Category Archives: Hiring

Career Confessions from Gen Z: Bathrooms matter to a great Employee Experience!

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In my opinion, there are few places that are worse than a public restroom. There have been very few times in my life where I’ve been happy to use a restroom in a public area. I strongly dislike any bathroom that is not a private restroom or one that is in my home.

I have 2 main reasons for my strong distaste for public bathrooms: cleanliness and privacy. I can thank my Mom for my concerns about germs, and 9 times out of 10 a public restroom will be dirtier than my nice and tidy bathroom at home. My main problem with using public bathrooms is privacy. Even if I just went in to fix my hair, I don’t want anyone looking and judging me for doing it!

Although I really would prefer if I could just use my bathroom at home 24/7, that is not realistic especially when I’m working every day. I’m going to at least have to pee a few times. So, if I have to use a different bathroom than my own, I want it to be as nice as possible.

The bathrooms at Quicken Loans(where I’m doing my summer internship! Hey, guys!) check almost all of my boxes. They are extremely cleanly and I see cleaning staff work on the bathrooms a few times a day. But, the best part is the almost completely private stalls that they have! The walls in between the stalls and the doors go all the way from the ceiling to the floor. It’s my dream honestly.

No one wants to poop at work, and if they have to, it might as well be in almost complete privacy.

In addition to the cleanliness and the private stalls, the restrooms on my floor have baskets of toiletries; toothbrushes, stain sticks, lotion, hairspray, basically anything you could need to make you comfortable and fix any problems you may have. It’s so comforting to know that if I ever spill something on my clothes or have bad breath, I have a quick fix just a few steps away.

If you want to make sure your employees are comfortable and doing their best work, the bathroom is a good place to put some luxury into. Most people don’t enjoy using the restroom but we all have to do it. So why not make it a more enjoyable experience for your employees!

 

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

@SocialTalent’s Talent Talks with Tim Sackett and Johnny Campbell

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Hey gang!

When I was over in London a few weeks ago speaking at the Sourcing Summit UK, Social Talent’s CEO Johnny Campbell and I sat down to talk shop on how can organizations fix their recruiting.

We probably shot 45 minutes to an hour of footage, the team then broke it down to a really great 20 minutes!

For those who don’t know Johnny or SocialTalent you should really check them out. I’m a huge fan of their platform, so much so, my own team has been using it for 2 years!

Here’s the promo video for it – click the link below to watch the full 20 minutes!

Watch the full video! (just click the link)

The Candidate Bill of Rights (revisited)

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In November 2010 Monster.com asked me to write a post on a hot topic at that time a “Candidate Bill of Rights“.  Needless to say, I’m not a huge fan of a Candidate Bill of Rights – I’m a Capitalist and believe in a free-market system of HR and Recruiting.  Here was my main point then, and what they are still today:

Candidates –

You Don’t Have To Apply:

  • If we have a crappy working environment – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t pay appropriately for the market – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give my employees opportunities for growth – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t treat you like a human – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give you a full job description – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t tell you every step of the process – you don’t have to apply

You Don’t Have To Work Here:

  • If we make you wait endlessly without any feedback – you don’t have to work here
  • If we make you an offer that you don’t like – you don’t have to work here
  • If we don’t offer the right work-life balance – you don’t have to work here
  • If we give you a bad Candidate Experience – you don’t have to work here

Candidates – if any of the above is true – you have some decisions to make:

1. Can I live with what I know about the company and the experience they put me through to get this offer?

2. IF SO, do I want to come and work for the company?

3. IF YES – welcome aboard, you’re coming on ‘Eyes Wide Open’

4. IF NO – thanks, and good luck, we’ll keep trying to get better in case you want to apply again some other time.

You see we all have choices. If you don’t like the way I’m treating you as a candidate, don’t come and work at my company.  I would hope that most HR Pros are smart enough to get this fact. Treat candidates like garbage and they’ll stop applying for your jobs, thus making your job all the more difficult to fill.  That might be a bit pie-in-the-sky thinking because I also know way too many HR/Talent Pros that don’t get this!

They have a little bit of power and have decided to torture candidates with painfully long and arduous application and selection processes that aren’t helpful to their own companies, statistically, and definitely aren’t helpful to the candidates.  During a recession, they don’t see much impact from these horrible processes, but eventually, the tide turns and face the results of their actions.  Karma is a bitch!

