growth. Employers within the United States have now used TextRecruit to message more than 8 percent of the U.S. labor force. That includes approximately 80 million messages exchanged between recruiters and job seekers to date with over eight million new messages being sent each month. While texting accounts for a generous portion of today’s candidate communication, it’s just the beginning!

With the success of text messaging in the recruiting space, we learned that candidates value quick and convenient correspondence. This year, TextRecruit took that one step further to launch Automated Recruiter Interface (Ari), as the first hybrid chatbot, enabling recruiters to automate crucial tasks such as screening, answering questions, scheduling, sharing interview reminders and driving directions, and responding to job seekers’ inquiries. Ari works with employers, and if it ever has trouble answering a question, it will pass the conversation off to a human recruiter to ensure that it’s properly handled.

Technology is only going to evolve to make things easier for job seekers and employers alike throughout the entire recruitment process. We’ll continue to keep a pulse on candidates’ needs and expectations, as well as the technology that can support that vision. Next up, I think we’ll be seeing voice-recognition infiltrate the recruitment industry.

Q5: What’s the best use of text recruiting you’ve ever witnessed? Strip away client details if need be. Explain what made the campaign so unique and effective.

I think the best use-case for text recruiting is when an organization digs deep and applies that same consumer-centric mentality to their entire recruitment process – not just to the methods that they use for candidate communication. A prime example is CDW, a company that currently employs over 8,000 people and hires 400-600 new employees each year. In an effort to keep up with their hiring demands and high volume of candidate communication, they decided to move forward with incorporating text messaging into their process.

Since having done so, CDW has seen an 87 percent response rate with a text message (compared to 5 percent with a call). Most of these responses come in within two hours or less. They are sending approximately 400 text messages per day, and proudly report an opt-out rate of just 0.5%. While these are stellar results, CDW understands that providing a strong candidate experience doesn’t stop here. Today’s candidates are looking for information wherever they can get it – they’re consulting a company’s website, social media accounts, and employee reviews to answer a lot of their questions. Perhaps the most widely sought after source is social media, with ninety-four percent of all working Americans admitting that they would visit a company’s social media page when searching for a job.

Keeping this at the forefront of their recruitment strategy, CDW maintains its employer brand across its social media channels. They actively post across popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with strong, branded content. By doing so, CDW is effectively leveraging these channels as another way to communicate their value and perspective with candidates. The result? The benefit of fast and convenient candidate communication coupled with a strong employer brand are undeniable.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this fireside chat with Erik. In the coming weeks & months, you’ll see more from this series.

Unlock that productivity, recruiters

This might be an exaggeration, but only slightly: it feels like every single article and piece of research about recruiters over the last five years talks about how they should be this empowered, business-facing function … but they just can’t be, because they spend all their time on top-of-funnel and logistical tasks. How true is this? That depends on the recruiter and the organization or staffing agency. It varies wildly. But, could we all do with a little more productivity in our lives? Sure. So let’s talk about ways to make that happen for recruiters:

Some Basic Ones

Use sourcing extensions: Easy and free, to boot.

Templatize emails: If a lot of your top-of-funnel work is emailing candidates specific things (interview requests, requests for information, etc.), then create templates for the main emails you send and fire those off when needed.

Spend 20 minutes per day on networking and building relationships: You can find 20 minutes in a day. Watch less Netflix. Whatever works. 20 minutes a day, even on weekends, is 600 minutes per month. That’s 10 hours/month. 120 hours/year. You would be amazed at what you can accomplish in 120 hours/year in terms of building more proactive pipelines.

Get in bed with AI: There are lots of options on the market now (AI has become table stakes in HR technology), and many of them can help you with sourcing.

Learn to use LinkedIn better: It is stunning sometimes how bad some recruiters still are at LinkedIn. Use it for more than InMail. Post stuff. Post relevant stuff. Talk about your life. Talk about the challenges of a tight labor market. Build a community around yourself. It will pop off. It takes time, but it happens.

Learn to use the rest of social media better: Pro tip — > most people under 30 barely know what their LinkedIn password is. It’s not a popular network among the millennial and Gen Z set; they mostly view it as a static resume bank. You want the A-Players in the 24-27 world? Look at other networks (ahem, not Facebook) and figure out how to source and recruit there. It will help you find the true needles in the true haystacks because everyone else is looking through Indeed and LinkedIn resumes.

Some Deeper Dives

Use the 52-17 ratio: 52 minutes of work followed by 17 minutes “off” browsing or whatever. Might seem like you are slacking off. You’re not. You’re actually maximizing your productivity.

55 hours/week max: Hard ceiling on human productivity. Embrace it. A week with 20 open slots to fill? Cool. Spend 54 hours on those 20 slots, and not any more time. Your productivity is essentially the same at 54 as at 80.

Work wherever makes the most sense to you: This could be your couch, an office, a co-work, a coffee shop, or a bar. Productivity is about you, not about being in a specific place. Some bosses are harder to convince of this concept, yes.

Block yourself a Focus Day: Just block out a Wednesday on your calendar. No one will schedule over it, typically. Use that day to hit every conceivable target in sight.

Be smarter about “pocket rockets”: Those are 15 minutes here and there between other meetings, calls, emails, etc. Most people use those 15 mins to look at Facebook. What about being more productive in those pockets? You’d get a hell of a lot of time back across a year doing that.

