Category Archives: Recruiting

Adjust Your Recruitment Packaging!

Posted on by
Reply

I talk to a lot of TA leaders and pros who tend to get stuck when it comes to their employer branding and messaging. They want to be transparent and tell candidates exactly who they are and what these candidates should prepare for. The problem being, they believe if they are transparent then candidates will not want to apply or join their company.

The problem with this type of thinking is every single employee, and every candidate for that matter will look at your company and your jobs through different lenses. Take your most loyal employee of all time (Timmy), the person who loves working for your brand more than anyone. What they believe is their truth. Our hope and dream is everyone sees the world, and our company, the exact same way!

Now, take the employee who is the exact opposite end of the spectrum as Timmy! This employee hates you, the company, their job. They are a walking work cancer. The only question you really have about this employee is can we fire them faster than they might be able to quit.

The reality is, your brand and your jobs are truly no different to these two employees, yet they see it as completely different.

When it comes to your employer brand there are some key things you should not adjust for:

  1. This is who we are.
  2. This is what we stand for.
  3. This is what we do.

The rest is just packaging!

Now, I’m not saying you should put out a video that shows daily ice cream socials and free Tesla’s. That would be lying. But if your packaging of your jobs and your company aligns more with how Timmy sees your brand, that’s the packaging. This world is real for at least one person at your company. It’s not a lie, it’s one employee’s truth.

You can change your packaging constantly. By location, by job, by month, etc. The core of your brand doesn’t change. This is who we are, and what we stand for, and what we do. You might even add to this with some this is what we will do for you or help you become. As long as that’s your core and you can deliver on it.

Each of us works for a brand and a job that can sometimes suck and sometimes be amazing, but mostly is a job that we like fine enough, but not as much as a puppy giving you a kiss, or your child running to you after you’ve been gone on a trip. And that’s okay!

So many of us are struggling to get people to apply to our jobs and come work for us right now, and the truth is, we need to step up our marketing game! We need to make our stuff more attractive! More desirable! We need to adjust our packaging. You’re trying to sell high-end jobs with generic branding, and you’re getting generic results.

3 Things to Stop, Start, and Keep Doing in Talent Acquisition! #SHRMTalent

Posted on by
1

Hey, gang, I’m out at SHRM Talent this week, and I have to tell you, it feels amazing to be back doing some in-person events! I’ve been a part of some exceptional virtual events during the pandemic, and the content is always very strong, but there’s something about interacting live with practitioners, face-to-face, that can’t be replicated!

As I’ve been hitting sessions and talking with corporate TA pros and leaders this week, it’s clear that the pandemic has given us some new challenges in TA, but we also have so many things that were broken before that we keep doing. Usually, at SHRM Talent, I find a lot of stuff that speakers are telling us we should start doing, some will tell us some things to stop doing, almost no one says “Hey, keep doing this…”

The Top 3 Things I Heard You Should Start Doing:

  1. Find automated ways to include all applicants in the selection process. Currently, we eliminate too many candidates that we believe aren’t a candidate, by taking a five second view of their application or resume. Hello, unconscious and conscious bias! Also, this kills are diversity and inclusion. We need to find ways to let everyone in the process, without slowing the process down!
  2. Go back to old school techniques! I’ve been hearing from everyone at SHRM Talent that many are finding success by going back to some old school techniques like, in-person career fairs (no black hole!), actual newspaper advertising, community networking with religious organizations and community organizations, etc. Yes, digitial is important, but when everyone turns right, some will find success by turning left!
  3. 95/5 – Still only 5% of organizations are using Programmatic for job advertising. 95% of organization’s marketing teams are using Programmatic to sell your organization’s products and services. More organizations are going to have to start testing and using programmatic for job advertising.

The Top 3 Things I Heard You Should Stop Doing:

  1. Stop treating candidates like crap. Okay, you aren’t, but everyone else is! The fact remains that candidates are telling us in survey after survey they keep getting ghosted and not getting feedback after applying and interviewing.
  2. Stop spending money on “job boards” without knowing what your actual stastics are regarding that spend. Which “job boards”? Indeed, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, etc. If you are spending money to post a job you need to know what is actually happening or not happening. Too many of us are still posting jobs and spending a ton of money without really understanding what is happening. More spend doesn’t always equal more of what you want.
  3. Stop allowing HR to pre-board and on-board all those candidates you worked your butt off to get to a “yes”! The candidate has the relationship with a recruiter, and they are more likely to work with a recruiter on issues they might be having intially. It’s too easy for them to break-up with HR, because they don’t know HR.

