What Makes a Great Talent Acquisition Conference? #SourceCon

Posted on September 27, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Hey gang! I’m back from attending and speaking at my first ever SourceCon conference. Can I be real for a second? I never attended SourceCon in the past because I was intimidated. For real!

Let me explain. I’m not a Sourcing Nerd! I’m not going to sit down on my laptop and go deep diving into the national archives to find names of whatever or build search strings that are 5,000 characters long, so I thought, yeah, this just isn’t for me. I was wrong! It is for me! Okay, not the super sourcing nerd stuff, but I even like watching that!

SourceCon was filled with passionate Talent Acquisition pros and leaders, not just Sourcing Pros. Like I’m just going to come up and introduce myself and start asking questions about how I can better and share with you on how you can get better. The interactions at all levels at the conference is off the charts, and unlike I’ve seen at other recruiting conferences, especially around how to make you as a professional better!

So, what do I think makes a great Recruiting conference like SourceCon?

– Leadership to break away from the normal content stream and put different stuff on stage. Shannon Pritchett and the ERE leadership are always willing to push the envelop and try stuff!

– A culture of sharing! Everyone at SourceCon seems to be there to share openly with everyone else, and it makes for interactions and conversations happening everywhere!

– Feeling like you’re being welcomed into the trust circle! That was my initial fear. I’m not really one of them, they won’t want me, what do I have to give them!? It’s the opposite, truly. Steve Levy, an industry veteran is just one of a bunch of actual “Welcome Wagon” pros who volunteer to introduce you into the inner circle and make instantly feel like part of a movement.

– Content where you can’t write fast enough! The content at SourceCon is packed with “oh, crap, I’m stealing that idea and taking that back to my own shop and we’re doing that tomorrow!” Like every session!

– Content that forces you to think differently about what you and your organization are doing. That challenges you, and might even make you feel a bit uncomfortable. Not every session, that would be exhausting, but you need a little bit to force you to think differently about the profession.

SourceCon 2019 is in Seattle, and Shannon and the team just keep finding ways to make it better. Definitely check it out as a great development option for you and your team next year.

Recruiters – How are you celebrating #GlobalTADay?

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today is a big day in Talent Acquisition! The Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP) is launching Global TA Day to celebrate all the talent acquisition professionals that are working hard every day to ensure their organizations have the talent they need to thrive!

ATAP launched the site ilovetalentacquisition.com, in conjunction with our founding sponsor KRT Marketing and you can follow the action that is happening across the country as events are taking place in major cities throughout the day. On the site, you’ll find some great downloads to help you and your team celebrate!

I’ll be in downtown Detroit today and on Facebook live around 1pm EST, as I’ll be celebrating #GlobalTADay with the over 100 TA Pros on the team at Quicken Loans as they are using today as their annual TA Summit where the team will have development and strategy sessions throughout the day, and some fun and celebration as well!

To check out the Facebook Live feed today just go to the Global TA Day Facebook Page!

So, I’m guessing most of you were caught off guard by this! Like, what is Global, what!?! I get it, but it’s not too late to find ways to celebrate today. Here’s how I would celebrate if I was in the office today:

I would follow along on the Twitter hashtag #GlobalTADay and connect with other TA Pros from around the world!
I would ask another TA Pro on my team to get lunch or go get a drink after work, or I might go buy some sweet treats to share around the office!
I would watch some of the celebrations taking place around the world today on the Facebook Live feed.
I would take some time to reflect on while our profession is extremely difficult, especially right now, I’m so grateful for having found a job and industry that I love working in!
I would go signup to be a member of the only professional association the supports my interests ATAP Global! Today only you get an annual membership for $85! (a $10 discount). TODAY ONLY! By the way, I’m the next President of ATAP, so come help me build something great!
I would go on Amazon and buy the best TA Book on the Planet and #1 Best Seller and 5 Star rated – The Talent Fix! (just kidding, no really I would!)!

So, have fun with Global TA Day! You deserve it!

Michigan Recruiter’s Conference – November 1st – Detroit, MI! Registration is Now Open!

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Tim Sackett

The 4th Annual Michigan Recruiter’s Conference will take place on November 1st, 2018 onsite at the GM Headquarters RenCen in downtown Detroit, MI. Registration is now open for this event. There is limited seating because of space constraints. Only 250 registrations will be accepted! This event will SELL OUT, don’t wait!

