Would Candidates Pay for Interview Feedback?

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I get my ideas in the shower. I have a busy life, so it seems like my downtime is that solid 5 to 10 minutes I get in the shower. I usually shower twice a day—once first thing in the morning, then before I go to bed. That’s 10 to 20 minutes daily to think and clean. I like going to bed clean. I like waking up with a shower. You’re welcome. You now know my daily cleaning habits. Thanks for stopping by today!

I’m not sure why ideas come to me. My wife says I’m not completely “right.” I get weird things that come into my head, at weird times. This morning I decided to stop fighting the candidate experience freaks (those people that think candidate experience actually matters, which it doesn’t as much as they think) and finally help them solve their problem. You won, freaks. But I damn well better get a lifetime achievement award at the next Candidate Experience Awards!

Here’s your solution: Charge candidates a fee to get feedback on their interviews.

<Drops mic, walks off stage, give me my award.>

Yeah, that’s what I just said. Let me give you the details; apparently, a couple of you just spit out your coffee.

Candidates want great feedback on their interviews, desperately. When someone really wants something, that certain thing becomes very valuable. HR shops in organizations have the ability to deliver this very valuable thing, but they don’t have the resources to do it well. By well, I mean really well: making that feedback personable, meaningful, and developmental.

Are you willing to spend 15 minutes debriefing a candidate after an interview… a candidate you don’t want? Of course not. What if that candidate paid you $10 for that feedback? That’s $40 per hour you could make just debriefing candidates. Couldn’t you go out and hire a sharp HR pro for like $30 per hour to do this job?

Yeah, that’s why I deserve awards. My ideas are groundbreaking. It’s a big burden to carry around.

Think of this as an airline. Airlines figured out that certain people are willing to pay an extra $25 to get on the plane first, or to be first in line. This is all you’re doing. You’re not taking advantage of anyone; you’re just offering a first-class candidate experience for those willing to pay for it. For those unwilling to pay for first class, they’ll get your coach experience. They’ll get a form letter that says thanks, no thanks, here’s a 10% off coupon on your next use of our service, or whatever you do to make that candidate experience seem special.

A first-class candidate experience for $10. Do you think candidates would pay for that? You’re damn straight they would! Big companies would actually have to establish departments for this! Goldman Sachs, give me a call, I’ll come set this up for you! GM, Ford and Chrysler, I’m like an hour away, let’s talk, I can come down any day next week.

It’s easy to dismiss a crazy idea that some guy came up with in the shower—until your competition starts doing it, it becomes the industry norm, or an HR Tech company builds the app and starts selling this a service. My Poppi (that’s what I called my Grandfather) always use to say, “Tim, it only costs a little more to go, first class.” People like first-class treatment. People want first-class treatment. People will pay for first-class treatment.

Would you pay for great interview feedback, so great it could be considered personal development? How much?

Writing LinkedIn Recommendations like We Write Yelp Reviews!

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I want to start a trend.

I’ve had some really great people write LinkedIn recommendations for me. I think all of them are from people I’ve actually personally worked with and had a strong relationship. The dirty little secret, though, is no one really ever reads or pays attention to these reviews. I mean, no hiring decisions are based on “OMG! Tim’s LI recommendations were off the charts! We must hire him!”

The trend I want to start is to start giving each other LI recommendations like we give Yelp reviews of restaurants, hotels, attractions, etc. Wouldn’t that be at least more fun!?!

They would read something like this:

Tim S. on Laurie Ruettimann: 5 Stars – Once walked a mile, drunk, with Laurie to a Sprinkles ATM in the middle of the night because Sprinkles Cupcakes are the best! We have a secret IG group where we talk “ish” about everything, and it’s super fun! Be careful though, she’s always trying to talk you into going to work out and other stuff you probably don’t want to do.

Tim S. on Kris Dunn: 4.5 Stars – I would have given him 5 stars but I was expecting Kris Dunn the NBA basketball player, and while this Kris Dunn does play basketball, he’s nowhere as good as the real Kris Dunn in the NBA. Loves to wear to dress sneakers as part of his get up, which I dig. The only person alive who drinks 32 oz Powerade Zeros in the morning, but didn’t drink the night before.

Tim S. on Steve Boese: 5 Stars – Have you felt his muscles? No, he legitimately works out, under all those fancy suits is a chiseled beast (or at least I’m told). The one dude is constantly on speed dial for a road trip to any sporting event in the world but prefers NBA and Gamecocks sports. Super secret Chairman’s dinners were the best until he sold out and went commercial. King of the top ten list.

