Viewing All Posts Tagged ‘recruiting’

The Message is Now Mainstream

For the last year, I’ve been writing on, quoting, tracking back to etc. any hints that the “candidate is customer” message may be getting the attention it deserves in Recruiting.

While AllianceQ is making great gains in membership and therefore the message is getting out, having it written about in the New York Times means that the message is finally mainstream:

In this new world, candidates’ correspondence to companies is rarely acknowledged. Calls are seldom returned. Status updates are not routinely provided. Rejection decisions are not consistently communicated.

I highly recommend that you read Jon Picoult’s article.  Job seekers will be expecting more civilised treatment now that word is out.

Interview Illusion

I just read the June edition of Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com).

In it there is an amazing article on page 51 called “Hold the Interview”.  In it, authors Dan and Chip Heath make a very compelling, fact-based argument against interviewing candidates.  The research they quote says that much more often than not, the interview is NOT a predictor of success.  They go on to suggest that one of the best predictors of job performance is a work sample;

“if you are hiring a graphic designer, get them to design something.  If you are hiring a salesperson, get them to sell you something.  If you are hiring a chief executive, ask them to say nothing – but reassuringly.”

 But the most compelling statement in the article is the last paragraph;

Giving job tests might be the easiest competitive advantage you ever acquire.  While your competitors hire friendly people whose “biggest weakness ” is “working too hard, ” you’ll be discovering the true stars.

So now, all of the HR and Recruiting Professionals reading this are saying to themselves (or aloud) “yeah right – no interview – that’s absurd”.

What’s absurd (and absolutely intriguing in it’s obviousness) is that the FEATURE article of this issue is the 100 Most Creative People in Business.

There are NO HR or Recruiting people mentioned in the feature article.

Just in Time to Just Right

Just in time vs just right.  Reactive vs proactive.

I’ve always liked the analogy of recruiting and dating.  The stages are the same, notice, invite, woo, date, move forward or break up.  Clean and everyone can understand – been there done that.

So in looking at paradigm shifts in recruiting, it’s only natural that I venture into this analogy to make a point about where recruiting is going.

Old way of dating:

1. go to a crowded, busy bar night after night, putting your best face forward and hope to meet the perfect match
2. Repeat night after night (week after week?), having coffee or lunch with a few people but really not making amazing connections
3. become despondent, bored and willing to settle and choose a “close match” for a longer term commitment.
4. break up and start again.

Wow, that was depressing.  See how it mirrors our current “just in time” recruitment process?  We conduct the best search we can, find the best “available” talent (by the way, availability is NOT a skill set) and choose the candidate who matches most closely with our requirements and requires the least headache to close.  Hope and pray it’s a good decision but more often than not, end up repeating the process in 24 – 36 months.  Ouch.

New way of dating:

1. Complete a profile on one of the scientific matching software systems – tell it what you do and don’t want, what you will and won’t accept.
2. Only be notified when someone matches what you require.
3. Connect by phone or email, do some quick due diligence and then meet for coffee or lunch.
4. Find a lasting relationship.

In essence, what we’ve done is move about 25% of the work from the back end (really bad dates) to the front end (setting up our profile and search requirements) and free ourselves from the other 75% so we can focus on other things (like living life!).  For the recruiting analogy, the percentages are the same.  If you can move about 25% of your effort the the beginning of the process, you’ll save about 75% on the back end.  You do this by using new tools (newer than Boolean searches on the web) and shifting your energy from sifting through results to creating them.

The point of all this is that there are NEW  ways to do about everything today including dating and recruiting.  For those of you out there on a really bad date today or reviewing your 100th resume of the day – why are you living in the past?

Fill vs Find – The Politics of Measurement

Coming off of ERE, there are always some very interesting articles as the organization awards best practices and innovative strategies.

One of the most interesting was Todd Raphael’s piece on “Fill vs. Find”.  In it he quotes Steve Lowisz from Qualigenceand Tony Blake of DaVita (Recruiting Department of The Year Award winner this ERE!) as saying that a better metric than “time to fill” is “time to find”.  Great stuff and I couldn’t agree more.

