Category Archives: Recruiter Experience

In a Corporate Recruiting Department, What Percentage of Hires Should be from Outbound Recruiting?

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I went to hireEZ‘s (formerly called Hiretual) Outbound RecruitCon this week and the big topic of conversation was recruiting isn’t working! Surprise! It’s broke!

Well, recruiting probably isn’t broke, it’s just what we normally do isn’t working as well any longer. The reality is, about 90% of corporate recruiting is some form of posting jobs and waiting for candidates to apply. That clearly isn’t working right now! And, it probably won’t work for a long time to come.

Outbound recruiting traditionally has been something only agency recruiters really did a lot of. It’s why recruiting agencies are a multi-billion dollar industry. Even RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) companies don’t do outbound recruiting, they also, primarily just replace the normal inbound recruiting done by corporate talent acquisition departments.

Why don’t we do more Outbound Recruiting in Corporate TA?

First, it’s exponentially more difficult to do outbound recruiting than inbound recruiting.

Why? It’s fairly obvious, one is just contacting people who have already told you they want to work for you (inbound) and the other is convincing someone to come work for you that might have never even heard of you and your organization!

Second, we don’t really train our recruiters to do outbound recruiting.

And since TA leaders grew up only doing inbound recruiting, their training consists of, “Look, it’s not hard, just pick up the phone and call people!” Which is actually really shitty training! It’s incredibly hard, and it takes skill.

Third, we don’t give our recruiters the technology and tools to do outbound recruiting properly.

Almost all corporate talent acquisition budgets are focused on inbound recruiting. It takes a lot of money to fill the inbound recruiting funnel, and since that’s what most of us do, that’s where the money goes. And, no, LinkedIn isn’t an outbound recruiting technology!

What percentage of our recruiting should be Outbound vs. Inbound?

This is a very organizational, job, and industry-specific question. If you do a ton of hourly hiring, your organization will do more inbound recruiting than outbound. If you hire highly skilled workers, healthcare, technology, etc., you definitely should at a minimum be doing a 50/50 split of inbound and outbound recruiting, and some will be in the 70-80% outbound the more specialized you get.

We all know there are some roles that you can post and advertise and they are so specialized you will never get a candidate remotely close to being qualified. And yet, the money is spent because, “well, you never know…” Actually, yes, yes we do know, and I’m not burning any more cash just for the fun of it! All of those resources should be spent on outbound recruiting.

The key to increasing your outbound recruiting is two-fold:

  1. You’ve got to measure the two, inbound and outbound, separately.
  2. You’ve got to have recruiters who aren’t asked to do both, because they won’t. I’ll add here, these two types of recruiters have to be paid differently and you can’t expect the same outcomes from both types.

What we know today is having a talent acquisition strategy that is mostly inbound recruiting will and is failing for most organizations. It’s hard, but in current times, its what is needed.

Exploding Job Offers!

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I had a question the other day from an executive outside of HR and Talent. A C-suite type who was frustrated by the lack of hires his “HR” team was making. My first question was, does HR hire for you, or do you have a recruiting or talent acquisition team? He didn’t know. Problem number one.

This guy wanted my opinion, well, he really wanted my agreement if I’m honest, to something he was forcing his HR team to do with job offers. You see, they had many job offers turned down to accept another job offer. Basically, almost all candidates we have are interviewing at multiple places, and these are technically skilled candidates, in IT, engineering, etc.

His plan was to start offering expiring job offers so that the candidate would be forced to accept their offer at risk of losing it!

Brilliant, right!? He asked me…

Here’s my exact reply:

“So, in an employment market where the unemployment rate is around 1% for technical candidates, you feel the best strategy is to force someone to make a decision to come to work for you? Also, who says that they won’t just accept your offer, continue in the process while waiting on other offers to come, and eventually just leave you high and dry? Also, do you really want to start off an employment relationship with someone who felt forced to take your offer?”

His response:

“Well, the hell should we do?”

The Problem with Exploding Job Offers

  1. Expiring job offers only work on candidates who are lower end of the value chain, or have no other vaiable offers to choose from. The best talent, won’t even consider you if you pull that strategy.
  2. If you aren’t a “unicorn” brand (Google, Apple, etc.) you have no shot at getting good talent to accept your exploding job offer.
  3. While it might in theory “end” your hiring process faster, you have a higher chance of a late no-show/decline that puts your team even farther behind in hiring. Especially, if they went back to your other viable candidates and told them they were silver medalist.

