Category Archives: Sourcing

2015 Candidate Bill of Rights

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In November 2010 Monster.com asked me to write a post on a hot topic at that time a “Candidate Bill of Rights“.  Needless to say, I’m not a huge fan of a Candidate Bill of Rights – I’m a Capitalist and believe in a free-market system of HR and Recruiting.  In 2010 (remember those days?) we had candidates coming out of our ears. In 2015, most of us are begging for talent. Welcome to the show kids!

Here were my main point back then – and what they still are today:

Candidates –

You Don’t Have To Apply:

  • If we have a crappy working environment – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t pay appropriately for the market – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give my employees opportunities for growth – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t treat you like a human – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give you a full job description – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t tell you every step of the process – you don’t have to apply

You Don’t Have To Work Here:

  • If we make you wait endlessly without any feedback – you don’t have to work here
  • If we make you an offer that you don’t like – you don’t have to work here
  • If we don’t offer the right work-life balance – you don’t have to work here
  • If we give you a bad Candidate Experience – you don’t have to work here

Candidates – if any of the above is true – you have some decisions to make:

1. Can I live with what I know about the company and the experience they put me through to get this offer?

2. IF SO, do I want to come and work for the company?

3. IF YES – welcome aboard, you’re coming on ‘Eyes Wide Open’

4. IF NO – thanks – good luck – see you next time

You see we all have choices – if you don’t like the way I’m treating you as a candidate, don’t come and work at my company.  I would hope that most HR Pros are smart enough to get this fact – treat candidates like garbage and they’ll stop applying for your jobs, thus making your job all the more difficult.  That might be a bit pie-in-the-sky thinking because I also know way to many HR/Talent Pros that don’t get this!   They have a little bit of power and have decided to torture candidates with painfully long and arduous application and selection processes – that aren’t helpful to their own companies, statistically, and definitely aren’t helpful to the candidates.  During a recession they don’t see much impact from these horrible processes, but eventually the tide turns and face the results of their actions.  Karma is a bitch!

So, do we need a candidate bill of rights – No!  Do you need to spend a ton of time, effort and resources on candidate experience – No, as well!  Don’t go right ditch-left ditch and start over correcting.  Treat candidates like you would want to be treated.  Have a few standards and etiquette, and some manners.  It’s not hard, it’s not expensive and you definitely don’t need to pay a consultant to show you how to do it!

Karma is biting a bunch of hack talent acquisition pros in the butt in 2015.

A Bachelor’s Degree in Recruiting

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When will a college or university have a degree program in recruiting?  We have hundreds of universities and colleges that now offer human resources programs.  Two of my good friends, Matt Stollak, and Marcus Stewart are both professors of HR programs.  I have yet to see one program in Recruiting and Talent Acquisition.

For the most part the degree programs that fill recruiting positions are:

Communications

Business Administration/Marketing

Liberal Arts degrees – history, art, other things you won’t ever get a job in.

Sports Management

Human Resources

The recruiting industry takes all degree programs where people can’t get a job making enough to live on!  An entry level recruiter can usually make around $40,000 to $50,000 in their first year. The best recruiters make six figures.  Not a bad professional, white collar level compensation for a four-year degree program.  Many professions would love to be in that compensation level.

I think we could easily come up with two years’ worth of undergrad classes. Let’s face it, you only need about 60 credits or 20 classes, to have a complete major in most programs. The rest of the classes are the ‘basics’ we all take when attending university in the first two years.

Here are some of my ideas for classes in my Bachelors of Recruiting program:

Recruiting 101 – History of Recruiting

Recruiting 102 – Recruiting Processes and Procedures

Recruiting 103 – Recruiting Communication and Marketing

Recruiting 104 –  Sourcing

Recruiting 105 – Negotiation, Offers, and Recruiting Finance

Recruiting 106 – 100 ways to connect with people – #1 is the Phone!

Recruiting 107 – Writing Job Descriptions like a Marketer

Recruiting 201 – Employment Branding

Recruiting 202 – Candidate Experience

Recruiting 203 – Recruiting Technology

Recruiting 204 – Advanced Sourcing

Recruiting 205 – Specialty Recruitment

Recruiting 206 – Recruiting Analytics

Recruiting 207 – The Law & Candidates

Recruiting 301 – Senior Project – solving real-life recruiting problems in real-world companies

Not quite a full class load, but I think we could easily build that out with great content.  So, here’s the big question.  If a university offered a degree in Recruiting, would you look to hire those people into your shop?

I would!  I think many of us would.  Any classes you would add to the above list!

