Category Archives: Recruiting

‘Divided America’ is a myth – @Jobvite 2017 Job Seeker Nation

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Jobvite does an annual study called Job Seeker Nation where they go out and survey over 2,000 Americans. The data is fascinating from an employee and candidate perspective. This year’s study found that 80% of Americans believe the country is divided, but when you dig into the detail of their responses, you find that’s not really true!

Sure, at a high level you have Dems and Repubs. Rich and Non-rich. Big city and country. Anything from far enough away can be divided into two sets. But, when you really dig into individual beliefs, you find that Americans are that different in their beliefs.

You can access the free, 35-page report from Jobvite!

Here are some of the highlights I pulled out of the data:

– Women negotiate less than Men for salary increases. We’ve known this for a while, but the data also showed that 87% of men who negotiate get a higher pay, and 80% of women who negotiate get higher pay. So, what does this tell us!? HR pros and Hiring Managers are awful negotiators! Also, it’s a candidate market! So, negotiate!

– 68% of job seekers do not believe Diversity is very important when selecting an employer. Only 36% of Women believe it’s very important, 60% of African Americans believe it’s very important. This isn’t to say that the majority don’t find diversity important, it’s saying that most candidates actually find other things more important!

– The lower you get paid, the less loyal you are to your employer. I think we all can understand the psychology behind this. If you have a great paying job, you’re probably more likely to be loyal to help keep that job. If you’re paid like crap, you probably don’t care as much about keeping that job.

– 46% of job seekers find it harder in 2017 to find a job, than in 2016. I found this unbelievable! I can walk outside of my office, right this moment, and within a quarter mile find at least ten business begging for employees. There are more jobs than job seekers, so why is it more difficult for almost 50%!?

– Get used to Hyper Job Hopping. 46% of Millennials will change jobs every 1 to 3 years. So, those hiring managers who have job hopper-itis when it comes to looking at resumes better get over it! That being said, I still don’t buy into the candidates who’s jumping a new job every year.

– Cover letters are dead. 58% of younger workers did not submit a cover letter on their most recent job application, but 26% of recruiters still view cover letters as critical to their decision to hire. That means 1 out of 4 of your recruiters have no clue at what they’re doing!

– You have a 13 times better chance of getting a job through a referral than applying on a job board. 13 times! That’s no joke. If you really want a job, find a referral, work your network, stop applying!

– 28% of younger workers analyze your company culture using Instagram. Candidates believe IG gives them better insight into your true culture over your career site.

I could go on all day with this stuff, I barely scratched the surface of what’s in this report. Go download it for yourself. We’ll basically be seeing screenshots of this study in every conference PowerPoint for the next twelve months!

Three overall key takeaways I took from the study:

  • We are more alike than different when it comes to being job seekers
  • Companies have shaped the behaviors of job seekers more than job seekers are changing company behaviors related to job seekers
  • If you hang onto your old ways of treating job seekers, you’re only hurting your own organization, not the job seeker

 

Everything I Know About Recruiting I Learned from my 70 year old Mother!

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So, most of you know I’m the President of HRU Technical Resources. Most of you don’t know my Mom is the CEO!

She makes sure to point that out to me about once per month! Today is her 70th birthday. While it’s been a while since she’s been on the phone filling requisitions, to this day, she can not turn if off!

She started her technical recruiting company in 1980 when almost no women started their own businesses, and it’s been successful every year we’ve been in business. Through two major recessions, constant competitive pressure, and an every changing client environment.

She’s the only person I’ve ever met in business I would not want to compete against! How’s that for a role model growing up! She resisted, before resisting became in fashion!

So, I wanted to share some of what I learned about recruiting that she taught me:

– The recruiter with the most activity will almost always have the most placements. 99.9% of the time.

– Our clients are important, but if they ask you to work for free, you won’t be able to help them for too long. Only work with companies that value the work you give them.