What’s a better way? Because it’s not unheard of in today’s world where we put some timing around job offers. The reality is, we can’t wait forever. So, the real question is, how long should we give someone to consider our offer before we have to pull it back?

I like to use this as a great way to find out what I’m up against. Let the candidate tell you a time, and then negotiate it down if you don’t feel like it’s appropriate. First, when I make an offer, I expect a full acceptance the moment I make it! What?! But, you just said…! Yeah, I don’t like exploding job offers, but I also work as a recruiter who has already pre-closed the candidate and knocked out all the objections, so when I make the offer, the candidate and I have already agreed, if I get X, Y, and Z, you’re answer is “Yes”, correct?

That doesn’t mean it works every time!

In the case where the candidate, legitimately needs some time, I give them some time, but also I need reasons to go back to the hiring manager with. Why do you need the time? Are there other offers you are waiting on? What would make you take those other offers over ours? Again, keep closing, with demanding an answer. Changing jobs is one of the top three most stressful things a person does. These decisions don’t come lightly, and we need to respect that.

Offering Exploding Job offers is old advice that has turned into bad advice, similar to not accepting a counter-offer from your employer. Job negotiation has changed a lot over the last few decades, some of the traditional things we did in the past just don’t work anymore.

How can Text Recruiting increase your gender diversity hiring?

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Who likes to text more, men or women?

What’s your gut reaction? My initial reaction was it’s probably the same, right? Then I was thinking about my wife and the amount of text messaging she does with her friends, her sister, her mom, her children, okay, its women for sure! Also, if there is ever a real phone call that needs to be made, she will text me to make that call! Like somehow my “superpower” is picking up the phone and speaking to a real person on the other end.

“Dear, it’s just ordering pizza, you can do it!” Fine, I’ll just go online and order it there!

There is actually data to support this:

Statista.com

I’m not sure men would prefer to talk over text, but they definitely are more willing to talk over the phone, on average, than women.

How can we use this nugget of information in landing more female candidates? Obviously, increase the utilization of text messaging outreach when you want to increase the number of female candidates you want to get into your pipeline!

As you are putting together your recruitment communications plan for a requisition where you know you want to gather more female candidates, text messaging should be a primary source of outreach. That doesn’t mean you want also to use email and phone calls, but your primary communication strategy should be focused on text messaging.

What do female candidates like to hear your outreach messages? Most likely that you have their dream job, but here are some other popular highly engaged forms of text messages females tend to respond more to:

  1. Items around important events.
  2. Sharing something about yourself.
  3. Another way to say, “I’m thinking of you”.
  4. Direct response to something public.
  5. A meaningful memory.
  6. A good morning text.

Now, the trick is how do we use this information in a job outreach candidate interaction exchange!?

The first thing you have to ask yourself is, “why would this person reply to this text message?” Your message that says, “Hi, we have an opening for Business Analyst, click the link to see more…” Is not the correct answer to this question! That’s spam, no one likes spam.

How about something like, “Happy Holidays! I’m getting ready to fly home to see my parents in a few days but wanted to send you this in hopes you would get a chance to review it on your time off as well. Please let me know if you have questions. Would love to discuss this with you!”

I can guarantee you, you have a way better chance of that candidate clicking through and viewing your job at the very least. Plus, you are actually setting yourself up for outreach number two which could be, “I hope your holidays were awesome! I had some flightmares, but great to see the family. Did you get a chance to take a look at what I sent? Any interest or questions?”

You are adding numbers 1, 2, and 5 from the list above in two messages!

Adding “personalization” doesn’t always mean you need to share actual personal information. It’s the perception of personalization that also matters. In these text messages, you sound like a real person who cares and you’re beginning to build trust. All are important in getting a high level of response, especially from female targets.

Want more female candidates? Use text messaging, get personal, and build trust.

Want to learn more about how your organization can utilize text recruiting to its fullest? Check out Emissary.ai today!

You Are No Longer Fit For Duty…in Recruiting!

