Tag Archives: Recruiting

Recruiting Process-How to Share Job Openings with SmartRecruiters and MailChimp

Recruiting process improvement, at its finest.

That’s the thought that whipped through my brain earlier this week when I was able to conquer a problem with our recruiting process that has plagued me on and off for approximately 20 months. Here’s the gist of it:

I signed us up for SmartRecruiters back in April 2010. I really like the service (the basic tool is free!), and it was a drastic improvement over our previous system of collecting emailed resumes from interested applicants. Blah.

So I’m cruising along and suddenly have an epiphany. At the time I was using MailChimp to deliver my email newsletter for the blog, and I thought to myself, “What if I could tie our job opening feed from SmartRecruiters into MailChimp? Then people who come to our careers page and don’t see a job they are interested in can submit their email address to be notified of our new job openings automatically.”

The basic principle behind the technology (reading a feed of jobs and pushing out an email about new additions to the list) was sound, and I’d seen it work well for the website.

The key purpose: building engagement in our recruiting process

I wanted to increase engagement in our recruiting process and help candidates learn more about us at the same time. There’s a neat tool within applications like MailChimp that allow you to send automatic emails to someone at regular intervals (autoresponders). In my mind, here’s what that meant:

  • Person submits email and gets a warm welcome response immediately.
  • 2-3 days later, the person gets an email that goes over our basic hiring process and how it works if they should ever move into that phase with us.
  • 2-3 days later, the person gets an email that delves deep into our culture, what we believe, and how that plays a part in the hiring process. It gives them a chance to opt out if they see that we aren’t a place they would like working (on the flip side, it also can turn them into an even bigger fan if they turn out to be a great fit for our culture).
  • 2-3 days later, the person gets some general tips on how to prepare for an interview, what to wear, etc.
  • Et cetera. The only limit is your creativity, though you wouldn’t want to schedule so many that you’re becoming annoying.

Starting to get my drift? With a tool like this, I could get a lukewarm person very interested in working with us in under a week and without having any hands-on work after the setup. I’m building our brand and keeping our recruiting process lean at the same time.

Disclaimer: I’m all about a high-touch recruiting process, but when you’re the only HR person around, you have to get creative with how to manage the workload of recruiting. I can’t personally talk with every candidate who applies, and I think this is the greatest gift I can offer to someone, since it is valuable information and could help them in the event we have something open that fits their skills/interests. 

The problem

So that all sounds very positive and encouraging, right? However, when I started trying to test it out, I couldn’t make it work. I’m nerdy, but I’m not a full-blown geek, and even the tech support guys at SmartRecruiters seemed to be stumped.

So I shelved the idea and vowed to give it a few minutes every so often to see if I can figure out some sort of workaround. Approximately twenty months go by with no progress.

Then I accidentally found the solution. Continue reading →

5 IFTTT Recipes for Recruiters

There are new tools released every day that make our lives more complex, but I’ve been looking at IFTTT lately, and it’s all about making life simpler.

IFTTT stands for “if this, then that.” It’s an online tool that looks for an “if” and then takes a “then” action. The most common examples you might be familiar with are Outlook inbox rules. For example, IF that creepy coworker sends an email to you, THEN it gets marked as “trash.” Or IF your boss sends you an email, THEN your rule marks it with a flag to follow up.

IFTTT does that on a bigger scale. For instance, it can monitor your email account. If you receive an email with an attachment, it can automatically download the attachment to your Dropbox folder to save it.

Or even simpler-you can set it to monitor the weather and send you a text message if it is raining/snowing so you don’t forget your umbrella. Or maybe you get an email from your best friend, and it sends you a text message alert as a heads up. There are hundreds of ideas for rules (or “recipes,” as they like to call them), and the only limit is your imagination.

iftttHere are 5 IFTTT recipes I think recruiters could use

  1. share relevant blog feeds on Linkedin using a Feedly category (link)
  2. send yourself an email whenever someone posts a job or resume on Craigslist (link)
  3. dictate a voice memo and email transcription and mp3 file to yourself (link)
  4. use Google calendar to schedule content for your recruiting/careers page on Facebook (link)
  5. send a text message that calls your phone (for those times when you’re stuck with that candidate who just won’t stop talking despite all of your nonverbal cues) (link)

More ideas for IFTTT recipes from around the Web

The Temp Factor (Book Review)

The Temp Factor by Cathy Reilly

the temp factor book cathy reilly

Recently I received a copy of The Temp Factor: The Complete Guide to Temporary Employment for Staffing Services, Clients, and Temps from Cathy A. Reilly. I didn’t know what to expect from the book, because I don’t have much experience with temps or staffing companies. I ended up with a well-rounded understanding of the client/temp/agency relationship triangle, and I feel much more comfortable with the possibility of working with a staffing company at some point in the future. Below you’ll see a few tips I learned and also to whom I might recommend this book.

