How the Role of Corporate Recruiter Is Evolving

Calling yourself a recruiter doesn’t do justice to what “recruiters” have to do. Here’s a quick overview of where the role was, where it is now, and where it’s heading.

Think about the good old days, way before the Internet. The normal recruitment method was to place an ad in a national or local newspaper or perhaps a relevant magazine. Applications came in, interviews arranged, and hires were made. So far so easy. But the volume of hiring was nowhere near what it is today with job hopping every few years the exception not the norm, as it is now.

The notion of a dedicated recruiter was rare in all but the biggest companies, with the overworked HR manager left to deal with hiring. But as jobs for life became less scarce so the churn rate increased and staffing agencies gradually sprung up to take the burden off HR teams.

Then the Internet happened and life got interesting. Previously the almost set-in-stone route to candidates meant little or no thought or creativity was needed to source candidates. The role was predominantly administrative — handling applications. Now the route to candidates is so diverse that the “recruiter” must develop expertise in multiple areas. Here’s a quick checklist of what a good recruiter must know … and it’s quite lengthy:

Job boards:

• 
  

  Do you know every single one for each of the roles you typically advertise?

  
  

• 
  

  Evaluation of response rates. Not always easy unless you’ve got a very good ATS doing it for you. Are you aware of the technology you can use to post to multiple job boards and/or search their applicant databases.

  
  

• 
  

  Do you know how to keyword-optimize jobs so they appear at the top of job listings on job boards? (And no, it’s not just repeating the job title five times in the text.)

  
  

• Are you aware of how to use job board aggregators to hire people? Which are the best classified sites to use and for which roles: Geebo, Craigslist, eBay classifieds, etc.

Social media:

• 
  

  This is recruitment marketing by any other term. As a recruiter do you know how to use social media to source candidates? Do you have a referral system in place to allow your employees to socialize the details of the job? Can you track the results?

  
  

• How’s your YouTube strategy shaping up? You are exploiting viral marketing, aren’t you?
  

Blogs:

Do you know how you can use a blog — or someone else’s — to find candidates? You sure you do? So where’s your blog detailing the great things your company is doing?

Talent pipeline building:

It’s vital for all but the smallest companies to identify and hook into candidates, even if neither party is actively looking. Do you know how to do that? Do you have a mechanism in place to track potential star candidates in the future you can talk to (no, not just an Excel spreadsheet) ?

Your careers portal:

• 
  

  Think of your vacancies in the same way your marketing team thinks about your company’s products and services: you have to sell them to people. What exactly is your careers portal doing to blow candidates away? Do you know how to make the jobs attractive? Do you really know how to write a great job description? Really? Here’s a simple test: if it’s a new role, do you state that in the job description every single time? You should. It impresses candidates to know it’s not just a boring replacement. Do you have video or written testimonials from staff introducing the role?

  
  

• 
  

  Do you know how to keyword-optimize your careers site so that Google and other search engines start picking it up for certain types of roles you constantly recruit? That’s your holy grail … all your jobs listed on Google, as that means a free pipeline of applicants every day. Do you know how to do this?

  
  

• 
  

  It goes without saying that you’ll have Google analytics installed and can track back the popularity of your careers portal and each of its subsections to see what people are looking at … right?

  
  

• 
  

  Increasingly, recruiters, to do their job effectively, must have at least a basic appreciation of what underpins a good careers portal … not just the content but the technical infrastructure behind it. Without that understanding it would be difficult to create the very best portal in terms of what it can do, how it can do it, how fast it can do it, and what information it can store and analyze. A basic understanding of graphical interfaces, databases, Flash, and HTML coding is becoming increasingly beneficial.

  
  

Gone mobile yet?

Let’s face it, more and more job traffic will come through mobiles and ‘phablets.’ Do do you understand what can and can’t be done to create a functioning, if slimmed-down careers portal which is usable via a five-inch screen? Have you even got a mobile version of your careers site yet? If not, get on it.

PPC recruitment advertising

Every tried advertising your jobs directly on Google? Not many have. It’s a process of trial and error, testing to see which roles in which locations get a number of applications. It might not work for a one-off role but if you’re regularly hiring certain types of roles (developers, accountants, graduates) then you should be devising a direct search engine advertising strategy.

Lastly, you’re an expert on all data-protection issues in every country you recruit for, right?

This list isn’t exhaustive, but gives you an idea of the hugely diverse nature of the modern recruitment ecosystem. Part lawyer, recruiter, data analyst … the role is becoming almost too large for one person, which leads me neatly to the role of the corporate recruiter in the near future. In the same way as a large marketing team is split into different areas from research, trade marketing, digital, brand/product marketing, etc., so recruitment will increasingly specialize. No longer will you just be a recruiter but a specialist with, in all probability, a very different title.

We’re already beginning to see it happening with people assigned to different areas of  specialization for major employers. Some focus on graduate hires, some on the nuances of hiring at board level. This trend will continue. “Generalist” recruiters will try their best to wear multiple hats as the dedicated recruitment manager at smaller companies, and the larger employers will split their ever growing recruitment teams into specialist roles. There will be a specialist psychometric tester, a member of marketing will be seconded to HR to focus purely on SEO for your careers site, a web developer will sit almost permanently in HR to work on a near continuous process of improvement to the corporate careers site and it’s mobile sibling, integrating the latest technologies to give them the recruiting edge.

“Sourcers” will have the sole job of evaluating, purchasing, and using job boards, the best staffing agencies, and CV databases to actually get the candidates. In turn they will hand them over to specialist assessors for evaluation via detailed psychological and psychometric testing. The days of the simple interview will be long gone.

Once hired or possibly even before offers are made, the candidates will then be handed to specialist “checkers” for validation of references and detailed background checks. Overseeing all of this will be campaign evaluators who, a bit like management consultants, will be constantly analyzing the whole department to spot bottlenecks, assess the success/failure rates, analyze the costs of hiring campaigns, as well as be responsible for continuously scanning the market for new technologies and tools to help source, evaluate, and secure the best people, faster.

So anyone fancy any of these new job titles on their business card?

Talent Evaluation Consultant

Recruitment Search Engine Optimization Manager

People Validation Executive

Careers Portal Developer

Sourcing Assistant

via How the Role of Corporate Recruiter Is Evolving – ERE.net.

How the Role of Corporate Recruiter Is Evolving

Why You Can’t Get A Job … Recruiting Explained By the Numbers

Is your “six seconds of fame” enough to land you a job?