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I’ve been hearing a lot of “Fit-for-duty” stuff in the news lately and it got me thinking. Are any of us really fit for duty for the jobs we have!?

Fit-For-Duty, according to OSHA, means that an individual is in a physical, mental, and emotional state which enables the employee to perform the essential tasks of his or her work assignment in a manner that does not threaten the safety or health of yourself, your co-workers, your company’s property, or the public at large.

That’s a lot, right!? I mean, on a day-to-day basis I might make one or two of three of those, but being physically, emotionally, and mentally prepared each day!? Get out of here!

As recruiters being physically ready probably isn’t our biggest hurdle. I mean, let’s face it, we sit in front of a computer. If we can physically type and make some calls, it’s not the most demanding job from a physical standpoint. Also, mentally, is recruiting really challenging anyone day-to-day? We aren’t trying to figure out how to put puppies on the moon, we are just trying to talk someone into accepting a job we have open.

Are recruiters fit for duty?

The problem is the emotional side of fit for duty. You see, Recruiters face rejection all day, every day. An average recruiter will face more rejection in one week than an ugly, short dude gets on Tinder all year. That’s to say, it’s a lot!

The recruiter also has to constantly placate dumb hiring managers that believe they are way better than they are and that believe they know how to recruit talent better than the recruiters they work with. On top of that, we have the serial repeat candidates who are awful but can’t take “no” for an answer. So, each week we spend hours with candidates whose own mother wouldn’t give them a job, but somehow they believe they should be the next executive VP at our company!

Let’s not forget our HR brothers and sisters who secretly, and not so secretly hate us, because they ain’t us! It’s hard being this sexy, smart, and cool. We get it, but let’s just be friends! And still, somehow we take the blame for our organization’s lack of talent when we have psychopath leaders who turnover people like there’s an endless supply of warm bodies just craving our average pay, average benefits, and average, cold, work location.

Emotionally, there’s no way, most recruiters are fit for duty!

And, yet, we show up, pick up the phones, and keep finding fresh suckers every day to fill the jobs of our organizations.

When is a Recruiter no longer fit for duty?

Here’s the real deal, because, for all the joking above, there is actually a time when a recruiter is no longer fit for duty in your company. The time they are no longer fit for duty is the exact time they stop believing.

That moment when they stop believing your company is a good company.

That moment when they stop believing that the job they are working on is a good job.

The moment when they stop believing that the hiring manager they are working with has the ability to be someone good to work for.

Now, I get it, we all have a bad hiring manager here and there. a bad job here and there, but overall, the majority is good. The moment we no longer believe this is the exact moment you can no longer recruit for your company.

You are no longer fit for duty, because “believing” can’t be faked. It shows up. It shows up in the bad candidates you let go on to the next step. How you sell your company to the world. How you allow a partner to make a bad decision and just walk away.

As a recruiter, you are no longer fit for duty the moment you stop believing. That is the moment you must leave. Maybe not the company, but certainly your job as a recruiter.

I think a lot of CEOs would like to believe this is a fit for duty criteria for every role in their company, but that just isn’t true. I don’t need Ted in IT to believe in the company, I just need to make sure he keeps the network up. Do I want him to believe? Heck, yes! But, I desperately must have my recruiters who believe!

Take a good long look in the mirror today. Are you fit for duty?

3 Great Learnings from Rejected Offers!

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The CEO of Kapwing, Eric Lu, a video online technology company, recently wrote a blog post about what he and his team learned from recruiting engineers and had sixteen offers that were rejected! Go read it, it’s a great insightful post, from a leader will to share a bit of his pain and learning for the benefit of all of us!

First, we all know that recruiting technology candidates have been, and will continue to be, very difficult, especially in Silicon Valley. Eric knows this as well, but you still like to dig into your own data and find out more. I find most leaders don’t truly like to know why someone rejected their offer. In fact, most leaders make up excuses about the candidates who reject them, instead of learning more about themselves. So, Eric is already a pretty damn good leader by just wanting to know more about this issue!

Why do people reject your offers?