T3 – Jibe #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.

This week on T3 I reviewed the mobile recruiting and analytics solution Jibe.   The one thing everyone knows in talent acquisition in 2015 is that candidates no longer just apply via their desktop computer.  Candidates now apply to your jobs using a many different devices, smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks, etc.  Organizations can no longer ignore mobile as being one of their largest potential candidate drivers.  This is Jibe’s sweet spot!

Jibe is mobile native. This means they weren’t first a desktop software that developers made fit to the small screen.  Jibe developed their solution specifically for the small screen.  Jibe dramatically improves the candidate experience to candidates on your mobile experience.  Jibe works with your current ATS to give candidates a best in class apply process via mobile.

Statistics show that anywhere from 50-80% of candidates will begin their job search process with you via mobile, but only 10-15% will actually complete that process via mobile. That’s a huge miss. You are forcing those candidates to another platform to finish, and when you do that most drop off.

Jibe also has a great recruiting analytics backend called Jibe Insights.  Jibe basically takes your ATS data and fuses it with their apply data and can show you where in your process you’re falling down.  The analytics behind source performance, and how Jibe can segment this down, is one of the best I’ve seen.   Jibe also has a CRM module that has exceptional application for field and campus recruiting with one click mobile connect onsite at career fairs and other offsite locations.

5 Things I Really Like About Jibe:

1. Jibe doesn’t do what most of your ATS vendors will do and basically make your site a mini-site for mobile. It gives your candidates an industry leading mobile online experience, they believe is all you.  From an employment branding perspective this is huge. You might not actually be the most technology advanced HR shop, but Jibe allows you to hide that fact!

2. Most ATS systems have analytics but they are really weak on the apply process side, which ends up being where most of your TA budget is spent. Jibe connects your ATS data with the apply data and specifically shows you what is giving you the best ROI and what isn’t.

3. Recruiting is a process, and it’s meant to be improved. Jibe uses supply chain type process models to help you improve your processes. Most corporate TA folks don’t think in the supply chain type mode, so it truly helps make you better at getting candidates into your pipeline.

4. Jibe’s Candidate Connect CRM has great application for field and campus recruiting.  This process was just so easy, I was amazed. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spend on campus, only to go back and spend more hours trying to get those candidates into our system, or having most fall off when they don’t complete the process. One click and their in, right now, on campus, no waiting. That’s cool!

5. Jibe started on the social recruiting side as well, back when we just called it social media. Their ‘Get Referred’ product uses your employees professional networks to increase your referrals, and put your employee referral program on steroids.

If you take anything away from this review, it better be mobile is important.  Look around you, everyone is using a device, and it’s usually not a desktop computer.  We as Talent Acquisition pros need to embrace mobile and make sure candidates can find us and apply, easily via these channels. If you don’t, you’re going to be left behind.

 

 

4 Things Successful Recruiters Do Every Day

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I’ve hired over one hundred recruiters in my career.  Not a ton, but a pretty good sample size.  I’ve had some of those hires go on to become great Talent Acquisition pros, as well as some who have completely bombed in the profession.  It’s not an easy profession to be successful at, but I’ve seen some basic things that the most successful recruiters, I know, do every single thing day:

  1. Daily motivation. Great recruiters are self-motivated by nature, but the best ones still find ways to give themselves that extra little kick every day. It might be one client or job order they decide they will close on that day. It might be an activity number they challenge themselves with for the day.  It might just be re-centering on a larger overall goal they are chasing and what they’re doing in that day will mean to reach that goal.
  1. Critical of their own work. The best recruiters I’ve worked with own their orders, candidates, interviews, etc. There is no blame.  An interview is a no-show, they own it.  They can look inward and go, next time I won’t have this happen because I’m going to do that one more thing to ensure it’s successful.
  1. They step up. Hey, guys we have a really critical position that just came open from a hiring manager, who wants it? The best recruiters always step up and want to work those high profile openings.  They want the challenge, and they are comfortable with the pressure.  They also step up with their ideas on how the organization can get better, and share freely.
  1. Daily focus. Successful recruiters can focus in and finish, every day. It’s so easy in recruiting to get pulled in a hundred different directions.  The most successful people stay focused on the job at hand, and don’t allow the ‘noise’ to take them off their plan.  They find ways to lock themselves in and keep going until they reach their outcome.

HR and Recruiting both have the same main daily issue we face, we turn ourselves into firefighters.  We run from made up emergency to made up emergency.  It feeds our need to feel like we accomplished something today and became a savior.