As a professor and a corporate recruiting strategist, I can tell you that very few applicants truly understand the corporate recruiting process. Most people looking for a job approach it with little factual knowledge. That is a huge mistake. A superior approach is to instead analyze it carefully, because data can help you understand why so many applicants simply can’t land a job. If you can bear with me for a few quick minutes, I can show you using numbers where the job-search “roadblocks” are and how that data-supported insight can help you easily double your chances of landing an interview and a job.

Your Resume Will Face a Lot of Competition

Although it varies with the company and the job, on average 250 resumes are received for each corporate job opening. Finding a position opening late can’t help your chances because the first resume is received within 200 seconds after a position is posted. If you post your resume online on a major job site like Monster so that a recruiter can find it, you are facing stiff competition because 427,000 other resumes are posted on Monster alone each and every week (BeHiring).

Understanding the Hiring “Funnel” can Help You Gauge Your Chances

In recruiting, we have what is known as a “hiring funnel” or yield model for every job which helps recruiting leaders understand how many total applications they need to generate in order to get a single hire. As an applicant, this funnel reveals your chances of success at each step of the hiring process. For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin the application process, 100 will complete the application, 75 of those 100 resumes will be screened out by either the ATS or a recruiter, 25 resumes will be seen by the hiring manager, 4 to 6 will be invited for an interview, 1 to 3 of them will be invited back for final interview, 1 will be offered that job and 80 percent of those receiving an offer will accept it (Talent Function Group LLC).

Six Seconds of Resume Review Means Recruiters Will See Very Little

When you ask individual recruiters directly, they report that they spend up to 5 minutes reviewing each individual resume. However, a recent research study from TheLadders that included the direct observation of the actions of corporate recruiters demonstrated that the boast of this extended review time is a huge exaggeration. You may be shocked to know that the average recruiter spends a mere 6 seconds reviewing a resume.

A similar study found the review time to be 5 - 7 seconds (BeHiring). Obviously six seconds only allows a recruiter to quickly scan (but not to read) a resume. We also know from observation that nearly 4 seconds of that 6-second scan is spent looking exclusively at four job areas, which are: 1) job titles, 2) companies you worked at, 3) start/end dates and 4) education. Like it or not, that narrow focus means that unless you make these four areas extremely easy for them to find within approximately four seconds, the odds are high that you will be instantly passed over. And finally be aware that whatever else that you have on your resume, the recruiter will have only the remaining approximately 2 seconds to find and be impressed with it. And finally, if you think the information in your cover letter will provide added support for your qualifications, you might be interested to know that a mere 17 percent of recruiters bother to read cover letters (BeHiring).

A Single Resume Error Can Instantly Disqualify You

A single resume error may prevent your resume from moving on. That is because 61 percent of recruiters will automatically dismiss a resume because it contains typos (Careerbuilder). In a similar light, 43 percent of hiring managers will disqualify a candidate from consideration because of spelling errors (Adecco). The use of an unprofessional email address will get a resume rejected 76 percent of the time (BeHiring). You should also be aware that prominently displaying dates that show that you are not currently employed may also get you prematurely rejected at many firms.

A Format That Is Not Scannable Can Cut Your Odds by 60 Percent

TheLadders’ research also showed that the format of the resume matters a great deal. Having a clear or professionally organized resume format that presents relevant information where recruiters expect it will improve the rating of a resume by recruiter by a whopping 60 percent, without any change to the content (a 6.2 versus a 3.9 usability rating for the less-professionally organized resume). And if you make that common mistake of putting your resume in a PDF format, you should realize that many ATS systems will simply not be able to scan and read any part of its content (meaning instant rejection).

Weak LinkedIn Profiles Can Also Hurt You

Because many recruiters and hiring managers use LinkedIn profiles either to verify or to supplement resume information, those profiles also impact your chances. Ey- tracking technology used by TheLadders revealed that recruiters spend an average of 19 percent of their time on your LinkedIn profile simply viewing your picture (so a professional picture may be worthwhile). The research also revealed that just like resumes, weak organization, and scannability within a LinkedIn profile negatively impacted the recruiter’s ability to “process the profile” (TheLadders).

50 Seconds Spent Means Many Apply for a Job They Are Not Qualified for

Recruiters report that over 50 percent of applicants for a typical job fail to meet the basic qualifications for that job (Wall Street Journal). Part of the reason for that high “not-qualified” rate is because when an individual is looking at a job opening, even though they report that they spend 10 minutes reviewing in detail each job which they thought was a “fit” for them, we now know that they spend an average of just 76 seconds (and as little as 50 seconds) reading and assessing a position description that they apply for (TheLadders). Most of that roughly 60-second job selection time reviewing the position description is actually spent reviewing the narrow introductory section of the description that only covers the job title, compensation, and location.

As a result of not actually spending the necessary time reviewing and side-by-side comparing the requirements to their own qualifications, job applicants end up applying for many jobs where they have no chance of being selected.

Be Aware That Even if Your Resume Fits the Job Posting, You May Still Be Rejected

To make matters worse, many of the corporate position descriptions that applicants are reading are poorly written or out of date when they are posted. So even if an applicant did spend the required time to fully read the job posting, they may still end up applying for a job that exists only on paper. So even though an applicant actually meets the written qualifications, they may be later rejected (without their knowledge) because after they applied, the hiring manager finally decided that they actually wanted a significantly different set of qualifications.

Making it Through a Keyword Search Requires a Customized Resume

The first preliminary resume screening step at most corporations is a computerized ATS system that scans submitted resumes for keywords that indicate that an applicant fits a particular job. I estimate more that 90 percent of candidates apply using their standard resume (without any customization). Unfortunately, this practice dramatically increases the odds that a resume will be instantly rejected because a resume that is not customized to the job will seldom include enough of the required “keywords” to qualify for the next step, a review by a human.

Even if you are lucky enough to have a live recruiter review your resume, because recruiters spend on average less than 2 seconds (of the total six-second review) looking for a keyword match, unless the words are strategically placed so that they can be easily spotted, a recruiter will also likely reject it for not meeting the keyword target.

No One Reads Resumes Housed in the Black hole Database

If you make the mistake of applying for a job that is not currently open, you are probably guaranteeing failure. This is because during most times, but especially during times of lean recruiting budgets, overburdened recruiters and hiring managers simply don’t have the time to visit the corporate resume database (for that reason, many call it the black hole). So realize that recruiters generally only have time to look at applicants who apply for a specific open job and who are then ranked highly by the ATS system.