So, do we need a candidate bill of rights? No!  Do you need to spend a ton of time, effort, and resources on candidate experience? No, as well!  Don’t go right ditch-left ditch and start over correcting.  Treat candidates like you would want to be treated.  Or don’t, and pay the price! Have a few standards and etiquette, and some manners.  It’s not hard and it’s not expensive.

The Top 7 Rookie Hiring Mistakes!

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One of my awesome recruiting managers at HRU (the technical staffing company I run) is in the process of making his first hire! It’s pretty exciting. Do you remember the first hire you ever got to make on your own?

You get nervous! You don’t want to make a mistake, because you know how awful it is to have a bad employee working for you, so the last thing you want to do is make a wrong decision. You want this first hire to be a rock star!

All of our managers who are going through the hiring process for the first time all face the same issues. They are unsure of what to really do. If you’re a parent, the best analogy I can give is when the hospital lets you leave with your newborn! Do you remember that?

You get to the lobby. You have your baby strapped into that car seat like they are about to enter a crash test site! When you reach the doors, they slide open, and you kind of look around. You’re waiting, for just a second, for someone to stop you! You can’t believe anyone would just allow you to walk out of the hospital with a baby! Did you guys even check who I am! I have a hard time throwing my clothes all the way into the hamper, and you’re just letting me leave with a baby!?!

That’s the feeling all of our managers get when they hire for the first time! Wait, you’re letting me choose!? Are you sure you’re okay with this?!

To help our new managers I put together the Top 7 Rookie Hiring Mistakes for managers to avoid. Here they are:

1. You wait for HR and/or Talent Acquisition to control the process. This is your hire, that you’ll have to manage, live with, and fire if they suck! Get involved! Immediately!

2. You fall into the trap of wanting to hire someone who is perfect. You’re not perfect. Your CEO is not perfect. No one is perfect. Hire someone who can succeed in your job, your organization, under your leadership. Don’t hire perfect.

3. You try and hire someone who is just like you! You were successful in the job, which is why you are now the leader. So, it makes sense that someone just like you will also be successful. This tactic fails more times then it succeeds because we actually suck at managing ourselves! Find someone who compliments your weaknesses, and has the skills to do the job and you’ll have a better chance to find success. You’ll also add more diversity to your team!

4. You don’t move fast enough. If you interview a very talented person, there is a good chance someone else is also interviewing this very talented person. Pull the trigger and get them before someone else steals them from you!

5. You wait too long to fire a miss-hire. First-time leaders are the worse with this. They feel like they can make anyone work! Plus, they feel more ownership since it was their first time. Stop it! This won’t be the last time you make a bad hire. Give yourself the best leadership gift ever and fire a bad hire quickly!

6. You don’t believe it’s your job to recruit and source talent. Guess what, champ? The organization gave you the keys to run a department. They believe in you. If I’m given the keys to run anything, I’m running the whole thing! It’s my department, which means I own the talent, which means I’m going to help find the right talent for my team. I know what is needed better than anyone! TA can help me, that’s great! But I own this!

7. You believe that leadership will judge you based on this hire. Leadership won’t judge you based on one hire. Leadership will judge you based on a pattern of hiring success, or lack thereof. One hire will not define you. Many hires will. R.E.L.A.X.

So, what do you think, HR and Talent Pros? What are the biggest mistakes you see Rookie managers making when it comes to hiring? Hit me in the comments!

I’m in Indeed Jail! Help me!!! #FreeTimSackett

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Do you remember when getting stuck in LinkedIn Jail was all the rage!? I do! It was awful! There you were stuck on the outside looking in not being able to use a valuable tool you used every day to help you do your job.

I’m in Indeed Jail!

It’s somewhat like being in LinkedIn Jail, but different. When you got put into LinkedIn Jail, LinkedIn decided that that right thing to do was to let us know why we were in jail, and then, specifically, how do you get yourself out of LinkedIn Jail. Seems like a good business strategy.

How does Indeed get you all of those great candidates?

The Indeed model built a decade ago was freaking brilliant! Basically, the idea was scrap all the jobs from all the career sites so candidates will have one place to go to search for jobs. No one understood Google SEO at the time, so they scraped the jobs, then bought all the SEO and owned the space.

So, any candidate who was searching for a job on Google the first thing that would come up, always, was an Indeed link. They trained entire generations to search for jobs by going to Indeed. Brilliant!

Now, Google came along eventually and woke up to this and said, “Hey, wait, candidates are searching on Google for things like “Jobs near me” and we are sending them to Indeed for things that aren’t even what they are truly looking for. We can do this better!” Hello, Google for Jobs!

