Category Archives: Recruiting

Privacy is the New Candidate Red Flag

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Have you interviewed anyone recently, and haven’t been able to find anything about them online?

No LinkedIn profile. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram. Google even seem to turn up nothing. It was like the person didn’t exist, yet there she was right in front of you, with a resume, work history, and educational transcripts. A living, breathing, walking ghost.

A social ghost, to be sure.

I had this happen a couple of weeks ago. It was disconcerting to say the least.  Of course, I knew this when I asked the person to come in to interview. It was one of the main reasons I asked her to come in.  It was like I found this mythical creature, this interview unicorn. There was no way I was passing this up.

Besides the resume with verified job history, valid driver’s license, address, educational records and a credit history, it was as if this person never existed.

I think the kids call this a “Catfish”, or at least thats what I expected to have come interview with me. This ‘Susan’ would come in and really be a ‘Samuel’! I’ve been in the game a long time, ‘Susan’ wasn’t going to pull one over on me.

I once had a friend who told me he gave up TV.  I didn’t really believe him, either.  Let’s be real, no one gives up TV.  And, as usual, I was right.  He gave away his TV, but he didn’t give away his laptop, his tablet and his smartphone. He was still watching, trying to act like he saved the fucking world by giving away his TV device. Like we don’t know you have twenty other devices in your house to watch shows on.

But, I digress, back to my social ghost, Susan. (of course, Susan isn’t her real name I changed that, I’m a pro, her real name is Jennifer)

I asked Susan the question we would all want to ask in this circumstance: “Susan can you tell me why you hate America?”

She seemed perplexed by this, almost like she didn’t comprehend what I was asking her, but I knew better.  She knew exactly where I was going with my line of questioning.  Why would a person choose to lead a life of anonymity, when a fully functioning narcissistic life is easily within her reach?

I showed her how if you Googled “Tim Sackett” I, soley, was the first 127 pages of the search results, working towards 130. I explained how I ‘socially’ erased another “Tim Sackett”, the Truck Driver Chaplin, almost from existence. Almost like he never stopped at a truck stop along I80 attempting to save lives in the name of Jesus.  It was a life’s work. My life’s work. I could tell she was impressed.

At the point where I had just about cracked her, she softly spoke one word, “privacy”, spilled from her lips like a small newborn logging onto Instagram video for the first time.

Privacy.  I knew there was something about her I didn’t like.

The interview ended.  So, did her chances of ever getting hired by me.

No One Is Waiting To Discover You

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I’m a recruiter.  I search for talent every day.  Basically, I’m never not on the outlook for talent.  Of course I’m doing this at work, but I also do it while shopping, while eating, while I’m at the movies, while I’m on vacation, etc.

You see, I never know when I’m going to discover a talented person and have the exact right opportunity, with the exact right company and it all fits together.

But, if you’re waiting for me, to discover you, you’ll be waiting forever.

I don’t discover anyone who isn’t working to be discovered.   I’m not knocking on closed doors where it looks like no one is home.  It’s like trick or treating, I’m only going to the houses with the lights on.

I hear from a lot of people who are willing to change jobs, or are open to new opportunities.  Unfortunately, almost all of these people are waiting to be discovered.  They aren’t actively doing anything to show me who they are and why I should be looking for them.

Their argument is they don’t want their current employer to know they’re looking.  My argument back is that isn’t the best way to be discovered anyway!  Hiring managers love passive candidates, people who aren’t looking.  You can be a passively-active candidate without floating your resume all over God’s green earth and changing your LinkedIn headline to “Now Open to New Opportunities!”

Get active in your industry.  Get active in the city and community you want to live.  Let your personal network know you would be open to something great, and by-the-way this is what I think something great would look like.

We are coming into a decade where there will be more jobs than qualified people.  You can have some great options if people are aware of who you are.  Just don’t think there is some magical fairy that will discover you sitting at your desk doing your normal job in the third row, second cube, fifth floor on the seventh building in the office park, the world doesn’t work that way. This isn’t Hollywood, this is main street.

