Title inflation lurks in every org chart, rears it head in offer negotiations, and is the subject of heated battles come annual review time. The gradual accumulation of ever-more-impressive sounding labels, titles, and levels of distinction to the jobs we…
Job Descriptions
If the Big Guy Gets a Break, Why Can’t ‘We the People?’
Dear U.S. Corporations: If the President of the United States gets a break on meeting the criteria and requirements of the job description — can we give each other a little break too? Pretty much my whole career has been…
The Art of Writing an Inspiring Job Description
How many job descriptions have you read in your life? Go ahead, make an estimate. Many people have read hundreds. How many of these job descriptions did you feel were inspiring? How many helped you understand what is special about…
Facing a Shortage of Applicants? — Losing Applicants Explained With 5 Ugly Numbers
It’s an almost universal complaint across both corporations and small businesses around the world. “We aren’t getting enough applicants and it is hurting our business.” This shortage of applications is probably occurring despite the fact that your corporation is well…
Facing a Shortage of Candidates? Discover and Use the Right ‘Attraction Factors’
They call it talent attraction for a reason. Because, obviously, the primary role of the function is to literally “attract” the very best candidates. But when a recruiting function is only guessing about what draws in desirable candidates, it will…
Spotify Puts Up a Job Description That Fits a Very Purple Squirrel
Spotify’s looking for “world-class leadership.” Fair enough — plenty of candidates could fit the bill. Attention to detail — also doable. Team spirit, excellent work ethic, a warm attitude — makes sense. But as for the rest of the job: something…
Dramatically Improve Your Applicant Quality Using a Simple Side-By-Side Job Post Test
A quick and low-cost approach for improving the attraction power of your job postings The most damaging failure point in recruiting is having a weak job posting! Even if your job is exciting, you will get fewer applications if your…
ZipRecruiter Testing an Interesting ‘Check Salary’ Feature on Job Ads, Including Its Own
ZipRecruiter is testing a new feature on its site that it hopes will get more employers to provide salary information about a job. On some job ads on ZipRecruiter, the feature I noticed last week gives job candidates the choices of…
Recruitment Agency Getting Heat Over Job Ads for Models
If you’d heard about and are surprised by job advertisements out of a UK recruitment agency, at least rest assured you’re not alone. Yes, a long lists of websites from around the globe are weighing on the controversy, where job ads for…
A Recruiting-technology Company Is Testing Unusual ‘Early Admittance’ Job Posts
In searching for its own employees, SmashFly is dabbling in “early admittance” — something many of us have seen done similarly in the college-admission process, but not in recruiting. Michael Hennessy, SmashFly CEO, and Tracey Parsons, director of the recruitment marketing practice,…
A Contrarian Perspective on Hiring for ‘Fit’
Many industries today are accelerating their focus on innovation to capture opportunities in ever-changing markets. CHROs and recruitment leaders are being tasked, as recently noted in a Deloitte study on innovation in the fast moving consumer goods, to “figure out…
Try This 5-10-minute Experiment if You Are a Real Recruiting Human Being
A great analogy for candidates (both active and passive) these days is a tourist wandering into a foreign food and goods marketplace. What first starts out as a genuine desire to see what goods and eats are available quickly turns scary…
What the #$##@ Is Human-centered Design and Why Should Anyone in Recruiting Care?
Jill inherited a recruiting function in a large company with operations in numerous locations across the world, although her primary concern was for the operations within her country. With more than 10 locations, some in remote areas, recruiting had always been…
Your Job Postings Aren’t Attracting Top Applicants, and a Simple Test Will Prove It
You simply can’t catch trophy fish with weak bait, and similarly, you can’t attract quality candidates with dull and ineffective job post descriptions. But most corporations simply post their descriptions without design criteria or any pretesting. This is a serious…
There’s an 85% Chance Your Recruiting Tactics Are Repelling the Best Candidates
When a company advertises a position, they are essentially painting a picture of what the future could look like for the candidates they are trying to attract. More often than not, that picture isn’t a pretty one, and when you…
5 Elements to a Killer Job Ad
Despite the rapidly changing climate of online job searches, the job ad remains a valuable resource to recruiters. With steeper competition in the digital world, your ad must stand out and be noticed. Recruiters should have fun with this exercise…
Goldfish Have a Longer Attention Span than Job Candidates
A Microsoft study shows human attention spans to be eight seconds in our mobile-device-driven world. Goldfish have an attention span of nine seconds, according to scientists at MacEwan University. That’s one second better than us humans! “Not now, I’m looking at…
Candidate Research — The Critical Information That You Must Know About Your Recruiting Targets
It’s a sad fact that most of what we know about those who we are trying to hire (recruiting prospects and candidates) is anecdotal and historical. At the same time, both the job search process and candidate expectations are changing at…
Your Job Description Matters More Than You Think
Of people hired in the previous six months, the No. 1 activity was visiting an online job site. Candidates today are actively pursuing their next career move and are connected to web and mobile search all the time, which is why it…
LinkedIn’s Coming Solution to the ‘Get Me More Like’ Problem
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll. Now that might have worked for Alice, but when your hiring manager’s criteria is along the lines of “I’ll know it when…