However, there are challenges inherent in measuring “time to find” and even more challenging, using it with your client groups.  I’ll explain.  Tony defines “time to find” as;

This is the time beginning when a job request comes in, ending in the time the recruiter sends the candidate to the hiring manager.

I prefer “time to submit” for this definition or even better as my friend Todd Noebel commented on the ERE article, “time to slate“.  Basically you start the clock when the requisition is approved in the system (not when the hiring manager says, “hey be on the lookout for ___ I may have an opening” – this is usually when the hiring manager starts their clock!) and measure until you have a slate of qualified, interested and attractable candidates. STOP. 

This is “time to slate” and should be used to measure your sourcing effectiveness and nothing else.  Why “time to slate” vs “time to find” or “time to present”?  Because you can submit your first candidate at day 3 and then not another one until day 10.  Using 3 days as “time to find” isn’t truly representative of your sourcing effectiveness.  “Time to Slate” means you are done sourcing and are moving to the interview process.  By agreeing up front what constitutes a “slate” you can now stop the clock on the sourcing and move to the next phase of the process.  Now you can effectively measure your interview process effectiveness and this is where recruiting departments start to waiver on separating the two measurements.

Why?  Because measuring the interview process means measuring and holding your hiring managers accountable!  I’ve advocated hiring manager scorecards in organizations and promptly been tossed out of meetings.  For some reason most recruiters and recruitment leaders shudder at the prospect of telling a hiring manager that the reason they lost their #1 choice of candidate was because they dragged the process out for a month or so (usually needing to see “more” candidates right?) and they took another job. 

Follow me here;

My hiring manager and I agreed a “slate” was 5 QIA candidates.  I delivered the 5 (which she accepted) by day 10 and we went to the interview process on day 11.  Her candidate accepted an offer on day 45.  The difference between “time to slate TTS” (10 days) and “time to fill TTF” (45 days) measures only one thing – how effectively are we moving candidates through the process which is “time to hire TTH” (35 days).

TTF(45) = TTS(10) + TTH(35)

So in our example, the interview process took 35 days.  Now whether this is good or bad depends on a multitude of factors but only by measuring it can we uncover it and coach our hiring manager if necessary.

I think the best thing is that Tony and DaVita clearly are into measuring those things that are important and give you vision to your process.  Congratulations Tony and thanks for bringing this to light.

An ERE Summary

Last week I traveled across country to sunny San Diego for ERE – The Recruitment industry’s largest gathering and trade show – normally.

But we are not in normal times and that was evident at the SD Convention Center where the girth of the venue dwarfed the actual event.  It was obvious to all that our ranks have been reduced and of the 250 – 300 (estimated) attendees there was not one who wasn’t grateful to have the opportunity to attend.  That can’t be said for all the vendors as there were some empty booths and notable absences.

As the attendees passed by our booth I was sure to ask them about the sessions going on and what they thought.  For anyone who has attended an ERE, the answers won’t suprise you.  The highlights were a live feed of Kevin Costner (noted Recruiting pundit? No, investor in the company GreenJobInterview.com who sponsored the session) speaking on recruiting and someone actually qualified to do so, Vicki Perry, Director of Strategic Staffing at Avery Dennison who’s session was the buzz at lunch on Wednesday.

But the same ERE complaint was echoed by almost everyone I spoke to; too much philosophy by the same pundits and not enough real world “how to get it done” by practitioners.  I think we all have recognized this fact with the big “shows” – too many people telling you how great life could be for Recruiting if you could; (fill in the blank) get hiring managers to behave, get candidates to behave, innovate, streamline etc, etc.

I got the distinct feeling that the lucky folks who got some travel dollars and were asked to attend ERE this spring were tasked with bringing back real solutions, whether in practices or technology – go find us something that will make a difference.  They saw a couple new items in the trade show and may have heard a couple of tidbits in the sessions that ran for three days but overall, they were left wanting/needing more.

For those of you lucky enough to stumble onto some travel dollars in the fall, there is a show that is NOT in Hollywood Florida that promises to actually TEACH you something.  It is the First Annual Recruitment Learning Conference put on by Qualigence, Inc.  This is a new format designed to really teach you how to do something in your department.  You will want to check it out and attend if you can.  For more details go to www.qualigence.com .