Okay – all that nonsense is out of the way! Why should you and your corporate recruiting team come? Yes, I specifically said “corporate” recruiting team. No staffing, RPO, or vendors will be allowed to register. Hate me if you want, but it actually works really well. Corporate TA leaders and pros can learn without being pimped constantly!

When Jim and I started this conference 4 years ago we did so that our teams would have world-class recruiting development in our own backyard. National conferences are great, but they are expensive! We couldn’t afford to send our teams, but if we had one local, we could bring our entire team!

Jim and I knew most of the great Talent Acquisition speakers personally, or we knew someone who knew them personally, and we felt pretty confident we could talk them into coming to beautiful Michigan! Okay, they all owe us favors and we just happen to be in Michigan! Either way, the Michigan Recruiter’s Conference has worked out wonderfully!

The 2018 Michigan Recruiter’s Conference lineup is Awesome!

– Torin Ellis – Diversity Strategist speaking on “Conversation to Commitment”

– Angie Verros – Sourcing/TA Expert speaking on getting more candidate replies

– Michael Arena, Ph.D. – Chief Talent Officer at GM speaking on TA Transformation

– Dawn Burke – HR and Talent Expert speaking on getting more out of your hiring managers

– Holly Fawcett – Sourcing Ninja at Social Talent sharing the latest and greatest Sourcing magic!

– Plus, additional sessions on DIversity Recruiting and Recruitment Marketing!

I want to thank this year’s sponsors: General Motors (just exceptional automobiles), Greenhouse (just an exceptional ATS) and Smashfly (just an exceptional Recruitment Marketing platform). They allow us to keep the cost of the entire conference down to just $89 per person, that includes, coffee, breakfast, drinks, lunch, snacks, oh yeah, and all that great freaking TA development and thought leadership!

Register Today! (over 100 tickets have already been sold in the 1st week!)

Career Confessions from Gen Z: The 4 Essentials Every Office Should Have!

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Ever since I was little, I’ve been pretty particular about the spaces that I live in. For my 12th birthday, my parents took me to Ikea and Target and let me “re-do my room” with a New York theme. I can also vividly remember the time when my Mom and I went to tour a college in Upstate New York and we almost left the hotel because we were worried about bed bugs. This particularness caused a lot of stress before going off to college about having to share a room with another teenage boy (a personal nightmare for me).

As I am entering the workforce, I know that this will carry over into the office that I work in. On average, a person will spend about ⅓ of their life at work. That’s longer than most of us will spend at any house we will ever live in! Since I’ve started interning, I’ve noticed some things that have made a big impact on my happiness and productivity at work:

1. Drink Machines: I am drinking water CONSTANTLY and I know that almost everyone sitting around me has a water bottle or cup at their desk. Having a water machine, like a Brita filter attachment or a Bevi machine, is more important to me than having elaborate coffee makers or nice vending machines. (editor’s note – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – I’m a life-long advocate for a Diet Mt. Dew soda fountain in the office!)

2. No Cubicles: I didn’t anticipate this making such a difference, but I now do not want to work in a cubicle. At Quicken Loans (where I’m interning!), we have little half walls that make rows and columns, but they are short enough to see and talk to the people around you. This creates a much more open environment so I can ask questions without getting up or I can eavesdrop on other people’s conversations!

3. Bathrooms: Read my last post for more of my feelings about bathrooms at work but basically, just make them nice.

4. Updated Decor: I get that office decor is difficult. You’re never going to please everyone’s tastes, it’s expensive etc. BUT you could at least put in a little bit of effort to put some decor on your walls that is from this century. A good rule of thumb: if your decor is older than some of your employees, you probably should get rid of it! There’s nothing sadder to me than being surrounded by gray all the time. Liven it up a little!

Now, I could go on for a while about what else I look for in an office, but these are just the basics. Just put a little effort to meet your employee’s requests, and you’ll probably be on the right track!

Another Editor’s Note (because apparently, I don’t have my own platform to say anything I want): I’ve been telling HR leaders this for a couple of years now. With Gen Z – Design matters! It matters in your employment brand, it matters in your personal workspaces, it matters for younger generations. Perception of working in a great place is influenced by design. Don’t discount it!