 

Covering Up a Career Hickey

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I had a person work for me at past job in HR.  She performed the HR cardinal sin of sins, she shared personal, confidential information with an employee outside of HR.  My problem was, this person was a high performer, an outstanding employee, she had a frustrating, weak moment, and did something you just can’t do in a HR position.  This is what we call a Career Hickey. Sometimes you can survive these hickeys and cover them up, and continue to work as normal.  Many time you can’t.

So now, this Hi-Po has a huge Hickey.  Interestingly though, this Hickey can’t be seen when you look at their resume or interview them in person, but it’s a Hickey they can’t get rid of.  So, barring a life-turtleneck how does one cover this puppy up?

It’s interesting because I think that probably the best of us have a hickey or two that we would rather not have our current or future employer know about.  Sometimes they’re big-giant-in-the-back-of-a-Chevy-17-year-old-I-will-love-you-forever hickeys and sometimes they’re just oops-I-lingered-a-little-too-long type of hickeys. Either way, I would rather not expose my hickeys and have to worry about how this will impact the rest of my professional life. And here’s where most people drive themselves crazy.

As HR Pros I think it’s important for us to be able to help our organizations determine the relative value of individuals.  This person was a rock star at ABC company, did something wrong, and couldn’t maintain that position any longer with ABC because of said incident, and lost their job. Now we have a chance to pick up a Rock Star (and probably for a discount).

The question you have to ask is not could we live with this person if they did the same thing here?  Because that really isn’t the question, you already have that answer is “No.”  The question is: do we feel this person learned from said wrong doing and is there any risk of them doing it again?  You might come to the conclusion, “yes, they’ve learned, and yes, there is potential they might do it again” (let’s face it, if they did it once, they’ve shown they can do it, so there’s always a risk), but it’s a risk we are willing to take.

So how does someone come back from a transgression at work? The answer is that they have some help.  Eventually, someone is going to ask the question: “why aren’t you with ABC Company anymore?”  They’ll give you the canned answer they’ve been developing since the moment they lost their job. If you’re a good interviewer, you won’t buy the first answer (I mean really – so you decided it was better off not to have a job – is what you’re telling me?!) and you will dig to see the hickey.  Hickeys are funny in that you really can’t take your eyes off of them, but for those who can get by the hickeys, you might just find a great talent who is grateful for the second chance.

But, you also might find someone who just likes being in the back of that Chevy and getting Hickeys. You’re the HR Pro though and that’s really why your company pays your salary – to mitigate risk vs. the quality of talent your organization needs to succeed. So, you have to ask yourself, can you live with a Hickey?

How To Get a Great Job in 2015

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Last week I got a call from an old work friend. He wanted to have lunch.  He just left a position and was in transition.  Not a bad or negative job loss, just parted ways.  When you get to a certain executive point in your career, it’s rare that bad terminations take place. It’s usually, “hey, we like you, but we really want to go another direction, and we know you don’t want to go that direction, so let’s just shake hands and call it a day, here’s a big fat check.”

Executives get this.  For the most part there isn’t hard feelings, like when you were young and lost a job. I usually find that the organization the person is leaving from are super complementary, and usually takes the blame for the change.  Executives in corporate America are like NFL coaches. You get hired with the understanding that one day you’ll be fired.  It’s not that you know less, or aren’t going to be successful in your career, it’s just that the organization needs change, and you’re part of that change.

Welcome to the show, kid.

My friend decided that he was going to find his next position not through posting for positions online, or trolling corporate career pages, he was going to have lunches.  About two per week, with past work friends. Let’s connect, no pressure, we already know each other and I want to catch up.

You see, in 2015 you don’t find great jobs by filling out applications in ATSs and uploading resumes. You get great jobs because of the relationships and personal capital you’ve built up over your career.  Having lunch and reconnecting turn on a relationship machine. I believe that people, innately, want to help other people. When a friend comes to you with a situation, and you have something to offer or help, you will do that.

The problem is most people who are looking for great jobs don’t do this. They lock themselves in their home office and apply to a thousand jobs online and get upset when nothing happens. Great jobs aren’t filled by ATSs and corporate recruiters.  Great jobs are fill through relationships. Every single one of them.

