Tag Archives: Recruiting

#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?

ZipRecruiter-My Test Run

I like recruiting. For those that know me well, it’s funny, because I really am not that outgoing or verbose in person.

So why do I love recruiting? Maybe it’s because I get to talk about the place I work. Maybe it’s something else. But one of my biggest frustrations with recruiting is the time it takes. As a generalist I have a thousand other things to take care of at any given moment. I usually get off pretty easy, because I can get enough interest from a simple post that I don’t have to actively source candidates, but sometimes due to the position or location I have a harder time than usual.

That leads to more time spent searching and less time to devote to the other day-to-day activities I have to manage. If I could just get more applicants from a single post, that would save enormous chunks of time for me.

A potential solution?

The other day I received an email pointing me to ZipRecruiter. I’d never used or heard of the service, so I checked it out since I had a new position to post that day. I have to say that I really liked the interface and the ability to post to multiple job sites (including Craigslist). If you are looking for a tool that lets you post your jobs instantly to multiple sites, I recommend checking out ZipRecruiter to see if it might help you save some time and effort. I set it to automatically send people to our job posting in SmartRecruiters so I didn’t have two places to monitor applications.

My experience (your mileage may vary)

After more than a week of having our job posted through their service, I have not noticed an increased number of candidates from our usual flow. That could be due to the position type/location, but those are the facts as far as our job posting goes. Anyone else used ZipRecruiter before and have an experience to share?

Job Fair Rules for Employers

Job fairs aren’t for everyone, and they’re not for every company/industry. But if your company happens to participate in them, I wanted to give you a few quick tips to help avoid disaster.

  1. Give a darn about the people who took the time out of their day to come and talk with you about your employer.
  2. And, um… That’s it.

I found out today that I might be participating in a special kind of job fair activity in the coming weeks. We are not in the typical industry for that sort of thing, so I might be a little rusty. I am used to a different flavor of the candidate experience.

However, in my experiences on both sides of the table, if you can handle #1 above, you can stand out among the other employers in the room. I’ve talked before about a major fail in job fair recruiting, but I think companies can still do it well.

A little perspective doesn’t hurt

Job seekers today are (in the best of circumstances) worried about finding a job. At worst they have been out of work for a while and are starting to get noticeably desperate. Have a little compassion. Try treating your candidates like customers.

I used to work with a wonderful, kind lady who did our recruiting at a previous employer. Every single person who walked up to our table ended up walking away feeling better and happier, even if we didn’t have a single job available in their area of expertise. Keep that in mind next time you’re going through the motions at a job fair.

Okay. Even as a minimalist I have to admit that one rule is kind of slim. Anyone else have a suggestion to add to the list? :-)

The Candidate Experience-How Confident are You?

What The Candidate Experience Means to Me

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the candidates for our positions. I do what I can to provide a transparent, high-touch process (click here to listen to me talk more about our hiring process and recruiting philosophy), but sometimes it just gets tough to make sure everyone is in the loop at all steps of the game. I also wonder at times just what the candidates really want from me as their main point of contact during the interview/offer process.

The potential solution

So, with that in mind, I’m considering putting together a short, two question survey to send to all candidates we interviewed after the final selection has been made. It would ask these questions:

  1. On a scale of 1-5 what did you think of our recruiting process with regard to ease of scheduling interviews, timely communication, follow up, etc.?
  2. What could we have done to make the experience better for you?

If you recall, it’s very close to the set of questions suggested by the author of 101 Strategies for Recruiting Success. As with all surveys, we are sure to get some varying responses. I’d expect everything from “you should have picked me” to “I would have liked phone updates more than emails.” But the end result, I’m hoping, would be an idea or two to incorporate into the process to help make it more user-friendly on the candidate side of things.

To save some time and effort, I would only send it to the people we interview. Those who apply get the automatic email response when they apply, and I try to make sure and send the blanket “the position’s been filled” email after we hire someone. In my mind we don’t owe those people anything more, because honestly it would become a full-time job responding to each individual person. While I think it’s important to treat candidates like customers, I’m also realistic enough to know that we can’t offer personalized service to the 50+ people applying to some positions.

There’s an award for that

Just as I was finishing this post, I saw a friend mention The Candidate Experience Awards. I’m going to talk with our people and see if we want to participate, because it looks like an interesting process. I already know we do a good job with how to be a best place to work, but are we doing the best on the front end before the candidate ever joins the team? I think it would be neat to find out.

Anyone else do a survey like this with their candidates? Anyone think they might like to participate in the Candidate Experience Awards? I’d be interested in hearing your perspective. 