Some Applicants Have Additional Disadvantages

Because four out of the five job-related factors that recruiters initially look for in a resume involve work experience, recent grads are at a decided disadvantage when applying for most jobs. Their lack of experience will also mean that their resume will likely rank low on the keyword count. To make matters worse, the average hiring manager begins with a negative view of college grads because a full 66 percent of hiring managers report that they view new college grads “as unprepared for the work place” (Adecco).

Race can also play a role in your success rate because research has shown that if you submit a resume with a “white sounding name,” you have a 50 percent higher chance of getting called for an initial interview than if you submit a resume with comparable credentials from an individual with a “black-sounding name” (M. Bertrand, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business).

Remember a Resume Only Gets You an Interview

Even with a perfect resume and a little luck, getting through the initial resume screen by the recruiter only guarantees that your resume will qualify for a more thorough review during what I call the “knockout round.” During this next stage of review, the recruiter will have more time to assess your resume for your accomplishments, your quantified results, your skills, and the tools you can use.

Unfortunately, the recruiter is usually looking for reasons to reject you, in order to avoid the criticism that will invariably come from the hiring manager if they find knockout factors in your resume. If no obvious knockout factors are found you can expect a telephone interview, and if you pass that, numerous in-person interviews (note: applicants can find the most common interview questions for a particular firm on glassdoor.com).

Even if You Do Everything Right, the Odds Can Be Less Than 1 Percent

Because of the many roadblocks, bottlenecks, and “knockout factors” that I have highlighted in this article, the overall odds of getting a job at a “best-place-to-work” firm can often be measured in single digits. For example, Deloitte, a top firm in the accounting field, actually brags that it only hires 3.5 percent of its applicants. Google, the firm with a No. 1 employer brand, gets well over 1 million applicants per year, which means that even during its robust hiring periods when it hires 4,000 people a year, your odds of getting hired are an amazingly low 4/10 of 1 percent. Those unfortunately are painfully low “lotto type odds.”

Up to 50 Percent of Recruiting Efforts Result in Failure

In case you’re curious, even with all the time, resources, and dollars invested in corporate recruiting processes, still between 30 percent and 50 percent of all recruiting efforts are classified by corporations as a failure. Failure is defined as when an offer was rejected or when the new hire quit or had to be terminated within the first year (staffing.org). Applicants should also note that 50 percent of all new hires later regret their decision to accept the job (Recruiting Roundtable).

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, much of what is written about “the perfect resume” and the ideal job search approach is based on “old wives’ tales” and is simply wrong. However, when I review the numbers that are available to me from internal company recruiting data and publicly through research done by industry-leading firms like TheLadders, Adecco, BeHiring, staffing.org, and Careerbuilder, it doesn’t take long to realize that the real job search process differs significantly from the ideal one.

Rather than leaving things to chance, my advice both to the applicant and to the corporate recruiting leader is to approach the job search process in a much more scientific way. For the applicant that means start by thoroughly reading the position description and making a list of the required keywords that both the ATS and the recruiter will need to see.

Next submit a customized resume that is in a scannable format that ensures that the key factors that recruiters need to see initially (job titles, company names, education, dates, keywords, etc.) are both powerful and easy to find during a quick six-second scan. But next comes the most important step: to literally “pretest” both your resume and your LinkedIn profile several times with a recruiter or HR professional. Pretesting makes sure that anyone who scans them for six seconds will be able to actually find each of the key points that recruiters need to find.

My final bit of advice is something that only insiders know. And that is to become an employee referral (the highest volume way to get hired). Because one of the firm’s own employees recommended you and also because the recruiter knows that they will likely have to provide feedback to that employee when they later inquire as to “why their referral was rejected,” résumés from referrals are reviewed much more closely.

I hope that by presenting these 35+ powerful recruiting-related numbers I have improved your understanding of the recruiting process and the roadblocks that you need to steer around in order to dramatically improve your odds of getting a great job.

via Why You Can’t Get A Job … Recruiting Explained By the Numbers – ERE.net.

Why You Can’t Get A Job … Recruiting Explained By the Numbers

Successful Recruiting in Matrix Organizations

It’s no secret that many organizations are moving away from the traditional hierarchical and functional way of working, toward a more matrixed structure where people report to multiple bosses and work on multiple teams with colleagues in different functions and locations, if not different time zones and cultures.

While this model can be effective, it’s by no means simple. In fact, it’s a much more complex way of working. Competing goals, influence without authority and accountability without control are the norms.

For recruiters, let’s look at the implications of this shift, and whether we need different types of people and different skill sets to succeed.

In working with hundreds of organizations around the world, we have identified five factors that go together to make up the matrix mindset. Here’s the list of those factors along with some ideas of how recruiters could look for evidence that candidates have this mindset.

Self-Leadership — Look for evidence that individuals have taken control of their own goals, role, and career. Do they have a track record of finding and engaging with the other people they need to be successful? Do they carve out a role for themselves or wait for others to solve their problems?

Breadth — Ask where interviewees have thought beyond their role and function. Do they take ownership for the delivery of results that cross-organizational boundaries or do they tend just to look at things from their own functional role perspective? Do they understand the business context they work in?

Comfortable with ambiguity — Candidates who want a clearly drawn job description are likely to be disappointed in the matrix. Are they comfortable with less clarity, and do they have the confidence to propose their own ideas and suggestions? Ask for examples from their business or daily life about how they’ve dealt with ambiguity or made sense of a previously unclear situation.

Adaptive — Successful matrix managers are flexible and open to new ideas and new ways of working. They know that today’s solution to problems may not be the right answer tomorrow. Do candidates show evidence of coping with significant change in their lives and careers? Was this stressful or stimulating? Can they demonstrate some sort of personal or professional change as a result?

Influencers – Because a matrix undermines traditional authority, people use a wide range of influence techniques and sources of power to get things done. If candidates seem to always fall back on hierarchy they may be unsuccessful in the matrix.

As always, the best indicator of success is to already have been successful in this kind of environment. Because this is a new way of working for many people, however, we may have to probe more broadly to find examples of where people have demonstrated elements of this mindset.

For example, you may find evidence of self-leadership and influence in community, educational, or other aspects of people’s lives.

How people deal with major life changes can be good indicators of comfort with ambiguity and the ability to be adaptive. Moving jobs and locations can be useful areas to probe, particularly if the move meant a significant change in lifestyle, such as an international move.

For many people, the matrix mindset is underpinned by a skill set that allows them to influence others and get things done without traditional authority. Simulation can be helpful here. Recruiters can observe these skills in action by using an assessment center methodology that puts people in a complex, ambiguous environment where they have to take into account different perspectives and influence others in order to be successful. Group and individual assessment exercises can be designed to show these behaviors in action.