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

I’m in Indeed Jail! Help me!!! #FreeTimSackett

Posted on June 4, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Do you remember when getting stuck in LinkedIn Jail was all the rage!? I do! It was awful! There you were stuck on the outside looking in not being able to use a valuable tool you used every day to help you do your job.

I’m in Indeed Jail!

It’s somewhat like being in LinkedIn Jail, but different. When you got put into LinkedIn Jail, LinkedIn decided that that right thing to do was to let us know why we were in jail, and then, specifically, how do you get yourself out of LinkedIn Jail. Seems like a good business strategy.

How does Indeed get you all of those great candidates?

The Indeed model built a decade ago was freaking brilliant! Basically, the idea was scrap all the jobs from all the career sites so candidates will have one place to go to search for jobs. No one understood Google SEO at the time, so they scraped the jobs, then bought all the SEO and owned the space.

So, any candidate who was searching for a job on Google the first thing that would come up, always, was an Indeed link. They trained entire generations to search for jobs by going to Indeed. Brilliant!

Now, Google came along eventually and woke up to this and said, “Hey, wait, candidates are searching on Google for things like “Jobs near me” and we are sending them to Indeed for things that aren’t even what they are truly looking for. We can do this better!” Hello, Google for Jobs!

Google for Jobs decided “candidates are the most important thing”. Your Indeed sales rep will tell you this as well, although, they didn’t ever say this until Google for Jobs came along! So, Google changes the game, stops indexing Indeed (which is like a death sentence to companies that rely on Google search traffic), and says we can deliver a better job search for candidates.

So, Indeed is basically a dead man walking, but they have this window of time when we still have the entire world trained to go to Indeed and not Google. So, how do you take advantage of this phenomenon? INDEED JAIL!!! Cut off the non-suspecting companies of their free traffic and charge them money before they realize they don’t really need to do this because Google will give them the traffic they need.

So, what’s Indeed Jail?

Indeed Jail is when Indeed makes the decision to stop scrapping your career site and posting your jobs on Indeed. Almost every company at some point in the past decade has enjoyed a lot of free, organic traffic from having their job posting on Indeed. It was an AWESOME business strategy. It basically followed LinkedIn’s strategy, who followed basic drug dealing strategy.

Get people hooked on your product, then take it away and make them pay if they want it. I don’t say that to be mean! It freaking works really, really well! LinkedIn is a multi-Billion dollar company that got bought by Microsoft.

Indeed Jail is when Indeed stops giving you those free hits! Now, they just don’t take it away for no reason. My reason to be cut off, I was told, was because of a magical, mythical division within Indeed called “Search Quality”. My Indeed Rep didn’t shut me off, no! It was “Search Quality” who shut me off, and my Indeed Rep has absolutely nothing to do with Search Quality. In fact, they run almost as a separate company, locked away in an undisclosed, secret location!

My “Search Quality” issue was I’m a staffing company. An example of my issue is we work with a major employer to fill contract positions, not a position they would hire direct. The company gave us a job description for the contract position, which was basically the exact same JD they use to hire direct. Because the direct employer has priority at Indeed, and my posting was ‘too similar” my ‘search quality’ was bad.

Okay, I’m in Jail, Ouch, that hurts! Help me fix it!

Let me say, I’m paying and have paid money to Indeed for various products, so it’s not like I’m not a customer. So, when you ask someone you’re paying for help, you expect help. But Indeed has no interest in helping you fix your search quality issue because that would mean you would get the product for free again!

I would love to tell you this is a staffing industry only issue, but it’s not. Little by little, and I have specific examples, corporate Talent Acquisition is also getting hit with ‘search quality’ issues and losing their free traffic from Indeed.

How can that be!?

Believe me, the corporate TA leaders I’m talking to are wondering the same thing. In one example, an Ohio-based employer is hiring hundreds of sales-related positions per year. They don’t use any staffing or RPO vendors, all the work is done in-house for direct positions. They have a big growth initiative so they went from maybe 50 openings to 200 openings, and Indeed cut them off! Because of ‘search quality’, and again, their rep would/could not help them.