Before we even get into some of the common reasons, the reason most candidates reject an offer is that “we” (recruiting, hiring managers, leaders) did a crappy job at closing the potential candidate. What should happen is we all have pre-closed enough that when an offer is made, we already know the answer, and that answer is “yes”! You should rarely be surprised by this answer, and if you are, something failed in closing this candidate.

–Money! (Duh, you really wrote that?!) Yeah, turns out people almost always want more money to come work for you, when they have a job and have some experience. They want a lot more money when they have those things and others who also want them.

–No High-Level Title. Why? Ego, yeah. But, honestly, this is also another money thing! If you can actually get a higher title, this helps in your career progression. If I’m looking to hire a “VP” I want someone who has that experience or career progression. Most orgs won’t hire a “Manager” to become a “VP”, so titles matter to a lot of people. Even though they shouldn’t.

–Your Brand/Position/Leader is what they want. This is the hardest one because many times there’s nothing you can do. Some candidates are looking for something specific and they don’t know if that will be you until they go through the process to find out. Sometimes that takes them to the end where they discover this isn’t for them.

What did the CEO of Kapwing learn from his rejected offers?

1. Expiring offers actually work! I absolutely love this concept! It’s a psychological concept to be sure! Once someone decides to accept your offer, even if other offers come in, they will usually stay with that offer. Kapwing had both sign-on bonuses and offer expiration dates! Take a look at this pic –

Expiring Offer Model from Kapwing

2. Access to your founders, C-suite, and Board can make a difference! But, really it’s more than just access, it’s also about those folks showing interest and making the person feel desired. If I’m interviewing for a non-leadership role and the CEO and a Board member reach out to me to say great things, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, and like those folks give a sh*t! I want to work for a company like that!

3. Communication from interviewers and potential new teammates is a big win! Candidates constantly get ghosted. They hate this and they hate “you” for it! If you want to land more candidates FORCE those who interviewed to email, call, send flowers, etc., and give those candidates constructive, yet positive, feedback. Also, have potential teammates of this person send notes, like “hey, Timmy, said he interviewed you last week and mentioned you have some knowledge around “X” we could so use you right now on this project…can’t wait to work with you!” A future employee wants to feel like they will find great friends at your company!

Shoutout to Eric Lu and the Kapwing team for sharing their pain, knowledge, and learning. It was a brave post, honestly, and I loved it!

The Top Recruiters Never Get Surprised! #Recruiting101

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If there is one thing I could give a new Recruiting Pro it would be this simple advice. No matter how prepared you think you are, you really only need to prepare yourself, for one thing, being surprised.

You don’t really get judged on your daily stuff.  Let’s face it, 99.9% of the time that goes off without a hitch.  You get judged on how you handle surprises.

Surprises make and break great Recruiting Pro careers.

There’s really only one way to prepare for surprises.  You need to expect that a surprise will always happen. That one interview you desperately want, who calls to cancel with ‘car trouble’, the candidate who backs out of the offer after signing the paperwork.  Talk about it, plan for it, and basically come to grips that it will happen.  Then it will happen, and you’ll be the only one not surprised by it.

The best Recruiting Pros I’ve worked with had this one common trait, they were unshakeable when surprised.

Almost like they expected it.

TransfoRM Recruitment Marketing Conference! Sign Up Today!

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The World’s largest Recruitment Marketing Conference is Back for 2021! You can sign up for free here using the code “TIMTRANSFORM” to join TransfoRM 2021! The conference will be held on August 5th, coming to you live from DETROIT!

For the 5th year, I”ll be the Emcee for this event, and I’ll also be bringing you the 4th edition of my popular walk & talk series “Recruitment Marketing Bootcamp” and in this episode, I’ll be discussing AI in Recruitment.

TransfoRM is such a unique conference that has been breaking barriers since it was started five years ago, and it has created a community of some of the greatest Recruitment Marketing Professionals in the world. The interaction is tremendous, and I wish more conferences would take note of what TransfoRM does! It’s fast, fun, and informational. No back-to-back, one-hour sessions – sessions that are short and sweet, get to the point, and make us smarter!

Who else will be joining me for TransfoRM 2021 Virtual?

