What's next in recruiting? Hear it all at the next Recruiting Innovation Summit in May
Archive for October, 2004 I’m going to make the case that the cost of a bad hiring decision for most positions is 2 times (2X) the person’s annual salary. This is not a one-time cost either. It happens year after year. That’s a lot of money. You’ll use this information to become a better recruiter. Here’s how:
Anyone who follows online screening and assessment knows that there just isn’t much information available about general trends related to its use. This can be a bit frustrating because, while everyone seems to be saying that screening is becoming a “hot” area, there is little actual data available to confirm this statement or to tell us “how hot” hot really is. This lack of information also makes it hard for those of us who follow this industry closely to provide factual information about how companies are using online screening and assessment tools and what the results of this usage have been. I found the general lack of information about the use of online screening and assessment tools so frustrating that in 2002 I decided to do something to help find some answers. The result was my first screening and assessment usage survey. The results were very useful and encouraged me to make this survey an annual event. (Thank you to everyone who has participated in the survey process over the past two years! The data you have provided has had great value for many of us.) I have really high expectations for this year’s survey and am really excited about building on the past two years’ results. The more data I can collect, the clearer existing and emerging trends will become. While the results of these surveys were far from being scientifically rigorous, they did provide good high-level information about usage trends for online screening and assessment. Specifically, my surveys have focused on providing information about the current usage of online screening and assessment tools, obstacles to the adoption of online screening and assessment tools, and respondent’s opinions about future usage rates for these tools. Here is a quick summary of the trends identified in last year’s results (for a more in-depth look please see my article covering last year’s survey results): Respondents:
Recruiting is always about too many people chasing too few positions (or too many positions) with not enough qualified people to go around. We bounce back and forth, hiring recruiters, laying them off, and trying to balance everything with contractors or outsourcing. Balance is rarely achieved, and recently the trend has been to ask for more from existing staff. Can recruiters work any smarter than they currently do? Is it possible for the average recruiter to make any real improvement in how much they can accomplish or in how many positions they can fill? As we have recently seen, organizations move work to wherever it can be done for the least cost at an acceptable level of quality. In fact, corporate charters and laws require management to do whatever they can to maximize shareholder return. The CEO of Peoplesoft, for example, was recently fired partly because he said that no matter how much he was offered per share by Oracle, he would not sell. The board said that by making this statement he was not exercising fiduciary responsibility to PeopleSoft. It’s all about money, in the end. The recruiting function that thrives will know how to add value to their organization by providing great people in a timely fashion with the fewest recruiters. So how can a recruiter become more productive? If you could shave an hour or two off your current work schedule every day, you would get five to ten hours a week to focus on other candidates or additional positions. The manufacturing world lived through the drive for greater productivity for two decades. They grappled with how to be more efficient and raise productivity while at the same time raising quality. Recruiting will have to do the same thing this decade, or organizations will find some other way to get the job done. There are a lot of ways to work more productively. I have outlined five of them below. Almost all of them require you to do things differently and to think outside the usual recruiting box. You should always ask yourself out-of-the-box questions. Ask yourself why you have to interview everyone, or what would happen if you simply got managers to agree to make offers to the first people who met the criteria for the position without further screening. By forcing some different thinking, you can come up with a dozen ways to save time and money without compromising anything. These are a good start. 1. Simplify everything you do. Don’t make your own work process complex. Cut out the steps that aren’t absolutely essential to your success. And I mean absolutely essential. Most of us either create or inherit steps that are, at best, only marginally needed. We often put ourselves into a process unnecessarily. For example, I know recruiters who spend time conducting a 10 to 15 minute telephone screens of candidates even when their resumes are excellent and they meet all the requirements. These recruiters feel they are adding quality, but I am almost certain they are wasting time for the most part. The candidate and the hiring manager would both prefer a face-to-face interview. When I work with recruiters, we almost always find two or three hours each day where time is being wasted on similar nonessential steps. I suggest you keep a log of everything you do for each day for a week. At the end of the week, take an hour or so and carefully review your log. Ask yourself what you could have not done and what you could have done differently or faster. If you do this for a few weeks, I guarantee you will find time you didn’t know you had. 2. Concentrate your efforts. Rather than spreading yourself over several candidates and positions, focus on one or two at a time and set a goal on when to have them filled. Focus is powerful and helps you to get spend the time you need to source, screen, interview, and hire people much faster. When you are dealing with five or six candidates and hiring managers at the same time, productivity goes down. While parallel processing is sometimes more effective (in computers for sure), most humans work better with serial processing ó doing one thing and then the next. Ideally, each recruiter would focus on not more than three types of positions and build the appropriate candidate talent communities to support those. This is what headhunting firms and staffing agencies have always done. 3. Leverage technology. I know that you have heard me say this over and over, but technology is your friend. Without it you can make some marginal improvements to productivity, but with it you can make big leaps. Rather than thinking about technology as automating the process, think about it as a set of tools to help you and candidates optimize your time. The recruiting website should be the hub for all your activities. You should use it to deliver pre-screened, and even pre-assessed, candidates. You should move administrative activities such as scheduling, dealing with applications, and processing background checks to fully automated processes. Many ATS tools offer this kind of automation and, sadly, it is often not used. Anything that is transactional in nature is, by definition, of no value and should be automated or outsourced. 4. Put the candidate in control. Use tools such as online profilers and online screening, web-based videos, and electronic information about jobs and what they consist of to give the candidate control over the process. Let candidates schedule their own interviews if they meet certain criteria and let them complete online applications. Provide them information, tools and tests and then get out of their way. Contrary to what many recruiters believe, candidates enjoy being in control and will provide information you need without much complaint. Several organizations have reported getting “fan” mail from candidates who thoroughly enjoyed the sense of control and the freedom from feeling like they are at a recruiter’s mercy. 5. Have a talent community you are always in contact with. Spend any of the time the above productivity suggestions give you to work on developing a community of people you have already screened to some degree and know something about. These people are most likely qualified to work at your company but will need to go through some final interviews. They should be “in the electronic loop” as to what your recruiting plans look like and why you are still (or no longer) interested in them. This act of informing them via email or other web-based means will build loyalty and make it easy to recruit them whenever you need to. Very few organizations will ever hire the number of recruiters that worked for them in the late 1990s. The focus for the next decade will be on productivity, automation, and a move toward letting candidates and hiring managers interact directly. Your job will be to facilitate that process, put in place the gates and screens, and keep everything at the highest quality.