The Top 3 Things I Heard You Should Keep Doing:

  1. Keep picking up the phone. Turns out, very few candidates claim they will accept a job without first speaking to someone either via phone or live about a job.
  2. Keep trusting your remote recruiters by fully understanding and knowing what they are actually doing through measurement of funnel recruiting metrics that validate why you trust them so much!
  3. Keep communicating non-stop with your executives, and really your entire organization, weekly on what’s really happening in recruitment. Be transparent and ask for help. When a crisis hits any part of your organization almost all employees would be willing to help. We are in a hiring crisis, it’s not time to be quiet, it’s time to be loud and get everyone on board!

Hourly Hiring Made Simple! @ParadoxOlivia

Posted on by
2

I’ve looked at a lot of hourly recruiting technology in the past three months. It seems like every organization that has mass hourly hiring all had issues all at the same time. Every org, every industry, every marketplace has openings and is trying to hire.

Take a look at this video from Paradox, on the re-launch of their hourly recruiting technology:

Of all the hourly hiring technology I’ve taken a look at, Paradox/Olivia seems to be the one, at Enterprise scale, that has the most merit to be wildly successful! The hourly hiring product is intuitive and the process flow seems to be actually built by someone who has had to hire high volume hourly workers in their career!

I’ve spoke to a number of CHROs and CPOs over the past few months and I’ve been very specific with them about having their teams check out what Paradox has put together. Well worth a demo, especially with all the pain that’s out there around hiring an hourly workforce.

I think so many organizations who have high volume hourly hiring issues right now are wondering why their ATS isn’t working better. The problem isn’t your ATS, it’s the automation behind your recruiting stack. Hiring high volume hourly workers quickly and efficiently takes a different level of automation that enterprise level ATSs do not have built. Most have a process designed around hiring your normal white collar, professional worker, and they do a fairly good job at it. Hiring 1000’s of workers a week or month, all via a mobile device, is a completely different animal!

Paradox didn’t pay me for this review (although they should!). This is how much I like this product, that I wanted to share this with all of you so you could make the decision is this would help your right now with delimma most of us are facing when it comes to hiring high volume right now!

“Hire Fast! No, Faster! Fire Fast!” The New Recruiting Axiom!

Posted on by
Reply

Traditionally, talent acquisition pros would say it’s “Hire Slow, Fire Fast”. I always thought that was stupid because the reality was for most corporations it was “Hire Slow, most likely Never Fire someone unless they kill another employee in front of you…” Or something like that!

Okay, “It was Hire Slow, Fire Fast”, but we all know that never really worked. Currently, around the world, it’s mostly, “Hire Slow, Fire Slow”. I’m a true believer in we you don’t hire someone to fire them. So, move quickly, hire well, and then support the heck out of them and make them superstars, seems like a higher ROI approach to hiring!

Welcome to 2021!

The problem is, economies don’t give a crap about our axioms! Currently, in the US you better Hire As Fast As You Can, and Still that probably isn’t fast enough! So, “Hire Fast, No Faster, and Fire the Bad Ones That Got Through Your Super Fast Process!” That is really the only shot you have in 2021, and most likely for 2022 and 2023!

Let’s break down what would really happen if you started hiring super fast!

1. You would fill positions much faster than you do now.

2. You would probably make more bad hires. Turnover would increase if you do it right.

3. You would probably spend more on training.

4. You would probably hire some folks you normally wouldn’t and actually, some of those will be really good.

5. You would be forcing your hiring managers to make very quick decisions if you let them decide at all.

Of course, this isn’t your long-term let’s do this forever recruiting strategy! This is, hey, if we don’t start moving super fast, we’ll never be able to compete for talent in our marketplace!

Amazon Warehouses can currently hire candidates from applications to offer in under 30 minutes. Low skill jobs, paying around $17-21/hr. Yes, their turnover is about 150%. Yes, that is actually about normal for warehousing jobs. Turns out, Doug, the hiring manager, doesn’t have some magic selection instinct. Is the Candidate is interested? Does the Candidate show up? You’ve got a 1 in 3 shot they’ll be a good hire.

If I was in the same marketplace as an Amazon Warehouse and hiring the same level of talent, I would literally hire a taco truck to sit outside their property across the street and just hire all the people who turnover from Amazon on a daily/weekly basis. That would be my sole recruiting strategy! Let them do all the work, and I just clean up the mess!

