Category Archives: Selection

T3 – Honeit

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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.

This week on T3 I’m taking a look at the digital interview platform Honeit (pronounced “Hone It”, as in hone your skills).  Honeit comes at the interview process from a bit of a different angle.  There is a segment of HR Technology that is originally started not to help companies, but for helping job seekers.  If you think about where we’ve been the last ten years, job seekers needed help and a bunch of well intentioned people had great technology ideas to help those folks.

Honeit comes at the interview a bit from that angle.  How can we help job seekers share their skills with employers, but what does “top talent” want and expect from top companies.  Many of assume that top talent wants to interview digitally on their own time, when it is convenient for them. 90% of the digital interview space is designed around this concept. Post a job with a digital interview/screen link, and people will click through and ‘tape’ their responses to your screening questions.  Honeit feels, and I tend to agree, top talent wants live interaction with a real person from your company.

The Honeit interview platform is designed whereas the candidate and the organization have access to their taped, live interview and can have outside professionals give them feedback on how they feel the candidate can interview better, differently, etc. The company can send the interview on to hiring managers, other recruiters, save it for later, etc.  The candidate can use ‘their’ interview to get better at interviewing, and get real feedback from real talent acquisition pros.  Plus, job seekers get an unique URL to use to help share and promote themselves based on their results.

5 Things I Really Like About Honeit: 

1. Easy to use dashboard and a clean UI gets you up and running in minutes.  There isn’t some big implementation to get this off the ground and running.

2. Build interview scripts and questions for hiring managers to use, and the system basically shows you if they’re using it or not because it’s tied to the taped answers of the live interview.  The system time stamps each question and answer during the interview so you can automatically jump to specific Q and A’s, and also share specific Q and A’s without having to share the entire interview.

3. Some HR and TA pros will hate this, but I love that a job seeker can decide to buy up services in Honeit to get themselves better at interviewing, and spend time, live, with a real person, in a real company, who is working in Talent Acquisition. Plus, the job seeker can get ‘verified’ by these individuals on skills, and use that to help promote themselves to other companies.

4. The live versus taped screen I’m sure is up for debate. You’ll get more volume with taped screens.  I have a feeling the better the talent, the more personal touch they want. This feeling is based on twenty years of pimping great talent.

5. We all suck at interviewing, most of our hiring managers suck worse. Honeit really gives you a quality control mechanism to help get your hiring managers better, by allowing you to actually hear both sides of a real, live interview. This tool can give you invaluable coaching material.

Honeit is fairly new, and still working on perfecting what they have.  That’s a benefit for you, because new companies tend to be inexpensive companies and want to work with you more and give you more one on one attention.  We have a client we are going to test Honeit out with, and I’ll follow up and let you know how our test works out.

Stop Hiring Generics

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I know, I know, you only hire ‘top talent’.  The problem is you don’t have a top talent brand. You have a generic brand.  So, while you keep telling yourself you hire top talent, you don’t. You hire generics.

That’s okay, generics are just like top brands, right?  I’ve tried generic drugs and name brand drugs and I have to be honest, I didn’t see (err, feel) a difference.  So, based on my formal study of generics, you have nothing to worry about! Yay!

Generics suck. You know it, and I know it.

You are hiring generics.  Most organizations are hiring generics.

Here’s how you can tell.  Ask yourself why you hired one of your recent hires.  If it was because they had the skill to do the job, and a really nice personality, didn’t smell funny, you hired a generic.  If you hired them because they can do the job and  you can specifically say why they fit your culture, you hired a brand name!

Therein lies the problem, you have a generic employment brand.  It doesn’t have to be generic. You made it generic because it sounded safe and professional. Because it sounded like every other boring brand you have heard or seen. “Tim, you don’t get it, we aren’t Google or Tom’s”.  Thank G*d. No one really likes those crappy shoes and Google probably hires worse than you.

The question is, who are you? Really?

At my company, we’re grinders. We’re a little more blue collar, than white collar. We might swear in a meeting and no one will notice. We like kids and dogs and both are welcome to come visit the office, and no one will ever feel odd about that.  We like making money, and we love watching each other succeed.  We don’t get sick on Mondays or Fridays.  We like to try stuff. We probably hold on to bad clients longer than we should, but that’s because we get involved and relationships are hard to end.  Most of us like Michigan State, the ones that don’t get brutally harassed as much as possible.  We like to give everyone nicknames.

That’s not generic. That’s specific.  We don’t hire generic. We hire folks who fit our brand. The ones that get hired that don’t fit, get weeded out pretty quick.  Generics don’t fit well in with Brands.  There’s always something that just isn’t right. Strong brands build strong cultures. Generic brands build cultures where people don’t feel any connection.