– Talent is the lifeblood of our business. It’s the only thing that will differentiate you from the competition. Never forget that when you’re talking to a potential candidate.

– Following the process is important until it isn’t. Don’t allow it to get in the way of making placements.

– People don’t know what they can accomplish until they get pushed. It’s your job as a leader to push them to their limits so they can see how great they can be. (Sounds like Bobby Knight, right!)

– Balance is never really the issue. If you’re successful you have all the balance you want. If you’re not successful balance shouldn’t be your biggest concern.

– Candidates always tell you why their great, or why they suck. You just have to keep them talking and ask the right questions.

– If you ever feel that a candidate has a red flag, ask the question. The embarrassment is not them having to answer the question, it’s you explaining to the hiring manager why you didn’t ask the question!

– The best thing you can do is turn down a client’s requisition when they’re completely unrealistic about what they want. It’s a waste of your time, and they think you suck for not filling it. Most recruiters won’t turn them down, when you do, they’ll want to know why. That’s the conversation you really want.

I could go on all day like this! The learning never stops. Running a business your mother started is tough. I’ll never run like her, and it’s taken us both a long time to understand that’s okay, as long as the core of what she’s taught me never changes.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back on the phone!

 

 

I Can’t Make You Recruit!

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My mind is still racing after coming back from SHRM Talent this week! So many great conversations I had with TA leaders and pros. I actually think the level of conversation at functional specific conferences is higher because everyone is feeling the same pain!

It’s not to say a conference like SHRM National can’t be great, but you’re surrounded by HR and Talent pros with dozens of specialties and focus. At SHRM Talent you basically had the majority of the attendees focused on how do we attract and hire better talent for our organizations! That leads to great open dialogue and connection. I came back to the office super energized!

I have to share one specific conversation I had. Great, passionate TA leader approached me with a problem she was having. She was feeling a little beat up, not as successful as she wanted her function and team to be, probably didn’t have the respect and influence she deserved for the challenges they’re facing. Her question was this:

“How do I get my recruiters to recruit?” 

It was simple and honest.  The easy answer is a performance management discussion but I knew what she was really asking. It’s a dilemma most TA leaders face right now. Our organizations are pushing us for more talent, and yet I don’t really have team and technology to provide what they want!

My answer to her was also simple and honest.

“You can’t.” 

Okay, I expanded my answer because you know I love to give advice! I explained that most likely I’m guessing you have some really lovely, caring, company people working on your team that love working for you and love what they do. She said, “that’s right!” I’m  also assuming these people are administering a recruiting process, but they’re not actually recruiting. “Right again! That’s my problem!”, she said.

Here’s what I know after twenty years in talent acquisition. If someone doesn’t want to change, nothing I do will get them to change. Making someone recruit who doesn’t want to recruit, won’t work. Never has, never will. You have to want to recruit, really recruit, to recruit. No, not what you think recruiting is, what actual recruiting is!

So, I said, here’s what I would do and laid out a plan of how I would change process and activities and hold them accountable. I also said more than likely most won’t do this and they’ll quit or fight you until you fire them. If you’re lucky you might get one or two of your “Farmers” to turn into a “Hunters”. But, my experience has been most will refuse to change, while telling you they’re desire to change!

I don’t have the time or capacity to get someone to change. Either they truly care enough to change, or they don’t. There’s no middle ground because I need to change what we’re doing, and I only need people on the team that can now do the new requirements of what I’m asking.

What I find is most TA leaders die trying to change their non-recruiters into recruiters. And by die trying, I mean they eventually quit or get fired, all the while their team keeps doing what they want to do. You can change the people, or you can ‘change’ the people.

I can’t make ‘you’ recruit, but I can find people who want to recruit.

Why Hasn’t Employee Referral Automation Caught on? #SHRMTalent

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I spoke at SHRM Talent this week. One of the best corporate recruiting conferences around. Many people don’t believe me when I tell them, but the content, speakers, and audience are really engaging.