The most successful recruiters are no different.  They get the opportunity to be fire fighters, just like we all do, but they make a conscience decision not to allow themselves to slide down the pole. How can you make yourself more successful today?

The Irresistible Power of Being Wanted

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It’s not 100%, but it might be close.  Some will deny this, but it’s pretty much universally accepted. We all want to be wanted by someone.

It makes us feel good to be wanted.  Not the crazy stalker kind of wanted. The kind of wanted where you know the other party wants you for all the positive reasons that are you.  That feeling is so powerful it could light up New York!

In a nutshell, that is talent acquisition.

You want someone. They may want you, they may not.  Either way, you are holding in your possession one of the most powerful feelings of all time!

People want to be wanted.

When you call someone and tell them, “I want you”, I can guarantee they will listen to what you have to say next.  100% of the time.

“Hi, my name is Tim. I want you.”

I now have your attention.  I might not have it for long, but I do have it in that moment.  That’s the key for successful recruiting. What you say next determines your success.

I have had four jobs in my entire career, over 21 years.  I’ve probably had upwards of 500 calls from recruiters wanting to talk to me about a job they have open. Each time I listened to what they had to say, initially, because it makes me feel good that someone wants me. That is a normal response. That is a majority response.

In recruiting you should never underestimate the power you hold in your hands.  Never believe the hype that people don’t want to be called or contacted about jobs. “Oh, those IT guys get ten calls a day, they don’t want to be contacted!” Yes, they do. That’s ten times a day they get a stroke to their ego. Ten times a day they feel wanted. Ten times a day where you might be offering them their dream job.

“Hi, my name is Tim. I want you.”

The Key Trait of Great Hires

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For twenty years, I’ve been hiring and firing people. I’ve been lucky enough to have some great performers, a bunch of good performers and an also a few crappy performers. It seems like every time I turn; someone has an answer for me on how to hire better. For years I have given the advice if all else fails, hire smart people. It’s not a bad strategy. For the most part, if you hire the smartest ones of the bunch, you’ll have more good performers, than bad performers. I’m talking pure intelligence, not necessarily book smarts.

But, just hiring smart people still isn’t perfect. I want to hire good, or great, people every single time. How do you do that? That’s the million dollar question.

To me there is one trait we don’t focus enough on, across all industries. Optimism.

Your ability to look at the situation and come up with positive ways to handle it. Think about your best employees, almost always there is a level of optimism they have that your lower performers don’t.

I can’t think of one great employee I’ve ever worked with that didn’t have a level of optimism that was at least greater than the norm. They might be optimistic about their future, about the companies future, about life in general. The key was they had optimism.

Optimistic people find ways to succeed because they truly believe they will succeed. Pessimistic people find ways to fail, since they believe they are bound to fail. This hiring thing can be difficult. Don’t make it more difficult by hiring people who are not optimistic about your company and the opportunity you have for them. Ask questions in the interview that get to their core belief around optimism:

– Tell me about something you’re truly optimistic about in life? (Pessimistic people have a hard time answering this. Optimistic people will answer quickly and with passion.)

– Tell me about a time something you were responsible for went really bad. How did you deal with it?

– The company has you working on a very important project and then decides to cancel it. How would you respond?

Surrounding yourself with optimistic people drives a better culture, better teams, it’s uplifting to your leadership style. I want smart people, but I truly want smart people who are optimistic about life. Those people change the world for the better, and I think they’ll do the same for my business.

4 Reasons Corporate Recruiting Should Use Staffing Agencies

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I love those Dos Equis commercials “The Most Interesting Man in the World” where the most interesting man says, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.”  It’s great marketing that doesn’t seem to get old.  It got me to thinking as well.  I started my HR career in recruiting working for the company I’m now running, so in a sense I’ve come full circle.  I started recruiting right out of college for a contingent staffing company, doing technical contract hiring, a tough recruiting gig, but it pays very well if you’re good.

When I left my first job, and the third party recruiting industry, to take my first corporate HR job. I left with a chip on my shoulder that armed me with such great recruiting skills I would NEVER, I mean NEVER, use a recruiting firm to do any of my recruiting. WHY WOULD I?  I mean I had the skills, I had the know-how and I could save my company a ton of money by just doing it on our own.

So, I spent 10 years in corporate HR before returning to third party recruiting in 2009, and you know what? I was young and naïve in my thinking about never using recruiting agencies.  It’s not just about having the skills and know-how; it’s much bigger than that.  I worked for three different large companies, in three different industries in director of recruitment type roles, and in each case, I found situations where I was reaching out to some great third party recruiters for some assistance.