How Could We Make “Hire Fast, No Faster, and Fire Fast” Work?

It’s pretty simple. You pay slightly above market pay. Be one of the top-paying companies in your market. Hire extremely fast, and the moment an employee starts to show you they actually suck BAM! You fire them. The reality is, being a pay leader in your marketplace will continue the funnel of incoming candidates coming.

We aren’t trying to put Jeff Bezos in space people! We are just trying to fill openings at our companies that are all about average. We treat you fairly well. You’ll have some laughs, and once in a while, we’ll buy ice cream and stuff. It’s not the best gig, but it’s far from the worst.

The key is you can’t let low performance even show up for a day! You reward, celebrate, and do all the good stuff for those who come to work. Those who come to collect a check, and not work, you have to kill instantly! Sounds harsh, but this isn’t show friends, this is show business!

The Top Recruiters Never Get Surprised! #Recruiting101

Posted on by
Reply

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!

Posted on by
Reply

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!

The One Reason It Is Almost Impossible to Remake Your Recruiting Department!

Posted on by
Reply

I got asked by a CEO of an F1000 company last week how would I build a Recruiting Department from the ground up if I was given the chance. Clearly, she was not happy with her current TA team and the results.

It’s a fun thought exercise to run through and we were talking socially, so we both played along. The problem is, in enterprise-level organizations, you never really get the chance to start from scratch. Anyone who would come in has plenty of legacy issues to deal with: technology, process, and the biggest issue, the people.

The people on your TA team become the biggest hindrance to you truly changing your talent acquisition function!

Why?

Not because they’re bad. In fact, some of them might be world-class. It’s because, especially in large shops, everyone is empire building! Okay, you want me to reinvent Recruitment Marketing, well, it starts with “Me” at the top, and then how many of my current team do I keep, and how many new heads do I get, and…

Recruiting Ops, Sourcing, Recruiting tech, etc. Every single leader you have has a number of goals and one of those goals is to grow their team! If you bring all of these people together, let’s say it’s you (the biggest leader) and all of your VPs and/or Director levels (let’s say 5 of those). If you truly started from scratch in your design, immediately you might not need three of these legacy leaders.

It takes a very, very, very, special person to throw themselves on the chopping block and say, in the new organization, I’m not needed! Like this is a one in a thousand type person. The rest all will work not with an open mind to what is best for the organization, but what is best for me and the organization, as long as the two things are running parallel to each other.

True story

If I do 100 recruitment consulting gigs, 99 of those times the leader will tell me how great the team they have is. Yet, they are totally failing!

They are open to change anything, except let’s be careful when we start talking about people. They’ll go to great lengths to save most of their people, even when facing team failure and ultimately probably termination.

“You can change the people, or you can “change” the people” – was a phrase a great leader use to love saying to me. Meaning, you can physically change people. Fire some, hire new ones. Or you can actually change people and help make them better. Both take a lot of work, but not “changing” the people, isn’t the right answer!

Back to my CEO friend and starting from scratch…

So, I reminded her I wrote a book about this very thing! But like most leaders, she just wanted the highlights. I went through at a high level what I would do, and she would jump in and say, “oh, we can’t do that, “Mary” is good and that’s her role…”

That’s when I became the thing I hate the most. Tim Sackett, Life Coach.

You asked me what I would do to remake your recruiting department. You didn’t ask me to remake your recruiting department with all the current people. That’s impossible. Mary might walk on water and maybe there will be another role for her, but I don’t need her the role she’s in, in my “new” recruiting department.

What we really discussed was how far could we use technology in today’s modern recruiting and where do people then fit within that modern recruiting tech stack? There are definite roles that are much needed, but there are also roles that I think could be done away with if technology was fully utilized.

It’s a fun leadership experiment to have with your team if you’re looking for certain behaviors. You’ll see immediately people trying to hold onto their territory, protecting their empire, not really even comprehending they really aren’t trying to remake your function, but only trying to build and maintain their empire.

The First Sign You Suck at Hiring!

Posted on by
Reply

Hiring people to work for you directly is probably the single hardest thing you’ll ever have to do as a manager of people. To be fair, most people are average at hiring, some are flat-out kill and probably 20% are awful at hiring.

The first sign you suck at hiring is your new hire turnover is an outlier in your organization, your market, or your industry.

So, what constitutes new hire turnover?