Tim S. on Carmen Hudson: 4.5 Stars – Her and I were separated at birth. Don’t even try to question, we have the 23 and Me results, haters! Shoes on point. Perfect travel pal. Drags a dude around with her that’s pretty cool, but he constantly complains about his plane seat while on this way to 5-star hotels. Not a 5 star because she lives in Seattle and that’s too far away from me.

So, what do you think!?! 100% improvement from a traditional LI Recommendation, right? I mean, you would hire all of these folks above, I mean if you could afford them, but you can’t, but you would!

Hit me in the comments with your LinkedIn/Yelp Recommendation of me (oh, this will be fun)! Also, be aware, I might hit you back with mine of you!

Career Confessions of Gen Z – Quit Catfishing

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Tim Sackett

When I graduated from college, I remember being so excited to start my job search. I was convinced that I was not going to settle for a job and that I was going to search until I found the right fit for me. Though I was determined, finding the right fit took a lot longer than I expected. Granted, I was not in any big rush. I had put my two weeks into my current job and was going to enjoy a break without working for the first time since I was fifteen. However, my once excitement for the job search quickly faded and turned into frustration and skepticism of job ads and companies. Below are the main causes of frustrations I ran into during my search for the right job:

The job title included the word, “marketing”, but the description exposed that the job was actually not marketing but instead sales, customer service, or something else not marketing.
The job was an entry-level position that had a billion requirements that made me feel unqualified as a new grad and that the right applicant actually needed like five years of experience.
The job ad sounded like just what I was looking for so I applied, landed the interview, and then learned that the job was NOTHING like the description in the ad but something completely different.
The job ad sounded great, I researched the company and the company looked great, I applied, got an interview, and then realized I was catfished. The environment, culture, and people were nothing like how they had sounded or appeared.

I felt like I needed to hire Nev Schulman, the host of Catfish, just to determine if the job ad was a scam or not before applying.

After looking for and applying to jobs, taking interviews, and being exposed to just how many companies try to make their job ads appealing by not being transparent, I was sure to tell my friends of my experiences so that they would not fall for the same lies that I did. These companies lost my trust, respect, and potential to ever apply again. They also lost other potential applicants due to negative word of mouth. Today, I often see these same companies constantly having the positions that catfished me always open and with the same job ad. If I had to guess, they are still struggling to fill the positions. So, was the lack of transparency really worth it? Probably not. Had they been real and transparent from the start they would likely have found someone that is the right fit for the position and saved their reputation from damage. Will these companies ever be transparent? I don’t know, but I sure hope so to prevent others from going through the same experiences that I did.

Hallie Priest is a digital marketer for HRU Technical Resources, a leading engineering, and IT staffing firm based in Lansing, MI, using her skills to create content to serve all involved in the job seeking/hiring process. When she is not strategizing campaigns, going over analytics, or talking about her dog you can find her at the nearest coffee shop fueling her creativity. Connect with her on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/halliepriest

@SHRM Making a Stand for Hiring Candidates with Criminal Record!

Posted on February 4, 2019 by Tim Sackett

When it comes to hiring bias in America we HATE hiring 3 types of candidates:

Old People
Fat People
People with a Criminal Record

SHRM decided to try and make an impact and help those with past criminal records get hired with their new initiative called: Getting Talent Back to Work.

GTBW is an initiative launched by SHRM to get employers to join in and take a pledge that their organizations will work to put people with criminal records back into their hiring pools. Koch Industries, a multi-billion dollar corporations with over 120,000 employees was SHRM’s launch partner, which drew some eyre from some of the HR blogging community.

When I first heard of the program, and HR blogging blow back, the first thing came to mind was the quote:

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows” by William Shakespeare from the Tempest

There are millions of American workers right now who are miserable because they have a record and we will not allow them to pay their debt to society.

This was the same language used by Torin Ellis and Julie Sowash on their entertaining podcast Crazy and The King. Where Julie was really upset by the Koch relationship because of their conservative political stance, and Torin saw it a little less so, which I thought brought great balance to this discussion. Not blind at all to what is going on, but also hopeful and realistic to how difficult this issue really is to change.

So, what do I think about all this?

Making change is messy business. Getting people with criminal records real jobs isn’t something we’ve done really well in our society. 1/3 of Americans have some sort of criminal record and we can’t just throw all of these people away. We have to start truly believing that a debt paid, is actually paid.