So, why did I change my philosophy on using recruiting agencies?  A few of the reasons I ran into in corporate HR:

1. Having Skill and Know-How only works if you also have the time.  Sometimes in corporate gigs, you just don’t have the capacity to get as deep into the search as you would like – with all the hats you have to wear as a corporate HR pro.

2. Corporate HR positions don’t give you the luxury of building a talent pipeline in specific skill sets, the same way that search pros can build over time.  As a corporate HR pro, I was responsible for all skill sets in my organization.  Niche search pros can outperform most corporate HR pros on most searches, most of the time. It’s a function of time and network.

3. Many corporate executive teams don’t believe their own HR staffs have the ability to outperform professional recruiters, primarily because we (corporate HR pros) have never given them a reason to think differently about this. Thus, we are “forced” to use search pros for searches where executives like to get involved.

4. Most corporations are not willing to invest in a model – people, technology and process – that puts themselves on a higher playing field than professional recruiting organizations.  I would estimate only 1% of corporations have made this investment currently – and more are not rushing out to follow suit.  Again, this comes from corporate HR not having the ability to show the CFO the ROI on making this change – to have the best talent in the industry you compete in. So, the best talent gets sourced by recruiting pros and corporations pay for it.

I didn’t always use recruiting agencies, but when I did I made sure I got talent I couldn’t get on my own, in the time and space I was allotted in my given circumstances.  When I talk to corporate HR pros now, and I hear in their voice that “failure” of having to use a recruiting agency. I get it. I get the fact of what they are facing in their own corporate environments.  It’s not failure, it’s life in corporate America and it’s hard to change.

Stay thirsty my friends…

4 Things Job Pirates Have

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It’s the holidays, so I’m going to run some “Best of” posts from the library at The Project. Enjoy. 

Dollars for donuts, Fast Company is the best publication out their for anyone in the business world!  They hit a home run in my book recently with the article: An HR Lesson from Steve Jobs – If you want Change Agents, Hire Pirates!  “Why? Because Pirates can operate when rules and safety nets breakdown.”  More from the article:

A pirate can function without a bureaucracy. Pirates support one another and support their leader in the accomplishment of a goal. A pirate can stay creative and on task in a difficult or hostile environment. A pirate can act independently and take intelligent risks, but always within the scope of the greater vision and the needs of the greater team.

Pirates are more likely to embrace change and challenge convention. “Being aggressive, egocentric, or antisocial makes it easier to ponder ideas in solitude or challenge convention,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a University of California psychology professor and an expert on creativity. “Meanwhile, resistance to change or a willingness to give up easily can derail new initiatives.” So Steve’s message was: if you’re bright, but you prefer the size and structure and traditions of the navy, go join IBM. If you’re bright and think different and are willing to go for it as part of a special, unified, and unconventional team, become a pirate.

The article is an excerpt from Steve Jobs book: What Would Steve Jobs Do?: How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win by Peter Sander, and it goes into some of the hiring philosophy that Jobs had while he was at Apple.

So, what did Jobs Pirates have to have?

1. It’s not enough to be brilliant and think differently- a Pirate has to have the passion, drive and vision to deliver to the customer a game-changing product.

2. Will the person you hire, fall in love with your organization and products?

3. A Pirate is a traveler who comes to you with diverse background and experiences.

4. Even though they’re a Pirate they still have to fit into the team and come with or be able to make connections.

“So, in Steve’s book–recruit a team of diverse, well-traveled, and highly skilled pirates, and they’ll follow you anywhere.”

Sometimes You Paint Fish in Vaginas

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Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He has some of the greatest works ever made.  He also made this. It’s called The Mackerel.

The Mackerel
Yep. One of the greatest artist ever made this. You see, to make great works, you have to make a lot of works. Great artist don’t just make great works. Sometimes they make fish in vaginas.  Sometimes what they think is a good idea fails. That’s how they perfect their craft. Every once in a while, greatness is the result.

I write a lot. At least every business day I have a post going up. Many times I have posts going up on other sites, as well.  Ideas come to me, such as my frustration with sourcing and talent acquisition, and I write about them.
I feel, far too often, talent acquisition blindly follows the pack without determining what is right for their environment, their culture, and their needs. Does this mean every day I’m frustrated with HR, recruiting and sourcing?  No. I’m going to write some stuff that I’ll look back on and wonder, “Why did I write that!?”

That’s part of the process.

We are at a place in our society where you can’t have one idea one day, and have another idea the next, if it contradicts one idea you’ve ever had in your whole entire life. What I believe in now, 20 years into my career, isn’t even close to what I believed in starting out in my career. And we lose our minds and judge people in this industry if someone has a different opinion than ours.