Working for multiple bosses is not for everyone, and it does challenge some of the traditional ideas about management. Consider that both IBM and Cisco reported losing around 20 percent of their managers in the years following the introduction of a matrix structure.

When done correctly, though, a matrix organization can lead to broader and more challenging careers and a higher level of personal development.

In the end, everyone — company leaders, their recruiters, and their employees – should keep in mind that success in a matrix environment is not about structure, but about mindset and ways of working. In this respect, recruiters have a critical role in bringing people into the organization who are both comfortable with and effective in this increasingly common way of working.

via Successful Recruiting in Matrix Organizations – ERE.net.

Successful Recruiting in Matrix Organizations

Develop a Hiring Manager Scorecard … to Make Them More Accountable (Part 1 of 2)

Few in the corporate world would argue against the fact that the actions of hiring managers have a significant impact on hiring. In fact, I estimate their impact to be over 50 percent (with recruiters and the corporate employer brand covering the remaining impacts). But unfortunately, I estimate that less than 5 percent of corporate hiring managers are formally assessed or held accountable for their contribution to the hiring process. What is needed is a hiring manager scorecard.

The goal of this scorecard is obviously to identify “problem” hiring managers but it is also to learn and then share the best practices of top-performing hiring managers with all other managers in the corporation.

After setting your overall functional goals, recruiting leaders need to develop these four items.

1. Develop hiring and overall recruiting process metrics


2. Develop recruiter competencies


3. Develop an individual recruiter scorecard


4. Develop a scorecard covering individual hiring managers.

I have covered the first three items in recent ERE.net articles, so this one will focus on a hiring manager’s scorecard.

The Benefits of Assessing Hiring Managers

Even though accountability and metrics are widely accepted concepts in the corporate world, they have been slow to filter down into the recruiting process. Accountability is unfortunately not the strong suit of recruiting. Failing to track, assess, and report the results produced by hiring managers essentially encourages “sloppy hiring” and loose compliance with the requirements of the hiring process. The benefits that can result from having an effective “hiring manager scorecard” can include:

• 
  Know what really matters — when you measure and report to senior executives a metric covering an area of hiring, everyone involved unambiguously knows that this area is seen as important by top management.


• 
  Awareness increases the time spent — whatever you measure gets an increased focus, which means that whatever you measure will cause a hiring manager to spend time on it.


• 
  It can identify best practices — by measuring every hiring manager on the same criteria, it is easy to identify the best performers and the practices that result in superior performance.


• 
  It helps to fix problems — measuring hiring manager performance also allows you to identify the worst performers and the problems that they are encountering. Research and analysis can help to identify and eventually share workable solutions to these problems.


• 
  Reporting increases internal competition — the ranked results of each individual hiring manager by name to all hiring managers increases internal competition. In addition, reporting individual results allows weak hiring managers to identify and learn directly from the best hiring managers.

SAMPLE HIRING MANAGER SCORECARDS

Give hiring managers their scorecard divided into three parts:

Part I – The Strategic Scorecard (covering major business impacts)

Part II – The Efficiency And Timeliness Scorecard

Part III – The Cooperation And Communication Scorecard

If you’re wondering what these three scorecards for an individual hiring manager might look like, below you will find three samples, each in a different reporting format (percent of improvement, results by quarter and ranked compared to the very best).

Sample #1 — Strategic Scorecard — A focus on the percentage of improvement in business impacts

This sample scorecard section shows the percentage of improvement of this manager from their last scorecard results. It also compares this hiring manager’s performance to the results produced by the average hiring manager.

Sample #2 — Efficiency And Timeliness Scorecard — A year-long assessment of a hiring manager’s progress

This sample scorecard section lists this manager’s performance in each quarter on efficiency and timeliness and it then summarizes the performance at year-end.

Sample #3 — Cooperation and Communications Scorecard — A performance comparison to the best and the best ever

This sample scorecard section compares this hiring manager’s performance on cooperation and communications during this quarter to the top performance by any hiring manager during this period and the best performance of any hiring manager at any time.

Determining Which Performance Factors to Include

If you’re going to measure and perhaps reward individual hiring managers for excellence, you will need to work with a sample of them to determine which output metrics are strategic, effective, and easy to measure.

via Develop a Hiring Manager Scorecard … to Make Them More Accountable (Part 1 of 2) – ERE.net.

Develop a Hiring Manager Scorecard … to Make Them More Accountable (Part 1 of 2)

Develop a Hiring Manager Scorecard … to Make Them More Accountable (Part 2 of 2)

If you’re going to measure and perhaps reward individual hiring managers for excellence, you will need to work with a sample of them to determine which output metrics are strategic, effective, and easy to measure.

Here are 23 possible scorecard measures as a starting point for that discussion. Note: the highest-impact factors are listed first in each of the four categories.

Category I — High business impact measures to consider

These business impact metrics should make up the majority of any strategic hiring manager scorecard.

1. 
   Quality of hire/retention rate — this is the most important of all measures because it shows the business impact of new hires. Although most use the term “quality of hire,” a better title is “the on-the-job performance of new hires.” The easiest way to measure it is by tracking the average performance appraisal rating of new hires after 6-12 months and then compare it to the average for new hires in that job or job family (note because hiring managers give appraisal scores, there is some subjectivity in this measure). A superior but more difficult approach is to measure new hire employee output directly. An alternative but more subjective measure of quality is to survey the manager who the hiring manager reports to in order to determine this executive’s satisfaction rate with the quality and the fit of the new hires (or alternatively, the percentage of new hires that met their expectations). A quality hire can also be reflected in a high retention rate, so also consider tracking the average turnover rate of a manager’s new hires within the first year and compare it to the average.


2. 
   Number of hires from target firms – if your firm identifies high-talent firms to recruit from, track the number or the percentage of new hires by this hiring manager who came from “targeted” competitors or high talent firms.


3. 
   Diversity hiring percentage – diversity hires may be harder to land and because they may have a high impact, track their diversity percentage out of the total number of an individual manager’s new hires.


4. 
   Candidate experience – a bad candidate experience can negatively impact future recruiting. So, if you expect an excellent candidate experience, survey a sample of applicants and new hires to determine the percentage who were satisfied or dissatisfied with their treatment by this hiring manager. The percentage that are very satisfied or above and the percentage dissatisfied are the comparison measures to use.


5. 
   Revenue loss due to vacant days – there is a direct and measurable dollar loss for every day that revenue jobs are vacant. If possible, work with finance to estimate the dollar loss due to each vacancy day in these positions. Then track the number of days that revenue-generating jobs under this hiring manager are vacant.