For many companies, employment websites do much more than just collect resumes: they provide a distinct competitive edge for top talent. But whether you’re in a large or small company, whether you have a big budget or a small one, whether you act as an in-house or agency recruiter, there are many lessons to be learned from those who do it best. So what makes an employment website one of the best? Start by thinking of your best recruiters, who:
Few individuals would disagree with the fact that CEOs are the leaders of their corporations. CEOs are clearly powerful people who provide direction to everyone in the organization. People follow and copy their behavior not only because of their power, but also because they know the direction where the corporation is going. Many individuals in the corporation strive to act like their CEOs, especially senior managers, directors, and business unit GMs. These senior managers dress, act like, talk like, and even attempt to think like their CEOs. The benefits of thinking, acting, and talking like a CEO can extend to the very bottom of the organization. In fact, it’s a wise move for anyone in the corporation to try to talk like, act like, and think like their CEO. The way that CEOs and senior managers talk and act is quite distinctive and easy to notice. Because I have had the opportunity to be a CEO, and also to meet many CEOs of major corporations throughout my career, I have grown to understand the distinct way they think, act and talk. Obviously every corporation’s CEO is somewhat unique, but if you read the many books written by CEOs and former CEOs, watch their interviews on TV, or listen their speeches on corporate web sites, you can learn to at least talk like a CEO by identifying and understanding their common language. Certainly recent books by Jack Welsh, Lou Gerstner and Larry Bossidy are excellent examples of how CEOs think and talk. After meeting them, listening to their speeches, and reading their books it is clear to me that most CEOs at the very least expect (and many in fact demand) that everyone in their organization begin to think and act just like them. Unfortunately, when you shift your attention to HR, you find that almost no one talks and acts like a CEO. If you go the next step down and look at corporate recruiting, you invariably find that most managers of corporate recruiting (and corporate recruiters in particular) fail to talk and act like a CEO does. Of course, these individuals frequently call themselves “business partners” or strategic individuals. But the fact is that you could tell immediately that they are not like CEOs just by their talk alone. Even though few corporate recruiters have had the opportunity to meet and spend time with their CEO, only a very small percentage of recruiting professionals ever take the time to identify the way they think and talk by reading their books, their speeches, or their strategic memos. Obviously, it is not possible for every corporate recruiter to act strategically all of the time. But the very least that recruiters and recruiting managers should do is to learn to talk like a CEO. It’s important in business to “walk the talk” (a famous CEO refrain) but if you can’t always “walk the talk” you should at least learn to “talk the talk.” This article is designed to educate you about how CEO’s think and talk and how you can take that information and use it to change the way that you, as a corporate recruiter, think, act and talk. Incidentally, I have purposely excluded executive recruiters from this lesson because they almost invariably already talk like CEOs. Because they charge such high fees and they often work directly with senior executives, they long ago realized that they couldn’t have a high success rate if they didn’t both “walk the talk” and” talk the talk.” In order to think and act like a CEO, fortunately you don’t need to copy their language or actions exactly. Many CEOs cuss like sailors in private, are staunch Republicans, or wear $2,000 suits. In my experience, none of these traits are required in order to be successful at lower levels of the business. There are, however, numerous CEO attributes that you can emulate. Show Me the Money CEOs understand that the language of business is money. They see everything in dollars; every sentence they use contains dollars. If you don’t believe that money is the language of CEOs, visit a senior management meeting or read the annual report. You will quickly see that the one common denominator that permeates every discussion ó whether it be about the performance of a department or project ó is dollars. One example of this laser focus on dollars is the fact that employees at Microsoft have described meetings with senior management as “math camp.” It’s also important to recognize that, in addition to dollars, CEOs love numbers. For example, market share, time to market, and inventory turnover, can all be expressed in numbers. CEOs live and die by the numbers. However, if they are given a choice as they prefer to use the one common denominator that connects all disciplines and business units, and that is dollars. Comparing “dislike” numbers is difficult but if you convert every number to dollars, you reach a level that everyone can understand. For example, in HR, you could report that your turnover rate is 3% using a number alone. However, you can make that number more powerful when you convert it to dollars by stating that the revenue impact to the firm of the 14% differential in turnover (between the industry average 17% and your firms turnover rate of 3%) results in increased revenues of $70 million a year! Any department or any senior manager will understand a $70 million increase in revenue ó but only within HR will they understand the importance of 17% turnover rates. To a CEO there are two types of money. This can be illustrated by looking at the formula for return on investment. The word “investment” in the formula stands for costs and the word return stands for the increased revenue, as a result of that investment. CEOs know that any accountant can cut costs, but it takes a truly innovative person to increase revenue. This is true because increasing revenue requires you to succeed in an incredibly competitive marketplace. Cutting costs requires no great products, no great customer service, and no innovation or creativity of any kind. In addition, almost all CEO’s believe that once they have a superior product that increases their market share and total revenues (top line), they can eventually increase profits (the bottom line) by raising prices, through gains in economies of scale or even cost efficiencies. Rather than focusing on cost alone, CEOs prefer to focus on the overall return from the reinvestment. Cutting costs might impress the CFO, but what really impresses the CEO is using the resources you have to create a higher rate of return’s than any other department (whether it be an overhead department or a P&L unit). In short, ROI is what they expect. Lessons Learned Corporate recruiters and many people in HR speak of filling requisitions, cost per hire, time to fill, and even occasionally, the quality of hire. These are all interesting terms, but none utilize the language of CEOs; all are focused on process, not on results or dollars. Great recruiters talk about, measure, and improve business results in a variety of areas including:
Dateline Chicago, October 2004, HR Technology Conference This is a story of missed opportunities, lack of vision, not enough courage, and hope for the future. For the hope part, I’ll reach back to Ben Franklin’s pivotal role in shaping the United States. There is a lesson to be learned from his early efforts to unite 13 colonies to achieve economic and political power. The moral: Too much independence leads to anarchy, not enough independence to bureaucracy. In our world, we need to find a middle ground in order to get more from technology. Human Resource Executive’s annual HR Technology conference is an event every recruiter and recruiting manager should attend. For one reason, you need to know what’s happening. For another, your voice needs to be heard. Technology is the key to making hiring top talent a systematic business process. Unfortunately, having just spent the day talking with some of the most HR technology savvy people around, it became clear that this industry has little direction. My hope for a technology solution to make hiring top talent a systematic process is not progressing as rapidly as necessary. In my mind, this is the fault of the users of technology — you the customer, not the vendors. By and large the vendors here can do whatever is necessary to make their technology work wonders. They just need more guidance and direction. But let me set up the big picture first on how technology solutions evolve. Stay with me on this, because you’re part of this Darwinian-like story. It has to do with survival of the fittest. Great technology emerges through a give-and-take struggle between great technology and great customers. Each is fighting for their voice to be heard. This is how next-day package-delivery service came into being through the extensive use of bar codes. This is how Wal-Mart’s crossing docking system emerged as the way to minimize the need for physical locations. This is how factories figured out to produce Six Sigma quality. The technologists could not have had the rapid acceptance and achieved the outstanding performance of their offerings without great customers pushing and challenging them every step of the way. Somehow these great technology-savvy customers are missing when it comes to recruiting solutions. The Good At the show, two vendors stood out as great examples of meeting customer needs. The first one, WetFeet, an ATS vendor, has just announced among its offerings their interview scheduling module. This simple solution allows candidates to automatically schedule their own interviews without recruiter involvement. The process was designed to meet the needs of it’s largest customer, Federated Department Stores, to minimize the time required to hire 30,000 or so people each year. The big bottleneck was manually scheduling interviews. In the first week alone, 1,100 interviews were scheduled without a person involved. This represented a 30% to 40% time-savings alone. This is just a small example of how a customer pushed a technology vendor to another level of performance. How many of you have gotten your ATS vendor to solve some of your difficult productivity challenges like this? Aside from scheduling interviews, another big time-consuming task is looking through resumes, separating the good from the bad. Each ATS vendor has a resume filtering solution, some better than others. Unfortunately, even for the better solutions, user adoption rates are generally low. Rarely do more than 30% to 40% of recruiters use the searching functionality properly. Looking through the resumes of unqualified solutions is both unnecessary and more time consuming than scheduling interviews. The solution offered by People Filter is worth checking out. They’ve combined a robust search engine with a marketing approach to induce less active candidates to apply. Their search engine does a good job of separating the good from the bad. The system then sends an automatic email to each good candidate with a compelling offer to apply online filling in a short questionnaire. The combination of a few relevant questions and a conceptual search engine quickly gives recruiters a short list of the top people to call. The beauty of this is the staged processing. Asking less active candidates to do anything more than email a resume in the first step is inviting them to opt-out. People Filter asks them to opt-in with a compelling message. This is an example of great technology combined with great marketing. The Bad and the Ugly In my mind, too many of the top ATS vendors have taken their eyes off the target. Improving the effectiveness of their systems to increase recruiter productivity and improve the quality of candidates should be the goals. However, many seem more interested in improving the processing speed of unnecessary functionality (e.g., posting bad ads faster), offering more of the same inefficiencies with different languages, or going off in different directions entirely. Some vendors, for example, are adding performance management capability, some have launched a searching arm, others are moving into the contingency labor market, or the exempt market, and others have offered outsourcing options. At one level this problem is attributed to the ATS business model itself. The market is just not big enough to support all of the vendors, and there is no one vendor that appears will ever dominate the market. Even the largest ATS vendors are relatively small, $50 million in annual revenues, so growth must be in new product offerings, not market share. I don’t see things getting better. The market is too fragmented for any one vendor or one customer to dominate. Actually some of the big ERP vendors like PeopleSoft and SAP could be stronger, but their offerings seem to be lacking at this time. I attribute part of this problem to the lack of a strong technology-savvy customer base to lead the vendors to better solutions. Good customers can drive better and better solutions each year. This is not happening. This represents a major opportunity for you to participate and help add direction to the industry. The Opportunity Despite the portends of doom, there is hope. This is where Ben Franklin comes into the picture. He was the first of the founding fathers who advocated more unity among the colonies. His “Join, or Die” cartoon (the one with the snake cut in pieces) was the start of a vigorous campaign in the 1750s pushing the idea that the colonies would not survive as independent states. The relevant point here is that recruiters and companies alone will have little impact on how recruiting technology will advance. However, groups of recruiters and companies can have great power to shape the future. You need to get yourself and your companies involved is the technology evolution. Here are a few ideas on how to start.