  • Torin Ellis – my friend and who I believe is the top Diversity Recruitment Strategist in the world, will be dropping his amazing knowledge on us!
  • Debbie Tuel – The Chief Joy Officer and the Queen of the Joy Roadshows for Symphony Talent
  • Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman – From the popular HR Tech podcast Chad and Cheese
  • Julie Sowash – Amazing disability advocate and star of the podcast Crazy and the King
  • Roopesh Nair – the CEO of Symphony, and one of the smartest dudes you’ll ever hear from in Recruiting!
  • Advent Health will bring you Talent Attraction Strategies you haven’t thought of!

What else? TransfoRM 2022 will be coming back LIVE and if you register using my code “TIMTRANSFORM” you will get $500 off the live event also, for next year, on top of getting into the virtual 2021 conference for FREE!

Even if you can’t make the live event on August 5th, sign up and you can get the content sent to you afterward so you don’t miss a minute of great ideas and motivation!

Why Aren’t You Celebrating When You Make a Hire in Recruiting?

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When I was a brand spanking new recruiter right out of college something amazing would happen every single time we made a placement. Now, granted, this one in an agency environment, and we were kind of a small business, startup, but if we (not I, but anyone on the team) made a placement we celebrated!

Now, I’ve heard of TA shops where they ring a bell or play a song, or something like that. NO, I’m talking about closing down the office and popping a bottle of champagne that usually turned into other drinks, and coming to work the next morning with a slight headache, celebration! Doesn’t that seem crazy now, in the world we live in!? I know high-volume recruiters who are making 15 hires a week or more! That’s a lot of champagne!

It might not be popping bottles, but we should still be celebrating!

Let’s be honest. Currently, for almost all recruiters, we are on a treadmill and it doesn’t look like that treadmill is going to stop anytime soon! If there was ever a time to celebrate a hire, filling a position, it’s now! I had a TA leader tell me last week that she has never been more stressed in her career than she has been right now, and over the past 6-12 months. The job is non-stop, and not trying to sound too life-coachy but we have to stop and enjoy our successes!

So, what can we do to celebrate filling a position(s) on a daily, weekly, and/or monthly basis?

  1. Acknowledge those fills as a true success. Period. Because here is what happens. We start off a meeting by saying, “Hey, I just want to recognize Mary because she made four fills last week and that’s just awesome! Now, let’s talk about the 660 openings we still have open!” That is defeating. Try and separate the success conversation from the rest of the work conversation.
  2. Have a senior-level executive, above the hiring manager, send notes of thanks and encouragement. We many times feel like second-class citizens in recruiting. We hear the hiring managers and their bosses talk sh*t about us in meetings. It’s our fault that these positions aren’t getting filled and because of that, they are failing. Actually, it’s all of our fault, but they love using that excuse. If senior executives recognize and celebrate the successes of the recruiting team, it goes a long way. It goes even longer if they actually understand their role in this failure!
  3. Have a Hiring Manager who just had some great fills happen, come buy lunch for the recruiters. Yes, it’s the job of TA to fill jobs, but if you’re a hiring manager and you want great recruiting, recognize and thank your recruiters, often. It’s a super hard gig right now. They will appreciate you.
  4. Have the CEO send a company-wide note or video recognizing an individual recruiter who has gone above and beyond to get positions filled. Share the stories. Yes, this makes this one recruiter feel special, but it also signals to the company how important recruiting is right now for our entire success.
  5. Don’t allow you and your recruiting team to be victims or use victim phrases or behaviors. Yes, we are in a difficult spot, but we are here together, and the only way we’ll get out of this, will be together, as one. We support each other, always. We only talk about our team and the teammates on our team in positive ways. We help each other, unconditionally. In times of crisis, victim mentality kills recruiting teams faster than anything. I’m not asking you to be “Polly-Ann-ish”. I asking you to understand where you are and do not allow outside forces to pull you apart.

Also, ring the bell, buy cupcakes, take the team down to Dairy Queen for an hour, do crazy stuff that shows the organization that a hire was made, and goddammit, that is important to recognize and validate!

Recruiting is hard. Life is hard. What makes it all worth it, it to feel valued. Valued for who you are, and the work you do. To have some enjoyment amongst the chaos. To feel supported by peers, and support them back. It doesn’t take much, but it does take something.

Keep grinding out there people. I see you! And once is while, Pop a Bottle of Champagne and Celebrate!