Johnny Taylor has a giant association to lead. Some of those SHRM members are ultra liberal. Some are ultra conservative. Some are socialist. Some are religious zealots. Some are atheist. While some HR bloggers hate him for allowing Koch Industries to be apart of this program, I find this view to be exclusive and not inclusive of all.

Odds are there are as many people who love that SHRM has Koch Industry as a partner, as there are people who hate that SHRM has Koch Industries as a partner (with 300,000+ members the stats will play out like America in general). By the way, SHRM also has over 500 other organizations that have stepped up and taken the Pledge! Which is what this is really all about!

Like the ex-criminals we are trying to help get them back to work, why is it we believe that Koch Industries can’t help in this situation? We all have things in our life, in our past, that some wouldn’t agree with, and things that people would love, no matter our political persuasion.

Our reality is almost every organization is or has probably done some crap we all can’t agree on, but they probably are smaller, or keep a lower profile, or believe in what you believe in, so we give them a pass.

I have many friends who lean very heavily liberal. Also, some ultra-conservative. Also, some socialist, and Libetarian, and who knows what else! I don’t agree with their politics and they don’t agree with my moderate politics, yet we can work together to help others and solve problems. It’s not all or nothing. That’s not how our country works. If my neighbor views the world differently than I, I don’t watch his home burn down with him in it, I run in and save him.

We are intelligent beasts that have the ability to separate one ideology from another, and while we won’t always agree it doesn’t mean we can’t find value in one another. We are HR! We own D&I. We need to stop making Inclusion, exclusive to one belief and not all beliefs.

So, kudos for SHRM in launching this initiative in getting organizations to really dig into this issue of hiring people with previous criminal records who have paid their debt to society. Kudos to each and every company that has taken the pledge to help these people who desperately need it.

I encourage you to go take a look at the site and decide if taking this pledge is right for your organization!

New Findings from the 2018 Candidate Experience Research Report

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Over the last 8 years, the folks over at the Talent Board release an exceptional research report around Candidate Experience (CX). This isn’t a small sample report, over 130,000 candidates provided feedback! The 2018 Talent Board Candidate Experience Research Report can be downloaded by following this link.

I love this report because it’s designed to not only give you the data, but also to help every organization, of every size, increase their CX. Turns out there are certain things that companies that win the Candidate Experience awards do, like:

Acknowledge a candidate’s interest and provide closure. (it’s what every candidate wants – did you get my application and what happened)
Provide consistent communication to candidates throughout the process.
Ask for candidate feedback, not only at the end.
Hold their TA team responsible for CX measures.
Be perceived by candidates as having a fairer process, in terms of candidates feeling they were able to show you who and what they are.

All of that seems easy enough right? It’s not rocket science, yet so few companies actually deliver on these simple things.

The 2018 report also found a few things that I thought were pretty interesting as well.

1 – Corporate TA shops who outsourced their recruiting function to third-party, RPO, or HRO vendors, candidates actually rated those organizations better for CX! Over in-house TA shops, both centralized and decentralized. WHAT!?! There’s no way, Tim!

Way! Think about how outsourced recruiting vendors survive. They survive by delivering recruiting better and more efficiently than you can yourself, otherwise they wouldn’t exist! It’s built into their contract and SLAs.

While I found this surprising at first glance, it makes sense. It also screams to me as a TA leader that we as leaders fail in-house by not holding our teams accountable to delivering great CX. The good news – that’s actually a simple fix!

2 – Only 7% of Corporate Recruiters and Hiring Managers call candidates who are rejected after an in-person interview. But, that 7 % that do see their CX ratings jump 28% higher than those who don’t.

7% is shameful. You take a candidate all the way through your process to the final step of having that personal interview and you don’t reject with a bit of personalization. You send them a stupid email!?!

We are better than this. You, personally, reading this right now, would be pissed off if this happened to you, yet 93% of us are doing this to candidates. Good news – this is also a super simple fix! Pick up the freaking phone!

Go download the report. Use it as a tool to take your TA team through a session and analyze your current process. One of the main issues you’ll find is your process is actually decent, but the variability of how each recruiter is running that process varies widely. That’s your biggest problem!

Transform Recruitment Marketing Conference is Back for June 2019!!! @Smashfly

Posted on December 6, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Transform is Back!!!