I recently read an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (Friday, October 15, 2004) about using graphology as a hiring tool. A bespectacled lady wearing a business suit was photographed carefully examining a written document with a magnifying glass. It looked very professional. The article stated that graphology:
It seems that we are going to remain in a slowly growing talent market for some time. The unemployment rate has hovered around 5.5%, give or take a tenth of a point or two, for almost a year. Pundits have predicted that job growth would return to robust levels for months, but there is almost no evidence of that happening. The reason employers haven’t hired more people is because productivity levels are amazingly high. People are working smarter and harder, and technology is finally being applied where it counts. People are also opting to be their own bosses more frequently than ever. Free agents make up about a third of the workforce. The self-employed, using technology and the Internet, are able to generate revenue without employees or much capital. We won’t see massive increases in hiring demand until some new technology breakthroughs occur (such as what happened when the semiconductor and the Internet were invented) or until the baby boomer retirements start in earnest. What we will see instead is a gradual ramp up ó as well a closer look on the economics and value of having an internal corporate recruiting function. Many organizations will move the function outside the organization unless internal recruiters understand some basic facts about this marketplace and the times we live in. Fact #1: The market is a ruthless judge of value. Many organizations are now seeing value (less cost, more quality) in moving services outside. The growth in employment revenues is moving to recruitment process outsourcing firms and strategic employment agencies. The most successful of these leverage technology and have built processes that are fast, efficient, and cheap to execute. All the big players in business process outsourcing, including EDS, IBM, Accenture, and others, have growing recruitment process outsourcing functions. They promise to find people faster and cheaper than internal recruiters can. Corporate recruiters lag behind and need to figure out how they can re-engineer their functions and apply technology so they can execute as fast, as cheaply, and at a higher level of quality. If they can’t or don’t, their services will outsourced. Fact #2: The Internet changes everything. Successful recruiting has always relied on two factors: knowledge about where talented people are located and the ability to screen and sell that talent. Getting to know candidates used to require lots of legwork, hours on the telephone, attendance at meetings, shows, and professional organizations, and a big network of friends and colleagues who would refer people to you. Screening required interviewing skills and intimate knowledge of the organization’s needs. And the really good recruiters were excellent salespeople. They could convince candidates on the merits of jobs and hiring managers on the merits of candidates. The Internet makes finding candidates fairly painless. Most recruiters have at least rudimentary skills when it comes to sourcing. Some are downright expert. Monster and other job boards have educated candidates about how to become known to recruiters and most candidates have an online presence of some sort. Corporate websites, while woefully inadequate for the most part, at least exist and periodically gather thousands of prospective candidates. They need to be more focused on marketing and on educating candidates on the benefits the organization offers. They should also become the conduit for screening and assessment and for all candidate communication. The Internet makes it possible to apply technology to most aspects of the recruiting cycle and is truly the hub of all efficient recruiting processes. Fact #3: Corporate recruiters have the same access to potential candidates as agencies. I think we can all agree that potential access to candidates via technology is uniformly the same to everyone these days. The differentiators are the recruiter’s skill at using the Internet and at establishing electronic relationships with candidates. Corporate recruiters are actually at an advantage because they can create relationships with candidates who have sought them out and are interested in their particular company or product/service area. By using email, instant messaging, blogs, employee referrals, and a host of other emerging technologies, recruiters can initiate and nurture great candidate relationships over time and space. Fact #4: Corporate recruiting is more about the inside than the outside. While most recruiters focus on candidate relationships and sourcing, which are indeed important functions, they neglect the internal issues companies face. Corporate recruiters have to intimately understand the inside of their organizations. What makes the place tick? What are the key business strategies? Where is the organization heading over the next three to five years? What kinds of talent are critical and hard to find? This in-depth knowledge, combined with taking time to build strong relationships with hiring managers and employees, will pay off with increased credibility and the consequential success that will ensue. Candidates you submit will be respected because they have come through you. Your opinion will count and be listened to. By spending too much time looking out, you erode the critical and fragile relationships that differentiate you from the agency recruiter. With smoldering demand and a corporate focus on efficiency, you will have to offer everything an outside source can offer, and more. You will have to leverage internal relationships, build your personal credibility, apply technology, and make sure you process for recruiting is as simple and cost effective as it can be.