Stop hiring generics.

Better Employee Relocation Design in 4 Easy Steps!

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I have to admit I’ve been one of those HR Pros who has had to design and develop relocation policies a few times in my career.  My philosophy on relocation has changed somewhat over the years. In my career, I’ve accepted positions 4 times in which I went through “professional” relocation for various HR positions in my career.  That fact has more impact on my philosophy of relocation than all other issues combined.

So, Fact #1 on getting a better relocation policy for your company: force those designing the policy to relocate, at least once.  If you haven’t relocated, you can’t design the policy, it’s that simple.

People who haven’t relocated to another state for a job have no idea what impact it has on your life.  It’s not the same as moving to a new house in another part of the city you live in.  For the most part, if you have a significant other and some kids thrown into the mix, it’s probably one of the most stressful events you’ll go through in life.  You get hired, Yeah!  You now have to go show up at the new job, without family, belongings, etc. You’re trying out the new position, culture, etc., all the while your spouse is home trying to run life, now without 50% of her support resources. That person, you, is now living in a hotel or furnished the apartment, eating out each meal, sitting around doing nothing, etc. You’ll only understand if you’ve been through this!

You need to find a new house, but not until the old house is sold, find the right schools, etc., etc.  Oh, and, by the way, you probably have some HR administrator going over your relocation expense reports like they’re a Zapruder Film. Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Sackett, you seem to have spent $1.32 too much on parking at the airport last week. Really!? I haven’t seen my wife and kids for two straight weeks, and we’re talking about $1.32?  DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FACT #1.

I know the talk, lately, about relocation, has been about how difficult it is to get people to relocate because of falling housing values.  Workforce Management’s article Recruiters Get Creative with Relocation in Sluggish Housing Market by Leah Shepherd speaks specifically to this dilemma. Clearly, it’s more expensive to get people to relocate, but I will argue that it isn’t more difficult.  HR folks are classic in confusing expensive and more difficult – finance people don’t have this same issue.  It’s not more difficult to get some to relocate, it’s just more expensive.

Here is where Fact #2 comes in: Never allow your Hiring Managers to get involved with Relocation.

Believe me, they will want to. It’s interesting how people who already work for a company tend to view relocation dollars spent, like the person receiving the relocation is getting a huge bonus!  All of sudden your hiring manager believes they are personally responsible for every penny that is spent.  They aren’t, and you the HR Pro understand this, and that’s why we keep our hiring managers out of the picture.  We need them to have a great first impression of the new person, so take the money out of the picture so they can focus on the fit and skills.

HR/Recruiting Pros are in the business of increasing talent of their organizations, and this fact has to be paramount when discussing the finances of corporate relocation.  This brings us to Fact #3 on how to make your relocation policy better: don’t budget relocation as a single annual amount, budget relocation by the percent of hires you anticipate in having to relocate.

Look, it’s way too easy for finance and executives to look at the HR budget and say, “Wow, $1.5M in relocation budgeted for 2010? You need to cut that by $500K.”  Great, I’ll do that, but tell me which people we won’t be hiring?

Recruiting Pros need to come to the table with market data supporting why relocation is necessary and at which roles and levels.  Cutting relocation isn’t a question about saving money; it’s a question about which talent is less important to the company, because that’s the real cost.  Also, budgeting by hires forces departments and divisions to answer to their talent management strategies, instead of throwing it on HR’s back. Hey, it’s August, and we’ve already spent our Relocation budget for the whole company!  No, Mr. Hiring Manager, it’s August, and we’ve spent your department’s relocation budget. You better talk to Mrs. CEO and tell her why you couldn’t manage your budget.

And lastly, Fact #4 – Don’t come to a Relocation Gunfight with a knife.  Know what the person brings to the table and be able to show the alternatives to hiring that person, but either way show what the impact will be to the organization no matter what decision is made.

HR So Fast You’ll Freak

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Have you guys tried Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches (err, subs)?  My family loves Jimmy Johns! Way too much of my annual income goes to this company!

Little known fact, I was once offered the head HR position at Jimmy Johns.  Back in 2007 I was working for Applebee’s and we were bought out by IHOP (International House of Pancakes) – which was much smaller, but it was a recession and Applebee’s stock was down and the IHOP folks were sitting on a pile of cash, and the rest is just good old American capitalism.

The uncertainty of a takeover had me open to new opportunities, and a headhunter called me about Jimmy Johns.  I was familiar with them, plus it was the top HR spot.  The founder of Jimmy Johns was no longer in the picture, he groomed at young man, James North, to take over the company (read his story in the link, it’s fascinating). The ‘kid’ was like 28-29 when I went to interview. He was running around the place, full of energy, looking to change the world one freaking fast sub at a time.