Google for Jobs decided “candidates are the most important thing”. Your Indeed sales rep will tell you this as well, although, they didn’t ever say this until Google for Jobs came along! So, Google changes the game, stops indexing Indeed (which is like a death sentence to companies that rely on Google search traffic), and says we can deliver a better job search for candidates.

So, Indeed is basically a dead man walking, but they have this window of time when we still have the entire world trained to go to Indeed and not Google. So, how do you take advantage of this phenomenon? INDEED JAIL!!! Cut off the non-suspecting companies of their free traffic and charge them money before they realize they don’t really need to do this because Google will give them the traffic they need.

So, what’s Indeed Jail?

Indeed Jail is when Indeed makes the decision to stop scrapping your career site and posting your jobs on Indeed. Almost every company at some point in the past decade has enjoyed a lot of free, organic traffic from having their job posting on Indeed. It was an AWESOME business strategy. It basically followed LinkedIn’s strategy, who followed basic drug dealing strategy.

Get people hooked on your product, then take it away and make them pay if they want it. I don’t say that to be mean! It freaking works really, really well! LinkedIn is a multi-Billion dollar company that got bought by Microsoft.

Indeed Jail is when Indeed stops giving you those free hits! Now, they just don’t take it away for no reason. My reason to be cut off, I was told, was because of a magical, mythical division within Indeed called “Search Quality”. My Indeed Rep didn’t shut me off, no! It was “Search Quality” who shut me off, and my Indeed Rep has absolutely nothing to do with Search Quality. In fact, they run almost as a separate company, locked away in an undisclosed, secret location!

My “Search Quality” issue was I’m a staffing company. An example of my issue is we work with a major employer to fill contract positions, not a position they would hire direct. The company gave us a job description for the contract position, which was basically the exact same JD they use to hire direct. Because the direct employer has priority at Indeed, and my posting was ‘too similar” my ‘search quality’ was bad.

Okay, I’m in Jail, Ouch, that hurts! Help me fix it! 

Let me say, I’m paying and have paid money to Indeed for various products, so it’s not like I’m not a customer. So, when you ask someone you’re paying for help, you expect help. But Indeed has no interest in helping you fix your search quality issue because that would mean you would get the product for free again!

I would love to tell you this is a staffing industry only issue, but it’s not. Little by little, and I have specific examples, corporate Talent Acquisition is also getting hit with ‘search quality’ issues and losing their free traffic from Indeed.

How can that be!?

Believe me, the corporate TA leaders I’m talking to are wondering the same thing. In one example, an Ohio-based employer is hiring hundreds of sales-related positions per year. They don’t use any staffing or RPO vendors, all the work is done in-house for direct positions. They have a big growth initiative so they went from maybe 50 openings to 200 openings, and Indeed cut them off! Because of ‘search quality’, and again, their rep would/could not help them.

I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well for Indeed. Right now they’re flying high! Going to hire thousands of more employees, which makes complete sense, because if you shut everyone off of free traffic, you’ll have a lot of TA pros panicking and buying Indeed products. At least until they discover it continues to cost more for less and less traffic as Google no longer indexes Indeed.

I’ve sent emails to the highest reaches of Indeed, pleading for help, and the only response I got back was from my rep offering to sell me more products!

I explained that I want this to be positive! Show me how to fix me, and I’ll show others how to fix themselves! Along the way, it’s a win/win since the more we understand about the Indeed products and services and feel like a vendor is truly helping us, we (as an industry) will support them!

Crickets!!! Crickets, I say, Chris Hyams!!!

So, what should you do to NOT get yourself in Indeed Jail?  

1. Never pay one dime to Indeed!!!

  • So one thing that has been pretty consistent with everyone I’ve spoken to that got put into Indeed Jail is that they were all (100%) paying customers of Indeed. Almost, like Indeed knew we were willing to pay for traffic, so they put us into jail on purpose! Up until the point of becoming a paid Indeed customer, none of the people I spoke ever had issues with being put in Indeed Jail!

2. Make sure you understand what is ‘bad’ search quality for Indeed. Good luck with this!

3. Enjoy the free traffic while you have it because eventually everyone will be shut off. Drug dealing works because we get addicted. You’re currently addicted to free Indeed traffic. That isn’t a sustainable model for a business.

So, what do you do if you’re already in Indeed Jail? 

