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During a trip to a suburban mall near Cleveland, I saw a man wearing a jacket with a logo for Hyland Software, a business-to-business software developer whose global headquarters are located nearby. In the B2B world, Hyland has a reputation of being a stellar employer with a fun streak. As evidence, it has a giant tube slide in the middle of its headquarters and has earned several top workplace awards in recent years.

Hyland also has a quirk in its interview process. Candidates applying online are required to write and submit a poem. Not an essay, not a biography — a poem. How does that strike you? keep reading…

Let’s talk about the future of predicting job success and why the world’s biggest evangelist for pre-hire assessments thinks tests are in danger of becoming extinct (and is OK with it).

There are a number of emerging trends in hiring right now that center around the currency of the new millennium: data. The impact of our ability to collect, organize, and interpret data is rapidly changing all areas of the economy. Should employment be any different? There are three ways in which data is slowly killing the employment test as we know it. keep reading…

Practices: The return of talent agents; HR owns M&A; and hiring without degrees

Anyone who tracks advanced trends in talent management knows that many of them  originated in the Silicon Valley. However, you probably also know that many of the publicized practices that start in the Silicon Valley are so unique and even outrageous (like the free Sweets Shop that is part ice cream parlor and bakery at Facebook), that no firm outside of the Valley ever copies them.

The three Silicon Valley practices that I am highlighting today probably won’t require immediate action at your firm, simply because they are so bold and outrageous that conservative talent managers will not even consider them. As a result, I am labeling them “leading edge practices that you should simply be aware of.” keep reading…

You have read all about what to ask in an interview as well as magic questions that will solve all your hiring problems. What about what not to do?

Make no mistake. An interview is not an opportunity to GetToKnowYa, but rather a verbal test. It has subject matter, questions, and answers that are scored. But you need to ask yourself: just exactly what are you testing for? The ability to answer silly questions? Whether you want to be friends? Whether you can trip up or intimidate a candidate? Haven’t you seen the thousands of books candidates read to fake their way through an interview?

How about learning whether the candidate has the right set of job skill s? You know, so you don’t have to waste everyone’s time?

If You Don’t Know What You’re Looking for, Any Question Will Do keep reading…

An IT recruiting tool. An internship community. A new branding/careersite company. A video interviewer.

A website for “challenges” students can take, leading to a job.

And, two big new launches from the applicant tracking company Jobvite.

All below. keep reading…

Startups and new products handling employee referrals, screening, sourcing, background checking, healthcare recruiting, and resume-reading. All below. keep reading…

Since we promote people based on their performance, why don’t we hire them the same way?

Amazon willing, my next book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, will be available as an eBook on January 31. The book is written for everyone involved in hiring: recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates. This story, and many others like it, inspired me to write the book and articles on ERE, and elsewhere. The technique described as part of the intake meeting helped my win the hearts of my clients and make more placements than I could ever have imagined. It might help you the same way. keep reading…

On the way home from the diversity career fair, while writing job ads for the diversity publications, hiring the diversity consultants — while taking those positive steps forward you may, meanwhile, be doing things that cause you to take two steps back.

Some examples:

The Cliquishness keep reading…

Late last year, I checked with my recruiting friends (yes, I still have a few left) and colleagues as to what they thought were the worst recruiting mistakes that companies make. What they said is below. What do you think are the worst? keep reading…

Kean University’s president

We are all familiar with the story of the Yahoo CEO who took on his role in early 2012, only to be dismissed when stories arose that he padded his resume with an embellished college degree.

Many executive screening packages only look at qualifications, work history, education, and public records, that can result in “misses” like the one above.

To help develop the “big picture,” many companies are looking to add media screening when hiring at the executive level. Media screening is a comprehensive search through various databases to access thousands of news sources including newspapers, trade publications, professional journals, articles, transcripts, and numerous others. The results of this search can include award nominations and other achievements by the applicant, and community and industry association involvement, business and job disputes, references to criminal activity, or other potentially negative information.