The total interview lasted about 30 minutes.  He threw me the keys to his Cadillac Escalade and told me to go find a house.  Head of HR position, thirty minutes, go find a house. I had five hours before my flight left.  I drove around Champaign, IL thinking it wasn’t East Lansing. James scared me, because he wasn’t like the big company operations leaders I had at Applebee’s.  I turned the position down, to the chagrin of my sons.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. By social media chance I get connected with the head of HR for Jimmy Johns, Amber Rhoton. I had to share my story! I mean what HR pro gets keys thrown to them of a Cadillac and is told to find a house! It’s a brilliant story, part of her organization.  She loved it, and confirmed James is still running the show, and the company is exponentially larger and more successful than it was in 2007.

Amber had the guts I didn’t have.  We (my ragtag group of brothers and sisters in the HR thought leadership space) tell HR people to have courage all the time.  I didn’t.  I thought I did.  But when push came to shove to prove it, I went back to the nice cushy well developed HR department at the largest casual dining company in the world.   James had the vision I couldn’t see.  Operations so tight that you can barely pay for your food when some kids is telling your sub is ready.

Building something from scratch and taking it to the next level is not easy, and it’s not safe.  A position like that might not be for you. It takes a level of courage many people don’t have.  It’s much easier to keep something on top, than to get it on top (people on top don’t believe this, but it’s true). Being number one has built in advantages, you don’t get chasing number one.

I envy HR pros like Amber, and operators like James.  Those are the people you want to learn from. The knowledge level is higher for those who made the journey versus those who arrived at something already on top.  We listen too much to those on top that did nothing but show up to an organization that was on top.  I like the grinders. I like HR so fast, you’ll freak!

 

 

Everyone in HR Sucks at JDs

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“So, how are your Job Descriptions (JDs)?”

Ugh! It’s the question we hate to get asked because we know they suck!  There’s only like five companies in the world that have good job descriptions and that’s because they only had to hire like three different kinds of people.  Most of us are stuck with JDs written in the 1970s, and while we know they suck, we can’t seem to find anyone to write a better one.

By “anyone” I mean the hiring managers, who usually ask for the ‘latest’ JD we have.  We blow the dust off Mr. 1970 and send it along.  To which the hiring manager goes, “yeah, that’s about right.”  You then send her the candidates you get from the sucky job description and she says, “these people aren’t even close!”

Shocking…

Sucky job descriptions are like a right of passage for HR pros.  I can’t tell you how many corporate meetings I’ve been in when the topic of conversation was somehow swayed to JDs and it always ended with, “we should hire an intern this summer to redo all those.”  Which never happens. Even the interns know how bad of a job that is!

The real problem doesn’t have to do with HR, but we own it because we own the bible of JDs for the organization.  Obviously, hiring managers should own their own JDs for their departments, but most just won’t do it, or don’t care to do a good job until they can’t find anyone for their open position. Talent Acquisition wants to get all ‘cute’ with them and turn them into marketing commercials, which could be cool if done right, but they also suck at it!

HR is the worst of all to write JDs because they turn them into something SHRM would have an HR boner over, but no one else in their right mind would ever read.  It becomes of a game of how many acronyms can shove onto a piece of paper and for gosh sakes don’t forget the say if it’s “salary” or “exempt”. I mean who would apply for a job unless they know that data?!?

ATS vendors and many of the suites have tried to solve this by auto generating the most boring JDs known to the history of man for you to just cut and paste.  The only good thing about these systems is they give you someone to blame for how sucky your JDs are.  “It’s not us, it’s this crappy software they make us use!”

Some Silicon Valley companies attempt to have “cool” job descriptions and titles, but really how cool can you get with “Brogrammer” and “Coding Ninja”? It’s like watching your high school robotics team try and pick up the cheerleaders.  You root for them, but in the end you know it’s not happening.

What can you do?

I like in-take meetings.  HR and Talent Acquisition pros hate these because it forces them to spend quality time with hiring managers, but they work. A funny thing happens when you sit in front of a hiring manager for more than 45 seconds. They begin to really talk and tell you what they need.  Not the bullet point stuff, your 1970 JD already has that, but the real stuff they want. The stuff that gets people hired and gets the req off your desk.

We all have sucky JDs. It’s nothing to get embarrassed about.  I would have a contest and reward the suckiest JD in our company as a kickoff to making better ones.  Have fun with it. Embrace it.  Just do something to stop it!

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.

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?

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.

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 – 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!