1. Understand you’re not alone.

2. Understand that your true reality is you can live without Indeed traffic, and slowly but surely the traffic you get from Google will be greater. So, focus on ensuring your ATS and Jobs are as aligned as possible with the Google Job Schema – it’s super important!

3. Understand if you want more Indeed hits, you better get ready to pay for them from Indeed.

4. Understand Indeed has no vested interested in helping you fix your search quality issue, even if you’re a paid customer because it costs them money.

5. Look at Programmatic Job Advertising tools like: JobAdX, Talroo, Appcast, etc. Increase your posting strategy with sites like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, Monster, LinkedIn, etc.  Invest in your own database with some talent rediscovery tools, use CRM technology, build and nurture your pipelines of talent.

My Offer Still Stands!

Chris Hyams, the President of Indeed, get your team to help fix my stuff and I’ll be your biggest fan in advocating and teaching others how to do right by candidates and by Indeed to make the world a better place. That’s all I ever wanted, for you to just help me. Help a paying customer fix their stuff. But you refused.

#FreeTimSackett

Skilled Trades Aren’t Sexy to Gen Z and Millennials!

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Wow! Really!?

Here are some other things that might surprise you:

  • They also don’t hang out on Facebook
  • They like Smartphones and using Snapchat
  • You shouldn’t pee into the wind
  • They think you’re old!

No shit, Sherlock, that younger people don’t find the Skilled Trades sexy!

I’m old. I was listening to NPR on way to work the other day and this well-meaning Gen X dude gets on the radio and says, “the problem we have in skilled trades is that teens don’t find them sexy”.

I’m like, of course, they don’t find the skilled trades sexy. Most don’t even know what the heck ‘skilled trades’ means, and if you show them, they still won’t find them ‘sexy’! Okay, well not ‘sexy’, but they should see what a great, stable job the skilled trades can be.

Um, yeah, no, you understand how young people think, right!?

Stable. Good pay and benefits. Something you can do for forty years and get a good retirement and pension. Are all things that will get young people to run away from whatever it is you’re trying to fool them into doing!

So, how do I get young people interested in the Skilled Trades? 

I don’t!!!

I get 35-year-old people interested in skilled trades!

You know what’s great about 35-year-old people? They can start to see the end. Sure that end is 25+ years out, but they start thinking I need to get my life together and do something that is (wait for it!), stable! Something that pays well and has ‘solid’ benefits. Something I can retire doing!

I don’t need 18-25-year-olds to fill skilled trades jobs. Those kids suck at showing up to work and listening! You know who’s really good at showing up to work and listening? 35-year-olds!

If you go into any retail store, gas station, restaurant, etc. and you say, “Hey, I’ve got a job that I’ll train you to do and you can earn a great living and have great benefits until you retire, and you’ll always have a job”, you’ll be like the Pied Piper leading people to your jobs!

The entire way we (and by “we”, I mean you!) is that you go hire 35-year-old people who have shown you that they are willing to show up to work, do work when they show up, but maybe they actually want to add something to their life that gives them a little more stability.

That 18-25-year-old doesn’t want your boring, stable, well-paying job, in which they must dirty their hands. They still have aspirations someone is going to pay them six figures to do nothing and give them a VP title.

By 35 we’ve had that beaten out of us. We’ve been humping $40K jobs for 15 years and we’ve almost, but not quite, given up on hope. You Mrs. Skilled Trades Job Lady are that beacon of hope!!!

Teens won’t solve the skilled trades shortage in America. That is something that is a waste of time for us to try and solve. “So, you, um, want me to stick my hand in a toilet!? Yeah, isn’t there an app for that?”

The 35-year-old has stuck their hands in worst places than toilets and they’re ready to work their butts off for your great skilled trades job. All they need is some love, some training, and a chance.

Skilled Trades jobs aren’t sexy to young people, but you already know that…

How Long Should It Take a Candidate to Make a Decision on a Job Offer?

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When you make a candidate an offer, how long do you give them to tell you they want the job or not? 24 hours? 3 days? 1 week? Immediately?

For two decades I’ve been in the camp of a candidate should be able to tell you ‘yes’ or ‘no’ immediately, or you (the recruiter and hiring manager) did something wrong in closing! But, I think I’ve changed my stance on this, if “fit” is really important for the position, your culture, etc.

Here’s the deal, if job and/or company fit is really important to your organization. The candidate should take as long as they need to, to make sure that your organization is the one for them. That might mean they need to finish up other interviews, do more research, go through counter-offers, etc.