I hope to see you in September in Chicago and am sure to see some of you in Florida again for yet another ERE mini-mega show.

Open Letter to Job Seekers

After a comment on my blog (yes, some people read it!) asking “what is an exact fit?” and the general exacerbation that the job seeking process causes most job seekers, I thought I’d write an open letter to all job seekers, allowing them a peek into the recruiting process:

Dear Job Seeker,

We know you are frustrated with the job search process.  We understand that you apply and apply and are rarely granted an interview or even an email communication telling you why you were not selected.  We also understand that even when you get a phone call or email telling you that you were not selected, you would like details on why.  Here is a glimpse into the world of recruiting and HR so perhaps you will understand the method to the madness.

• Our lawyers prohibit us from giving you detailed feedback on why you were not selected for an interview.  We can give you a broad category of why but not specifics.  Why?  Because you sue us.  If the company gives you feedback that you misinterpret as discrimination or bias, we get sued.  We mitigate our risk by being vague.
• We have a timer on positions and have to get them filled.  Even in this economy, most positions have a cost of vacancy associated with them.  As such, we have to fill our roles in a timely fashion.  Sometimes, this means that the best candidate for the job is not considered because they applied late to the opening.  This TIMING element of filling jobs is the most misunderstood by job seekers.  We hire the best candidate in a given timeframe otherwise we’d never fill our jobs because we’d always be waiting for YOU to apply!
• You apply to the wrong job a lot.  Sometimes it’s because you think by applying to every job we have posted, you’ll get noticed.  You do, but not in a good way.  Most of the time it’s because we’ve posted a vague, laundry list of requirements that could be you but is probably not.  We need to do better and really put a great job description up.  A video of the hiring manager telling you what she needs in the ideal candidate would be best.  We’re working on it.
• We have less jobs to fill (75% less in some cases) but we get between 100 – 300+ applications for every job we have posted.  Most recruiters carry between 20 – 25 openings.  Do the math.  To require that we personally contact each person and give them feedback and advice is simply not reasonable.  We are trying to let you know your status.  If you get an email from us we really ARE doing our job.
• Interviewing and hiring are human processes and as such, are inherently flawed.  Recruiters make suggestions on who to interview – sometimes geting it wrong but mostly getting it right (meaning the people who are interviewed are good candidates).  Hiring Managers make hiring decisions – sometimes getting it wrong but mostly getting it right (meaning the person they hire is usually a good hire for the job).

We empathize with your frustration (there are a lot of us out of work today too) and just want to tell you that we are doing the best we can and are constantly looking for ways to get better.  One way we’ve found is AllianceQ – where at least we can offer you the option of continuing your job search with our fellow Member companies and 3000 small and medium sized businesses.

Good luck with your job search

Sincerely,

Corporate Recruiting

Revolutions are Uncomfortable Things

After hearing that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased operations yesterday to become the 12th major newspaper to shutter its doors I began looking into this momentous change we are experiencing.

On the website “Newspaper Death Watch” (http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/) (yes, I don’t like the name either) an article sums up the situation for newspapers:

The game is over for newspapers. Nothing can save the business, so it’s pointless to try. We’re in the middle of a revolution and revolutions are uncomfortable things because “The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.”

The newspaper industry, like the automotive industry and the financial industry, is an institution in the United States.  Even 5 years ago no one would have imagined that we could be facing a time when major cities were “newspaperless”.  So what is happening?

Web sites like Craigslist have been to classified ads what the internal combustion engine was to horse-drawn buggies. The stock prices of most newspaper publishers have dropped more than 90 percent from their peaks.  Couple this with an amazing amount of debt taken on in the last 10 years as major publishers bought up smaller competitors and viola’ – the death of an industry.  Maybe.

Monster and Careerbuilderbattled over who would run the newspapers’ employment sections and traded the honor witheach other but for what?  It seems that even with big board names behind the employment sections, people were relying on them less and less.  While people were running from classified employment ads, they were running TO Linkedin and other ‘new’ ways to find work.  Revolutions are uncomfortable things.