At this point in my career, I don’t read a lot of stuff in the HR and Talent space, primarily because I agree with a lot of it.  It’s like the pastor preaching to the choir. It’s not needed because they’ve already bought in!  Now I like reading stuff that I totally disagree with because it challenges my assertions and makes me rethink my positions.

It’s not my goal to write about stuff that is controversial. I’m not that guy. I get far more traffic on my positive posts than on my controversial posts. And it’s easier to write about hugs and babies and show videos that make you cry and appreciate your life.

But I will write about stuff that matters. Some of it will be great. Some of it won’t stick. I hope that people in our industry will see the art for what it is and avoid personal attacks. I know some of the most vocal people in our space. I admire them for their skills. I want to give everybody the space to develop new and deeper ideas, even if those ideas contradict earlier blog posts. And I don’t want to start calling them out when they write their fish-in-vaginas sourcing and talent manifestos.

***Shoutout to my friend Laurie Ruettimann for some editing help with this post***

 

 

T3 – Workable

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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 I took a look at the recruiting software Workable.  It’s sold as the “simple recruiting software for fast growing businesses”. It’s part ATS, part social sourcing tool, part talent acquisition process enabler, but it’s 100% simple to use. That is by far what I walked away from after my demo, I actually bolded in my notes in capital letters:”SIMPLE!”

I’ve used a lot of recruiting solutions in my career, but this one might have been the most intuitive and easy to use right out of the box.  It even let’s those proces crazy folks drop and drag the process and design it the way you want, and even change that process based on the position, hiring manager, etc.  Workable gets recruiting and keeps it to what is is.  Source candidates. Get them to apply. Phone screen them. Interview them. Make the offer. Hire them. Straightforward. Easy.

Just because it’s easy, though, it doesn’t take out all of today’s cool tools and technology.  The solution automatically pulls in LinkedIn profiles of candidates who apply, under the same email address and puts their picture on their Workable profile. The systems tracks every single touch and creates a timeline that is transparent so everyone knows what is going on, who the hold ups are, and what the next step is.

If I had an older ATS that just wasn’t working, or wasn’t using an ATS at all and on the outlook for a ‘beginner’ recruiting solution, I would definitely take a look at Workable.  Yeah, I said ‘beginner’, but that really isn’t fair, it probably fits more in the SMB space, where you just don’t’ have the resources for a full enterprise ATS solution, but you still want the tech the big boys have.  Workable is designed specifically for a SMB recruiting solution!

5 Things I really like about Workable: 

1. Simplicity in software is so hard to do. After about 30 minutes into the demo, I was pretty confident I could use the system all on my own, and be really good at it!  It’s just one of those systems that is easy to use.  That is exactly what is needed for companies growing quickly, who are usually understaffed and many areas in the business are utilizing the solution to help in hiring.

2. HR ladies will hate this, but I loved that it pulled in the candidates profile pic from LinkedIn.  Hiring managers will love this as well. It’s a simple example of how Workable understands the user of this type of solution. (BTW – you can turn this function off, HR Ladies!)

3. Automatically posts jobs on a bunch of free sites, and easy integration to your paid sites. Plus, they can get you a big discount on the big boards, through leveraging their current clients buying power as one.  Workable does all the regular stuff you expect as well, resume parsing, resume keyword searching, EEOC/OFCCP reports, source reports, candidate flow, etc.

4. Interview scheduling, email and calendar integration is very good.  Plus, you don’t get charged by user, you get charged by job, so you can every single employee in your company use the system.  This makes it easy to get adoption, when you’re not just trying to pick a small number of users to keep the cost down.

5. The ability to change and add to your process whenever you feel like it was really cool. Especially, if you’re just starting out on a big hiring project and you’re not quite sure, and you want to make some changes as you’re going.  That’s reality! Fast growing companies need to be able to change quickly and move, Workable allows you to do that, simply.

I mentioned, briefly, but Workable doesn’t charge you by user, but by job posting by month.  Need to hire 15 people one month, but none the next, Workable allows you to go up and down on pricing based on your use, and not lock you into one rate.  You can even shut it down for a period, and come back when hiring picks up and all your data will still be there. Very inexpensive for what you get!

One last thing, this would #6, but I only do five. Workable will set up a mobile friendly careers page as part of your monthly fee.  It’s a must have, they make it happen. You have no worries.

Check them out if you’re in need of a recruiting solution.  I was really impressed!