Diversity recruiting has long been a hot topic in the HR community. In recent years, it’s also become one of increasing interest among senior corporate leaders from companies large and small as well. For some corporate leaders the issue of diversity recruiting is still one largely driven by politics, while for others the motivation is purely economic in nature. From the perspective of a corporate advisor, there are many proven economic, legal, and social reasons to maintain a diverse workforce, many of which have been discussed and debated thoroughly on the Internet. This article does not intend to rehash the subject of why, but rather tackle a roadblock that has many corporate diversity initiatives returning less than lackluster results. All Recruiting Sources Are Not Equal Given the fact that the working population of the U.S. has become more diverse in recent years, you would think that it should be easier to recruit and retain a diverse workforce. Unfortunately for many corporations, diversity recruiting is a never-ending fishing expedition that continues to yield undersized fish. Newspaper advertisements, once the standard tool for driving all types of applicants to a firm, now produce only a trickle of applicants that often leave you wondering if the applicants even read the ad before submitting their resumes. Diversity job fairs pool great entry-level candidates together, but often fail to deliver when it comes to the ever-elusive professional-level diverse candidate. When it comes down to identifying which source of hire truly produces the greatest volume of professional-level diverse candidates, the numbers speak for themselves: referral programs rein supreme. And therein lies a problem. Employee Referral’s Achilles Heal Like most systems, employee referral programs have an inherent weakness that if not addressed significantly reduces both the quality and quantity of output, or in this case, top-performing diverse candidates. The weakness that bogs down so many referral programs is that they rely upon an employee to articulate and communicate to potential applicants why they might want to consider joining your firm. If you don’t immediately see why this is a problem, consider trying this simple test:
Let’s have a no-holds-barred interview shootout. Winner takes all. But first, the fine print. Let’s establish the selection criteria. For starters, we must recognize that the interview process has multiple objectives. Certainly, assessing candidate competency is one aspect. Assessing candidate motivation is another, and in many ways it’s more important even than measuring competency. Too many interviewing methods ignore what is clearly the dominant trait of all top performers: motivation to excel at the work required. Recruiting the candidate is a third objective of the interview. This means demonstrating to the candidate the professionalism of the company, highlighting the leadership and management skills of the hiring manager, and presenting the job as a positive career move. Most interviewing approaches suggest doing this after the formal interview is completed, when they then instruct the interviewer to “sell” the candidate. If the people who write and sell these interviews systems ever had to recruit a top person, they’d know that by then it’s too late. The other key (and never discussed) aspect of the interview is who is being interviewed. The assumption is that the same interview can be used for entry-level or senior management positions, and everything in between. For purposes of this wild-and-wooly shootout, we’ll divide the common interviewing techniques into a few broad groups. As you review these descriptions, see which best describes the one used most often in your company. The Unstructured Superficial Interview This type of interview skims the surface, asking a lot of questions but not gathering much information about the candidate. Since the superficial questions change for each candidate, it has very little predictive value. Candidates are generally judged on presentation skills, not performance. When you judge candidates based on skills (the resume being the primary selection device determining who was interviewed) and personality, there is a tendency to hire people who are partially competent and partially motivated. The partially competent aspect comes into play because the candidate’s skills and experiences weren’t evaluated against real job needs. The partially motivated aspect occurs because the candidate’s motivation wasn’t really evaluated. When managers complain about a candidate’s work performance with the excuse, “But the person said he would do the work,” you’ve experienced this problem first hand. There is also a tendency to overpay if the person is a “wow!” candidate ó one who makes a great first impression and is poised, confident, etc. In this case, the hiring manager tends to quickly go into sales mode, talking too much and learning even less about the candidate. This puts the bargaining strength in the candidate’s hand. Overall, this type of interview will result in a good hire in about one in four cases, but it’s all random luck. Worse, the best candidate is rarely hired. (Email me at lou@adlerconcepts.com if you’d like to discuss the actual Hunter and Schmidt research on this.) The Structured Superficial Interview Just by asking the same irrelevant questions of everyone, you’ll do far better than asking different irrelevant questions. Adding structure to an interview is an important element of interviewing design. The real benefit here is to increase objectivity. The number one reason for bad hiring decisions is the tendency for managers to make emotional decisions based on invalid information. This includes things like first impressions, personality, style, and similar soft traits. My estimate is that about 30% to 50% of all hiring mistakes are made due to lack of objectivity. Even a bad structured interview will prevent many of these. This type of interview will minimize major hiring mistakes and improve to one in three the likelihood that a good person will get hired. Sometimes this will even be the best person. The Structured, Not Superficial Interview A good structured interview consists of conducting a comprehensive work history review for all candidates. When this is combined with proactive techniques to reduce interviewer bias, interviewing accuracy can increase significantly. The work history itself reveals trends, consistency in work habits, areas of specialization and excellence, and potential problems. If you ask about recognition received at each job you’ll also gain a quick sense of where the candidate fits on the weak to top performer scale, since top people get lots of recognition throughout their careers (e.g., promotions, bigger raises, bonuses, awards, better assignments, etc.). Asking a few situational questions can also help add insight into thinking and planning skills. The more relevant this is to the job, the more value this type of question has. For example, asking, “What type of animal is most like you?” is less useful than asking a candidate how he or she would go about solving a job-related issue (e.g., “How would you handle this type of customer?”). The latter gets at job-related thinking skills, which have been shown to represent about 25% of overall performance. In general, this type of structured interview ó especially when interviewer bias is controlled ó will improve hiring results to better than 50/50. In addition, the person selected will often be the best, since first impressions have not influenced the selection. The Behavioral and/or Competency-Based Interview The typical behavioral event interview relies on the STAR interviewing technique. In this case, the interviewer asks the person to describe a specific trait, e.g., team skills, by having the candidate give an example of a relevant situation, define the task, describe the action taken, and describe the result. If the behaviors and competencies are accurately determined by a detailed job analysis, this technique can help improve overall interviewing results. But this type of interview does nothing to help the recruiting process. In some ways, this approach can even be misleading for a couple of reasons. First, past behavior is NOT a good predictor of future behavior if the job is different. For example, someone showing initiative in one job might not show initiative in another for a variety of reasons: different boss, different team, different culture, different type of work, or different circumstances. Another related problem is that most interviewers don’t probe deeply enough to find out the cause of the behavior. This type of interview does, however, improve overall interviewing effectiveness, since it increases objectivity, and it does give insight into core behaviors (the most important: initiative and team skills). This type of interview is more valuable for lower-level positions. Research shows that when combined with a work history review, a behavioral interview is about 60% to 65% effective in predicting on-the-job performance. However, this means it’s 35% to 40% ineffective ó and even less effective for higher level or more complex jobs. The Performance-Based Behavioral Interview This is the interview methodology I’ve been advocating for the past umpteen years. It combines the best of all of the above interviews into one simple-to-learn methodology. The key to controlling interviewer bias is to measure first impressions at the end of the interview. When managers are required to compare their initial reaction to the candidate to an objective assessment of first impressions at the end of the interview, emotions are held in check. Conducting a comprehensive work history review in the beginning of an interview adds structure and insight. By getting candidates to describe their major team and individual accomplishments at each job, it’s far easier to compare competency and motivation to actual job needs. In essence, the STAR behavioral interviewing methodology is used multiple times within each accomplishment. Digging deeper is the key to success here. It allows the interviewer to better understand how a combination of behaviors and competencies were used to achieve actual results. This way, changes in behavior and personal growth can be observed over time as candidates mature and develop. The key to making this type of interviewing methodology work is the use of a performance profile (which describes what that person needs to do) rather than a traditional job description (which describes what the person needs to have). Overall, this type of interviewing methodology is about 75% to 80% effective in predicting on-the-job success. This is primarily attributed to a direct matching of a candidate’s competency and his or her motivation to handle real job needs. In addition, top candidates are easier to hire without paying unnecessary salary premiums, since they can quickly see the opportunity and stretch in the job by the types of fact-finding questions asked. (Download a copy of my recommended performance-based interview to try it out.) If you add a test of mental ability and some type of validated personality profile after the interview, you’ll be able to increase the overall predictability of any of these interviewing methods. To minimize hiring mistakes even more, combine this with rigorous reference checking and a background check. Since I’m the judge here, there’s no question in my mind about what is the best interviewing approach to use. However, if you’re making lots of hiring mistakes, the problem might not even be due to bad interviewing. It could be lack of enough good candidates being seen. When hiring managers are forced to settle on less-than-qualified people, their first reaction is that the interviewing process is flawed. More often than not, the problem is really weak sourcing. Under these circumstances, managers just don’t have any choice as they mutter to themselves and hire the “least worst” person available. That’s why hiring needs to be seen from a strategic rather than a tactical perspective. Being strategic means understanding the cause of the problem before implementing a solution. Good interviewing skills won’t help bad sourcing. So to win this shootout, you first need to figure out what you’re aiming at.