I believe this is the next “revolution” we’ll see.  At least I’m hopeful that we will.  Just like no one wants newspapers to completely disappear (after all it IS where most of the serious reporting and reporters still reside) I’m not advocating that the big boards  disappear.  But like the newspapers, the days of “post and pray” recruiting would be a desired victim of a job board revolution.  The big boards have their place in an overall strategy but for too many recruiting departments that place takes up too much precious budget money to prove truly valuable.  Remember that a large percentage of Recruiters report getting a LOT of candidates from big boards but less than 20% of all employees actually report finding employment through the big boards.

If Craigslist can automate, facilitate and communicate better than your old classified, is it not too far fetched to imagine that a technology is coming that can do the same to “post and pray” recruiters?

It is all a question of “value” and who can provide the value faster, easier and with less cost.  If the road from consumer (Hiring Manager) to product (candidate) can be streamlined by taking out the middle person who adds little to no value to the process then the “revolution” is for the better.

The only way to reduce the discomfort of revolution is to find a way to add value to a process.  As we are seeing with the newspaper industry, if you are not adding value, you are not going to survive.

It’s a Hard Job

How do you view the profession of Recruiting?  Grab a mirror and get your “Stewart Smalley” on because we’re about to search your soul as a Recruiter.

In my travels to companies as Director of AllianceQ, I often hear this objection when we present our solution;

How is your system going to help me find my double PhD, Biomechanical Nuclear Physicist? (or fill in any other absolute needle in a haystack profile for your industry)

My answer is always the same;

How do you find them today?

Answer: research lists, cold calls, lots of networking and hard core headhunting

Then THAT is how you are going to find them in the future.

It seems that many Corporate Recruiters are searching for easier ways to source difficult profiles and that search will always be in vain.  You see, Recruiting is a HARD JOB, or at least it should be.

Before the internet, the only way we found anyone was through a very tough and arduous process of cold calling, phone book research and faxing job descriptions.  Then the internet and eRecruitment was born and I think many recruiters have come to rely on the “ease” of internet recruiting to their ultimate demise.

If I ran the world (which I won’t because frankly I’d rather be sailing) Recruiters would be as revered in an organization as the top sales people are.  Why not, their job is just as tough and they contribute as significantly to the bottom line right?  Well, in “Phil-land” they would.  Here’s how.

I’d create a pyramid picture of the roles my department fills every year.  The broad base at the bottom are those repetitive, high turnover roles.  For every industry these are different but they are there in EVERY industry.  Then I’d move up to the next level where we are looking to fill the roles regularly but less frequently and then up to difficult and frequent then to impossible and frequent and then to impossible and infrequent and so on.  You get my drift.

Now anyone with a “Recruiter” title would never touch the bottom few job families in my world.  Instead, I’d find a way to automate that process (yes, it can be done) and allow my Recruiting Assistants to process these people.  I’d then take my now freed up Recruiters (who are dying to get on the phone and pull that needle out of that HUGE haystack) and make them heroes in the company by doing what Executives believe only Korn Ferry and Heidrick and Struggles can do.

I may not have slashed my headcount spend because what I’d save in not paying a bunch of low level Recruiters, I’d redistribute to my now Rock Star Recruiters in the way of retention bonuses, organizational impact bonuses etc. and I’d have a team made up of the best in the country because I’d be paying them like headhunters.

Many of you believe this can’t be done.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it is because you came into the industry after it was made easy by the internet, perhaps you believe that “recruiting” is a noun and not a verb.  Either way, these are times of change and I hope you’ll find the courage to re-create Recruiting, not just as a verb but as a very hard job occupied by really great salespeople who love the fight and can sell your company to your biggest competitor.

Recruiting will hopefully be a hard job again one day soon.

Employment in the headlines

Here is the digest from this week of employment in the headlines.  Hang on.

• Employers cut 533,000 jobs in Nov., most since 1974
• More than 10.3 million Americans were unemployed in November, the most in 25 years.
• Bush told reporters: “Our economy is in a recession. This is in large part because of severe problems in our housing, credit and financial markets, which have resulted in significant job losses.”

Who do you think is on the front lines of this dilemma in our economy?  Corporate Recruiting departments for one.