TA Tech companies and vendors haven’t caught on yet to the new SHRM Talent. Most corporate TA pros I spoke to might not have million dollar budgets to spend, but every one of them had decisions making over tens and hundreds of thousands of TA budget dollars!

It’s becoming one of the favorite conferences because the audience of corporate TA pros and leaders are very open to wanting to learn and get better. Their questions are genuine and the truly want to learn how to improve recruiting and talent attraction in their organizations.

One topic that I bring up during my sessions as the most under-utilized TA technologies on the planet is employee referral automation. Jobvite created the space, others followed, like RolePoint, Zao, Gooodjob, etc. Still, main stream corporate TA tech in mass aren’t using employee referral automation. It’s one of the great mysteries in the TA space for me!

When you ask corporate TA pros and leaders what their top source for talent is, employee referrals will always come in the top 3. When you ask what is the highest quality of hires by source, employee referrals are almost always number one! When you ask how much money have you invested in increasing employee referrals, it’s almost always $0!

So, help me out, what am I missing?!

The SHRM Talent audience told me I wasn’t missing anything, they just simply didn’t know this technology was available to them! Jobvite was in the expo hall, but mainly they were selling ATS, not employee referral automation (huge miss, but I know ATS margins are bigger than employee referral automation!). 97% of my audience weren’t using this tech, but almost all had an interest in learning more.

It’s really a zero-budget buy for most companies! If you use this type of technology you can basically get rid of your referral bonus program and your numbers will still go up on employee referrals. So, there’s the money you need to buy the tech that will put your employee referral program on steroids!

Truly, the bonuses per referral are not needed! You will have to actually begin recognizing those who do refer in your company, but almost all employees will refer people to your organization without a monetary gain! Also, increasing bonuses does little to actually increase the number of referrals you get.

So, why isn’t the vast majority using this tech?

First, they aren’t being sold this technology. Most corporate TA pros and leaders buy because of what is being sold to them, not necessarily what they need.

Second, I’m guessing the companies that sell this tech are for the most part fairly weak at marketing because it seems like a pretty easy sell to the groups I have in front of me!

Third, most corporate TA pros and leaders just have no idea this tech is even on the market for them, and if they do, they believe it’s too expensive to purchase.

They’ll spend a million dollars on LinkedIn and Indeed, but not $50,000 on technology that gives them more hires of their highest quality source?! There’s a major disconnect here on both sides of the market, which means there’s a giant opportunity for a company with a great brand with great tech that can make it simple for corporate TA leaders.

 

 

7 Ways to Increase Your Hourly Hiring!

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In 2017 there will be over a thousand webinars on how to hire more IT talent, 15,285 blog posts on how to hire more IT talent, 100s of new technologies will be released on how to hire more IT talent. You won’t see a fraction of that help when it comes to hiring Hourly Workers!

Why?

The majority of hiring done on a daily basis by most companies around the world is in hiring hourly workers, yet almost no one spends time on how to make this easier or do it better. This webinar is designed to help our brothers and sisters in the trenches who are out there every single day, doing all the dirty work in their organizations. Those recruiters and talent leaders who are responsible for hiring the masses!  

Tim Sackett loves the people! (and apparently talking about himself in the third person!) The real people, who go to work every single day and keep our organizations running like a well-oiled machine, not those pretty boys sitting behind a computer screen who have no idea what we really make and do on a daily basis!

Can you hear that music playing in the background? “America, America, God shed His grace on thee…” (Okay, I’m off my rocker, but you get it, I love this stuff!)  

What you’ll learn from FOT’s first webinar on better hourly hiring:  

–7 things you can start doing to increase and simplify hourly hiring in your organization

–3 ways top organizations are leveraging technology to do massive (over 1,000 hires per year) hourly hiring

–Pitfalls most organizations fall into when hiring hourly workers, and what you can do to make sure you don’t go down this path  

Smashfly, the world’s best recruitment marketing platform, is the sponsor for this FOT webinar.  So, you know we’ll be discussing the benefits of utilizing CRM technology in mass hiring, along with so many other tips, tricks, and techniques.