Smashfly Transform is the bold community that’s impressively grown from 200 at the first-ever Recruitment Marketing Conference in Boston in 2016 to more than 10,000 strong across the globe today. Transform is the place for this community to come together. I was the Emcee for the very first Transform in Boston, and I’ll be the Emcee once again for this event!

Attendees are the rebels, the early adopters who want to transform the Talent Acquisition industry.

What is Transform…

Brings together this unique segment of thinking in TA to create better, smarter experiences through recruitment marketing, technology, and innovation
Is a place to find and connect with the people who get it, the people who want to change the industry through new tech, strategies, data, Marketing techniques and more
Introduces these leaders to each other for support, for ideas, for inspirations, for community, for validation
Gives the recruiting revels a path forward through dialogue, interactive brainstorms, tactical sessions, and strategic keynotes.

Transform is NOT a user conference… We’re still working on the agenda, but we’re planning two days of content including keynotes, super inspiring speakers, break-out sessions and workshops. Transform is one of the only events that takes peer-to-peer learning to the next level.

Each speaker is vetted, coached and their content is completely unique to Transform. No out of the box presentations that you will hear at any other event. We will have some more user-focused content to help with product adoption, but those will be breakouts/opt-in.

Sponsors are invite-only, the leading vendors in the space who get it. This is a unique chance to meet with these technology providers face-to-face and demo their products.

Overall, Transform is an experience. A place to grow in your job, your careers, and as a person. Our speakers challenge more than just the status quo of recruiting, they push you outside your personal comfort zone so you leave the conference with tools the work-belt and the personal-belt.

We don’t skimp on experience, and the food is incredible. The welcome party will be on the rooftop of the Revere Hotel overlooking the Boston Skyline and (fun fact) when you check-in there is a pillow menu in your room to select the type of pillow you want to sleep on.

Sounds like the one conference you can’t miss if you are in Recruitment Marketing, Employment Branding, or have responsibility over those strategies in your organization.

Click Here to Get More Information on Attending Transform on June 19-21 2019!

Recruiting is not Marketing – Here’s why!

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Tim Sackett

We love, I love, to say Recruiting is Marketing! I love Recruitment Marketing and the technology behind it, I think it’s brilliant! Recruiting is also not sales!

Why is Recruiting neither Marketing or Sales?

What’s the core function of marketing and sales? To welcome as many people as possible into your funnel so that all of those people will buy your product or service, or give to your charity, etc.

In Recruitment we in the Rejection business!

Can you imagine you walk into a Cadillac dealership? You saw the commercial for the new SUV, you decide you want that SUV. You saw the billboard for that same car, heard the radio commercial, heck you even saw an Ad on Facebook, it’s almost like they’re listening to your brain! You’ve got a pocket full of hundred dollar bills and you walk into the dealership because today you’re driving away in that brand new, beautiful Cadillac SUV!

Dealer – No!

Me – Um, what?!

Dealer – No, we aren’t selling you that new Cadillac SUV, you’re not a Cadillac “Man”!

Me – A what!?

Dealer – Yeah, sorry, you don’t get a Cadillac today, we’re saving those for only certain people!

It’s funny because we know this would never happen! I could walk into the dealership holding a severed head and the first words out of the salesman’s mouth would be “the trunk on our new sedan could hold a hundred of those heads!”

Recruiting isn’t Marketing or Sales, because true Marketing and Sales is in the business of ‘All’, not one. No one really gets rejected in marketing and sales if you have the means. In Recruiting, you could fit every single thing the organization is requesting and you will still get rejected. Recruiting is in the Rejection business, not the sales and marketing business!

If we/recruiting are in the Sales and Marketing business, we are in a really sick and twisted business! Hey, “Everyone” come and apply to our jobs, because I get really excited when I get to turn you down and say “no”! So, let’s not kid ourselves. Our business is about Rejection. Hey, come on over here and let me tell you what’s wrong with you, and then I’ll make the decision if we want you to be a part of our team or not.

Marketing campaigns sometimes try to fake like they’re being exclusive. “Only ‘you’ are being invited to buy this new SUV! You’ll be the first to own it! No one else!” Until next week when everyone will own it and actually have a better color than you. That’s not true rejection for those who don’t get it first, it’s just a game we play to increase demand.

So, why does this manner?

If we know we are actually in the Rejection business, and we are, we/recruiters have to have an empathy level that is off the charts if we want to survive. Let me get this straight, you want me to talk as many people as possible into loving our company, then you want me to reject 99.9% of them? Yes!