Turn off mobile at a certain time at night: Reading work-related, candidate-related emails at 11 pm does absolutely nothing for you in any beneficial way. Set a hard out (9 pm is a good one) and don’t touch your mobile email after that. Heck, in France they even have laws about this.

Journal: Every day, write down 3 things you did well professionally, 3 things you need to work on, and one “wild card.” Now at the end of a work week, you have 15 wins and 15 areas to improve. Keep focusing on the latter and celebrating yourself for the former. You good now.

Learn: Attend webinars and read things about the recruiting space.  We have a ton of this available.  Look at case studies of how people are slaying. Learning does take time, so it’s not a productivity hack in that sense, but it will make you do things more effectively and take the right “best practices” into account.

Take walks: Easy peazy, and super important for productivity.

What else ya got?

Open minds: Creating a space for belonging

For years, diversity and inclusion was just that. D&I, I&D. More recently, we’re seeing the definition shift and evolve and adding in a new letter in the process – B, for belonging. Recognizing that there are potential limits on what diversity and inclusion can achieve, especially given current initiatives, belonging seeks to expand our understanding of one another, open up our interactions and establish a workplace where everyone can engage and thrive. And that’s the dream, isn’t it? Provided we know what belonging actually means and how it operates, something that many organizations are still figuring out. So here’s a look at where belonging can take us, starting from recruiting and hiring:

Defining the B word

By most accounts, use of the word belonging traces back to Pat Wadors during her time as CHRO of LinkedIn. Around 2016, she went on record at Talent Connect to speak about “The Power of Belonging.” Acknowledging that D&I had been around for some time without making much headway, Wadors suggested that this third arm could move the needle. And while Wadors made a strong case for feeling included, even citing personal examples, she did not invent the concept – though it is a good story.

In reality, belonging or belongingness stretches back decades and reaches across multiple disciplines. The basic idea being that humans have an innate need for validation and connection with others. No surprise there and a lack of belonging can cause “work loneliness,” proven to have a direct impact on employee performance. So even though your recruiting may be diverse and company policies inclusive, without belonging, employees won’t necessarily know their place in the organization. Basically, we need to play nicer with one another, something that happens at all stages of the employee journey.

Calling DIBs  

Still, despite this additional context, Wadors captures much of the attention around belonging. And while she certainly didn’t coin the phrase “calling dibs” (or in this case, DIBs), she did promote the concept in HR, and we thank her. With belonging taking hold at organizations around the world, a trend on the rise if you will, interested employers need to know how we got here and where we stand.  

For that last piece, there’s the recent EY “Belonging Barometer” study, which asked 1,000 American employees to define what the term means and what makes them feel like they belong at work. Releasing four key findings, EY uncovered that 56 percent of respondents feel they belong most at work when they feel trusted and respected. Echoing this, 39 percent say that when colleagues check in with them about how they’re doing personally and professionally, they feel their greatest sense of belonging at work. All that changes when exclusion comes into the picture. EY summarizes, “When social exclusion happens at work, people feel physically and emotionally isolated. More than 40 percent of respondents across generations and genders feel physically alone, or in other words, ignored. Others also experience feelings of stress and sadness.” And no employer wants that to happen.

Reframing the narrative

And that begins with recruiting and hiring, working to attract candidates through an open door into forums and communities that showcase the organization’s ideals, before engaging them with tailored messaging. Employers can easily supplement these efforts with events, virtual or in person, designed to highlight existing employees and what the organization looks like on the inside. With this deeper level of transparency, job seekers gain an understanding of their place, their fit and whether or not they align with the organization. From here, recruiters can connect the dots, moving interested candidates from interview to offer to onboarding and so on.

From the initial interaction through to every day around the office, belonging encourages employees to reach out, connect and check-in with one another regularly. With the support of recruiting strategies and technologies, belonging builds a place for everyone from day one and makes it possible to redefine culture and foster community. And that’s where the magic happens, with open hearts and open minds, with common values and ideals, working toward a shared goal.

How to Ace Your Next Recruiting RFP

Recruiting RFP

About to Hire an Outside Recruiting Firm? Here’s How to Ace Your RFP (Request for Proposal)

Your company is growing and there is an urgent need to reduce time-to-hire. A decision has been made to engage an external talent acquisition firm and your team is tasked with creating the RFP. Vendor responses are needed quickly and the pressure is on to meet with key project stakeholders to define project requirements, scope, and goals, and write a clear, concise RFP.

Composing accurate RFPs are a constant challenge for busy recruiters, especially if you are seeking bids for more complex staffing or RPO project. After years of working with HR and recruiting teams in companies of all sizes, I’ve come up with a few basic ground rules — for both parties — to help convey all the information a potential vendor needs to know and get your deserved outcome: a highly capable partner who can deliver the value you need at a fair cost.

RULE #1: – Don’t give potential vendors only a day or two to respond

Pressuring a potential vendor to respond in an extremely condensed timeframe usually results in best guess responses and lowball cost estimates that they think you want to hear. Unless it’s a simple project for an executive search or the need for contingent staffing, there are too many variables that can influence your investment and require more time to work through. From the time the scope has been detailed sufficiently enough to present an initial proposed solution, potential vendors should have at least 30 days to properly produce a response. If a highly reputable and experienced vendor asks you for more time to deliver its proposals, be thankful.  If a vendor can turn around an RFP in a day or two, there’s a good chance that there is some due diligence lacking on their part and that their estimate will eventually change.