Joining me on the webinar will be my special guest, friend, and HR Influencer, Robin Schooling, VP of HR from Hollywood Casinos, who every day is in the weeds with her team in hiring the best hourly talent!

Register today! Thursday, April 27th at 2 pm ET! 

Trump Can’t Stop Immigrant Hiring!

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Before Trump was hired, err, voted in as President. I was asked to respond to this question:

What impact do you think Trump will have on immigrant hiring? 

My response was probably a bit more positive at that point, pre-Trump than it is now, but I still remain bullish on immigrant hiring. Why? Because it’s what America actually wants! I still believe that any President wants what is best for America. How they get there might be drastically different, but Trump is very similar to many Presidents we have.

Even his recent Executive Order to “Buy American, Hire American” (My grandparents who retired from GM would love this, BTW!) has little if any impact on actual H1-B hiring. H1-B hiring is broken, and random, and needs major overall, everyone can agree on that! Not hiring immigrants is just ignorant and uninformed.

Trump is easily swayed by high public opinion. He cares about what people think of him. No, really! He actually does, probably more than any other President we’ve ever had. What he doesn’t care about is crazy folks yelling on the fringes. He cares about being ‘popular’. American businesses need immigrant workers. If he gives this to them, he’ll be popular with people he views as peers in many ways.

CareerBuilder released a study today showing 33% of American companies plan on hiring immigrant workers, which is virtually unchanged from this time last year. Also, the American public doesn’t view immigrant hiring as a challenge to their livelihood. A whopping 90% feel like immigrant hiring has no impact on their career possibilities. That’s a giant number!

If you put all the psychology and data together, I think we’ll get to a place in America and the hiring of immigrants that makes more sense than what we have now. A lottery system? That’s what we pin our hopes on for American companies!? No one in business thinks this system is good. Trump is all about, well, that changes daily, but let’s say he’s a little more consistent on what American businesses want.

I can foresee, for good or bad I’m not sure, a tiered system of immigrant hiring. The Visa system really has already created this. Professional workers get preference over service level, unskilled immigrant workers. I can see this widening as this is what Trump voters are really worried about. They aren’t worried about the Software Engineer or Doctor coming into America, they’re worried about that cook at Applebee’s, the immigrant on the manufacturing line, etc.

We know the reality, most American workers don’t want those jobs anyway, but they feel that having an immigrant take those jobs is somehow holding them back. The real issue is American companies offshoring high paid manufacturing jobs, not highly skilled professionals coming into the states. Again, the CareerBuilder study backs up this assertion, “I’m not worried about an immigrant taking my job” because immigrants don’t take normal American jobs, they take the jobs on the fringes – high-end and low-end.

You need to be a part of a Professional Tribe

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One of the things I speak about when presenting to HR pros is there need to become part of the ‘Tribe’.  Meaning, if you want to have your seat at the table, you want to gain influence with your leadership team, you need to become part of that tribe.  How do you do that? Well, every tribe is different, you need to figure that out. There is no magical answer, but my guess is they have or do something in common. Find out what that is, and slowly work yourself into that tribe!

HR people struggle with this concept.

“Tim, I just want to do my job and go home!”  Okay.  Then stop bitching that you’re not getting any respect from your executives.  You’re choosing not to be part of that tribe.  Tribes take care of themselves.

You see, most HR pros place themselves on a professional island.  Just Tom Hanks in Cast Away, they’re all by themselves, plus maybe there own little ‘Wilson’ comfort toy picked up at a SHRM conference, a Monster stuffed animal, a Careerbuilder ‘recruiter’ doll, you know the ones!

