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

Before You Require Poem Writing, Take These 7 Steps to Ensure Your Hiring Matches Your Culture

During a trip to a suburban mall near Cleveland, I saw a man wearing a jacket with a logo for Hyland Software, a business-to-business software developer whose global headquarters are located nearby. In the B2B world, Hyland has a reputation of being a stellar employer with a fun streak. As evidence, it has a giant tube slide in the middle of its headquarters and has earned several top workplace awards in recent years.

Hyland also has a quirk in its interview process. Candidates applying online are required to write and submit a poem. Not an essay, not a biography — a poem. How does that strike you?

I’m guessing some percent of people reading this column are thinking that’s ridiculous. And I know from reading message boards about hiring at Hyland that several past candidates frown upon the poem (that’s putting it nicely). I’m sure at least one applicant has written to the company, “Roses are red, violets are blue. This assignment is stupid, and so are you.”

Many recruiters and HR managers would freak out if they got wind that their interview process was causing a negative reaction. Their job is to put fannies in the seats, and angry candidates don’t help achieve the company’s hiring goals.

I don’t sweat when I hear candidates complain about my company’s pre-employment process. I think repelling some applicants is okay, unless your process turns off candidates who fit your culture. If certain people don’t like your process, that’s probably a good indication they wouldn’t like your job either.

My company is a B2B magazine and website publisher who regularly hires account executives, managers, and writers. Our culture embraces and rewards people who are high character, high initiative, hard working, and humble. We seek to attract folks who value constructive criticism and teamwork and are seeking a long-term career, not just their next job.

So, our interview process is thorough and intense with questions that go beyond skills and personality, seeking to fully understand the candidate’s character. We spend 14-16 hours with successful candidates. Our pre-employment steps include an essay, dinner with their significant other, and an aversions interview where we give the candidate an accurate picture of the struggles they will face on the job.

Partway through our process some candidates bail and tell us we are overwhelming and invasive. But others compliment us for our rigorous system, saying it helped them learn more about themselves and our company before making a major life decision. The general reaction by these candidates is, “At first, I didn’t understand why you’d need to spend so much time with me because every other interview process is much shorter. But now I see that you really value people and take hiring seriously.”

My company’s corporate tagline is “We’re Different By Design,” and I think you’d agree our interview process mirrors that. We would be misleading candidates — and experience high turnover — if we behaved otherwise.

Because that process works for us, does that mean you should copy exactly what my company does? Absolutely not.

These seven actions will ensure your hiring process is effective and in harmony with your culture:

1. Review a copy of your organization’s guiding principles and see if they are evident on your recruiting website and within your interview process.


2. Compare your website with websites of companies in your industry and companies with cultures similar to yours.


3. Call the HR directors and recruiters from those companies to get details on their interview process.


4. Review sites of “best-places-to-work” companies for ideas on how they communicate their culture and conduct their pre-employment process. At Jameson, we researched companies on the Forbes list “Companies That Give The Toughest Job Interviews.”


5. Ask your recently hired employees if they felt your interview processes accurately depicted your company culture. Note where they feel differences exist.


6. Get feedback from “ones that got away” — candidates you wanted to hire but decided to go somewhere else. LinkedIn is a great resource for quickly finding what these folks are up to.


7. Ask current candidates in your process how they would describe your company from what they’ve been exposed to. Does it match the perspective you want them to have?

via Before You Require Poem Writing, Take These 7 Steps to Ensure Your Hiring Matches Your Culture – ERE.net.

Before You Require Poem Writing, Take These 7 Steps to Ensure Your Hiring Matches Your Culture

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

List the 20 Traits You Want in Your Next Hire

Try this for your next hire: have a manager come up with a list of about 20 different traits she’d like to have in the new employee who’ll take the job. Consider the work environment and performance expectations: What skills and traits does an employee need to possess to excel at the job? Be specific.

After the list is complete, you and the manager can go back and put a letter “T” next to the ones in which you are able and willing to train. Of the remaining traits, circle the ones that are non-negotiable, must-have traits. From the ones circled, put a star next to your top five.

You can always train a new employee to perform a task (if you are willing), but hiring an employee who doesn’t possess the same values as you or your organization will be problematic in the long run. After aligning your values and attitudes, focus on the individual’s skills and abilities. Competencies to look for include reading comprehension, math skills, computer skills, decision making, flexibility, and interpersonal skills. Consider which skills are essential, which tasks are performed occasionally, and which are not necessary for the job.

Determine how much experience and education are needed to fill the position and address specific needs. Some jobs can allow for a training period, while others require the employee to hit the ground running almost from Day 1. Even the employee with the best credentials will need a period of time to get adjusted to your organization’s specific culture.

Some people were made to be accountants, some to be salespeople, and others to work with their hands. Putting people in a position which is not the right fit for their skills, abilities, and personalities is sure to create coaching needs in the future.

via List the 20 Traits You Want in Your Next Hire – ERE.net.

List the 20 Traits You Want in Your Next Hire

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