Jack has always followed two general approaches when making contact with a candidate. The first contact is always a phone call to do an initial screen and “gut” assessment. The second contact, assuming there is one, is an interview. There may be a phone call or two, or even an email, to set up the interview; but that is often left to his assistant. Although new technologies have become common, Jack has not really incorporated them into his day-to-day routine. Jack says he doesn’t use email as a primary contact tool because it is too impersonal and because many senior-level candidates like the personal touch of a phone call. It is also very hard for him to assess a candidate, he says, using email. He needs to hear their voice and get a sense of how they respond to questions he asks. Experts in psychology agree that an experienced recruiter like Jack can probably get a sense of a candidate’s verbal acuity and personality from a phone call, but not much else. On the negative side, they can also most likely determine a candidate’s race and national origin, which may lead to the screening out of good candidates. No matter how hard we try, personal prejudice always colors how we regard candidates. The other problem with phone calls is that they take too much time. The average call probably takes around 25 to 30 minutes, if you connect with the candidate at all. When you don’t immediately connect, a game of “phone tag” often takes place, which wastes more time. One or two emails, combined with a screening process, can save hours of time and increase your efficiency. Research shows that almost everyone is using email. The Digital Future Report*, Surveying the Digital Future, Year Four, which was recently published by the University of Southern California, shows that more than 76% of Americans have access to the Internet and that 90% of them have email and use it. This means that almost 72% of Americans have access to both the Internet and email on a regular basis. The same report also shows a 300% increase in the use of broadband (cable and DSL) in the home since 2000. The Internet is slowly replacing television as the way we receive news and other information, and is a primary communication tool. People are clearly using the Internet as a means of job searching, as a way of communicating with friends and family, and as way to stay in touch across the miles. Telephony is important and remains a powerful communications tool, but the Internet is catching up. The fear of someone getting information about you and other privacy issues are often brought up as a reason to not use the Internet or email. Although many of the survey respondents did have some concerns over the privacy of their personal data on the Internet, that concern has steadily dropped over the three years the study has asked about it. So what does this mean for a recruiter? It means you can find, connect with, communicate with, and even screen candidates without a phone call. Organizations that have put together quality recruiting websites and that work to develop relationships are finding that more and more good candidates are coming to them through this website. When you add to the site online screening and assessment technologies, you get fewer, but much more qualified, candidates to communicate with. Websites are very popular with candidates and are the first place most serious job seekers go to learn about new positions, an organization, or a product or service. About 74% of the survey respondents felt that the data found on corporate and government websites was credible. While I have no actual to data to back me up, I believe the average recruiter has a much lower credibility when it comes to describing a position or explaining what an organization does on the phone. Technology can alert you to candidates who are exceptionally qualified by sending you an email with information about the candidate from their profile. You can then send the candidate an email, an instant message, or pick up the phone. Candidates that I speak with are not troubled at all with email, and many prefer it. They may have questions to ask to get more details about a position or they may just want to know what the status of the position is. Email can provide this with speed and clarity. There are many other communication tools that are enabled by the Internet. All of them can play a role in your recruiting process and can reduce wasted time and costs. For example, recruiters can put together a “webinar,” or seminar given over the web, for a group of interested candidates. None of them has to know the other is there. You, as a recruiter, can touch numerous candidates at the same time with information about a position, your organization, or whatever else is of interest. Or you can have all of the candidates be aware of one another and establish a session with discussion. This will give you insight into the candidates you will not get with any other method. With this tool, you can invite senior management to say a few words or you can show a short video. The possibilities are really only limited by your imagination. Emerging technologies allow candidates to self-schedule interviews and provide them up-to-date information on their status. Interviews can be conducted by video from a number of sources, including Kinko’s Copy Centers. The possibilities to begin utilizing technology to ease your workload, improve efficiency, and save costs are potentially huge. The telephone looks very 20th century, very old-fashioned and is less and less useful everyday.
*The Digital Future Report, Surveying the Digital Future, Year 4, USC Annenberg School, Center for the Digital Future, 2004.
In Part 1 of this series, we examined the ill-conceived and irrational hope that you can improve employee morale with just a program. Whether “program” means a half-day seminar on morale, a company picnic, or a process for handing out goodies like t-shirts and mugs with your company logo on them, such approaches are not the answer to building employee morale. What they typically do, instead, is lead to an increasingly cynical and disenfranchised workforce, who see management as not “getting it.” In this segment, we’ll examine four real principles you can use to guide your morale building efforts. Goodies, Gimmicks, and Gala Events Are the Frosting, not the Cake Although goodies, gimmicks, and gala events aren’t the solution to improved morale, they do have a place in morale-building efforts. They’re appropriate when done as part of a larger effort, when they don’t replace the hard work that needs to take place. Organizations known for having a great workplace frequently put on a variety of fun events and special programs, often showering employees with various goodies. These programs and perks work for them because they’re an honest representation of how management feels about, and treats, employees day in and day out. Managers in these companies recognize that such programs and perks are the frosting on the cake, and not the cake itself. They understand that the “cake” is their employees’ work experience. For these organizations, generous perks, gala events, fun programs are a congruent manifestation of the ongoing relationship between labor and management, and a congruent extension of their employees’ work experience. Returning to the example from Part 1 of giving a partner a special gift, if the relationship isn’t good, such a gift is seen as missing the point (“I don’t want an expensive gift. I want to spend time together!”) and perhaps even a transparent manipulation. But if that special gift is a natural expression of a special relationship, it both communicates and strengthens the good in the relationship. As you develop a strategy to improve morale, don’t make goodies, gimmicks, and gala events the centerpiece of your strategy. See these things for what they are: the frosting, not the cake. It’s the Little Things, and Every Little Thing Matters Morale is not improved by a one-time, dramatic display of appreciation. Morale is improved ó or damaged ó one interaction at a time. Every time employees interact with their manager, it’s a moment of truth. Every time they interact with their employer, whether in the form of a company-wide policy or communication, it’s a moment of truth. Just as in customer service, each moment of truth affects how the organization is perceived. The sum total of these moments of truth determine how the employee feels about his or her employer. Each moment of truth matters. Thus, instead of focusing on one time events and dramatic displays of concern and appreciation, your management team needs to think small. They need to focus on those simple day-to-day encounters, which, although they might seem insignificant, through their cumulative effect do in fact determine morale. In the words of branding expert Scott Bedbury, you want your managers to understand that “everything matters.” It matters whether a manager notices the good things an employee does or just notices their mistakes. It matters whether a manager asks employees for their input before making a decision that impacts their daily work or just goes ahead and makes the change, expecting employees to just deal with it. It matters whether managers get back to employees promptly about their requests or have to be repeatedly pursued for an answer. It matters whether managers say “thank you” when employees go the extra mile, or instead just take it for granted. In short, everything matters. Every manager needs to be more focused on the many moments of truth that build or destroy morale. It’s important to help managers understand this for two reasons. First, with most people being overloaded with work, it’s natural for managers to sprint through the day without taking time to consider the impact of their interactions. The phrase “everything matters” helps them remember the importance of paying attention to each interaction and giving it their best. Second, because most people are unlikely to give their boss