So, if that takes two or three weeks, so be it. The fit is critical for you and you actually want the candidate to take their time with this decision.

I feel so strongly about this, I think you should actually make candidates wait 72 hours after you offer them the job, to give you an answer! Yes! You won’t accept an acceptance from them until they’ve taken 72 hours to really think about the job, the new boss, the organization, everything!

Why wait 72 hours if they already know!? 

A ‘cooling down’ period will give them some time to get through the infatuation period of getting the offer! It will give them some time to really think about your job, their current job, other jobs they might be considering. This time is important because too often, too many people get that offer and at that moment everything feels so awesome!

After a couple of days they come down from the high of being desired by you and start to think clearly, and all of sudden you’re not as pretty as you looked two days ago, or you’re even more pretty by playing hard to get.

But what if a candidate gets cold feet by this technique? 

That’s a real concern especially with historic unemployment in many markets and fields. If you force a candidate to wait 72 hours there is a good chance someone else might come in an offer them a job!

Yep! That actually would be awesome if that happened, because then you would really know! Do they love you, or did they just fall in love with someone else!? Remember, this isn’t for every organization. This is only for organizations where fit is critical to your organizational culture.

If a candidate gets cold feet by another offer or by waiting 3 days, they don’t really believe your organization is the one for them. They don’t believe what you have is their dream job or organization. Also, if you get cold feet by having them wait, you don’t really believe fit is important!

So, how long should it take a candidate to decide if your job offer is right for them? 

There is not one right answer. Each of us has our own internal clock to make those decisions. If you force a candidate to decide immediately upon offer, that speaks to your culture. If you let candidates decide on their timeline, that also speaks to your culture.

In a perfect world, I still believe if the process works as designed, and everyone pre-closed like they should, both you and a candidate should be able to make a decision when the offer is placed on the table. But, honestly, how often does our process work perfectly?

Hit me in the comments with what you believe is the proper amount of time you should give a candidate to decide whether or not they’ll accept your job offer?

“In Transition” Isn’t Helping You Find a New Job!

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I know you’ve seen this on resumes and profiles over the past few years! Someone is looking for work and they title their profile “In Transition”.

Quick – without taking five seconds to think about, be honest, what do you think when someone says, “In Transition” on their resume, cover letter, LI profile, etc.? Put it in the comments!

My guess is, like me, it’s not positive. If it’s not positive, you should remove it from your profiles immediately!

When I read “In Transition” my immediate thought is “why are you in transition? Must not be good! No one wants to be in ‘transition’!” A ‘transition’ can mean many things when it comes to your career. Some of those are positive, but I think the collective will see most of the reasons as negative.

I think the reason I read “In Transition” in a negative light when it comes to talking about careers, is that for me it makes me believe you don’t really know what you want. I’m not ‘in transition’, I’m making a change and this is exactly what I’m looking to do.

Reason’s you might be ‘transitioning’ in your career and now you are looking for another job:

Potential reasons for transitioning:

  • Retirement from your current role (which many will take as a negative because of age bias)
  • Completely switching careers (could be a positive, if you’re willing to start at entry level income for the career you’re choosing to go into)
  • You got fired
  • You got laid off/company closed
  • You had your own business, that has ended, now you’re finding your next gig
  • You took a leave of absence for personal reasons (FMLA, went back to school, child rearing, aging parent, etc.)

So, I’m on record saying that using the phrase, “In Transition” isn’t good for someone seeking a job.

The bigger question than becomes is there a good phrase for people who are out of job and want to get a job that TA pros won’t immediately believe is negative?

I’m not sure there is one, especially if the real reason you’re transitioning is negative! That seems obvious, but you would be shocked at how many messages I get from people ‘in transition’ that are wanting my advice on how to say ‘positively’ they were fired.

My advice is usually to tell the best version of the truth you can come up with, and try to back up that version of the truth is a lot of people who will give you a positive work reference. Ideally, from the place you just left, even if that last job ended in a termination for performance.

What experienced TA pros and hiring managers realize is that not every termination is really do to actual poor performance. Sometimes it’s just a simple personality conflict between the manager you worked for and yourself. That isn’t great, but it’s better than you just couldn’t do the job!

Here are some phrases I might use instead of “In Transition” –

– “I quit my last position because…”

– “I retired from my last position and I’m looking to work “X” number of years in “X” type of position…”

– “I haven’t worked in “X time” because…, and I’m looking for…”

– “I got laid off from my last position…” (This one seems easy, except so many people now use this when they were the only person laid off, but everyone else kept their jobs! That’s not a layoff, that’s just a nice way to get fired! So, you better be able to back this up because great TA pros will find out the truth!)