I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well for Indeed. Right now they’re flying high! Going to hire thousands of more employees, which makes complete sense, because if you shut everyone off of free traffic, you’ll have a lot of TA pros panicking and buying Indeed products. At least until they discover it continues to cost more for less and less traffic as Google no longer indexes Indeed.

I’ve sent emails to the highest reaches of Indeed, pleading for help, and the only response I got back was from my rep offering to sell me more products!

I explained that I want this to be positive! Show me how to fix me, and I’ll show others how to fix themselves! Along the way, it’s a win/win since the more we understand about the Indeed products and services and feel like a vendor is truly helping us, we (as an industry) will support them!

Crickets!!! Crickets, I say, Chris Hyams!!!

So, what should you do to NOT get yourself in Indeed Jail?

1. Never pay one dime to Indeed!!!

So one thing that has been pretty consistent with everyone I’ve spoken to that got put into Indeed Jail is that they were all (100%) paying customers of Indeed. Almost, like Indeed knew we were willing to pay for traffic, so they put us into jail on purpose! Up until the point of becoming a paid Indeed customer, none of the people I spoke ever had issues with being put in Indeed Jail!

2. Make sure you understand what is ‘bad’ search quality for Indeed. Good luck with this!

3. Enjoy the free traffic while you have it because eventually everyone will be shut off. Drug dealing works because we get addicted. You’re currently addicted to free Indeed traffic. That isn’t a sustainable model for a business.

So, what do you do if you’re already in Indeed Jail?

1. Understand you’re not alone.

2. Understand that your true reality is you can live without Indeed traffic, and slowly but surely the traffic you get from Google will be greater. So, focus on ensuring your ATS and Jobs are as aligned as possible with the Google Job Schema – it’s super important!

3. Understand if you want more Indeed hits, you better get ready to pay for them from Indeed.

4. Understand Indeed has no vested interested in helping you fix your search quality issue, even if you’re a paid customer because it costs them money.

5. Look at Programmatic Job Advertising tools like: JobAdX, Talroo, Appcast, etc. Increase your posting strategy with sites like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, Monster, LinkedIn, etc. Invest in your own database with some talent rediscovery tools, use CRM technology, build and nurture your pipelines of talent.

My Offer Still Stands!

Chris Hyams, the President of Indeed, get your team to help fix my stuff and I’ll be your biggest fan in advocating and teaching others how to do right by candidates and by Indeed to make the world a better place. That’s all I ever wanted, for you to just help me. Help a paying customer fix their stuff. But you refused.

#FreeTimSackett

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @TextRecruit Drip Campaigns Really Work!

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today on the Weekly Dose I review TextRecruit‘s new Drip Campaign feature that my team is actually really using!

So, I don’t talk a lot about my tech stack, because I think it’s a real differentiator when it comes to running a staffing company. In fact, I’m fairly cocky about telling clients I know for a fact, my tech stack is better than theirs, which is why my team can find and attract talent faster than theirs can!

We use TextRecruit.

Why?

Because being able to text candidates, more than one at a time, is critical for recruiting success. Plus, I need a way for my recruiting team to manage multiple text conversations at a time, and a platform that will capture all of those conversations.

So, we have been using TextRecruit with a high rate of success when it comes to getting more reply rates than we could with email, InMail, and phone calls.

So, what are Drip Campaigns using TextRecruit?

Drip Campaigns are a series of automated text messages built to drive deeper engagement with candidates. They help you automate text messages based on whether your candidates respond, and engage them with the right message at the right time.

They work like this:

Create the different messages you want to send to your candidates and decide how much time you want between them
Once you start your campaign, candidates that respond will stop receiving messages while unresponsive candidates move to the next drip message
After the campaign, you can check your analytics to see your response rates

We do a lot of message testing so it might look something like this:

Message #1 – “Hey ‘Candidate name’ it’s Tim from HRU. I’ve got this awesome position we need to talk about. Let me know when you’re available.”

No response.

Message #2 – “”Candidate Name”, it’s Tim again! Here’s the link to that position I texted you about. Contact me back and I can give you more details!”

Still no response.

Message #3 – “It’s Tim! I’m stalking you! No, really, I really do think you’ll like this position. Just let me know “Yes” or “No” and I’ll stop bugging you about this position.”