Is Media Screening the Same as Social Media Screening? keep reading…

Every so often someone publishes an article about lessons learned from great coaches, offering advice about how to select people. Sorry, this is useless nonsense.

Great coaches don’t work with players who pass an interview. Their players are thoroughly pre-screened by skilled talent scouts who watched each and every one of them excel at the game. Only the best and most talented players ever got to meet the coach. In the corporate world, coaches would be similar to line managers. Talent scouts are represented by recruiters. But the analogy ends with titles.

HR recruiters in the corporate world don’t use tryouts, so they don’t really know whether candidates can do the job. Line managers are generally promoted into their job because they were good individual contributors, so about 70% don’t have any coaching skills at all. Just imagine what a team would be like if talent scouts used corporate recruiting methods: “Are you fast? Yes. Agile? Yes? What kind of barnyard animal would you most like to be?” And, if coaching consisted of “Do what I tell you.”

Yep, organizations seem to think advice from great coaches them all they need to know about candidate skills. But have you ever considered how great people are really selected? keep reading…

Here’s a quick look at some of the newer recruiting-technology companies you may not have heard of, from gamification to screening to a significant new “social resume” tool launching right now. keep reading…

Warning: do not use this slick all-purpose assessments for screening out people. However, it’s useful for becoming a better interviewer and screening in people.

DISC and all its variants (Calipers, Myers-Briggs, Predictive Index, etc.) should never be used to pre-screen people. At best, and if they’re not faked, these “tests” only predict preferences, certainly not competencies. At worst, they prevent diversity by eliminating the chance to see and hire people who can achieve great results but use a style different than the expected. (Note: Use these types of style indicators after you’ve narrowed the selection to 3-4 people who you’ve determined can meet the performance objectives required for success.)

Despite this predictive limitation — although it will be argued by those who use or sell them — the DISC style preferences are quite helpful for understanding how people communicate, make business and hiring decisions, and interact on-the-job.

To determine your dominate DISC style, look at the descriptions of the four styles in the graphic and select the one that best describes you. Then to validate this, answer these two questions: keep reading…

Social media, employment branding, an employee-assessment company, a new tool you need to know about for using applicant tracking systems, and a job site focusing on screening for fit.

It’s all below.

Let’s start with Reqcloud, which launched about six months ago. “Nobody really knows about us,” says founder Ivan Kedrin.

I’m thinking you should, as this one may be around a while.

keep reading…

Here’s a taste of a few recent new companies and other moves, from assessments to job-posting technology to screening tools, to job sites for recruiting veterans, young adults, and more. keep reading…

American Airlines may be bankrupt and struggling with on-time arrivals, but it’s hiring flight attendants for the first time in a decade, and the interest in such jobs is “unbelievable,” according to two key players at the company.

It has been a time of “uncertainty, anxiety, and extensive change” at American Airlines, involving staff reductions, health care plan changes for employees and retirees, pension changes, and asking flight attendants with 15 years’ experience if they want to call it quits in exchange for $40,000.

But life is quite upbeat at the same time. American Airlines is bringing on 1,500 new flight attendants, and just opened the hiring floodgates this month with social media and job-board postings. Quickly, 20,000 applicants showed interest.

This is a joint operation. Flight Services, with Lauri Curtis the VP, is involved, as is the “People” department. A recruitment outsourcing vendor, IBM, is also helping.

They’re not just hiring, but making changes in the workforce, the job, and the training of flight attendants. Employees used to handle either domestic or international assignments, but now they’ll be cross-trained on both. The company put in a large order for new planes, also requiring new training. And I hear the company will be rolling out a new customer-service training program.

Anyhow, Curtis and others spread word of the jobs through the American Airlines career site, as well as CareerBuilder, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ (something the airline, like many other companies, is still learning how to use), and in print media.

The flight-attendant ramp-up is the first substantial such hiring in 10 years at American, aside from smaller-volume hires like for Mandarin speakers. This high-volume recruiting a four-part process. keep reading…

One of my frustrations with the recently completed political campaigns was the implication that if we elected Candidate A, our business problems would be solved. You and I know that’s not true; an organization determines its own fate. We have the ability to navigate towards success — especially if you’re a recruiter or hiring manager.