negative feedback, managers never realize the negative impact of mishandled moments of truth. Because they don’t get that feedback, they don’t receive evidence that everything matters. Thus, by helping managers make “everything matters” a mantra, it helps them become more alert to, and mindful of, the many little moments of truth each day brings, and increases the odds that the outcome of each will be morale-building instead of morale-destroying. Most of the Answers Are Within You and Your Workforce The answer to improving morale in your company doesn’t come from the latest management fad. It doesn’t come from giving every employee copies of Who Moved My Cheese or making them watch a Fish! video. The answer comes from you and your workforce. Because each company has a unique culture and a unique set of problems that cause diminished morale, no off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all, quick-fix solution will address the unique challenges and needs your organization faces. Furthermore, trying to force a pre-packaged solution onto employees usually backfires. No one likes to have things forced on them. We do, however, like to be involved in solving problems. Creating a homegrown, customized solution for low morale obviously requires finding out the causative factors. Rather than guessing what they are, just ask. Just as importantly, make sure you don’t ask unless you are truly willing to do something with the feedback you receive. Doing something with the feedback doesn’t mean inviting employees to give you a big wish list of what they want and then having management scurry about trying to figure out how to grant every wish. Doing something with the feedback means honestly considering the issues raised, differentiating between critical themes and idiosyncratic complaints, fixing the problems that are leading to low morale, and keeping employees apprised of the status of the various issues you’re examining. I like what they do at Stonyfield Farm, the New Hampshire yogurt company, to keep employees apprised of issues raised. They post a chart that lists various employee issues and suggestions and indicates where in the process each issue currently is, whether it’s waiting to be explored, being researched, being implemented, or not going to be implemented and why. Addressing the factors leading to low morale also means involving employees in generating solutions. Because everything matters, just the fact that you involve employees in generating solutions wins you at least a few morale brownie points. Involving employees in coming up with solutions shows you respect them. It taps into people’s need to matter ó to be a player and not just a hired hand ó as well as the innate drive to solve problems, two factors that strongly impact morale. Be Willing to Look in the Mirror If there’s a morale problem, there’s a leadership problem. The problem is, when things aren’t going well, it’s human nature to look outside ourselves for the cause. If you’re a manager, especially a senior manager, have you asked yourself, “What am I doing that might be contributing to ó or even driving ó low morale?” If you yourself are contributing to low morale, chances are good that no one has told you that you are. Most employees realize criticizing their boss isn’t exactly the fast track to success. Thus most bosses never hear about the many things they inadvertently do that frustrate, annoy, anger, and alienate their staff. They continue to unwittingly damage morale, and wonder why they’re plagued by high turnover or employee problems. Because power brings immunity from feedback, you will need to actively seek out feedback if you’re truly serious about improving morale. You will need to ask for feedback and learn how to make it safe for people to respond honestly. Approaches and tools that can yield useful information include the many leadership assessment tools available, 360-degree survey tools, having HR or an external consultant interview people you deal with, and executive coaching. Conclusion If you want to improve employee morale, remember that goodies, gimmicks, and gala events are not the answer. They’re the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The cake is an intrinsically rewarding work experience. To find out how you can create an intrinsically rewarding work experience, ask your employees. Then work together with them to make it a reality. You can also learn how to create a more intrinsically rewarding work experience by applying the wealth of information now available about what factors and practices make the biggest difference in terms of employee morale and productivity.
Being a corporate recruiter is a thankless job. It requires staying on top of tons of paperwork; keeping up to date with a myriad of federal, state, and local regulations; and worst of all, working with an endless line of unappreciative managers. With very few exceptions, managers treat recruiters like a necessary evil. More often than not, they view reading resumes and setting up interviews as something akin to getting a root canal. Managers make recruiters’ lives difficult because they are frequently unclear about what they want in a candidate, and invariably they select someone who doesn’t meet half of the requirements they originally set forth as essential. In short, being a corporate recruiter and working with “managers from hell” isn’t a lot of fun. Sure we’ll do it. But would you recommend the job to your son or daughter? If you’ve ever had an opportunity to work directly with line managers outside of the human resources function, then you know that some of the things they say about corporate recruiters are less than flattering. But from an external advisor’s point of view, this kind of manager is not only wrong in their assessment, but also often themselves the root cause of most recruiting problems. I find it interesting and troubling at the same time that many corporate recruiters take so much crap from managers. Perhaps they do so in hopes of one day establishing a trusted relationship with them, or perhaps they are just too passive in accepting the lack of responsiveness and rude treatment often dished up by managers. If you’re tired of this lack of accountability, you must adopt a more forceful approach, and when necessary, put the manager in their place. This article outlines several approaches that recruiting managers have successfully implemented to shift the burden of responsibility back where it belongs. Other Administrative Professionals Get Treated Better There are many back-office professionals that who much less grief from line managers than recruiters. For example, when a line manager tells someone in finance that they want to do something outside the boundaries of normal financial practices, finance managers tell them no. When a line manager tells someone in IT that they want to change their computer system beyond the acceptable limits, they are told no. The same behavior can often be found in purchasing, travel, and even corporate security. When these professionals tell line managers that they must operate within the standards of the department, there is little discussion. Managers adhere to these standards because they believe them to be necessary. They further believe the person enforcing the rules is an expert who knows the best way to get things done. Corporate recruiting could learn several valuable lessons from these other functions. If corporate recruiters want to increase their level of respect and be treated the same way, they must act differently than they do today. Corporate recruiters must:
In the past few weeks I’ve written about two seemingly unrelated issues ó the shift in corporate America to emphasizing the hiring of less-active candidates, and how to assess executive potential in up-and-coming managers. The first article highlighted the need for applicant tracking systems (ATS) to improve the suite of candidate relationship management services companies use. Less active candidates have different needs than active candidates (two examples: more information with respect to how the job ties into the business strategy, and implementing a continuing dialogue of the status of major company hiring initiatives), and a properly designed ATS can automate much of this. The second article indicated that one of the important traits that senior line executives need to possess is the ability to use technology to more efficiently manage and scale business processes. Such business functions as distribution, sales, and manufacturing have been able to use technology to provide profound improvements in performance. HR/recruiting hasn’t seen had the same IT/process improvement benefit. In my opinion, not many HR managers truly understand how IT can impact business performance. This is why few get promoted to business unit management positions and why even the best ATSs are not as effective as they could be. This could be sheer speculation on my part. So to prove the point, I’d like you to take this quick assessment of how well your ATS measures up against the best, and how much it’s costing you every day. A low score across many companies will prove my point that HR/Recruiting and IT don’t mix. One clue you might have a problem: low user adoption rates. If you don’t have at least two-thirds of your recruiters properly using the major features of your ATS, you’re wasting lots of time and too much money. More important, you’re not hiring all of the top people you should be. The ATS Performance Evaluation Where do you stand on these important measures? 1. Recruiter adoption rates