What!? Still no response. Remember, even a response of “No, I’m not interested” is a good response, because now you at least know something about that candidate, and you can respond back with “Okay! Is there something you would be interested in and I’ll make sure I put that note on your profile?”

Message #4 – “Last Chance! I don’t want to assume you’re not interested until I really hear from you. Here’s the link again. Just text me back!”

We set up the messages. The candidate sees it as a personal text to them, with their name embedded, if you have that as part of the message, and the TextRecruit technology does the rest! Easy to set up and use.

So, what’s the response rate?

70%! (this is my team’s response rate when using the drip campaign method – I can’t guarantee your results will be the same)

That’s an unreal number for recruiting response! You can send out 4 emails to 100 candidates in a drip campaign and you might get a 15-20% response rate. The cool thing is the technology is running the interactions and letting your recruiters respond to those who are interested.

TA pros and leaders ask me constantly how they can get more candidates. One thing that I know that works, is you need to start communicating with candidates in a mode they will respond to.

Editor’s note: I pay to use TextRecruit as part of my tech stack. Many will assume this is a paid commercial and I don’t pay for the tech. I do.

The Weekly Dose – 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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find. If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

How Hard is it for Candidates to Find Your Jobs on your Career Site?

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Tim Sackett

The other day I got contacted by a large enterprise level TA leader. She had a major problem about to hit them. They had to hire thousands of people and she was hoping I could tell her which chatbot to use to help them.

Sweet! I love TA Tech, let’s talk about some of my favorites!

I pulled up their corporate site because I wanted to see what ATS they used and just check out the career site.

This is where I found her first problem! The first problem was I had to search to find out how to find their jobs! Like four clicks deep into the corporate website before I could even begin a job search, let alone apply.

There is only one right place for candidates to find jobs on your corporate website. It’s at the top of the page, the same exact place where you find things like: Home, Company, Products, Search, etc. If you’re making candidates scroll down to the bottom of your site, you don’t care about talent. If you’re making candidates search to find “Careers” on your site, you don’t care about talent.

You know who you are. “Well, Tim, we put “careers” under the “About” tab because we want our products front and center!” Nice! So, those candidates you desperately need now have to go on a snipe hunt to find out how to apply for your jobs!? How’s that working out for you? Or you make the scroll down fourteen feet to the bottom where you put things like “investor relations”, “contact information”, “press inquiries”, “Legal Notices”, etc.

The most innovative companies in talent acquisition have ‘finding’ their jobs down to one click. You pull up their page and it says something like “Jobs!” or “Apply Now” or “Careers” in the top right corner of the website. Sometimes there is even a button along in the corner to make it even easier for candidates to spot.

When a candidate clicks on that top of the page, right corner link they are instantly taken to a page that allows them to search. No more clicking around, no more searching for how the hell they can find which jobs you have open. It’s right there. One click.

It’s pretty common for me to visit a large brand corporate homepage and it will take me 4-7 clicks before I can actually search their jobs. If you ever want to know where TA falls in the order of importance in your organization, just count the clicks. The more you click, the less influence TA has in your organization. It’s fairly unscientific, but I find this little measure almost always works out.

So, my new TA friend was looking for a chatbot but didn’t really need a chatbot. Well, at least not yet. Foundational blocking and tackling of TA can do wonders for helping you hire. If it takes me four or five clicks to find your jobs, you’re in trouble. If you make me search around your site on how the hell I apply, I leave and go someplace else.

I know that 90% of know this, but almost 50% of organizations can’t figure this out. Why? Because we as TA leaders aren’t going to our executive team and telling them, “Hey, idiots! We are losing 67% of our candidate traffic because some moron in marketing doesn’t like how “Jobs” looks on our corporate website in the righthand upper corner! Can we stop being stupid and do the right thing?”

I know selling our stuff is important, but if we can’t fill jobs, we won’t have stuff to sell. I know putting our employment brand out front is important, but why are we creating a search game for candidates to solve to just apply for our jobs?

Simple Tip to Share with Your Executive Team: Hiding how a candidate can apply for our jobs, doesn’t actually help us fill jobs!

So, where do candidates find your jobs on your corporate homepage?

The Life Span of a Crappy Recruiter!