Layoffs are always a tough time for Recruiting departments; with fewer openings and more applicants, the tension between job seekers and Recruiters escalates.  It’s like calling the cable company customer service person for the 5th time in a month – you may want to rip his/her head off even though you know it’s not his/her fault your cable is out again!

This tension is caused by the conflict of job seeker needs and Corporate Recruiter bandwidth:

• Job seekers feel more desperate in times of massive layoffs etc.  It takes longer to find new employment and everyone’s senses are heightened in an environment of significant competition.  During this time, job seekers NEED more attention.
• Job seekers may not “trust” that Corporate Recruiters are actually concerned about their ability to find employment and therefore doing all they can to help.  Job seekers NEED reassurance.
• Recruiters are innundated with a significant increase in applicants for each job, reducing the time and effort they can give to each applicant.  Recruiters BANDWIDTH is minimized.
• Layoffs in Recruiting Departments mean that at this crucial time in “candidate experience”, many recruiters are carrying larger requisition loads than in go-go hiring times.  Recruiters BANDWIDTH is stretched paper thin.

So what can a corporation do to ease the fears and concerns of their job seekers and provide Recruiters with a way to meet the needs of the candidates (customers).

OVER COMMUNICATE

Many ATS systems are set up to send a “Thank you” when someone applies.  Many Recruiting Departments feel this is enough effort and FAIL to communicate when a requisition is closed or put on hold or filled.  The “BLACK HOLE” of recruitment gets bigger in difficult times because rather than face the tension mentioned above, companies hide from it.  The effect is that the tension INCREASES instead of subsides.

Most ATS systems have the ability to automate communication when a requisition is closed (if yours doesn’t, then send this post to your ATS vendor and ask them to help you solve the problem) and ALL ATS systems have the ability to custom craft an email for this “end of the line” communication.  Fix the black hole by crafting an honest, caring email and make sure everyone gets it:

Thank you for your patience while we executed our hirng process for the Accountant 2 position you applied for.  Unfortunately this position has recently been closed.  You’re application will remain active in our system for the next 12 months and we will certainly call you should a similar posiiton come open.  In the meantime, we wish you the best of luck in your job search.  We realize these are unique times and while we wish we could hire everyone who applies, we simply can not.

Or even better yet – put an offer in your email to help them find work!

Thank you for your interest in a position with <company>.
We realize that you recently applied for the Accountant 2 position.  Unfortunately that position is no longer vacant.  We encourage you to check our website to see if there are other positions that match your background.

If you don’t see a role with us that is of current interest we would still like to assist you in finding a new position by introducing you to other great companies who may be able to give you the position you seek, right now.

<Company> is a Member of AllianceQ – a partnership of leading companies collaborating to increase our ability to find the world’s top talent.

It’s an easy, free and confidential service.  Simply share your background and what you desire in a new job.  In addition to being considered by <Company>, you are automatically and anonymously considered for thousands of other opportunities with leading employers every day.

To join AllianceQ or for more information, visit: http://www.AllianceQ.com/company

Again, thank you for considering <Company> in your job search and we look forward to considering you for future opportunities.

This communication is guaranteed to reduce tension and provide the job seekers hope and a continuation of their job search.

All they really want.

Business Wisdom for the Recruiting Department

An article in today’s USA Today spoke to the lengths that retailers (specifically electronics companies) are going to to “keep customers”.

 ”now is when I most want to keep my customers, because it’s much harder to get new ones”. 

Is anyone taking this stance for candidates?  Probably not.  It seems that in our world of too many job seekers for too few jobs, we are more than willing to treat our candidates as if they are in infinite supply.
 
But this is a dangerous mistake.  The candidate who applies for a role at your company today may turn out to be a customer or even worse, someone you desperately need to hire in 2010.  How you treat them today WILL dictate how the perceive your company in every interaction in the future.

I’m not advocating sending fruit baskets to everyone who takes the time to apply to one of your open positions (chances are they applied for the wrong job for a myriad of reasons) but at the very least, you need to close the “black hole” and communicate with everyone, both thanking them for applying AND letting them know the final disposition of their application.

You can do it, your ATS can automate it for you.  You just have to realize that it’s not a burden to do it.  It IS the right thing to do and it’s just common business sense.