Rule #2 – Initiate work sessions

Since so much is at stake for your company, give prospective vendors the opportunity to interact with you and other project stakeholders in a proper work session.  These kinds of sessions let you engage in authentic dialog with potential vendors and create the kind of shared understanding of expectations that you would never get from a written response. Not only will you get a preview of the vendor’s work style, but your team also gains an opportunity to learn a great deal about the process, efficiencies, best practices, and where your areas of improvement could be.

Rule #3 – Make sure the manager of the process has relevant experience and credentials   

We frequently run across RFPs written by Procurement or an outside consultant who repurposes an RFP template. The RFP process is about much more than presenting a scope of work and getting a few questions answered about pricing. In order to successfully assess, select and work with a vendor, the creator and the manager of the document and process should be someone who has the experience and credentials to do so.  While repurposed templates might work for commoditized goods or services if you are looking to build a genuine working relationship, avoid canned questions that do not reflect your current business needs.

For smaller companies with limited resources, consider identifying two or three providers that you believe would be a fit based on size, industry focus, experience, and results.  Execute a short RFI (Request for Information), followed by work sessions with the folks who will influence and utilize their services and work to fill urgent openings. This can help you to learn about each other and further solidify a solid relationship built on demonstrated actions and success.

Rule #4 – Make sure your RFP addresses the “why?”

Your RFP should lead with business goals, objectives, and measurements, rather than a list of required features or services. A vendor that is sincerely interested in being a partner will ask thoughtful questions about your organization and central pain points, why this project is important, and project goals and timeline. The most accurate proposals are always based on a shared understanding of business goals and how project stakeholders define success.

When an RFP is written well, the selection process becomes much more efficient, faster, and successful. The RFP process is not about getting a “price check,” free advice with no intentions of selecting an outside partner, or a way to drive current provider costs down. Rather it’s about an opportunity to create a stellar partnership with innovative thinkers and doers who are invested in generating true business value for your company.

 

 

Kendo: Social Email Finder

Kendo is a free tool worth adding to your collection

Kendo is a tool for finding contact information that works as a free Chrome Extension. It’s a fairly straightforward tool, but has proven to be accurate and effective.

Like many other tools, Kendo works on top of LinkedIn.

  • When on a profile, Kendo will show you what contact information it has found for that person.
  • You can unlock the email addresses by using a credit. Kendo provides 30 free credits to begin with, and gives you one new credit each day.
  • You can choose to download the information you have found to a csv for easy import into other tools.
  • The extension is flexible, and can be moved around your screen to fit your preferences.

From Kendo:

Kendo has over 500 million emails in our database. All emails provided are double verified and super accurate. Kendo automatically lookup and searches the web with our AI engine to find contact vectors. Give us a a try and compare it with: contactout, Connectifier, Prophet, Lusha, Hiretual, Email Hunter, adorito or any other product out there!

Kendo’s simplicity makes it a worthwhile addition to your collection of tools. Though 30 free credits with a new one each day may not seem like a lot, with other tools growing more and more expensive, any free tools are worth testing out. Kendo can prove to be a good alternative if other tools aren’t finding you the information you need. ~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

Before You Get Started with Conversational Recruiting, Read This

Candidates’ demands are at an all-time high. Talent today expects a quick and easy application process, immediate company information, and consistent communication throughout their journey.

For recruiters in a time when the US unemployment rate is at 3.9% (the lowest it’s been in over a decade), meeting those demands is vital. Add to the fact that technological advancements are on the rise, and you have a volatile recruiting landscape. Technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning have left their mark on every industry from healthcare to entertainment — so it’s no surprise we’re seeing a similar pattern in how organizations are recruiting talent.

If companies want to remain competitive, they need to adopt new methods and embrace this industry shift. One of the best ways to do so? Conversational recruiting.

What is conversational recruiting?

Conversational recruiting is the industry’s approach to embracing automated two-way communication across a variety of online channels, such as email, SMS, messaging apps and chatbots. Adopting these new mediums can help recruiters connect and engage with more talent faster. Since many of these forms of communication happen instantly, it speeds up the application process, cutting down the time to hire and boosting overall recruiter efficiency.

However, conversational recruiting isn’t for everyone. Before you get started, here are a few things to consider to ensure it’s the right move for you and your business.

Find the right use case

Before going after the new shiny object of automation, make sure you have a solid application (or two) for it. Investing in any new strategy or technology is always a risk, and you should avoid jumping into it blindly with the expectation it will be a gamechanger.

Here are a few use cases where conversational recruiting might make sense:

  • You lack the resources to have any call center support for candidates. Sure, your organization might have a call center to support the business, but can you handle answering the questions of hundreds or even thousands of candidates? While a second call center might not make sense, a chatbot on your career site that automates candidate FAQs will.
  • There are a lot of high-volume cookie-cutter roles. For certain industries like manufacturing and retail where you’re filling a lot of low-entry level roles (where there isn’t much to differentiate candidates on), automation can be a huge help. An automated chatbot can help screen visitors on your site by asking knockout questions, and scheduling qualified candidates for in-person interviews. In this way, you can leverage automation on the front end, and get people who qualify into the next stage of human interaction faster.
  • You’re recruiting talent outside of your region. Hiring for positions across the country or world? Automated SMS text conversations and emails allow you to maintain asynchronous communication with candidates in different time zones. This enables you to engage talent at times that are most convenient for them, simplifying the application process.