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I have to give credit where credit is due, and Aerotek is the one that originally discovered how long it takes to figure out you suck as a recruiter! It’s right around 9-14 months. The TA world is littered with people who have worked at Aerotek for 9-14 months! If you’ve spent 13 minutes in Talent Acquisition on either the corporate or agency side, you’ve seen a ton of these resumes.

Just having recruiting experience, especially IT or Technical, can guarantee you a recruiting career for at least ten years or more, even if you are completely awful at recruiting! As a President of a recruiting firm, and someone who has run corporate TA shops for years, I see these candidates come across my desk on a weekly basis:

A crappy Recruiter looks like this:

1. First Recruiting job right out of college, working for a big agency recruiting sweatshop and this position lasts 9-12 months. They left because “they didn’t agree with the management style” of said agency. The truth is they weren’t meeting their goals, but we give them a pass because these sweatshops churn and burn through people.

2. The next gig is usually another agency or small corporate recruitment gig. This one usually lasts under 9 months. It’s more of the same, they couldn’t do it the first time, what makes you think they’ll do it for you!?

3. Now, if they’re smart, they jumped from the second gig before getting fired to a very large corporate gig where they have so many recruiters they truly have no idea what they actually do, this will buy you at least 24 months before you’re discovered as a recruiting fraud. In these big organizations you don’t even recruit, just post and pray, anyway, so you should be able to survive.

4. Big organizations finally figured out you’re worthless, but you now know the game, so you leveraged this big corporate name on your resume into your next gig, this time as a senior recruiter, with another big firm who wants you to sell out your last firm and all their recruiting secret. The big secret is, you have no idea, and the last big org gig you had, well, they had no idea. Once you run out of fake secrets to share, you’ll be kicked to the curb, so start looking for a recruiting manager gig in about 18 months.

5. You jump at the first recruitment manager gig you’re offered. A mid-sized firm, who loves your big company experience and can’t wait for you to save them from themselves. They have super high expectations on what you’re going to do for them, this is not good for you, remember, you suck at recruiting! You’re gone in 9 months.

6. Welcome back to the agency world! You will now bounce around these companies for a while, selling the fact you have ‘contacts’ at big companies of which agency owners want to get into. You’re now 8-10 years into your Recruiting career, and you’re an awful, crappy recruiter.

If you’re truly lucky as a crappy recruiter you’ll fall into some recruiting gig with a college or university or some other sort of fake, non-profit. Those are like wastelands for crappy recruiters. Absolutely no expectations that you’ll do anything of value, just show up, collect a check and follow a process. It’s never your fault, and hey, they don’t want you to move to fast anyway!

Beware TA leaders. There’s a reason a recruiter has had 4 – 6+ jobs in ten years, and it’s not because they’re good at recruiting! The best recruiters don’t move around because they’re so valuable the organizations they work for won’t let them leave! If you’re crappy, people are hoping you leave and take your crappy recruiting skills to your competition!

Career Confessions from Gen-Z: When You Get “Ghosted” by an Employer!

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Although I am referred to as the “Gen-Z expert”, I would not claim to be an expert on the dating practices of Gen-Z members. However, I am familiar with the concept of “ghosting”. If you aren’t familiar with this practice, here is the definition from Urban Dictionary: “To avoid someone until they get the picture and stop contacting you.” Pretty harsh, huh? Now, this is a classic example of young people just avoiding their problems and being too afraid to face them. But, we aren’t the only ones doing this!

My name is Cameron Sackett, and I have been ghosted by a potential employer.

Yes, I said it. I am only 19 years old and I have been a victim of ghosting.

Here’s how it works people. Let’s say you apply for a job and low and behold, they invite you in for an interview! Next, you go in for the interview and it goes really well and WOW, they offer you the job right on the spot! They say “oh, we’ll be in touch next week!”, and you leave feeling like you’re on Cloud 9. All of sudden, it’s next week and you hear nothing. You wait around and still nothing. Finally, you email them and they email back saying “some internal things are changing in the company, we’ll be in touch as soon as we can”. And you never hear back again.

This is what happened to me a few months ago. And it sucks. So, I’m here to say, don’t ghosts your candidates. Don’t fall into the easy trap of avoiding potential confrontation and just own up to it! Be honest with your candidates. If you can’t hire them anymore for whatever reason, let them know! Don’t just forget about them and leave them hanging, desperately yearning for an internship, so you can gain much needed experience to get other internships that will help you find a worthwhile job after you graduate (or at least in my case).