To be able to do that and not drink yourself to sleep every night takes a really high ego or an endless supply of empathy towards all those great people who just wanted you to pick them, but your organization picked someone else, but they left it on your desk to share the bad news!

This is probably the main reason so many candidates never get dispositioned. We can all just crush only so many souls in a day! It’s easier to ghost candidates than to crush their dreams!

Rejection business is a hard, hard business to be in. Sales and Marketing are easy. Can you imagine how easy your life would be if you were able to give everyone the job!?

5 Things Great Employers are Doing to Drive World Class Candidate Experience in 2019!

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I’m still struck at how for the most part, we treat candidates like garbage. Historically in Talent Acquisition, we had this really weird power dynamic that took place. We believed we (TA) had jobs to give out or not give out, like prizes, so we would force candidates into our processes and make them jump through hoops.

It’s been a super hard habit for many of us to break! Even with historic low unemployment numbers!

I have some help for you!

I’m partnering with the folks over at Candidate Rewards to put on a free, live 1-hour webinar titled:

5 Things Great Employers Are Doing to Drive World-Class Candidate Experience in 2019!

What can you expect to get from this webinar?

– 5 Rock solid strategies and tactics you need to be using to deliver more candidates to your organization!

– 3 Things great organizations never do to candidates, and that you can easily change in your own TA Shop!

– Candidate Experience data that will give you the ammunition you need to change your executive’s mind and give you more budget money to fix your Candidate Experience issues!

– Live Q&A with me on your toughest Candidate Experience questions!

Candidates Experience has been one of the hottest topics over the past five years, and it’s never been hotter when it comes to the hiring environment that we are in right now! Right now is the perfect time for most of us to look at our 2019 strategies around Candidate Experience, because for most of us it’s TA Budget Time!

If you don’t plan, you plan to fail! That’s what we are always told, right!? So, let’s sit down for an hour and discuss how to make 2019 the best year you and your TA team has ever had!

REGISTER NOW for this free webinar!

I’m looking forward to presenting this information, it’s the first time I’ve ever done a Candidate Experience presentation, and I’m sure my takes will probably be a bit different than most, but you’ll have to let me know!

How do candidates find your company?

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I have a brain crush on Smashfly’s Tracey Parsons. She’s a great Recruitment Marketer who flat out gets what you and I should be doing to get candidates to find us!

I only tell you this because Tracey shared something online this week that I had to share. I came on a LinkedIn post by Joel Cheesman (you can look him up as well, he’s way less impressive than Tracey, but he might be your flavor! JK, Joel! He’ll cry himself to sleep tonight if I don’t say that!) where Joel was stating a stat “80% of applicants start at Google“.

Cool stat. You probably didn’t know that. About a year and a half ago, Google said it was 47%, before they launched Google for Jobs, so it shows that GFJ is actually already having a big impact on candidate behavior.

Tracey’s response was this:

“And approximately 0% of those searches involve your brand name”

Bam! Mic drop! Walk off stage.

She’s dead on 100%-ish percent accurate!

No one is going to Google searching for “Jobs at Amazon” or “Jobs at ABC Manufacturing”. If they already know they want to see your jobs, they’re just going directly to your career site, or corporate site, where you’ll make them click around for five minutes to find your jobs. Oh, wait, maybe they should be Googling jobs at “X”!

I think Tracey’s point is that you shouldn’t be focused on SEO to drive people to your ‘brand’. You should be focusing on SEO to drive people to the market and the jobs you have, the brand at this initial point, doesn’t matter.

We love to think it matters, but 99.8% of us have an unrecognizable brand to the majority of candidates. That’s not a negative statement, that’s just reality. They don’t see any difference in what it’s like to work for us unless you’re a Unicorn brand.

But we aren’t all Google or Facebook or Amazon. We’re just good, solid companies to work for, that are virtually indistinguishable from every other good, solid employer who’s out there.

So, what can you do?

Truly understand the impact Google is making on candidate behavior.
Turn yourself into a Marketer. Think like a marketer. What would it take to get people to know who we are?
Turn your employees into Brand Advocates.
Stop paying Referral Bonuses, and buy Employee Referral Technology.
Build and turn on a Recruitment Marketing machine for your shop.

Also, go read and learn from super smart people like Tracey and Joel. That’s what I do.

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

Category Archives: Candidate Experience