Get access to candidate data

Creating an engaging candidate experience is impossible without personalization. Whether it’s delivering specific job recommendations based on their skills and experience or tailoring email messages with relevant content, all of these individual touchpoints create a memorable interaction with your company.

While AI-powered technology helps make this level of personalization possible, you can take it even further by segmenting your candidates. To do so, you’ll need data about your talent pool so you can target them based on experience level, skills, and more. CRM platforms that handle email and SMS campaigns, for example, should collect and store enough candidate data so you can slice and dice it for targeted messaging.

Make sure your team is ready

Yes, technology has the power to make life easier. And yes, it can boost efficiency like never before. But that’s only possible if your team is willing to invest their time and effort into using it to its truest potential.

Here’s why: Automating communication channels requires a significant amount of content creation. Investing in a chatbot can save you time and money in the long run. But before you launch, you’ll need to build an FAQ repository with at least 1000 questions and answers to properly train it. The more questions and variations the chatbot can reference, the smarter it will be in delivering accurate answers to candidates.

The same goes for automated emails and SMS messages. Sending emails to specific candidate segments and setting up automated SMS campaigns requires dedicated time to content creation. To properly support these campaigns and your candidates, make sure your team (or future team) has the capacity.

Are you prepared to take on conversational recruiting?

While there is plenty to consider before chasing after the latest technology, remember this: whether your team is ready to embrace conversational recruiting or not, start by focusing on one solution at a time. Perhaps your team will be better prepared in a year from now, or maybe there’s a specific way in which you can get started today. Regardless, technology, automation and AI isn’t only the future of incredible candidate experiences — it’s the key to making your team as effective as possible.

Bullhorn is making moves for staffing companies

Helping staffing agencies with their growth prospects.

Bullhorn®, the cloud computing company that helps staffing and recruiting organizations transform their business, has realized its vision to deliver a completely integrated front-to-back solution that combines time and expense, invoicing, gross margin calculation, and billing functionality with its market leading front office into a single cloud-based system. This middle office suite is the culmination of years of experience and development from several Bullhorn teams, including those who joined Bullhorn following its Peoplenet acquisition in November 2017.

As large buyers of labor adopt new workforce management practices, staffing firms are challenged to provide flexible billing and payment practices for clients and workers. Saddled with legacy middle office technology that is difficult to upgrade and manage, many firms are looking to transform their businesses through the use of connected middle office systems that are configurable, adaptable, and scalable – equipping them to be successful and competitive for years into the future. Building middle office capabilities seamlessly into the front office creates a single unified system; every transaction from the initial job order all the way through to the invoice occurs on a single, open, cloud-based platform supported by an enormous ecosystem of solution providers and developers.

With its front and middle office integration, Bullhorn becomes the single source of truth for everyone across an organization and allows staffing firms to innovate to drive efficiency, make better decisions, and create true competitive advantage. This, in turn, empowers these firms to succeed in a new world of work in which available skilled talent is scarce and elusive and large buyers of labor place increasingly complex and restrictive demands on their suppliers. To this end, Bullhorn’s vision is to provide firms with the end-to-end infrastructure needed to transform their businesses.

Previously, enterprises had to choose different systems to get best-in-class performance for front and middle office capabilities. With Bullhorn’s offering, staffing firms do not have to make any sacrifices when choosing an integrated system that marries front and middle office capabilities, as it includes best-in-class capabilities across the entire suite. Bullhorn’s difference is in the combination of its staffing-specific DNA, its depth of R&D resources devoted to actualizing its middle office connected vision, and the fact that it provides, and always has provided, a true cloud-based and intrinsically scalable platform upon which this suite of middle office solutions is built. 

With a best-in-class middle office solution that gives staffing agencies full front-to-back visibility from candidate and order intake all the way through invoicing, customers can now see margin information and profitability in real time to make informed decisions. This helps them to:

  • Save millions of dollars on margin-erosive operations and back-office costs through fully automated pay and bill processes, with crystal-clear data visibility between front, middle, and back office systems
  • Save significant time and money on contract compliance by automatically enforcing pay/bill terms configured at the client level
  • Provide a fully integrated candidate onboarding experience that automates the complexities of putting people to work at multiple companies
  • Differentiate their value to talent with a seamless candidate experience in which candidates can manage their profile, complete documents, record time, and see their pay stubs

Additionally, Bullhorn will, over time, leverage its cloud-based platform with more than 600 billion records to provide AI-based capabilities to enhance staff and organizational performance. For instance, staffing firms can leverage predictive intelligence to assess client billing health indicators – such as when client invoices will likely be paid – in real time, and therefore help them prioritize jobs. Additionally, recruiters can assess the likelihood of successfully filling a job based on the available talent pool, and more effectively put the right people to work quickly by leveraging search and match capabilities that take into account time approver-provided candidate scoring data.

Bullhorn’s middle office suite will see its first customer deployments in Q2 2019.

“The excitement from customers around what we have built has been very energizing for the entire organization,” said Ed Holmes, head of Bullhorn’s Workforce and Revenue Cloud business unit, responsible for the development of the company’s middle office suite. “It is clear we’ve built a solution that the market has desperately needed for a long time now, and we’re excited for our customers to experience its benefits.”