Interviewer: We are speaking today with world-famous HR test expert, Dr. Vladimir Blotov. Welcome, Dr. Blotov. Vladimir Blotov: Hello. Let’s not stand on formality. Please, call me Vlad. Interviewer: Okay, Vlad. I couldn’t help but notice you continually misspell the word “validation” as “vladation.” What’s up? Vlad: Ho! Ho! Ho! Vladation is not misspelled, my dyslexic friend! “Vladation” is much superior to the traditional forms of assessment validation. Vladation is the same as validation… only it’s different. Validation is too complicated. Vladation is much preferred by organizations! Interviewer: Interesting. I must admit I am new to the field, Vlad. What is the difference between validation and vladation? Vlad: Well, try to follow along and I will explain. Vladation has several components that set it apart from so-called validation. First, vladation is not taught in accredited universities. Second, I support vladation data with personal testimony. Third, I only use high and low producer averages, not egghead statistics. Finally, my clients like to keep things simple. Interviewer: You raise some interesting questions. Why do you suppose vladation is not taught in universities? Vlad: Simple! People prefer to base decisions on their own experiences. They don’t want to get involved in high-brow, fancy-dancy number-crunching and research papers. Besides, they might have to change their minds after reading all that research stuff. Mind-changing is hard work. My system makes intuitive sense. Were you ever enrolled in a special-ed class? Interviewer: Isn’t the purpose of a test, Vlad, to evaluate an applicant’s ability to perform a job? You know, high scores predict high performance; low scores predict low performance…that kind of thing? Vlad: Of course! That’s the beauty of vladation. If the applicant’s scores match an average of high performers, they’re hired! Interviewer: But, group averages tend to hide individual differences. On the average, a person with one foot in a fire and the other in a bucket of ice water is comfortable. Averaging eliminates critical data about individuals in the group. Vlad: What’s your point? Interviewer: If individuals in the high group don’t match their own group average, how can you assume the group average is a legitimate benchmark? Vlad: Yes, yes, a minor technicality. I’ll soon release an impressive computer program that compares how many people in the high average group meet (and do not meet) the group average. It will be written in Widows. Interviewer: Don’t you mean “Windows”? Vlad: No, no. Windows is quite inferior. I developed the Widows operating system to run my proprietary software programs. It’s just like Windows, only different. Interviewer: Okay… Well, I guess that clears things up a bit. As I mentioned, I am not an expert. But why don’t you compare individual’s test scores with individual production? That way you could get a one-to-one comparison. Vlad: Too complicated! I have worked with hundreds of test companies who use vladation to sell tests. Vladation is everywhere! People like it. It must be good! Interviewer: But you are using group data to predict individual performance! That’s stereotyping. How do you justify stereotyping? Vlad: Feedback! Interviewer: Feedback? Vlad: Is there an echo in here? Yes, customer feedback. People tell me vladation works all the time. Interviewer: Do these people conduct scientific studies to confirm whether their personal opinions are legitimate? Vlad: Did I mention we also give them job standards for comparison? Interviewer: I don’t understand. My question was about legitimacy. Now you mention comparative job standards. Are you changing the subject? Vlad: Pay attention. We give clients a set of external standards to compare applicants with. If they don’t like their internal averages, they can use external averages. Brilliant, yes? Interviewer: Doesn’t that imply that the organization’s internal requirements are exactly the same as the external ones? Vlad: You catch on fast. Everyone knows that all sales jobs are identical, all managerial jobs are identical, all engineering jobs are identical, and so forth. Furthermore, when you strip away cultural differences, competitive differences, performance differences, product and service differences, managerial expectations, and organizational mission, every organization is exactly the same! This allows us to compare any and every job with a pseudo-standard (well, we don’t actually call it that). Interviewer: Pseudo-standard? Vlad: There’s that echo again! Sure, pseudo, a fake standard, deceitful practice, or pretense. Don’t you own a dictionary? Interviewer: Yes, I’m afraid I do. If I understand vladation, Vlad, you first compare an applicant’s individual test scores against high and low performing groups within an organization, then you compare them against an external job standard which is also based on group averages. Vlad: Yes! That’s it! You understand vladation! Interviewer: Are you aware that this kind of logic is flawed? It’s like saying that since most engineers are men and most social workers are women, a woman cannot be an engineer and a man cannot be a social worker. Or that since most women have small feet, people with small feet must be women. Educated people have known for hundreds of years that you cannot use group theory to make meaningful one-on-one real-world predictions. They even gave it a name: Aristotelian logic. Vlad: Whoa! Stop with all those university words! I’ll agree that vladation might have a few flaws, but that does not keep it from selling tests. As I said before, I have taught the technique to hundreds of test vendors. They don’t complain about high sales. Our buyers never follow up anyway. What harm can it do? Interviewer: Vlad, I was wondering, what kind of studies did your Ph.D. include? Vlad: Lunar agriculture. Interviewer: If you don’t mind my asking, how does a degree in lunar agriculture qualify you to be a test and selection expert? Vlad: No, I don’t mind. Interviewer: Well? Vlad: Oh, Sorry. I thought you were making a statement. What was your question again?
Around this time of year, as the days get shorter and the weather a bit cooler, I find myself reflecting on the themes and trends that have emerged over the spring and summer. I entered this year thinking that the rebounding economy would create thousands of jobs and that we would be facing significant skill shortages. What has happened instead has been a slow improvement in the job market, with many organizations facing skill shortages, but mostly in very specific professions and areas. Hiring managers are asking for better people in less time, while recruiters are working harder with fewer resources. I have identified below six trends or themes that seem to be topmost in the conversations I have with recruiters. Some of these trends have been written about in other ERE columns and some have been showcased at conferences and seminars. All of them directly or indirectly deal with the struggle to meet customer (hiring manager) demand, while keeping recruiters from getting frustrated and giving up. I have written a short commentary on each of the trends I see. Let’s take a look. 1. A slow but relentless move toward outsourcing Most organizations are not even thinking about outsourcing their recruiting functions. Instead they are using external firms to recruit for the positions that are both high volume or that perform marginally important functions for the organization. Positions frequently outsourced are those of clerk, secretary, sales associate, and customer service representative. In many cases, these positions consumed several recruiters’ time and a significant portion of the recruiting budget. Recruitment process outsourcing (often called RPO) is now on the rise, with more than a dozen firms offering to take over the entire recruiting effort. The best of these firms do it all: they take over your employment branding, website operations, sourcing, marketing, selling, screening, assessment, and all hiring activities from making an offer to onboarding. They eliminate the need for organizations to buy and maintain expensive applicant tracking systems and shift a significant administrative burden outside the firm. The best of these RPO firms are integrating and leveraging an array of technology that includes branding tools, websites, screening and assessment software, applicant tracking, workforce planning, and more. This is a trend that will continue to grow, probably slowly for the next couple of years, and then explode as both the technology and accumulated experience make it economically attractive and successful. 2. Embracing online screening and assessment technologies Many organizations have begun to use online screening questions or simple tests as part of their online application process. Most applicant tacking firms now offer something in the way of screening, but usually nothing very sophisticated. However, this is just the beginning of a trend that will change how we recruit significantly. Over the next year or two, organizations will incorporate more levels of assessment into the initial application process. For example, a person seeking a programming position may be asked to complete a skills test as well as cultural fit assessment. These tests will be wrapped around more complete information about the position than candidates typically get today, so self selection will also become a larger factor in filtering candidates. The e-screening and e-assessment providers have done a good job in simplifying and shortening these tests so that they are more palatable to candidates. Even though the tests themselves may not be as accurate as when they are longer, they provide both candidates and recruiters with a good enough idea of skills and fit to decide whether further assessment is needed. When added to the recruiting website and coupled with the applicant tracking system, these tests provide a powerful, simple, and effective way to reduce large numbers of potential applicants to a manageable size for additional, more personal, assessments. 