I find most organizations actually don’t measure their hiring managers on new hire turnover but use this to judge effectiveness on their talent acquisition team. That’s a complete joke! That is unless you’re allowing your TA team to make hiring decisions! New hire turn is a direct reflection of hiring decisions. Period.

When should you measure new hire turn?  Organizations are going to vary on this based on your normal turn cycles and level of the position. Most use 90 days as the cap for new hire turnover. That is safe for most organizations, but you might want to dig into your own numbers to find out what’s best for your own organization. I know orgs that use one year to measure new hire turn and orgs that use 30 days.

How do you help yourself if you suck at hiring?

1. Take yourself out of the process altogether.  Most hiring managers won’t do this because their pride won’t allow them. If you consistently have a high new hire turn comparable to others, you might consider this, you just have bad internal filters that predispose you to select people who don’t fit your org or management style. Don’t take it personally. I suck at technical stuff. I shop that part of my job off to someone who’s better. You might be an exceptional manager of your business, but you suck at hiring. Shop that out to someone who’s better!

2. Add non-subjective components into your hiring process and follow them 100% of the time. Assessments are scientifically proven to tell you what they’re designed to tell you. If you follow what they’ll tell you, you’ll be much more likely to make consistent hires. If that assessment gives you better hires, then keep following it, or find an assessment that does give you that consistency.

3. Analyze your reasons for each misfire hire. Were there any commonalities in those? What I find is most poor hires stem from a hiring manager who gets stuck on one reason to hire, which has nothing to do with being successful in your environment. Example: “I want high-energy people!” But then they work in an environment where they are stuck in a 6X8 foot cube all day. It’s like caging a wild animal! 

Numbers don’t lie. If you consistently bomb your new hire turnover metrics, it’s not the hires, it’s you! In the organizations where I’ve seen the best improvement in reducing new hire turnover, it was in organizations where new hire turnover metric results were solely the responsibility of each hiring manager, and nothing to do with talent acquisition.

It’s the 80/20 rule. 80% of most new hire turn is usually coming from around 20% of your hiring managers. Fix those issues and ‘magically’ your new hire turn improves.

Using Video to Attract More Talent! @Prezi

Posted on by
3

We do not use enough video when trying to attract talent! So, I made a video about how you can increase your use of video and attract more talent! Check it out!

HR and TA Peeps! I got a chance to test out Prezi’s new video presentation technology and you can see the results below. It’s pretty cool, and definitely a great way to do remote and virtual content for others!

You can go test Prezi Video for free! I really like the outcome as compared to a static slide deck and a window of me next to it!

Want to Recruit Better? Hire more Recruiters and less Recruiting Managers!

Posted on by
6

 

Take a look at what’s happened in healthcare over the past 40 years:

 

In the healthcare industry over the past forty years, there has been a 2000% growth rate in the number of “Administrators” in healthcare, which the number of Physicians has remained relatively flat. Now, some of this growth in administration could be that for decades prior there might have been a lack of proper administration and some of this growth is just catching up, but 2000%!?

And we wonder why the cost of healthcare in our country is out of control!

Healthcare isn’t the only place where this happens! The more successful an organization is, the more mid-level management hires increase. So, in times of prosperity, we tend to want to surround the worker bees with tons of management “help”. Our organizations get bloated with none productive hires all hired believing we’ll make those who actually produce more efficient and effective.

We do this in talent acquisition, a ton!

I get asked by HR and TA executives frequently about hiring recruiting leadership. Recently, I spoke with a CHRO who was struggling to attract talent and fill positions and I asked her to give me their TA structure. “Oh, we have a Director of TA, a Manager of TA, and a Recruiter.” So, you can’t hire, but you’ve got two TA leaders and one person actually doing the hiring!?

I told her to fire the director and the manager and hire 4 more recruiters and let the team of 5 recruiters work the openings. I was exaggerating a little, but she got my point. Positions don’t get filled by managing them to death. Positions get filled by recruiters generating activity that leads to filling positions.

Of course, great leadership can help any function be more effective, but having leaders for the simple fact that we believe someone or something needs to be “managed” is short-sighted at best, and destructive at it’s worst. I’ll always choose a flatter structure over empire-building any day of the week. Give me some soldiers and let me fight!

The problem with hiring non-productive employees is what we’ve seen in healthcare. Once you get one administrator/manager every other employee wants to do the same thing. “Wait, I can get paid more and not have to actually produce!? Yes, please!” And soon you have a 2000% increase in hiring folks who don’t actually see patients, who don’t fill positions, who don’t make the donuts.