6. 
   Offer acceptance rate — this metric can indicate weak candidate closing skills on the part of the hiring manager. Recruiters can sometimes manipulate this metric to make themselves look good.


7. 
   Percentage of new hires from referrals — referrals generally produces the highest quality hire. And because hiring managers can greatly influence members of their team to make referrals, this measure can indicate whether a hiring manager is encouraging their team members to be “talent scouts” and to actively seek out quality referrals.

Category II — Lower-business-impact measures of hiring manager effectiveness

These measures get a lower priority because they generally cover items that have a lower level of business impact.

1. 
   Legal compliance and process adherence – if compliance is a major issue, track the number of discrimination complaints, EEOC, or legal issues related to this hiring manager that were raised during the period. Also, because many hiring managers prefer to “wing it” throughout the hiring process, measure their actual adherence to the corporate recruiting process. Or alternatively, have recruiters estimate each manager’s percentage of adherence in a survey.


2. 
   $ of external search spent — because the excessive use of external search may be unnecessary, track the percentage of this hiring manager’s hires who required the use of outside agencies, and their total dollar spent on agency costs.


3. 
   Percentage of new hires who must be terminated — a new hire who must be terminated or asked to resign must be considered as a hiring failure, so the percentage should be tracked. But since the hiring manager makes the termination decision also, you should be aware that this metric is also likely to be skewed.


4. 
   The number of unfilled positions — this metric can indicate that critical work is not being done because of excessive unfilled positions. The measure can also be problematic because not all positions have an equal negative impact when they go unfilled.


5. 
   The quality of the applicants you did not hire — some recruiting leaders worry that individual hiring managers are somehow missing high-quality resumes or are failing to hire high-quality candidates. If this is your concern, you can randomly sample rejected or passed-over applicants to determine the percentage that were extremely high quality in both fit and qualifications but for some reason were not hired. Google actually revisited some of these “misses” and hired them later.


6. 
   Employer brand contribution — if you expect individual hiring managers to help build the employer brand image through writing and speaking, periodically measure this manager’s visibility to applicants through a Google search of their name or by their PeerIndex or Klout scores.

Category III — Hiring manager efficiency and timeliness measures

Although these are not strategic business impact measures, they do indicate whether hiring managers are prioritizing recruiting. Provide hiring managers with a separate section of a scorecard covering “efficiency and timeliness.”

1. 
   Total time from resume slate received to hire — rather than measuring overall time to fill, instead measure the portion of hiring that the manager has the most control over, which is the number of days between when they receive their initial slate of resumes to the offer acceptance date for each position.


2. 
   Applicant-to-interview, interview-to-offer, interview-to/hire-ratio — these ratios can indicate a failure to prioritize recruiting or weak skill levels on the part of the hiring manager.


3. 
   Response time after resumes received — the average number of days that it takes a hiring manager to read and respond to a group of resumes presented by the recruiter is an important indication of how high the manager prioritizes recruiting.


4. 
   Time from first interview to last – managers can unnecessarily stretch out the interview process, resulting in the loss of some high-demand candidates. As a result, the average time that it takes to complete all interviews should be measured.


5. 
   Time to complete the position description — because managers are routinely slow to finalize their position description and hiring requirements, this time period between requisition approval and completing the position description should be measured. The number of times that the position description must be updated can also be measured.

Category IV — Hiring manager cooperation and communications measures

If you expect your hiring managers to be cooperative and communicative with recruiters and other hiring managers, track and report measures under this area. Provide hiring managers with a separate section of the scorecard covering “cooperation and communications.” Some of those possible measures to include in it are:

1. 
   Satisfaction and responsiveness to recruiters – most recruiting leaders expect hiring managers to continually communicate, to provide rapid feedback, to share competitive intelligence, and to be responsive to your recruiter’s questions and requests. To measure their responsiveness, periodically survey the recruiters who they work with and track the average satisfaction rate with the manager’s responsiveness and the support provided to their recruiter. The percentage who are very satisfied or above and the percentage dissatisfied are the comparison measures to use.


2. 
   Providing input into the sourcing strategy — because hiring managers are experts in their field, they should proactively provide their recruiter with help and advice on the best sources for seeking top prospects. A survey of recruiters that covers their satisfaction with the sourcing help provided by the hiring manager and their team is the easiest way to measure quality of their sourcing input.


3. 
   Completing documentation – managers are notorious for failing to complete hiring documentation. As a result, the percentage of new hires where the manager completes the documentation requirements on time should be measured.
   


4. 
   Cooperation and best-practice sharing with other hiring managers – if you expect your hiring managers to be cooperative and share best practices with other managers, you must measure it. Do that by surveying all hiring managers. Have each rate the individual hiring manager on a 0-to-100 scale on “their degree of cooperation and best-practice sharing.”


5. 
   Lead time provided to recruiters — sufficient lead time before a requisition is final can allow recruiters to build a talent pipeline. As a result, managers should be assessed in a survey of recruiters on how frequently and how much lead time they provide.

And Finally, It’s Time to Consider a Service-Level Agreement

After you have determined the performance expectations for both your recruiters and your hiring managers, it only makes sense to go the next step and to develop a service-level agreement. Service-level agreements went out of fashion a handful of years ago when hiring levels were reduced, but with the war for talent returning in many areas, it is time to revisit them.

An SLA is a shared agreement where both sides agree to perform at a certain stipulated level. It tells hiring managers what specifically they should expect from their recruiters, but it also simultaneously spells out what hiring managers are expected to contribute to the hiring process. Most SLAs cover minimum and maximum timetables, key deliverables, dos and don’ts, and any other administrative expectations.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, the state of metrics in recruiting is not good. This is primarily because many recruiting leaders get bogged down in philosophical discussions on what can be measured “perfectly.” All metrics have weaknesses, so perfect metrics should not even be a goal. The goal instead should be to continually improve and to spread best practices rapidly as a result of the different effectiveness scorecards. I you don’t like the metrics and the hiring manager scorecard formats that I have provided, feel free to create your own. There will be resistance from the whiners who are “too busy to keep score” but don’t let them slow you down.