On the other side of the coin, don’t let yourself get ghosted. You may think that this is all because it was a shady company, but no! This happened to me at a perfectly well-respected company and I’m sure it does at plenty of others. If someone is offering you a position, get it in writing. I don’t care how you do it, but don’t fall into the same hole that I did.

Now, I’m not trying to call out anyone on this post because. Even though it made me upset, everything ended up working out and I’m all set for a summer internship at a different (better) company. I’m writing this for all of the hiring managers and recruiters out there who offered a position they can’t fill anymore. Also, I’m writing this for all of the candidates that were offered a job that they desperately need or want, but somehow disappears. Let’s lead the way and end job ghosting and hopefully, Gen-Z will follow suit and stop being assholes.

Editor’s Note (Yeah, Cam’s Dad) – So, I’m a Gen-Xer but clearly I was on this ‘ghosting’ thing way before my Gen-Z son – when I wrote this post – The Reson You’re Being ‘Ghosted’ After Your Interview! All the way back in March 2018! 😉

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @HRmarketer now has Employer Brand Advocacy!

Posted on April 11, 2018 by Tim Sackett

On the Weekly Dose this week I review HRmarketer’s new Brand Advocacy product. If you don’t know who HRmarketer is they are someone you should probably take a look at. They were originally developed as a real-time data and HR industry insights product to help drive HR marketing and media relations campaigns, primarily for the HR vendor community to sell better to all of us (and they still do a great job at doing that!).

What HRmarketer found out over the past years was that they had built most of what an Employment Brand function would need to have a fully automated employee brand advocacy tool as well. Since they already built a brand advocacy tool for vendors, building one for employees was pretty similar with a few changes.

So, what the heck is an employee brand advocacy tool!?

Think of Employee Brand Advocacy the way you think about all those consumer brand you follow socially and love. One of my favorite brands is Nike. I follow them on Instagram, FB, Twitter, etc. If they share cool content, I tend to share a lot of that cool content with my followers. As you can imagine, Nike loves this kind of content share, because it’s coming from a fan.

Now, think about how you can use that with employees with your employer brand.

Not all of our employees love us. Some just like us, or they’re on the path to loving us! We all have a few employees that are truly in love with us! They love us, we love them! If you asked these employees to share some content with their networks, they would in a second! Without even asking why. Remember, they love you!

If you truly want to build and grow your employment brand, you need employee brand advocates! Now, you can do this manually and send a million emails asking for help, then send more emails showing them a piece of content to share, then hoping most will share. You can do that. It’s tough, and it’s hard to maintain.

This is where HRmarketer comes into play by automating the entire employee brand advocacy function for you! It’s like Employee Brand Advocacy on steroids!

What I like about HRmarketer’s Employer Brand Advocacy program:

– It’s priced to get people to test it! You don’t pay by the size of your company, you pay by the number of advocates that use the program. So, you can start small with one group and see how it works, then, as you prove the value, you can expand where you need it. (HR vendors should take note, this is a great pricing model).

– Super easy to create as many employee groups as you want. By skill, by location, by demographics, by hiring a manager, etc. Want more female referrals? Just create a group of all of your female employee brand ambassadors and have this group share content and job openings with their network.

– Advocates don’t have to live inside the platform. Once it’s set up and permissions approved, email reminders of new content go directly to your ambassadors who can then pick and choose what content they share and how they share it. You can also set up mobile and desktop notifications as well for new content.

– It measures the analytics so you have real data on the effectiveness of various content you share. Plus, you can also see which advocates are having the most impact, and figure out how can you leverage these employee ambassadors even more, or even set up rewards.

I’m a gigantic fan of this technology!

If you’re running a large TA shop, an employee brand advocacy program is a must. If you want to do it really well, employee brand advocacy automation is a must. HRmarketer made this platform super easy to use, you don’t have to be techy to use it, and they made it cost effective to test and show your organization the value.

So, I tell you to demo a lot. I know, I love tech and I geek out about this stuff, but this is one you really need to demo if you want to start an employee brand ambassador program, or just have interest in what and how other organizations are using these programs to expand their employment brand. Just demo it, you’ll see!

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.