Want to find a great job in 2015?

Go out to lunch.

6 Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic

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Let’s face it—the recruiting metrics you use at your company are either non-existent or stale.  Sure, you tried to roll out the basics—time to hire, cost per hire—but all that did was put the focus on your HR/Recruiting function, not the people who actually make the final hiring decision.  Flash forward 12 months since the launch of those basic recruiting metrics, and you’re bored… heck, everyone’s bored.

Never fear! The FOT webinar makes it’s 2015 debut with Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires.

Join us for this webinar (sponsored by Chequed.com) on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST (11am Pacific) and we’ll hit you the following goodies:

– A review of the traditional talent selection/recruiting metrics.  We’ll give you a rundown of those metrics like Time To Fill and Cost Per Hire, what the standard benchmarks are for each and then explain why only using these traditional metrics is a lost cause/suckers play.

– An explanation of the Holy Grail of reporting Recruiting Effectiveness and why it changes the conversation from “Did we fill the position?” to “Did we make the right hire and what happened once we filled the position?“. We call this metric Hiring Manager Batting Average (HMBA for those of you that need an acronym), and it’s the cleanest, most all-encompassing metric you can have to make your internal recruiting conversation strategic—not transactional—and actually make it tie in to your overall talent strategy, not just Talent Acquisition.

– How to change the dialog of organizational turnover from being an HR problem to being everyone’s problem. Admit it, you report on turnover all the time. We’ll show you how to link turnover to your selection process in a way that spreads the wealth related to turnover responsibility—and actually sets you up to be more consultative and less reactive related to employee churn.

– We’ll give you 5 additional metrics to show how your recruiting/staffing process actually reduces risk of bad hires and prepares for future searches.  You need to get out of the trap of only reporting cost and time.  We’ve got the metrics to show you how to do that.

Things that are hard:  Riding a bike on a freeway. Getting your kids to eat peas. Getting managers to own the bad hires they make and be interested in getting better at selection.  Join us for Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST, and we’ll show you how to create recruiting/talent metrics that get the attention of your organization.  You’re on your own with the other two.

Rejection Letter Dos and Don’ts

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A number of years ago I got rejected for a job.  I know, I know, you are probably as surprised as I was.  The funny part is, I got the hard copy, snail mail rejection letter 18 months after I had apparently applied.  I went back into my email to try and figure out what really happened.

You see, as a Recruiting Pro, I wouldn’t actually apply through an ATS, especially for an executive position, which this was.  My email confirmed the fact; I had sent the CHRO of a large organization my resume directly.  This rejection letter was from that contact.

18 months. Send a resume. No communication for 18 months. Rejection letter. That’s the time line. How’s that for a solid candidate experience!?

Ever since this experience I’ve always had strong beliefs of what you should do and not do when it comes to sending out rejection letters.  Here’s the deal about Rejection Letters:

Do –

  • Send personally signed letters to all people you have had personal contact with (i.e., over the phone, in person, referred by someone internally – you get the idea).
  • Draft a letter(s) that builds your brand.
  • Once a candidate is a “no”? Send the letter. If they’re a “maybe”? Keep them in the process.
  • If they never had any personal contact, send them the ATS mass email.

Don’t –

  • Send a letter to everyone who applies.  Within your recruitment/sourcing process should be a communication when someone applies.  In that communication, let them know that only those chosen for interviews will be considered part of the recruitment process – meaning we will communicate with those individuals directly moving forward – all others thanks, please apply for other positions that come up that fit your experience and background.
  • Tell people you chose someone with better qualifications or someone who is more qualified – you really don’t know that – who you chose was a person who best fit your organization at this time.
  • Tell people you’ll keep them on file for future consideration. You and I both know that you don’t. Tell them the truth – if you ever want to work here, apply again and possibly make some internal connections to help move your resume to the top.

In the end, you want your rejection letters to make people feel like I’m glad I applied, and I would apply again and I would continue or will start using this organization, buy their product or service.  It’s not easy, but it can be done.

