Recruiting Behavior in 2020 – Will it change for 2021?

In Episode 40 of The HR Famous PodcastTim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee appear at TalentNet Live and do a panel on behavioral trends among recruiters in 2020, using the 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey from Jobvite as their source for conversation.

The gang discusses how recruiters have changed in the depths of COVID, Tim gives his rant about the use of social media by recruiters, JLee notices that female recruiters might be more balanced than males and KD wonders how soul-crushing it is to be a resume writer in 2020.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

RESOURCES AND SHOW NOTES:

————TalentNet Live and Jobvite

TalentNet Live

Craig Fisher

Jobvite

The 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey

—————Jessica Lee, Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

HRU Tech

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Kinetix

Boss Leadership Training Series

There Is a 75% Chance of Selecting Better Talent if You Only Hire…

ME! No, I’m only joking. I’d be way higher than 75%! 😉

You all know I love data and some of the fun things we can pull out of studies about performance and selection. A 2014 study on world-class athletes found that the top-performing athletes had older siblings in 75% of the participants studied!

So, want to hire better performers? Ask this question:

Do you have older siblings? 

Ironically, those only children, the super great ones all those parents love, only have a 5% chance of being world-class! Oldest kids get the other 20%, and middle kids, well they don’t get anything but to continue to complain it’s unfair! 😉

Why do people with older siblings tend to perform better? 

Okay, I get it, we are talking about world-class athletes and performance, but really the same foundations are set by older siblings no matter what the skill or profession. Want to be a better cook? It probably helps to have older siblings who were cooking around you and showed interest, which made you interested, etc.

Siblings tend to compete with each other, and the youngest will always be at a disadvantage until they are not. If you’re kicking little Timmy’s butt all over the court, you won’t work as hard to continue to get better, but little Timmy will never stop until he beats you. (By the way – this isn’t a “boy” thing, the study was done on female world-class athletes – it works across all genders)

The youngest kids get all the advantages of being pushed harder and getting knowledge transfer from seeing older siblings fail and succeed. On average, they are more likely to gain from being in an environment where older siblings are performing.

Does this concept transfer to the world of work? 

I don’t have hard data from a study that it does, only anecdotal evidence to say it depends! I’ve worked with brilliant people who come from all kinds of family dynamics. I do find, on average, that those people who were raised as younger siblings bring competitiveness to the workplace that if channeled appropriately can be very good.

I do think it also depends on how close in age they are to their siblings. The closer the better in my experience. My younger brother is 15 years younger than me. He’s more only-child than younger sibling grinding it out trying to beat me. My two oldest sons are twenty months apart, one year apart in school age. They are strong competitors, and my youngest you is four years younger than his brothers gets competition shoved down his throat, by his brothers in everything he does.

So, today, younger siblings who have taken all the beatings from your older siblings, smile bright! You probably have a better shot a being great, because of those beatings!

Finding Qualified Diverse Talent is NOT Your Issue!

During 2020, I’ve spoken to a lot of leaders who are concerned with their diversity recruiting. Every single one of them will say something like, “Tim, we just can’t find the ‘qualified’ diverse talent we need!” Sound familiar? Feel familiar?

I’m not a diversity recruiting strategy expert. I leave that to my friend, Torin Ellis. I do think I’ve got a bit of knowledge when it comes to overall recruiting, though.

When I break down the response I get from most leaders, regarding diversity recruitment I usually have one cringe, and one response. “Qualified?” What do you mean by that? I hear it as, you can find plenty of diverse folks interested in coming to work for you, but none of them, or few of them, are actually qualified to work for you. Is that how you read/hear that?

It makes me cringe a bit because what you’re actually saying is we don’t have a supply problem, we have a training and development problem, but you don’t even realize that. You could have your perfect diverse mix of employees if you just invested a bit in training and developing these great hired into great employees. But, you don’t see the value in that, which makes me think you probably don’t see the value in a diverse workforce, to begin with.

What I actually say to them is this, “You don’t have a diversity recruiting problem. You have a diversity pay problem because finding diverse “qualified” talent is easy. Finding ones that will accept your job, culture, location, and/or average to low pay is really hard!” 

Finding talent has never been easier in the history of humanity. We have more technology and tools than ever before. Finding is easy. Recruiting is hard..

Successful recruiting takes some skill. A success recruiter will find the “qualified” diverse talent you are looking for and then they’ll do a few things:

  • They’ll get them interested first. They will make them feel desired and wanted by the organization. By the hiring manager. By the team. Being Desired is a powerful drug!
  • Next, they’ll discover what that talent actually desires in their career. Quickly, efficiently, like a sniper.
  • Then they’ll make a determination: 1. Are we going to meet those desires. or 2. We won’t meet those desires.
  • One, you obviously move on to screening, assessing, etc. Two, and you move on to giving something back to this person. “I can’t help you right now, but I’ve taken notes and if I have anything that ever comes close to meeting what you need, I’m going to contact you back.” 99% of recruiters will never say that to a potential candidate.

Honestly, about 25% of the time when you tell someone “I can’t help you, but…” they’ll actually state a desire to keep going. You taking the potential away will make some reveal they actually have an interest. Doesn’t mean you will still move forward, but it’s a nice outcome.

I can easily find you “qualified” diversity talent. Don’t think so, call me. I can find anyone. The problem we’ll run into is that some of that talent is rare and will cost a premium to get. It’s a simple economic proposition, you can buy talent or build talent. They each have their costs and benefits. I find most organizations claim they want to hire diverse talent, but aren’t doing what it will take to make it happen.