– “I started my own business. It failed (or it succeeded or I decided it wasn’t for me). I’ve got the entrepreneurial bug out of me and I want to help an organization succeed in the following way…”

So, what do you think TA leaders and pros? Does “In Transition” scare you off of a candidate?

 

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London/UK Friends! I’m Coming to You in June!! Let’s meet up! #sosuuk

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I have something to confess, I’ve never been to Europe! Never! So, a few months ago I put that fact out into my little social world and something amazing came back to me! The Sourcing Summit UK reached out and ask me to come speak at their event in June! And, they made a little video to help promote it:

I can’t wait to come to London and speak at this event! All Americans love British accents, and I’m no different! The accent makes us believe you’re truly brilliant, even if you’re not! Such a recruiting strength! I’ve often said I could start a recruiting company in the states with just recruiters with British accents and we would own the U.S. market!

The other thing I love is building a worldwide network of recruiting and sourcing pros that love what I love!

As I’ve traveled all over the world what I’ve found is that no matter where I go when I’m with people who are passionate about our profession, that is always a good time! We get to nerd out together and learn from each other, and it brings this giant community down to size and makes it very personal!

So, let’s do this! Come see me and all the other great speakers at the Sourcing Summit UK on June 20th and 21st

Can’t wait to meet you in person!

How Hard is it for Candidates to Find Your Jobs on your Career Site?

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The other day I got contacted by a large enterprise level TA leader. She had a major problem about to hit them. They had to hire thousands of people and she was hoping I could tell her which chatbot to use to help them.

Sweet! I love TA Tech, let’s talk about some of my favorites!

I pulled up their corporate site because I wanted to see what ATS they used and just check out the career site.

This is where I found her first problem! The first problem was I had to search to find out how to find their jobs! Like four clicks deep into the corporate website before I could even begin a job search, let alone apply.

There is only one right place for candidates to find jobs on your corporate website. It’s at the top of the page, the same exact place where you find things like: Home, Company, Products, Search, etc. If you’re making candidates scroll down to the bottom of your site, you don’t care about talent. If you’re making candidates search to find “Careers” on your site, you don’t care about talent.

You know who you are. “Well, Tim, we put “careers” under the “About” tab because we want our products front and center!” Nice! So, those candidates you desperately need now have to go on a snipe hunt to find out how to apply for your jobs!? How’s that working out for you? Or you make the scroll down fourteen feet to the bottom where you put things like “investor relations”, “contact information”, “press inquiries”, “Legal Notices”, etc.

The most innovative companies in talent acquisition have ‘finding’ their jobs down to one click. You pull up their page and it says something like “Jobs!” or “Apply Now” or “Careers” in the top right corner of the website. Sometimes there is even a button along in the corner to make it even easier for candidates to spot.

When a candidate clicks on that top of the page, right corner link they are instantly taken to a page that allows them to search. No more clicking around, no more searching for how the hell they can find which jobs you have open. It’s right there. One click.

It’s pretty common for me to visit a large brand corporate homepage and it will take me 4-7 clicks before I can actually search their jobs. If you ever want to know where TA falls in the order of importance in your organization, just count the clicks. The more you click, the less influence TA has in your organization. It’s fairly unscientific, but I find this little measure almost always works out.

So, my new TA friend was looking for a chatbot but didn’t really need a chatbot. Well, at least not yet. Foundational blocking and tackling of TA can do wonders for helping you hire. If it takes me four or five clicks to find your jobs, you’re in trouble. If you make me search around your site on how the hell I apply, I leave and go someplace else.

I know that 90% of know this,  but almost 50% of organizations can’t figure this out. Why? Because we as TA leaders aren’t going to our executive team and telling them, “Hey, idiots! We are losing 67% of our candidate traffic because some moron in marketing doesn’t like how “Jobs” looks on our corporate website in the righthand upper corner! Can we stop being stupid and do the right thing?”

I know selling our stuff is important, but if we can’t fill jobs, we won’t have stuff to sell. I know putting our employment brand out front is important, but why are we creating a search game for candidates to solve to just apply for our jobs?

Simple Tip to Share with Your Executive Team: Hiding how a candidate can apply for our jobs, doesn’t actually help us fill jobs! 

So, where do candidates find your jobs on your corporate homepage?