If you really want to know what people think of your rejection process, pick up the phone and call a few that have made it to different levels of the hiring process, and just ask. People who get rejected are more than happy to give you feedback!

First Ever Michigan Corporate Recruiters Conference!

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I’m super excited to announce I am co-organizing the first ever Michigan Recruiters Conference to be held on March 13th in Lansing, MI starting at 9am!

Jim D’Amico, Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health, and I have been talking about doing this for over a year and late in 2014 we finally just said, “Screw it! Let’s pick a date and force ourselves to get his puppy off the ground!”  And we did it!  With a lot of help from Jim’s team at Spectrum, my team at HRU, our techy guy Matt Wagmann and our friends at the Accident Fund corporation!

Register at www.MichiganRecruits.com

Our Goal for the Michigan Recruiters Conference:

We want an event similar to an ERE, but local. Great recruiting and talent acquisition content, without having to pay thousands of dollars to attend.  Our fee is $49! We want to raise the level of recruiting in the state of Michigan.  We want to offer this in an environment where the corporate Talent Acquisition folks don’t feel like it’s a meat market (i.e., no staffing agencies).

We want to bring in national speakers, corporate talent acquisition best practices and next-gen practices that aren’t even being used by the masses. We want to network and share our successes, and find ways that corporate talent acquisition pros can better leverage each other and their knowledge. We plan on having two Michigan Recruiters Conferences per year, one in the Spring and one in the Fall.

We are not doing this for profit. The sponsors (CareerBuilder is our first, but we would love more!) and fees are only to cover costs of running a great conference like this. Sounds like we want to be a bunch of Hippies!  I hope so, this is going to be great!

The format of the Conference: 

Unlike normal HR conferences we aren’t looking to do 1 hour and 15 minute sessions. Who the hell even came up with that length of time!? It’s way too long, and just encourages rambling. We are Recruiters, we don’t have time to ramble!  Our sessions will be 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the content and presenter.  A professional national speaker can easily hold the stage for an hour.  Your local sourcing pro who has some great ideas to share, might only need thirty minutes!

We will strive to have you leave each conference with great ideas you can use immediately, ideas that will challenge what you do long term, and increase your network and tribe of other talent acquisition pros you can lean on.

It won’t be a full day.  6 hours or so. Get in, get out, go make placements.

We’ll attempt to always hold these at host corporations who are willing to have this progressive knowledge come into their walls.  Thank you Accident Fund Corporate, and Darcy Kerr, for hosting this first conference in Lansing, MI!

Why no staffing agencies? 

I’ve already gotten a ton of crap on this. “Tim, aren’t you a staffing agency?” “Tim don’t you rail against being treated as a second class citizen by LinkedIn?” “Tim this is hypocritical!”

Here’s the deal.  I speak about a dozen times a year, nationally, to HR and Talent Acquisition pros, and never once have I been accused of trying to sell my services. I’m not worried about me, but I know my industry.  I’ve already had agency folks try and sneak their way into the conference like a Catfish!  To make the Michigan Recruiters Conference a success we need corporate talent acquisition pros and leaders to see the value of a conference like this. If their first experience is some cheese-ball from RecruitTech coming on to them in the first fifteen minutes, that experience is ruined.   So, Jim and I decided, no agencies, yet.

We do see a time down the road, once the conference is established, where we will be able to invite in our agency brethren.  Minnesota started in a similar way.  Even at that point, we’ll have hard rules around selling at this conference.  It’s designed to be developmental. That’s the conference we want.

Sometimes to make something great, you rub a few folks the wrong way.  Agency folks are resilient, to say the least, I know they’ll bounce back. I look forward to the day I can invite them as well.

T3 – NAS Recruitment Innovation #HRTech

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

I’ve known NAS Recruitment Innovation is a company I’ve known and worked with for over ten years.  It’s definitely a company I wanted to highlight on T3.  I’ve written this before but in my mind there are two kinds of technology companies: 1. Born out of a technology solution; 2. Born out of a problem and adapted to the technology of the day.  NAS, in my estimation, is in the later types of companies.