Hiring managers should not be allowed unlimited freedom to do whatever they want, and a hiring manager scorecard is one way to gently guide them toward the right course of action. If you are really bold, work with finance to put a dollar value on hiring miscues and bad hires, so that you can include the actual costs of weak hiring behaviors in your report card. I have calculated the estimated cost of a bad hire can be up to 10 times their annual salary and weak hiring manager interview practices and candidate treatment can also severely damage your employer brand. Compared to the cost of a weak or bad hire, the traditional cost-per-hire calculation can only be classified as insignificant!

via Develop a Hiring Manager Scorecard … to Make Them More Accountable (Part 2 of 2) – ERE.net.

Develop a Hiring Manager Scorecard … to Make Them More Accountable (Part 2 of 2)

Google’s Weird Interview Questions: ‘A Complete Waste of Time

You may have suspected that those peculiar interview brainteasers made famous by Google, Microsoft, and enough other companies that Glassdoor is able to come up with an annual list of 25 were, well, a waste of time.

You were right. And no less an authority than Google’s own Laszlo Bock says so. He’s Google’s senior vice president of people operations and in a New York Times interview he bluntly calls “a complete waste of time.” “They don’t predict anything,” he told The Times. “They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

So the Google question that made this year’s Glassdoor list — “How many cows are there in Canada?” — has no probative value when determining whether the person being interviewed can do the job. Another of Bock’s frank admissions is that college grades and test scores have almost no correlation to future job performance. No longer does Google ask for college transcripts, except for brand new college grads. For everyone else, Bock told The Times, “We found that they don’t predict anything.”

A haven for PhDs, Google these days is hiring workers who have no college degree at all.

What happened to change Google’s hiring methods is its ‘big data’ analysis of employee performance and the criteria used in choosing candidates. A study comparing tens of thousands of interview scores against the selected candidates’ job performance found “zero relationship.” What did correlate, Bock reported, is the behavioral interview.

“What works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people, ” he said, explaining:

The interesting thing about the behavioral interview is that when you ask somebody to speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information. One is you get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable “meta” information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult.

This isn’t the first time Bock has talked about the hiring and leadership selection process at Google. A few months ago, at The Economist’s Ideas Economy: Innovation Forum, he said the key determiner in deciding among candidates is “capability and learning ability.”

“We actually would rather hire smart, curious people than people who are deep deep experts in one area or another,” he told the forum audience. Why? Because experts tend to come up with answers that replicate what they know, rather strike off in new, potentially better, directions.

Plus, he said, Google takes its time selecting candidates and all hiring decisions are collaborative. “We don’t let hiring managers make a hiring decision.”

via Google’s Weird Interview Questions: ‘A Complete Waste of Time – ERE.net.

Google’s Weird Interview Questions: ‘A Complete Waste of Time

Is It Finally Time for Corporations to Provide Applicants With Feedback?

One of the most powerful unanswered questions in recruiting is “Why are ‘not hired’ applicants and rejected candidates not provided with feedback?”

Providing individual feedback in recruiting is almost nonexistent, even though giving feedback is a widely accepted practice in business. Firms take pride in providing feedback to their customers, vendors, and even their employees, but there is no formal process in most corporations for providing direct feedback to applicants/candidates covering why they were rejected or what they could do to improve their chances if they later applied for another position.

After my extensive research on the subject, I estimate that 95 percent of all corporations would get an “F” score on providing routine formal actionable feedback to their job applicants, mostly because providing feedback is an individual decision and that feedback is not monitored. In fact a 2012 survey by the Talent Board revealed that only 4.4 percent of candidates received the gold standard of … receiving specific individualized feedback and having their questions answered by hiring managers or recruiters.

Obviously all applicants, but especially those who have gone through interviews, have invested a great deal of their time in response to a company’s request for applicants, so on the surface at least it would seem that they have earned the right to something more than a canned email rejection note. If you are a corporate recruiting leader, perhaps now is the time (before the war for talent vigorously returns) to revisit this controversial issue.

Reasons Why “Actionable Feedback” Should Be Provided to Rejected Job Applicants

When considering whether to provide any kind of feedback to rejected candidates, you should consider these supporting arguments and benefits.

• 
  They may be customers — because they like your firm enough to consider working there, a significant percentage of your firm’s applicants are likely to be past, current, or future customers. Failing to meet their expectations for feedback may directly hurt future product sales.


• 
  It will hurt your employer brand — in a social media world, failing to provide what is expected during the employment process will likely generate negative comments that will be shared with many friends and colleagues. Any negative messaging resulting from a lack of feedback will likely hurt your brand image and both the quantity and quality of your future applications. Because few others do it, providing honest feedback that would allow them to learn and improve will likely make your firm stand out, compared to others. Candid feedback and responsiveness are both features of a great candidate experience. Research by industry leaders Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin continually reveals that some firms fail miserably at responsiveness and there are now even awards from the Talent Board for excellence in providing a great “candidate experience.”


• 
  It may scare away those in the next generations from applying – members of new generations that have grown up expecting and even demanding continuous feedback, two-way communication, and transparency may use the fact that you don’t provide their expected level of feedback as an indicator that you are not a desirable firm to work for.


• 
  Without feedback, strong candidates may prematurely give up – rejected candidates who you would like to apply for future openings may not reapply because they assume that their lack of feedback meant that they had no chance. But another hiring manager might have coveted them or their failure to get hired may have been a case where they simply lost out merely because an extraordinary candidate applied at the same time as they did.


• 
  Without feedback, weak candidates may continue to reapply – rejected candidates who have no real chance of landing a position may continue to clog your system with applications because they have received no feedback suggesting to them that they should give up.


• 
  Applicants have invested a lot – applicants have volunteered their time in response to your job solicitation and many believe that you have an ethical responsibility to provide them with actionable feedback in response to that investment.

A Case Study on How It Can Be Done — InfoReliance

I have found one firm, InfoReliance, an IT-solutions firm near Washington, D.C., to be the benchmark firm to learn from in providing candidate feedback. It believes that “anyone expressing interest in our company deserves to know why we are unable to hire them.”

Rather than sending out automatic rejection notices, this firm actually takes the time to “explain to each applicant why they were not chosen for a recruiter screen, an interview, or an offer.” Its feedback ranges from a short explanation for all applicants (i.e. lack of experience or education) to a lengthy explanation (“a back-and-forth discussion about why they are not the best fit for us at that time”) for a candidate who has been through multiple stages of interviewing. It goes even further by posting their recruiters’ contact information; it accepts calls from applicants and even informal inquiries from potential applicants. It also measures customer service levels.

Arguments Against Providing Applicants and Candidates With Feedback

The following section contains a list of the possible counter arguments against providing feedback. Many are pure speculation, and even the legal risks that many suggest have not been thoroughly researched and quantified.