Here’s a mistake holding back many businesses: recruiters and hiring managers overemphasize industry experience and immediately dismiss candidates who do not have specific job-related experience. That might be fine if you’re hiring a doctor or a mechanic. But for most jobs in the business or non-profit sectors, it’s not the right tactic.

Companies miss out on candidates who, if taught the necessary skills, could be excellent employees. It’s unwise to base your conclusions solely on a candidate’s résumé or LinkedIn profile. Always be on the lookout for people who have the personality and character that can advance your organization.

I’m known in some HR circles as the author of a hiring book, but my full-time job is president of a publishing company. A little over two years ago our operations manager resigned, and the first person I called and asked to consider the position was someone who had zero publishing experience. I knew he possessed excellent critical thinking and people management skills based on this real-life experience he and I shared.

I had crossed paths with Kyle off-and-on over the years in recreational basketball leagues. When a neighbor of mine told my wife about shoddy treatment she received from a local fitness center (where Kyle worked as a manager), I gave him a call. keep reading…

Scientist at Xerox

If you are into the use of technology to support the hiring process, read the recent Wall Street Journal article about algorithmic hiring.

It offers a very real glimpse into the future of hiring. To those companies who are looking for ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the hiring process, the value returned by the newest wave of advanced technology can be significant.

But it would be wrong to blindly accept that computers are poised to take over the hiring process from human hands.

As a traditionalist who also embraces change and loves technology, I straddle two sides of this issue. I believe in the value of algorithms and data to help optimize and automate decision-making. However, the role of humans in the hiring process cannot and should not be replaced.

The last book I read, The Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku, provided me with some really good perspective on this issue. This is a fantastic book in which the author, a physicist, uses factual scientific information to predict what we can expect in the near future.

The author discusses the future of the workforce and suggests that by midcentury (2030-2070) almost all lower-level jobs will be automated. He goes on to suggest that the types of jobs that will not be automated will be those that require “the one commodity that robots cannot deliver: common sense.”

The inability of machines to think creatively and to have intuition creates a limitation to their use and value. So, while the wealth of information available to us will be staggering, it will still take a human brain to digest it, evaluate it, and make decisions that cannot be programmed or made using algorithms.

I could not agree more with Kaku and when it comes to machines and hiring, we need to keep a sense of realism about what we can expect machines to do. More than anything we need to see them as a helpful tool to make experts better, not as a substitute for human intelligence.

Know this about hiring by algorithm: keep reading…

You are ready to hire, but before you start slinging out job postings consider these seven questions.

How fast do you want the candidate? Many hiring managers say they need the candidate right away but drag their feet responding to qualified candidates to set up interviews. Lengthy delays in the recruiting process may convey to the candidate your organization is not interested in them and they may take another offer. If you are planning on being on vacation, out of town, or just unavailable, then this should be clear to your recruiters from the start so they can best establish the time frame expectations with your candidates. keep reading…

A little of what’s new, from a “matching” site, to video, to job boards, a tool to find passive candidates, a place to review employers in Australia … and a look at what might happen if LinkedIn and eHarmony had a baby.

Let’s start with Jobdreaming. In short, here’s how it works. A candidate (U.S. only for now) puts in the type of job they want (let’s say a design job making $50,000 within a certain number of miles radius of a given zip code). An employer — right now for free — sends in a job listing to Jobdreaming. It gets sent to candidates who match, along with a question of the employer’s choice. The candidate is still anonymous at this point. But, if the candidate is interested, they can express interest, and answer the question. The employer receives the contact information on the candidate, as well as the answer to the question the employer posed.

Jobdreaming has under 10 employees and is funded by two VC firms. In response to my question asking how this is different than the laundry list of matching sites we’ve chronicled on ERE, the company mentions simplicity. Instead of starting with a specific job description and trying to match a long list of personal traits with it, this begins with the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” concept.

Entelo’s Passive-candidate Sourcing, and More keep reading…