What I liked

  • For the newbies-pages 19/20 have a great checklist of items that will help put new clients at ease. I know if I was hiring a staffing firm that the answers to these questions would be very valuable to help establish a trusting relationship with my new provider. It includes basic info, but the new clients might not know to even ask some of the questions!
  • Culture matters! Thankfully Ms. Reilly covers one of the biggest concerns I would have about hiring temporary workers: culture. How do we explain it to them? How do we find someone who is only temporary but still a fit for what matters most to us? She goes into some detail here on presenting candidates that are “company ready,” meaning not only fully prepared for the operational aspects of the role, but also the cultural considerations that could make or break the staffing company’s reputation if handled poorly.
  • Tip for the agencies: use updated and fresh materials, including timesheets and business cards. Just because the concept of a time card is 80 years old doesn’t mean your forms should be using an 80 year old design. Every time a client signs off on the timesheet, it’s a marketing opportunity to reinforce your brand identity–use it well.
  • Handling problems: the customer service side of the client/agency relationship can be complex, but one piece of advice stands out. The manner in which you handle problems can become the problem itself. Find out about an issue with a temp? Take care of it, or it could hinder the relationship with the client on a larger scale.
  • Top three issues with temps: performance, policy related, and “fit.” Those are the key areas to ensure your temps are performing up to par if you want to remain on contract for your services as a staffing firm.
  • Shopping for a temp agency? Ask these questions… Page 250 has a laundry list of “wants” that a company could desire from a staffing firm. The challenge is to pick the top five or ten and customize the list for your business. For instance, if you are looking for a satisfaction guarantee, a temp that is coachable within their specialty area, and a person that is a strong culture fit, make those the top three items for the agency to agree to. That allows you to differentiate among those providers who might be able to do one or two of those but isn’t quite a fit for what you need overall.
  • Just say “no” to celebutemps. If the agency is pushing someone on you who is “great” and “really nice,” ask for more concrete information. Find out what makes them so “great” and “nice,” because those hard facts are going to be the basis of why you decide to bring them on (or not). This is the equivalent of an employee trying to refer a clueless friend with no marketable skills–if they can’t tell you what makes them a fit, they aren’t going to fit!

Wrap up

Again, I am not extremely experienced with temps and temp agencies, so my take on it is from that perspective. I would recommend this book for temps looking to hone their craft, HR pros looking to partner with a staffing agency, or staffing agencies looking for innovative ways to serve clients and grow the business. This book covers all that and more! Click here to get your copy of the book if you are interested.

Click here for other book reviews.

Zen Recruiting Wisdom

Don’t just choose the better candidate, choose the candidate that makes your company better.

Next time you’re trying to choose between two similar candidates, consider which one makes your organization more valuable.

How to Read a Resume for Culture Fit

Have you ever wondered how to read a resume to get the best understanding of the candidate’s fit for the job? What’s the most important part to focus on?

Is it the objective? Is it where you went to school? Maybe it’s your last employer?

Google’s staffing director discusses how to read a resume

It’s not any of those things. Well, not according to Todd Carlisle, Director of Staffing at Google. He believes the most important part of the resume is the bottom portion, where people normally list things like hobbies, activities, volunteer experience, etc.

Candidates\’ early work experience, hobbies, extracurricular activities or nonprofit involvement—such as painting houses to pay for college or touring with a punk rock band through Europe—often provide insight into how well an applicant would fit into the company culture.” source

I think that’s a great idea, and I’d have to agree that it could be valuable for ascertaining a person’s culture fit. Many professionals drop those kinds of information from their resume in order to fit in the valuable experience gleaned at other positions, so you could be missing plenty of them with a great history of volunteering and social activities if you’re only scanning resumes.

That’s where the next point comes in…

Stop reading resumes altogether

In the video below Jerome Ternynck, CEO of SmartRecruiters, brings an even more radical approach to the one above: get rid of resumes and use “profiles” instead. I like the idea, but I don’t know how feasible it is. Frankly, it’s easier for any company to sort through ten resumes than it is to sort through ten profiles for candidates.

And despite there being hundreds of great career resources on the web, some job seekers still have ugly resumes, poor interviewing skills, and no real career plan. Then again, that does weed the technically ignorant folks from the hiring pool (at least until they catch on). Check out the video below for more ideas on how we can get rid of resumes once and for all.

#SHRM12-Keys to Corporate Recruiting Leadership

On Monday at SHRM 2012 I was able to attend 5 Keys to Corporate Recruiting Leadership led by John Vlastelica. I’ve been recruiting in this job for nearly a year and a half now, and I really enjoy the hands on part of it; however, I haven’t put much thought into the overall strategy involved. As an HR Generalist, when I hear the siren song of recruiting start up, I usually am working to get it finished as soon as possible and then move onto other “important HR tasks.”

In other words, I sorely needed this session. 

Here are a few of my big takeaways from John’s presentation.

Think bigger than the job

There are three levels to focus on-the organizational level, the departmental level, and the requisition level. It’s easy to get sucked into each position and not consider the big picture. How does this position fit into the mission and goals for the organization? What about for the department/workgroup? What does the ideal candidate look like?

It’s not just an open job requisition.

When you hire someone, you’re not adding them to the team. You’re creating an entirely new team with different dynamics and social norms. Remember that every person you hire is going to change the existing team (some positions more than others); don’t ever lose sight of the importance of a single position.

Don’t solve problems that aren’t problems

John shared a story about a workgroup who was using twelve people to interview engineering candidates. Instead of approaching it as a problem to be solved (“Hey, dummy, stop wasting resources!”), he tried to listen and learn the rationale for the practice. It turned out that higher than average turnover in the department was being mitigated by allowing more of the incumbent workforce to meet and select the person they felt was the best fit for the job.

The reduced turnover more than offset the cost of additional resources allocated to the interviewing process, so what originally seemed like a problem was actually a very smart hiring practice.

There is more great content that I gathered from this session, but this is all I was able to process so far! Look for a sequel coming soon with even more information and ideas on how to rock your recruiting function. Anyone else ever get stuck in a rut and need a kick in the pants to start focusing on what matters in recruiting?