• 
  Recruiter burden — most feel that providing feedback would unnecessarily add to the already heavy recruiter workload burden.


• 
  It’s expensive – the high volume of applicants means you would have to provide a high volume of feedback, so it would be too expensive unless it was 100 percent automated (which would require technical support, which is often scarce in recruiting).


• 
  Additional questions will be generated – many assume that providing feedback would only generate more candidate follow-up questions, and not answering the follow up questions would probably anger applicants.


• 
  Potential legal issues — any feedback opens up legal questions, so lawyers recommend against it.


• 
  It increases gaming – feedback might make it easier for individuals to learn the keywords in the ATS system and later perhaps game the system.


• 
  Most are simply unqualified — so many applicants are simply unqualified that their feedback would be extremely negative, making the feedback of little value to most.


• 
  No one else is doing it – risk-adverse firms prefer to see others start the practice of providing feedback and they would join in only later after the bugs were worked out.

16 Action Steps to Consider

The following section contains some action steps to consider if you have decided to provide more information and feedback to your applicants. They are broken down into two categories and listed from the simplest to the most complex.

Category #1 – The different levels of feedback that you can provide

1)    Notification that the application has been received – at the very least, a simple email acknowledgment that an application has been received should be sent to all.

2)    Offer a talent community to provide information – another option is to increase the amount of information provided to potential applicants by allowingthose interested in positions at your firm to join a “potential applicant community.” Provide community members with information on what is expected and what factors in the past have caused most applicants to be rejected. Provide frequently asked questions and answers and have a recruiter periodically answer new questions that apply to many in the community. Allow members to sign up for automatic notifications when relevant jobs become open.

3)    Provide upfront information on the hiring process – you can help eliminate some confusion and a great deal of anxiety on the part of applicants but providing an overview of your typical hiring process. For those applicants who are invited for interviews, more detailed information can be provided on the process, what you are looking for, who will be involved, and how long on average it should take (Blackberry does an excellent job in this area).

4)    Provide summary feedback – after a position closes,consider providing summary information to all applicants disclosing the factors in descending order that resulted in most applications being rejected. This information could also be posted on your website in order to educate potential applicants for this position.

5)    Provide guidance on whether they should reapply – for rejected individuals who you would like to reapply, tell them so. And subtly discourage those who do not appear to be a corporate fit for any job not to reapply.

6)    Provide feedback on whether they met the minimum qualifications – you could provide feedback on a simple yes/no basis as to whether an applicant’s resume/application “met the minimum requirements for the position.” For those who were found to be qualified, a clarifying statement could be added explaining that although they did meet the minimum standards, others applicants were found to be more qualified.

7)    Disclose the areas where they were weak – consider going beyond simple yes/no answers to whether they were qualified and give specific “failed-to-meet-expectations” feedback in one or more of the four key assessment areas (i.e. education, experience, skills, or fit). You should also consider giving periodic feedback at the end of the various stages of the interview process praising the areas that they have done well and highlighting the areas that more information is needed.

8)    Providing easily gathered objective information — consider providing the ATS score received by their resume (compared to the average) to those who were rated as meeting the minimum qualifications. If technical tests were given, provide their percentile ranking.

9)    Give a higher level of feedback to a targeted few – provide some coaching and give more detailed feedback through with a single back-and-forth opportunity with a recruiter to those who went through the interview process and to all finalists and quality employee referrals.

10) After hire feedback – if you really want to reinforce their hiring decision and improve performance, consider sitting down with new hires and highlighting their strengths, as well as covering areas where you feel they will need to build on (and how you will provide that support).

Category #2 — Administrative actions

11) Create a customer service team within recruiting – work with your organization’s customer service function on the business side to put together feedback goals, processes, and success measures. Realize that you have four categories of “customers,” each with unique information and feedback needs: (1) those individuals who are considering applying, 2) those who have merely applied, 3) those who have gone through interviews, and 4) hiring managers/recruiters). Use interns or part-timers to handle some administrative aspects for collecting and delivering simple feedback.

12) Ask each type of customer what feedback they want — conduct a survey of a sample of your applicants and candidates to identify what feedback they expect at each level of the hiring process. Obviously you want to either meet their expectations for feedback or explain why what they want is not feasible.

13) Develop a business case – avoid speculation and instead actually calculate the ROI and the business case for providing additional candidate feedback. Rather than anecdotel evidence, a complete quantified risk analysis should be conducted.

14) Create a feedback toolkit — provide managers and recruiters with a “feedback toolkit” which includes which individual is responsible for each type of feedback, resume and interview assessment forms, actual scripts that can be used as feedback templates, as well as individuals who can coach feedback providers on tough situations. Where necessary, provide education to your recruiters and hiring managers on the dos and don’ts of feedback.

15) Examine your ATS system — work with your ATS provider to ensure that it captures the right information and that it has automatic CRM “triggers” which automatically send basic responses and reminds hiring managers and recruiters when to provide additional feedback. Also make sure that your screeners, recruiters, and hiring managers are entering the appropriate data into the system that makes later accurate feedback possible.

16) Make a list of the allowable types of feedback – provide recruiters and hiring managers with a list of the acceptable feedback categories and give recommended minimums and maximums for each feedback area. Be sure and educate them about the pitfalls of providing too little or too much feedback.

Final Thoughts

Although almost no major corporation currently provides more than a basic level of feedback, don’t be surprised when you find that it has become a common practice over the next five years. This shift will be caused by an increased expectation for feedback and transparency among newer generations and the increasing use of social media (and especially glassdoor.com) which allows the rapid spread of both positive and negative aspects of a firm’s hiring process.

Of course there are some risks involved, but in my view, the benefits far outweigh the largely unproven and unquantified concerns.

via Is It Finally Time for Corporations to Provide Applicants With Feedback? – ERE.net.

Is It Finally Time for Corporations to Provide Applicants With Feedback?

Bring in the Reserves: an Argument for Over-Hiring

Consider this scenario: A talent acquisition director makes a seemingly great hire for a specialized manufacturing role. However, several weeks after the new employee starts the job, another, better — actually, amazing — candidate is referred by a colleague.

The HR professional decided to bring in the late-coming candidate for an informal interview even though a true “job opening” no longer exists. After the decision makers interview the late-coming candidate, they acknowledged that he’s a perfect fit for the culture, qualified for several potential future opportunities in the firm, and a prime candidate for leadership grooming.

The talent acquisition director considers two options:

Fire the original hire (even though he has thus far met expectations) and upgrade him with the newer, better candidate, risking the morale of other employees and damaging the employment brand by appearing insensitive.