“We have chosen Bullhorn as our long-term partner and are excited that we are now going to be able to get a full front-to-back solution from one provider,” said Layne Tharp, SVP of Finance at Signature Consultants. “A fully integrated workflow will certainly strengthen and enhance our partnership with Bullhorn. Front-to-back reporting, from leads to revenue and actual gross margin, is a game changer. The product looks great and the flexibility will allow us to remove manual processes while improving our business processes. A middle office built specifically for staffing is incredibly exciting for us.”

Learn more about Middle Office.

Fireside Chat with William Tincup and Michelle Vargas, VP of HR at HireVue

As Sr. Vice President of Human Resources, Michelle will direct the continuing development of long-term HR strategies and infrastructure to support HireVue’s rapid growth and international expansion and play a key role in strengthening its culture of innovation and collaboration.

Michelle has over 25 years of experience in human resource management, with specialties including organizational development, recruiting, and employee engagement. Most recently, she served as the Vice President of HR consulting at NFP, where she helped clients identify and implement talent solutions, including training and development, performance management, and compliance. She has held senior roles at several technology companies including AutoPoint, iBAHN, and APPLABS where she instituted sustainable HR strategies from talent acquisition to talent management. Michelle has a B.A in Humanities/Communications from Brigham Young University.

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

I am very focused on the development of leadership at HireVue. A successful management group has the biggest impact on our ability to retain our talent and successfully grow our business.

Employees do not leave a job for extrinsic motivators like free lunches, benefits, parties, or even money. Intrinsic motivators drive employee engagement and the manager has the biggest impact on how the employee feels about their work if they feel appreciated and respected and can be their best self.

Another thing that keeps me up at night is ensuring the way that we portray the jobs we are hiring for and the company’s culture aligns with reality. Nothing can be more damaging to an employer brand or to retention than misaligned expectations. We have a great candidate experience because we use our own technology in hiring. We need to be sure that the same experience carries over to the first day of work and beyond. If the expectations aren’t aligned we will lose valuable people.

Q2: How has HR changed since you started in the profession?

The evolution of HR is amazing. This evolution is because of the changes in technology and the increased importance of the employee value proposition (EVP).

As a profession HR is now more focused on the people and their experience through the full life cycle of employment. We have to treat our candidates and employees like they are consumers and win their loyalty and trust so that they will choose to stay with our organization and do their best work. It begins with our brand, the recruiting experience, the onboarding experience, the employee/manager experience, the culture and work life experience, the total rewards package we offer, and we have to provide meaningful work and provide opportunities for employees to grow and develop.

When I started in HR, it was so different, the people were sometimes secondary to the process, legal concerns, and requirements. Of course, I am aging myself, but the technology wasn’t around when I started so everything was manual which made the work very administrative and less strategic.

As we evolve we can eliminate administrative tactical tasks and focus more on people-centric strategic initiatives and driving business results. We are also moving to more reliance on analytics to drive our decisions.

It’s very exciting!

Q3: Working for HireVue you glimpse into the talent acquisition of a lot of companies, what is one piece of advice you’d give to TA leaders?

Focus on the candidate experience. I advise TA leaders to think of the candidate as a consumer. If their company doesn’t have a compelling story to tell and a great candidate experience, they will lose the best talent to organizations that do. Don’t waste a candidate’s time and be sure to communicate with them every step of the way.

Make sure the application process and internal processes make sense and be willing to modify how things are done to improve the experience. Even the best technology can’t fix a broken system.

That is why I love HireVue: we make it easy for our clients to identify the right talent and engage the leaders quickly in the recruiting process so candidates never feel like they have dropped into a black hole.

Q4: Where do you see your recruiting function in 5 years?

I believe AI will play a big role in how we attract and evaluate talent. Technology will allow us to identify the right job out of multiple opportunities in an organization for every candidate that applies. I can see a future where our talent teams are acting as career coaches and helping candidates understand their options and what skills they need to get the job they want. Candidates will also be able to see the company culture and maybe even experience it virtually before they join a company. There are no limits to the implications of technology on our ability to find the right talent and match people to jobs.

When I started my career out of college at a Temporary Agency, we used the analogy that the talent funnel was inverted at the staffing company. Each candidate was assessed and matched to the job that best matched based on the multiple opportunities available. I think we’ll see more brands adopt this mindset as technology advances.

Q5: How do you see the role of HR changing in the next 5 years?

HR departments are moving away from the term of HR. Many are now using the term People Operations to better define the role of HR in the success of the business. Technology has and will play an important role in making HR a more core component of business success and strategy.

HR leaders are more focused on people and data than ever before. I see exciting opportunities for HR leaders to bring value to the business as we continue to embrace new technology that removes the administrative burdens so we can focus on the people and strategies to improve the overall experience of the employee. Effective HR teams will effectively identify and augment their teams with technology to make their outputs more effective.

HR leaders will need to stay focused on the growth of both individual contributors and leaders with personalized growth plans. Again, technology will be critical to help scale the expertise and function of the skill in HR departments to managers and finally to employees. Flexibility will be the key to our success. We can’t have a one size fits all approach anymore.