NAS was started as advertising, marketing, creative type company 60 years ago, specifically to help ‘personnel’ executives with something that hadn’t even been termed yet, but we know it today as “employment branding.”  Today, they rival the best recruitment marketing firms out there from both a creative perspective and a technology perspective.

NAS’s main technology solution is called ACTIVATE and it’s a candidate attraction platform. With a powerful SEO engine at its core, ACTIVATE pushes branded job positions from your ATS to your career site. But ACTIVATE is more than SEO. ACTIVATE integrates decades of strategic recruitment expertise and industry-leading analysis to optimize your candidate sourcing platform and improve the overall effectiveness of your recruitment marketing program. In simple terms, ACTIVATE increases your candidate pull. NAS turns your career site into a candidate attraction site.

5 Things I really like about NAS – ACTIVATE

1. NAS’s people get corporate recruitment at a much higher level than most technology recruiting companies.  It’s not just about the technology, you have to understand recruitment and candidates.  You need people on your side in Talent Acquisition and HR that are creative and NAS does this as good as anyone!

2. The ACTIVATE platform increases your candidate experience through better design and without you having to do any heavy lifting.  NAS gets how and why candidate search for jobs and uses this knowledge to deliver a great search and apply experience for candidates.

3. You don’t care about mobile, but your candidates do and the ACTIVATE platform will optimize this for you.  A great example is recruiting Nurses. Nurses aren’t at a desktop all day, they’re constantly on the move. But they engage their mobile devices all day long. If you aren’t mobile optimized and delivering a great mobile experience, you’re missing out in a big way!

4. ACTIVATE delivers you real-time metrics from your career site.  Big or small, this is a must have in today’s highly competitive talent market.  If you don’t know what’s working, or what’s not working, you’re just flying blind. No talent acquisition leader wants to be in this position.

5. CRM functionality with custom branded email campaigns.  Recruiting and CRM isn’t new, but it’s still something way too many shops are utilizing. If you do utilize a CRM you want to make sure it’s connected with the rest of your data, and the ACTIVATE platform does this with your ATS.

I’ve used NAS so in my mind they cater a little better to the talent acquisition pro who might not as technologically savvy as they would want to be.  They definitely don’t try and shove tech down your throat, but will ease you into it and show you how you can make great strides with it in your department.

NAS recruiting innovation has the technology and know how to help your talent acquisition team take your entire organization to the next level. Check them out, I’ve personally used them in the past and they made my life easy. I don’t know if I can give a company higher praise than that!

T3 – TalkPush #HRTech

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

It seems like lately I’ve had the chance to review some really big, really dynamic HR Tech enterprise level tools.  I’m excited today to get back to a tool that everyone can use, especially those small and medium size HR and Talent shops.  On T3 this week I’m reviewing the automated phone screening tool Talkpush.

Talkpush is just what it says it is.  The solution automates your normal phone screens.  We don’t talk about phone screens as much any more, because in HR Tech everything has gone digital with the explosion of video and video screening tools (which I love). The reality is, though, many employers just don’t need, or want, a video screening solution.  Talkpush fills the need for a phone screening tool quite well.

95% of candidates never get ‘heard’ by a potential employer.  A recruiter spends only 7% of their time, on an average week, with candidates they’ll actually hire. When candidates are interviewed about their experience with an employer it comes up constantly that they don’t feel like they ever got a fair chance to be heard. A tool like Talkpush allows the candidate to have a voice, and recruiters to more efficiently spend their time.

The system is super easy to use and you can have the system up and running for your candidates in the matter of minutes.  No need to get IT involved, just signup and start using it.  All the screens are saved into separate audio files that you can attach to a candidate in almost any applicant tracking system. These same files can easily be shared with a hiring manager, who can hear first hand how candidates respond to your own questions.

5 Things I really liked about Talkpush:

1. It’s super easy to use.  We get caught up so often on wanting purchase and use overly sophisticated systems, and then don’t use them for that same reason. Talkpush can be implemented and used even by people who could never figure out how to set their VCR clocks, or still have a VCR!