Commit to developing the current staff, and keep the late-coming candidate in the pipeline for future opportunities, knowing full well that he will probably be scooped up by the competition before an appropriate position opens up in the company again.

Well, let’s explore the third option. One that is counterintuitive and requires some further analysis, not to mention a lot of convincing …

Hire the new superstar now instead of waiting and hoping for perfect timing down the line!

Some call it building a bench. Other call it over-hiring. Upon initial consideration, this recruiting tactic seems indulgent … even risky. After all, when there’s no wiggle room in the head count, numbers and budgets need to be juggled to fund a talent reserve. Certainly, it is not a recommended strategy for every position or for every company. But in certain types of organizations, industries and departments (such as certain retail, healthcare, IT, and manufacturing environments) this strategy may make sense.

For example, building a sales bench may prove to be a smart, flexible recruiting solution during this time of economic recovery. According to Pareto, a UK staffing firm, “The concept of having a sales superstar, trained up, off head count, waiting in the wings for something to change and ready to step up to any challenge could prove an invaluable sales safety net. Benching is fast growing in popularity, and reflects the changing demand of the modern day marketplace.”

Certainly, we’ve seen this in the past. Since the early 1980s, the bench model has been working in the IT space.

Jason Gorman, a software development trainer, coach, and author, believes that if you find a great software developer it might make sense to keep the talent on the payroll for months before a real project materializes. Actively recruiting when there’s an urgent need is like, “last-minute Christmas shopping. We run around town at 4 p.m. on the December 24 trying to get something for everyone on our list. But all the good toys are gone and all the supermarket shelves have been picked clean … So you make massive compromises.”

Does building a bench make good sense for your current hiring needs? Consider these six qualifying factors …

Evaluate your firm’s analytics for turnover rates by department and by job.

Quantify costs related to vacancy, especially overtime pay .

Examine time-to-fill data for the position and/or the department.

Find out if your customer satisfaction/customer loyalty is affected by staff shortages.

Explore the effect of staff shortages on employee engagement, retention.

Consider the administrative and recruiting costs associated with replacing those employees lost due to staff shortages.

But keep in mind, superstars don’t like to sit idly by. So put the talent on your bench to good use until the right opportunity appears within the organization. Here are a few options to keep your reserve players in the game:

Develop a rotational program to give bench warmers well-rounded exposure to relevant departments within the organization.

Pre-train those on the bench by shadowing more experienced/higher-positioned people in department.

Use your bench as fill-ins while others are on leave/vacation.

Volunteer your bench: Provide their services/manpower to local charitable organizations and elevate your brand at the same time.

Ask bench warmers to come up with specific ways to use their talent while they are waiting for their opportunity.

Proactive recruiting is all about predicting expectations. But in some cases, to be truly competitive, firms should seriously consider hiring more staff than currently needed. After all, when all is said and done, you may find that the costs of over-hiring in key areas are much lower than the price of staying lean. Even if your extra employees warm the bench until a job opens.

via Bring in the Reserves: an Argument for Over-Hiring – ERE.net.

Bring in the Reserves: an Argument for Over-Hiring

How Recruiters Can Tame Frustrating Hiring Managers

Ask a roomful of recruiters if hiring managers can occasionally drive them a bit batty, and hands rise faster than you say black hole.

You know the drill: managers who are unresponsive, unprepared, waste time, and don’t get back to candidates. Or, those who ask illegal questions, or just cringe-worthy ones. Tell me about yourself!

Or they say this: “I need to see 137 more resumes!”

Recruiting Toolbox’s Carmen Hudson, speaking at the ERE conference here in Chicago, gave recruiting leaders some advice on improving the manager/recruiter relationship.

Her suggestions:

Carmen HudsonShame! Yes, shame the hiring manager, she says, smiling. Well, if not shame, at least create some accountability. Hudson, who has held recruiting and sourcing roles at Yahoo, Starbucks, Amazon, and Microsoft, suggests you:

Make sure you set expectations up front. Recruiters and managers should each commit to do certain things by a certain date. If those dates need to change, no problem.

Create a buddy system. Pair someone, perhaps a junior person, up with the hiring manager. One benefit of this is that if one of the two can’t show for an appointment, the interview is covered.

Keep score. Don’t accept managers not showing up to interviews — document it. “Not showing up is the ultimate disrespect,” Hudson says.

Pre-schedule interviews. Know that they’re going to happen on, say, the first Wednesday of every month.

Hold pre-interview meetings. At a company Hudson is consulting for, managers are asked to meet with recruiters to discuss not just the jobs needing to be filled, but also to make sure everyone’s on the same page with the assessment criteria, the importance of the candidate experience, and to make sure the task of selling the job and the company will be done.

Candidate debriefs. This is a meeting, perhaps on the phone, to discuss how things went, post-interview.

There’s more. Hudson suggests you shadow interviewers. You’ll be shocked, she says, at what you’ll find going on in an interview, like the company asking people to provide a joke as part of their interview. “Nuts,” Hudson says.

Job descriptions may need to be rewritten, too. They may be boring, and ask for a lot of stuff a candidate doesn’t really need to have to do the job well. “Your employer brand is in the hands of your interviewers,” she says. Like a bad experience at a coffee shop, a bad experience during an interview will only spread the bad word to others.

She says to ask managers: how would you want your best friend to be treated if he or she were to interview here?

Some of her other suggestions:

Make sure you check out Glassdoor, she says, to see what people are saying about your company. But, she warns: try to manipulate the results, and candidates will see through it.

Give “white glove” treatment to people coming from employee referrals.

Talk to new hires — not just company veterans. They’re hypersensitive to what’s going well and what’s not, and what surprised them about the company (e.g., they were told they’d work on the newest technology and ended up not). This can be very valuable in crafting a value proposition and selling candidates on your company.

Ask questions you want answers to — not questions that will subtly lead to answers you want. For example, if you’re hiring a sports editor and want to know someone’s favorite team, ask. But try to don’t find it out by asking, “where’d you grow up?”

via How Recruiters Can Tame Frustrating Hiring Managers – ERE.net.

How Recruiters Can Tame Frustrating Hiring Managers

Top 5 Recruiting Trends in the U.S. [INFOGRAPHIC]

Do you know what is the fastest growing source of quality hires in the US?  Do you know how the US talent acquisition leaders stack against their peers across the world in terms of using data?

via Top 5 Recruiting Trends in the U.S. [INFOGRAPHIC] | The LinkedIn Talent Blog.

Top 5 Recruiting Trends in the U.S. [INFOGRAPHIC]