Editors Note:  We will run these conversations with industry professionals, practitioners of the art, and generally interesting folks every month.  Feel free to reach out to me for arranging a conversation and Fireside chat: [email protected] ~ Noel Cocca

TA Movers, Shakers, and News Breakers

There was a plethora of conversation hearts shared this Valentine’s Day. Let’s take a look at which ones we found in the world of Talent Acquisition to share with our reading colleagues:

2019-02-13 22:30:14.196000

HEADLINES in Talent Acquisition

Deloitte has announced a major hiring initiative for its Hyderabad office, seeking to double its current staff of 40,000 to 80,000. This move is part of a larger organizational plan to expand the workforce by double over the next three to five years. Additional reports cite how Deloitte’s other offices in India, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi (Gurgaon) will also see an increase in hiring over this time span.

News reports reveal how potential employers including Beaumont Health Systems are partnering with General Motors outplacement services to engage in TA recruitment and retain talent in Michigan. This recruitment partnership has formed in response to GMs announcement, made earlier this month, to cut 4,000 workers in coming weeks. Beaumont alone reports about 500 job openings for qualified GM employees losing jobs this month.

Facebook appears to be broadening its reach by expanding into cryptocurrency. Cheddar reports hint that Facebook is looking into a major acquisition of talent from Chainspace, a platform that scales smart contracts for payments and is bolstered by blockchain technology. Why is this significant to folks in the TA space? Speculators wonder if this means Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is digging trenches for forecasted shifts of millennial workers in freelance digital payment positions. Time will reveal, so eyes will be askance, seeking updates.

iCIMS reports this week how 2018 revenue surpassed $200 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) — doubling its growth for a sixth-straight year. iCIMS currently offers dedicated TA solutions that extend client reach from typical recruiting modules, focusing on target elements such as better use of advertising dollars. iCIMS also enables candidates to manage all iCIMS applications, offering better control of personal data. Let’s not forget how iCIMS also acquired TextRecruit in 2018, a significant milestone for them to offer AI chatbots to engage better talent, faster. Established in 2000, iCIMS supports 4,000 customers hiring over 4M people annually.

Premier Health, a major Dayton, OH employer, announced recruiting efforts to hire teens, after a long duration of hiring 18+ year old employees. This announcement comes as Ohio’s unemployment rate dipped below 4.6% in December 2018.

Blockchain tech leader, Ripple, bolsters its hunt for talented engineers/developers as they stake out space in the global payments network. Various crypto news sources are abuzz with how Ripple seeks over a dozen engineers and tech experts, possibly even a new head of engineering for their newest projects. Rumors have wafted in various crypto news spaces of engineers being offered joining bonuses with dollar ranges at an eye-popping $1-6 million. (That kind of TA endeavor literally re-coins the term, “ripple effect.”)

A much anticipated SHRM-Backed Bill, that would give a tax break for student loan repayment aid, has been introduced this week by federal lawmakers. The Society for Human Resource Management backs the Employer Participation in Repayment Act (HR 104), legislation that would permit tax-free student loan assistance for up to $5,250 a year per employee. Of note is how this amount equals tax-exempt Employer-provided tuition assistance. SHRM has strongly advocated for legislation that allows employers to provide student loan repayment assistance with pretax dollars, so this legislation will be one to monitor as it proceeds through Congress.

 

2019-02-13 22:39:13.822000

Capital Investments & Acquisitions

Jobvite and K1 Investment Management has announced three major talent acquisitions — Telemetry, RolePoint and Canvas — totaling in excess of $200 million. Dan Finnigan, Jobvite CEO, will lead the newly combined organization offering a triad solution of broad TA: recruitment marketing, employee referral/internal mobility, and text-based conversational recruiting, offering advanced tech solutions for advancing recruitment demands.

TMP Worldwide announced a binding agreement to acquire CKR Interactive, based in Campbell, CA. Founded in 2001, CKR Interactive has grown to become a leader in employee branding and recruitment, bringing a new range of client solutions and platforms including TalentBrew to TMP’s business. CKR Interactive will continue to operate under its existing name and rwill be recognized as a TMP Worldwide company led by President and CEO, Curtis Rogers.

 

2019-02-13 22:32:29.026000

Conferences

The 2019 Recruiting Trends & Talent Tech LIVE! Conference launches in T + days, opening next February 20-22, 2019 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. An impressive line-up of presenters is on deck, including Eric Winegardner, TA leader and moderator for this year’s event.

More than 500 employers from Kansas City, MO launched their Team KC second annual leadership conference, that opened February 8th and closed on the 10th. The summit joined 500+ recruiters and HR execs, to partner together to bring key talent to the Kansas City region. Team KC itself currently serves a network of more than 1,000 TA leaders and 300 KC area employers, to amplify Kansas City’s livability assets to potential candidates.

2019-02-13 22:33:34.981000

People and Places on the Move

A hearty congratulations is extended to the following organizations and people, moving, shaking, and bringing TA to new levels of exceptional records and service:

AMM Communications, a leading St. Louis based strategic communications, PR and TA firm has been awarded US Small Business Administration (SBA) federal certification as a Women-Owned Small Business.

Atrium, of New York, NY has been named winner of ClearlyRated’s Best of Staffing Talent Award for the fourth year in a row. The award is presented in partnership with CareerBuilder.

Frederickson Partners, a Human Resources executive search firm, with eleven metropolitan locations based in the US, announced the hiring of four new executives:

Tom Wilson, a veteran with over 25 years of global executive TA experience, in various roles at Standard Chartered Bank, RBC Capital Markets, and Bank of America;

Stephanie Owens, an executive with over two decades HR experience for DLA Piper, who brings diverse experience from Sophos SaaS cyber security;

Brendan Casey, who brings over 20 years executive search and placement experience from Robert Half and Protiviti and Burr Pilget Mayer, Inc.;

Shari Davis, who brings over two decades executive search experience across a range of organizations including Berman International.