2. Inexpensive. Free trial to start with no obligation, $1 per interview and around $300 per month for unlimited interviews.  You can’t beat this cost as a screening tool.  It costs more than $1 to have a recruiter dial the phone and leave a message!

3. Great for volume hiring.  Send out mass invitations to screen hundreds of people all at the same time. I’ve had to open new locations for employers and it can be a major headache when everyone is applying all at once.

4. Audio files are searchable.  Technology is an amazing thing.  Someone says they have experience in robotic programming as part of their answer to a screening question. Months later you need someone with robotic programming skills. Talkpush has the capability of you searching all of your screens for key words, and potentially finding talent you had no idea existed.

5. Questions are in your voice, your language.  You record the screening questions that will be asked, and they can be different for every single job you have, if you want.

Talkpush has a really smart dashboard as well, that tracks all of your responses, allows you to push those responses to managers along with LinkedIn Profiles, photo of the candidate (if you wish), resume, etc.  I think some people will look at this review and think this is a ‘low-tech’ as compared to the digital platforms that are on the market.  I look at it as a different hi-tech solution for organizations that don’t need or want a video solution, but still have a great need to screen candidates.

The fact is, many people are still uncomfortable with video.  Probably not your younger candidates, but once you get above mid 30’s you’re dealing with people who didn’t grow up on video, and might just might be much more comfortable doing a screen via the phone.  Check them out, I really believe Talkpush fills a market need for so many companies!

The Best Recruit No One Is Talking About

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I’m sure my #8ManRotation partners have read this story, but you might not have.  Bleacher Report had an article this week about a stud high school quarterback, Easton Bruere, out of New Mexico, who threw for 4500 yards, 49 touchdowns and only 6 interceptions this year alone and won the state title for his team.  He’s 6’3″, 200 lbs, strong athletic kid.  3.75 GPA and no legal trouble. He has zero college scholarship offers at the D1 level.

Let me give you a personal angle on this story.  Easton’s Dad and Aunt, both attended the University of Wyoming, when I did.  Both his Dad and Aunt were D1 athletes, Dad, Carl, in Football, Aunt, Ginger, in Volleyball and his sister plays college volleyball.  So, this kid also has a D1 pedigree. He comes from a very athletic family.  My wife and Ginger played together at UW for years.

There is great learning from this for all of my recruiting brother and sisters out there!  I can think of two things specifically:

1. As soon as you believe there are no more ‘recruits’, talent, people, left to hire, you’re dead wrong. This kid is in the middle of New Mexico.  Very few D1 football players come out of New Mexico, so most schools just fly over it on their way to Texas or California.  It’s forgotten about, in terms of football talent.

We do this all the time in recruiting talent for our organizations. “We tried that before, didn’t work.” Have you heard that? Okay, try it again. It didn’t work one time, doesn’t mean it’s never going to work.  “We went to that school three years ago and didn’t recruit anyone, so we didn’t go back.” “I tried calling into that company once, but couldn’t get through.”

 2. On the flip side, college coaches will go to the end of earth to find talent.  Was this kid missed? Or, is there something else we just aren’t getting from this article?  You see what we do.  We assume.  We assume if no one wants the kid, there must be something wrong with him. So, we just take it as fact and don’t do our own evaluation.

This is a problem with corporate recruiting as well.  How many resumes have you passed on because the person was unemployed for six months? “Well, if there weren’t hired by someone, there must be something wrong with them.”  Or, maybe you should bring them in and make that determination for yourself. But, you don’t.  You assume.

In recruiting, more than almost any other field, we give ourselves self-fulling prophecies.

I don’t know if this kid deserves a shot. Sure seems like it from the data I see. Because I know the family, I’m rooting for him.  His dad and aunt were highly competitive.  He has the skills, the experience and the genetics.

Remember this story the next time you go to pass on a candidate without a real reason.  Remember this story the next time you decide to pass on a source because previously it was a bust.  We’re all in the talent game. The funny thing about talent is, it can come from anywhere.

Check out Easton’s recruitment on twitter at #EastonBruere.