Developing Your Team-Commitment Matters

How to develop a teamDeveloping your team the “Edward Jones” way

For the past few months, my youngest brother has been going through the hiring process for the hardcore Edward Jones PASS program. I had the opportunity to sit and talk with him about the steps he took to get the position, and it honestly floored me at all the hoops he had to jump through to even be considered as a serious candidate. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that EJ had put some serious thought into the process and what they wanted their final candidates to look like.

Here’s the basic process to go through for the highly competitive PASS program:

  • Apply on website
  • Lengthy web application process
  • Someone at EJ performs resume review
  • If considered qualified, you are notified via email to call in and listen to PASS conference call and Q&A (~40 applicants on the line at once)
  • If you attended the call, you are notified via email to call and schedule your own phone screen
  • During the phone screen, the EJ representative asks how you would build a sustainable investing business, what your plans are, what you understand of the PASS program, etc.
  • If you pass the phone screen, they send you the job description again for review, then you are notified to schedule your own phone interview
  • During the phone interview, the EJ asks fairly standard interview questions. This lasts 45-90 minutes based on your responses. If you do not understand the job requirements (multiple questions based on the job description you’ve been furnished previously), you are not considered qualified. At the end of the call you are given an immediate verbal yes/no notice
  • You receive an email a few days later and are provided a task to complete. Once you complete the task, you report back on your results. If you did not meet your goal, you are eliminated from the process
  • If you complete the task successfully, you are notified to schedule a face-to-face interview to discuss the task and answer a few routine interview questions
  • At the end of that meeting, they tell you that you’ll know if you are still being considered within 4-5 days
  • Someone calls you to make sure you are interested specifically in the PASS program and provides conference call info
  • You call into PASS conference call again to listen to the program description and have a chance to ask questions
  • You call into a conference call only for PASS-qualified candidates a few days later
  • One month before your scheduled start date, you must turn in this information: fingerprints/drug screen/paperwork/background check
  • If you pass each of those hurdles, you are considered qualified to join the early stages of the PASS program

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have even half as much difficulty getting my current job. I think having a process like this leads to several things:

  1. Your final candidates are fairly knowledgeable about the company, their role, and how that fits into the organizational structure (I’ve met people in previous jobs with 5 years of experience who don’t even know those kinds of details!)
  2. The remaining candidates are deeply committed. They’ve invested several months of sweat equity into the process, and they won’t just walk away from the position halfway through the hiring steps
  3. The people who don’t make it in still realize it’s a good company with high standards for filling its positions

This article only covers the pre-hire steps involved with developing your team. Hopefully I’ll have some time soon to write on post-hire steps you can take in developing a highly committed workforce. For more on the topic, be sure to check out how to develop managers by getting them involved.

Anyone else have a long, difficult hire process? Did that leave you feeling more committed to the organization? Less? 

Employee Referral Recruitment-Pros and Cons

recruiting employee referralsInterested in growing your employee referral recruitment but not sure how to get started? Today we’ll look at a few ways to encourage the process as well as a few ideas to keep it from getting out of hand (the “good old boy” system, people trying to circumvent the process, etc.).

What and Why

Employee referrals are a great way to save time and effort in your recruiting. According to the annual CareerXroads surveys on sources of hire, referrals are the #1 source for recruiting new employees. When it comes down to it, using referrals can shorten the recruiting process, fill positions with better-qualified candidates, and save money on advertising and other related costs. Continue reading →

Helicopter Parents at Work

helicopter parents at workHelicopter parents at work-fight or submit?

I ran across this interesting NPR article the other day about helicopter parents in the workplace. Every time I run across a news story or magazine article about these outrageous behaviors, I have to shake my head. I don’t know where the bright idea comes from for parents to continuously weaken their children, but it’s not having the effect they’d hoped.

When you support a muscle or tendon for a long period of time and never let it perform its intended function, it will atrophy. The same applies with children (and yes, for this discussion I’m talking about 18-22 year old children!). When parents continue to make decisions, intercede on their behalf with college professors and employers, and fight their battles for them, the students will never learn the critical behaviors required to function without parental support.

Some employers are closing the parents off, and rightly so. If you can’t interview without a parent backing you up, there’s no way you will be able to handle a stressful  job without calling them for help every half hour.

Others are welcoming the contact. They are using a thought process similar to mine detailed in recruiting a candidate’s family, hoping that if the family is intrigued, they will push the candidate to take the position.

The point where their thought process and mine diverge is that I think it applies only after the person has been interviewed and selected for the position. Some employers are allowing parents into interviews and salary negotiations, which seems ridiculous to me.

Anyone else having to deal with helicopter parents at work? I’d love to hear some of the crazy stories…