Nissan announced appointment of Simon Woodard as regional Vice President, Human Resources for Nissan Asia and Oceania. The move is effective January 1, 2019. Woodard has been with Nissan for six years and, prior to this, was leading talent management, acquisition and learning and development teams at Nissan Europe.

Noto Group, Inc, a search firm based in Portland, OR, serving consumer brands,  announces Sara Spirko joining their team as senior executive recruiter. Spirko brings 15 years of TA , brand management and operations experience from Godiva, Mars, Inc and Gibson Guitar Co.

Odgers Berndtson announces hiring Catherine Bass Black, its fourth Atlanta-based search professional. Ms. Black, who served as Head of TA and Director of Community Affairs at Bass Pro Shops joins Odgers Berndtson as Principal supporting Industrial, Consumer Board and Leadership Practices.

 

What news would you like to share with us for upcoming weekly news updates? Contact us at [email protected]

 

 

New Privacy Laws in California: Take Your Consumer Data Privacy Seriously Now, Before It’s Too Late

Data Privacy

“Google’s parent company Alphabet is making changes to its data privacy policy, even though could harm its lucrative advertising business and have a larger financial business impact”

Data privacy should not be taken lightly. Although in early January at CES – the largest consumer tech show – virtually nothing was said about consumer data privacy to many attendees’ surprise, tech giants are placing a lot of effort in changing and enhancing their data privacy policies. For example, Google’s parent company Alphabet is making changes to its data privacy policy, even though could harm its lucrative advertising business and have a larger financial business impact. Data privacy is that important and cannot be ignored.

Whether you are being proactive, or more reactive to recent regulations like the California privacy laws (CCPA), which will go into effect January 2020 for companies who have touchpoints with California, now is the time to reevaluate your policies and processes.

The California consumer data rights laws are the first wave reaction to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the United States, and I expect the rest of the country to eventually follow suit with their own versions of CCPA.

With the possibility of numerous state and federal laws to comply with as well as international regulations, companies need to gear up for data privacy, fast.

Companies that process consumer data must remain diligent on how to comply with regulations by prioritizing the safeguard of consumer data rights.

For example, our software processes 3 million jobs and 75 million applications per year and supports 238 million candidate users – that surmounts to a lot of sensitive consumer data, and the rightful storage and usage of it should be taken seriously.

If you have a single candidate – or customer – from California, then the new CCPA laws apply to your company. The Act provides the right for Californians to:

(1)  Know what personal information is being collected about them

(2)  Know whether their personal information is sold or disclosed and to whom

(3)  Say no to the sale of personal information

(4)  Access their personal information

(5)  Equal service and price, even if they exercise their privacy rights

While California is the first America state to impose a lawful act, consumer’s private information is both a national and a global data concern, and understanding data rights is paramount to the future of all companies. No one will be able to disappear through legal loop holes with this. Data rights is about protecting consumers from data breaches, and in the wake of so many big named ones, people are paying attention.

Here are some quick actions employers can take to set themselves up for success on the recruitment front:

Provide Compliant Candidate Rights

  • Provide candidates with easy-to-understand consent terms.
  • Allow candidates to opt-out of messages and retract consent. This includes email communications, phone calls and text messages.
  • Notify candidates of any potential breaches, quickly (GDPR requires a 72-hour notification window).
  • Provide candidates with their data upon request.

Follow GDPR Best Practices for All Net New Data Laws (in addition to new regulations)

  • Choose a Data Rights Lead: Identify who will be accountable for ensuring your HR team meets all existing and net new data laws. Consider whether this should be someone in your legal department, IT department, or someone else who is qualified to lead this effort.
  • Review Your Policies and Processes: Ensure your application processes and recruitment privacy policies are complaint with data rights with CCPA and GDPR. As a starting point, check to see if your company has created data maps of California residents, to identify what type of information your organization collects, why you do it, where it is held, with whom it is shared, and how it is transferred. From there, you should make sure your company has the following in place:
    • Has a “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” option on your site
    • Allows users to easily request access, change, move or delete their personal data
    • Provides candidates with your privacy policy
    • Provides evidence of valid consent for every applicant
  • Conduct an Audit of Outside Vendors: If your company uses outside services for background screens, reference checking, assessments or drug testing, then those service must also be compliant. Confirming that they meet privacy standards will save your company from a huge headache down the road. Take Target as an example where the huge retailer’s data breach a few years ago actually resulted from a compromised third-party vendor. Not only do employers need to consider their own compliance and privacy protocols, but those of their third-party vendors, as well. Whether vetting new vendors or evaluating existing vendors, ensure that all third-parties take data usage, privacy and security at the same standard that you do.
  • Document Everything: Make sure your team has a clear understanding of data processes, such as where candidate data is stored, as well as what type of data your storing and how long you must keep it .At iCIMS, some steps we have taken to ensure our teams have a clear understanding of data rights processes includes ensuring all employees participate in mandatory training courses. In addition, iCIMS pushes employee data processes by assigning specific security levels for various employees, forcing secure passwords that change every 30 days, and confirming all personal cell phones that are linked to company platforms have strong passwords.