I have a really, really cool tribe.  In fact, I have many tribes.  First and foremost of have my family.  My HRU tribe is next.  I probably spend more time with them, then my real family on a daily basis!  I also have a number of other personal tribes around youth sports, neighborhood, etc.

My FOT tribe is professionally very cool and satisfying. It’s a group of HR and Talent bloggers who are super smart and snarky, and they make me laugh every day.  I support this tribe and they support me.  They make my professional world better.  They help make me get excited about what I do, and how I do it.  They challenge me to be better. There are many subsets of that tribe, like the 8 Man Rotation tribe, the greater HR blogger tribe, etc.

Tribes are important.

HR and Talent Acquisition pros need to take down their locked HR office doors. Take them right off the hinges.  Get out and start getting involved with professional tribes.  Start in your own organization first.  Do you support a department or client group?  Get into that tribe, now!  Go to lunch with them. Go for drinks after work on Friday.  Bake cookies and bring them to the tribes.  All tribes like to eat and drink! Never underestimate the importance of being a part of that tribe.

I hear from HR pros who tell me all the time, “Tim, ‘they’ just won’t listen to me. How do I get them to listen?”  My first question is to ask them what relationship they have with whoever isn’t listening. That answer is usually, none, or next to none.  They aren’t part of that tribe. That’s the real problem.

I’m not saying it’s easy to break into every tribe. It might not be, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying.  Also, you can create your own professional tribes.  There are so many people just like you that just want to be a part of a tribe.  Go find them! Start a tribe.  You’ll be better for it.

Some of my Tribe and I will be at SHRM Talent next week speaking and hanging out. If you’re going reach out to me and let’s connect! Maybe you’ll become a part of my tribe!

Learn how to give the best IT interviews on the planet!

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Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 18th at 2 pm ET) I’ll be talking IT Interviewing on a Recruiting Daily webinar sponsored by eTeki – Register Here! Most organizations suck at interviewing IT talent. I think there’s a better way!
It takes tech expertise to properly gauge tech competencies and experience and let’s face it most recruiters fall short in their capacity toTim Sackett eTeki
interview for the nuances of these specialized IT roles. You and I know this, but hiring managers struggle to understand why Talent Pros will never really be able to tell them if someone is a great coder or not!
Attend this webinar and I will show you a number of things you can start doing immediately to increase your ROI! Plus, you’ll hear from real talent leaders in the field who have already put a number of these ideas into place and hear about the success and struggles they had in launching this process.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Learn five ways successful companies are doing technical interviews differently to choose great talent.
  2. Design a technical interview process that attracts talent, and learn the things that turn off technical talent in an interview.
  3. Develop an interview strategy for technical talent that will increase your hiring manager satisfaction.

 

This webinar is designed to show any Recruiter and Recruiting leader (Corporate, Agency, RPO) a better way to interview technical talent, increase hiring manager/client satisfaction, and increase the influence and expertise your team brings to your organization.

The New Definition of “Passive Candidate”

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Okay, we get it, Mrs. Hiring Manager, you want passive candidates!!! We’ll get right no that…

Passive candidates are the holy grail of candidates, right? Untouched, virgin, pure as the driven snow, fresh meat that has yet to be soiled by the dirty hands of another recruiter. If I could find a way to mainline passive candidates right into my system I’d be the best recruiting junkie on the planet!

Do you even lift bro? I mean, do we even know what the hell a passive candidate even is anymore?

The Passive Candidate Definition from ten years ago:

“A Passive Candidates is someone who is being considered for a position but is not actively searching for a job.”

So, are we buying this today?

If so, it seems like we then need to define “actively searching”. The only candidates I know who are ‘actively searching’ for jobs are candidates out of work, working in a job that isn’t their chosen career (Communications grad from B-level university, selling cell phones in a strip mall), or about to be fired from their current position.