3. A focus on metrics We can only know how well we are doing after we have defined the outcomes we want and then measured whether or not we achieved them. Recruiters have historically been poor at measurement, and have only recently begun to track basic administrative numbers ó things like costs, dollars spent, and so forth. But the more useful numbers tell us whether or not we are achieving the specific goals that have been established. For example, did the right candidates get hired in the right timeframe? Did the organization have the right person pre-sourced for a critical position so that very little time was spent with a vacancy? These are the kinds of strategic questions that can be answered by carefully tracking what matters. Establishing the critical outcomes and then measuring achievement is a trend that will rapidly unfold over the next year. Every top quality recruiting function will have a set of strategic metrics that get reported to senior management on a regular basis and that forms the basis for future planning and decision making. 4. Retention There is a pervasive fear among hiring professionals that good people are all about to leave their current employers. ERE has hosted a half-dozen articles this year on retention and what to do about it. Over the next year there will be more awareness that retention is a complex issue. Recruiting plays only a small part in the retention equation. More important is the quality of the manager, the success of the organization, the organization’s brand, the quality of fellow employees, the challenge of the specific job, and the openness of the job market. Recruiters need to be aware of how all these factors interact to create a retention-oriented culture or not. Recruiters also need to anticipate that key people will leave and have a replacement strategy in place and pre-sourced candidates ready to go. There will be greater focus on re-recruitment and on recruiting internally for both promotional opportunities and for lateral moves. 5. Changing competencies of recruiters Internal recruiters need to approach their jobs from the perspective of an outside retained or contingent recruiter. They need to ask how they are adding value and where. As technology gets more sophisticated and allows recruiters to spend less time on administrivia, what should recruiters do instead? If candidates can come to the website, learn about the positions and the organization, complete an application, take a screening and assessment battery of tests, and then be short listed immediately, where does the recruiter come into the picture? Do internal recruiters act as project managers for outsourced recruiting functions? Do they source new candidates, assess current ones, or act as a broker between candidates and hiring managers? Or do they do all of these things? Each organization is already in the midst of redefining what a recruiter is and what she does. Smart organizations will raise the bar and force recruiters to be marketers, salespeople, closers, relationship builders, and nurturers all at once. Less-well-run organizations will ask recruiters to continue to act as administrative helpers, low-end candidate screeners, and receptionists for candidates. 6. Social networking software and other “out there” sourcing and candidate relationship technologies A handful of leading-edge recruiters are playing with social networks as a recruiting tool. They are using them as referral engines and as a way to generate the names of happily employed people who may have an interest in another opportunity ó especially when asked by a friend. Likewise there are blogs, instant messaging, chat rooms, forums, and other emerging practices they may or may or may not become important ways to source candidates and nurture relationships. This is an area to watch carefully over the next six months. The real lesson from 2004 is that evolution is far more powerful than revolution. What is happening is that recruiters are slowly embracing, incorporating, integrating, and using tools and processes than have been around for some time. Smart recruiters carefully experiment and slowly incorporate. They also embrace change and realize that nothing ever holds technology back.
Networking has long been an essential part of business. More importantly for some, it’s also been a part of a successful career. According to recent statistics released by the MMC Group, nearly 30% of all external hires are a product of an employee referral, a rate that has steadily climbed since 2000. When one considers that roughly one-third of all the positions filled annually in the U.S. are a direct result of a candidates using professional networks to their advantage, the true value of networking is evident. Historically, the process of networking has been socially enjoyable but frequently tedious, involving luncheons, cocktail parties, and association meetings. While the benefits of such functions are real, they often fall in the middle of a business day and have the ability to sap your productivity for the remainder of that day. Not to dismiss networking in the traditional sense (I am attending one such function later this week), but it has not always been the most effective means of gathering valuable contacts. Anyone who has attended these types of events has certainly met with the dreaded “card-tossers,” attendees who hand out their business cards and credentials in such a flurry that they have no idea whom they have just met and are unable to match a name with a face at the end of the day. In recent months, though, the tide of change has rolled in. Many professionals have now modified their approach to networking and even given up on the traditional method. More and more people are taking their networking online. Websites with names like Ryze, Spoke Software, AlwaysOn, BizTribe, and LinkedIn are taking the desktops of corporate America by storm. These online destinations (I say destinations due to the sheer amount of information available on their pages) have taken networking to the next level by allowing their users to network outside the local business community and on a national, if not global, scale. While most of these websites contain more or less the same nuts and bolts, two of the most popular ó LinkedIn and Spoke Software ó stand out from the pack for numerous reasons. LinkedIn and Spoke Software both enable you to create a vast network of professional and personal connections based on the email addresses saved in your inbox and archived files. Where the two begin to diverge drastically is in how each system uses those addresses. LinkedIn is primarily a web-based application that allows you to select which contacts to invite into your network (by manually entering information or downloading it), with an interface that’s as friendly for a tech novice as it is for an IT guru. Where LinkedIn gets interesting is in the site’s ability to allow you to request contact with connections outside of your own inner circle but still within your network of connections. The whole process is based loosely on the idea of “Six Degrees of Separation” (or for the Generation X readers out there, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”). LinkedIn shines in its ability to allow you to provide and share as much or as little information as you like, even providing the option to “not accept” new contacts. On the flip side, we have Spoke Software. Spoke is a much more robust interface with capabilities that seem to go on forever. Using Spoke, however, requires you to download the application to your PC, which in itself can pose a concern for many users whose company’s have strict computer user policies forbidding the download or installation of software not authorized by the company. If you do decide to go for it and install Spoke onto your system, the program troves your email and collects addresses much like the optional component available with LinkedIn. This is where Spoke takes the process to a whole other level though. Once you have activated your connections list, you can elect to contact your potential connections. The email generated by Spoke implores recipients to reply with their most recent contact information. Up to this point, it all seems harmless, right? Well, recently a colleague of mine installed Spoke Software onto her PC. Within a week, I had personally received at least eight emails requesting my updated contact info, even after I replied to the first email. Unfortunately, mine was not the only inbox barraged with the invitation, which resembled “spam” or the “phishing” schemes I often hear about on the news. It seemed as if everyone she had ever traded emails with ó in addition to everyone in her company, from the president on down to the guy in the mailroom ó had received the same email on multiple occasions as well. The situation escalated to the point where her corporate communications department volunteered to distribute a communication informing the company that the email was related to a technical difficulty currently being addressed and corrected by their IS department. While this incident should be chalked up to a less-than-tech-savvy user, the most alarming and intriguing aspect of Spoke Software is the sheer power of the application. Based on the current version available at the time of this article, a well-versed user has the capability to dig deep into an organization ó even going so far as accessing another user’s archived emails. At a recent seminar regarding this very topic, one user of Spoke boasted at her ability to pull up the names of executives and organizational charts within companies outside of her own, namely her competitors. While this could be seen as a valuable tool to users in the staffing industry, we need to consider the ethical ramifications of such use. If we can pull up this information, what is to stop our competition from doing the same? Networking is a valuable tool, but a tool we need to respect, we need to protect our Rolodex and the impact it could have on our business in the wrong hands. Some important things to consider when making the jump to online networking include:
Whether you’re a corporate or external recruiter, there are four things you must be able to do in order to increase your influence with your hiring manager clients:
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