If your company ensures that they are always thinking first of the consumer’s rights and then of how to lawfully abide by those rights, then you will have success with CCPA and GDPR. To have long-term success, brands will need to build relationships and trust with consumers by giving them control of their data and being transparent about the usage and storage. In the end, if consumers trust a brand, they may be more likely to consent and offer up even more data to have a better experience with that product/service, which will then contribute to the future success and improvements of said brand.

For more information on iCIMS’s data policies and procedures, please visit iCIMS General Counsel site.

AFS – Advanced Facebook Search

 

AFS helps you to harness the enormous quantity of Facebook profiles in an effective and efficient way

 

AFS, or the Advanced Facebook Search, is a search engine that allows you to sort through Facebook based on a number of terms. Facebook has billions of members, making it a great sourcing tool. However, without a way to narrow the billions into a manageable selection, it doesn’t do you much good. With AFS, you are able to be as specific as you want, narrowing down the vast number of profiles into a useful selection.

The tool has three tabs: People, Posts, and Pages. For the purpose of recruiting, the “People” tab is the most relevant.

  • First, you can choose to search all people or narrow it down by friends, friends of friends, or only non-friends.
  • You can specify standard characteristics such as language, location, and gender.
  • You can also specify more career-related characteristics, such as job title, education, and current or past companies.

Though the tool works as a Chrome Extension, it always opens up Facebook’s site to display the search results. From here, you can choose to reach out to potential talent directly through Facebook. Alternatively, you can use another tool (such as ZapInfo) to compile lists of people and location contact information.

One of the best aspects of the Advanced Facebook Search is that it is consistently being updated along with Facebook. It’s a reliable tool that allows you to harness the incredible power of Facebook for your own sourcing needs. ~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

 

Learning New Steps: Making Inclusion Stick

Most of the time, we talk about diversity and inclusion as if they function in tandem and take hold simultaneously. In reality, that’s not always how it happens at a corporate level. Typically, diversity takes center stage, with companies welcoming increased numbers of diverse hires, skewing heavily toward race and gender. In turn, inclusion starts to seem more like an add-on, tucked in the corner; an overlooked buy one, get one free premium. But if you’ve ever seen the movie “Dirty Dancing” you already know that “nobody puts baby in the corner.”

So while it’s true that diversity and inclusion are linked, it’s not because the words pair together so nicely. If anything, diversity won’t last without inclusion, a core-shaking change that disrupts the status quo and reframes an organization in the process.

Cutting through the misconceptions   

Vernā Myers, vice president of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix and founder of The Vernā Myers Company, so famously said, “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.” And though she’s not entirely wrong, this pithy summary puts limits on inclusion, doing little more than offering up a catchphrase for folks to repeat on slides in meetings. However, despite how carefully crafted the statement is, she gets at least one thing right – a point that we need to drive home again and again: diversity does not equal inclusion, and at the same time, inclusion does not equal diversity (at least not at first – more on that in a minute).

Instead, as God-is Rivera, director of inclusion and cultural resonance at Twitter, explains, advocating for a broader strategy, “You have to stop thinking about inclusion and diversity as this … thing over there. It has to be something completely threaded through your business.”

Boom, there it is – a deeper truth. Inclusion goes beyond recruiting, beyond hiring quotas, beyond annual reports. Inclusion is in an organization’s foundation, fundamental to its culture and community, a guiding principle that moves us forward, making it possible to achieve diversity and foster belonging.   

Two steps forward, one step back

Part of the ongoing challenge with inclusion is that it’s harder to measure than diversity. That’s likely one of the reasons the two ended up so tied together. And when we hear about D&I failures, it’s usually because an organization set lofty, quantifiable goals that it failed to meet in a given timeframe. The evidence is everywhere though it’s not really about inclusion. Take a recent report from Deloitte and the Alliance for Board Diversity, which opens with “A critical need for inclusive leadership,” but only five references to inclusion in 40 pages.

The problem being these initiatives, as they are so often called, tend to sit within human resource departments and focus primarily in bringing people from outside the organization in, with no regard for what happens post-hire. Rather than help the organization grow and evolve with this changing workforce, this approach works to uphold the current structure, and we end up right back where we started.

Of course, ending this cycle isn’t a one and done move, or as Gwen Moran says in Fast Company, “Once you’ve put the time and effort into building your multi-talented, multi-faceted A-team, you’re not going to keep them if they don’t feel valued, understood, and comfortable. That’s where inclusion—making employees feel valued, welcome and comfortable being who they are—comes in.”

Let’s dance

Inclusion isn’t just a campaign, it’s a commitment, and by definition, lives across the organization, it reaches from top to bottom, and requires open communication and ongoing maintenance.

To make inclusion stick, we need to integrate it at all stages of the employee journey, regardless of their position, from recruiting and hiring to onboarding and training and everything after. This makes it a shared responsibility, one that everyone owns and can participate in, with no exclusions. Maybe this means forming a council, developing employee resource groups or spending more time together, actively listening. Better yet, perhaps this becomes how we measure our progress, through employee engagement and satisfaction, by celebrating business growth and outcomes, rather than comparing the number of one population over another.

Inclusion is a call to action, one that involves each and every employee, as well as their knowledge, experience and perspective. It starts at the beginning, not the end, deeply ingrained in the organization’s existing culture and promoted through improved hiring practices. Because ultimately, inclusion is how we talk to one another, how we relate and how we interact. It’s finding the right rhythm and teaching one another the steps day in and day out.