If those are the actively searching candidates, that makes almost everyone else Passive! I don’t think our definition of Passive Candidate matches that of our hiring managers current definition of passive candidate! I think they would say anyone who is searching for a job, passively or actively, is not really passive.

So, why do we see this differently? Well, this is a bit of marketing that TA played on the hiring manager to fill positions. “Hey, Tim is a great ‘passive’ candidate, I found him on LinkedIn, he didn’t even ‘apply’ to our job! You have to interview him!” The ‘he didn’t even apply’ is like crack for hiring managers, who now believe you found Tim locked away in a vault at your competitors that has never seen the light of day.

The reality is a bit less sexy! Tim has been on LinkedIn for three years trying to get out of dead end company he’s been working for, but Tim sucks at networking and finding jobs, so he is just waiting around to be trolled by a recruiter, and he applies to jobs every week, just hasn’t applied to your job!

Let’s be honest with each other. If someone has posted a resume online, err, professional profile, they’re on the market! They might not be actively applying to jobs on a daily basis, but we all know they’re open for business. Someone can’t be passive that has a presence on any of the job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, LinkedIn, Dice, Zip, etc.).  They also can’t be passive if they actively applying to jobs, but just haven’t applied to your job!

So, the new definition of Passive Candidate should probably be:

“A Passive Candidate is someone you find through various methods who is not on the job market in any way.”

That means you might contact someone in your ATS database who applied for a job with you three years ago, but they are currently happily employed and totally off the job market radar. That’s a Passive Candidate. The referral your employee gave you for a former coworker that you can’t find anything online, and they tell you they’re not looking for a job. That’s a Passive Candidate.

A passive candidate isn’t someone you found who just hasn’t happened to think about applying to your job, yet. They actually might be the most active candidate on the planet, who you just happen to run into.

We know a truly passive candidate when we speak to one. They’re a bit nervous. A bit surprised. A bit flattered. You can tell they’re not used to talking to recruiters and feel guilty talking to you. This is the person you’re hiring managers are asking for when they say they want a passive candidate.

This isn’t to say passive candidates are better. That’s an entire another post, but let’s not act like we are providing passive candidates when we aren’t.

The Single Greatest Metric in the History of Talent Acquisition!

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“0.00” or “Zero”

I’ll let you decide how you want to display it, both ways work.

Oh, what is this measuring? Check this out:

The number of candidates, in the past twenty years that I’ve hired, that were willing to accept a job without first having a phone call with someone at the organization I worked for. 

That number is:    0   

I’m guessing your number is fairly close to my number! If fact, this is a universal metric between all types of talent acquisition professionals (Corporate, Agency, RPO). Across all industries and all levels of hiring, hourly, salary, temporary, 1099, seasonal, etc.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

1. Would you be willing to accept a job without first speaking with someone about this job?

2. Would you be willing to accept a job interview without first speaking to someone about the position, details, etc.?

My guess is almost 100% will say “No” for number one, but some would actually say “Yes” to number 2. Okay, I’ll buy some of you would go to an interview before ever speaking to anyone live about a job. I don’t think it’s many, but I’ll give you some people just want a job and a text or email communication is good enough for them. I’ll also assume the quality of those people will be questionable.

The fact is there is an extremely high correlation between speaking to a candidate ‘live’ on the phone or in person, and their willingness to continue through your process of hiring. Like a .99 correlation!

Another fact, then, would be that the recruiters in your environment (corporate, agency, RPO) who actually make the most phone calls will have the most candidates willing to engage your organization in your hiring process.

Final fact, in every recruiting environment I’ve worked (corporate and agency) the recruiters who connected with the most candidates over the phone, filled the most positions. Every. Single. Environment.

It’s not Rocket Science people! It’s actually Psychology.

If you don’t pick up the phone, you don’t find candidates willing to follow through with your hiring process.

Don’t over think this. Put yourself in the shoes of your candidates. Would you be willing to accept a job without first speaking to someone at the company offering you a job?

0.00!