What does the future of talent acquisition look like? Sara Dalsfelt and I discussed on a LinkedIn Live this week. Check it out!
Will Recruiting Automation Dehumanize Talent Acquisition? #video
1
Category Archives: Sourcing
Talent Acquisition is NOT Marketing. Here’s why!
We love, I love, to say Recruiting is Marketing! I love Recruitment Marketing and the technology behind it, I think it’s brilliant! Recruiting is also not sales!
Why is Recruiting neither Marketing nor Sales?
What’s the core function of marketing and sales? To welcome as many people as possible into your funnel so that all of those people will buy your product or service, or give to your charity, etc.
In Recruitment we in the Rejection business!
Can you imagine you walk into a Cadillac dealership? You saw the commercial for the new SUV, you decide you want that SUV. You saw the billboard for that same car, heard the radio commercial, heck you even saw an Ad on Facebook, it’s almost like they’re listening to your brain! You’ve got a pocket full of hundred dollar bills and you walk into the dealership because today you’re driving away in that brand new, beautiful Cadillac SUV!
Dealer – No!
Me – Um, what?!
Dealer – No, we aren’t selling you that new Cadillac SUV, you’re not a Cadillac “Man”!
Me – A what!?
Dealer – Yeah, sorry, you don’t get a Cadillac today, we’re saving those for only certain people!
It’s funny because we know this would never happen! I could walk into the dealership holding a severed head and the first words out of the salesman’s mouth would be “the trunk on our new sedan could hold a hundred of those heads!”
Recruiting isn’t Marketing or Sales, because true Marketing and Sales is in the business of ‘All’, not one. No one really gets rejected in marketing and sales if you have the means. In Recruiting, you could fit every single thing the organization is requesting and you will still get rejected. Recruiting is in the Rejection business, not the sales and marketing business!
If we/recruiting are in the Sales and Marketing business, we are in a really sick and twisted business! Hey, “Everyone” come and apply to our jobs, because I get really excited when I get to turn you down and say “no”! So, let’s not kid ourselves. Our business is about Rejection. Hey, come on over here and let me tell you what’s wrong with you, and then I’ll make the decision if we want you to be a part of our team or not.
Marketing campaigns sometimes try to fake like they’re being exclusive. “Only ‘you’ are being invited to buy this new SUV! You’ll be the first to own it! No one else!” Until next week when everyone will own it and actually have a better color than you. That’s not true rejection for those who don’t get it first, it’s just a game we play to increase demand.
So, why does this manner?
If we know we are actually in the Rejection business, and we are, we/recruiters have to have an empathy level that is off the charts if we want to survive. Let me get this straight, you want me to talk as many people as possible into loving our company, then you want me to reject 99.9% of them? Yes!
To be able to do that and not drink yourself to sleep every night takes a really high ego or an endless supply of empathy towards all those great people who just wanted you to pick them, but your organization picked someone else, but they left it on your desk to share the bad news!
This is probably the main reason so many candidates never get dispositioned. We can all just crush only so many souls in a day! It’s easier to ghost candidates than to crush their dreams!
The rejection business is a hard, hard business to be in. Sales and Marketing are easy. Can you imagine how easy your life would be if you were able to give everyone the job!
Do Recruiters Still Need to Make Phone Calls?
Recently, I was on a webinar, and in my presentation, I harped on the talent acquisition pros and leaders on the webcast on why 100% of us are not using texting as a primary first form of contact with candidates. The data is in. Texting works! It works better than email by a mile, but still, less than 50% in the room are texting candidates.
After I was done a great TA pro contacted me and said, “Tim, shouldn’t recruiters being calling candidates!” I feel in love! Why, yes, fine, sir they should always be calling candidates! But, let’s not forsake other tools that are working at a high level. We know people, in general, respond to texts at a much higher rate than email and phone calls.
You see a text and within seconds you read it, and you respond to it at more than double the rate of email or voicemail. In talent acquisition, we are in LOVE with email, even when it doesn’t work.
In 2011, I wrote this post below – funny enough, it’s still relevant today (except now I think we need to add in more texting with those phone calls!)
Do we (recruiters) still need to make telephone calls?
I mean really it’s 2011 – we have text messaging, emails, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – hasn’t the telephone just become obsolete? Does anyone actually use their cell phones to make actual phone calls anymore?
The New York Times had an article: Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You, in which they delve into this concept of whether the act of making a phone call has jumped the shark or not. From the article:
“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”
Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people…
Even at work, where people once managed to look busy by wearing a headset or constantly parrying calls back and forth via a harried assistant, the offices are silent. The reasons are multifold. Nobody has assistants anymore to handle telecommunications. And in today’s nearly door-free workplaces, unless everyone is on the phone, calls are disruptive and, in a tight warren of cubicles, distressingly public. Does anyone want to hear me detail to the dentist the havoc six-year molars have wreaked on my daughter?
“When I walk around the office, nobody is on the phone,” said Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president, and publisher at HarperCollins. The nature of the rare business call has also changed. “Phone calls used to be everything: serious, light, heavy, funny,” Mr. Burnham said. “But now they tend to be things that are very focused. And almost everyone e-mails first and asks, ‘Is it O.K. if I call?’ ”
Sound Familiar?
Now I could easily turn this into a generational issue because for one it’s easy to do, but this isn’t a GenX vs. GenY issue. This is a basic communication issue. An understanding of what we do in our industry issue. Whether your third party or corporate recruitment, we do the same thing, we search and find talent. There are two basic ways to screen potential talent for fit for your organization: 1. Meet them in Person (no one would argue that this is the best way, but boy it’s expensive if you are using it as your first-line screen); 2. Meet them over the phone (done in some form or another by 99.9% of recruiters).
There really isn’t any way around this issue, we recruit, we make telephone calls. If you don’t like to make telephone calls, if you believe what the New York Times article believes, you shouldn’t recruit. It’s not an indictment on you, this just isn’t your gig.
Recruiters like to talk to people, to question people, to find out more about people, not a career, best done by email and text messaging. We need to talk live to others. That’s how we go to work. Doesn’t matter if you’re 21 or 6. It’s how to deliver great talent to our hiring managers.
So, here’s a tip, if you’re in recruitment and you don’t like making phone calls get, out of recruitment, you will not be successful. If your first choice of contacting someone isn’t picking up the phone and calling them, instead of sending them an email, when you have their phone number, get out of recruitment. If you’re thinking you want to recruit, and you don’t like making phone calls take another path.
Recruiters make phone calls, that’s what we do.
Do you pay a larger employee referral bonus for Black Engineers?
I know a ton of HR Pros right now who have been charged by their organizations to go out and “Diversify” their workforce. By “Diversify”, I’m not talking about diversity of thought, but to recruit a more diverse workforce in terms of ethnic, gender, and racial diversity.
Clearly, by bringing in more individuals from underrepresented groups in your workforce, you’ll expand the “thought diversification”, but for those HR Pros in the trenches and sitting in conference rooms with executives behind closed doors, diversification of thought isn’t the issue being discussed.
So, I have some assumptions I want to put forth before I go any further:
1. Referred employees make the best hires. (Workforce studies frequently list employee referrals as the highest quality hires across all industries and positions)
2. ERPs (Employee Referral Programs) are the major tool used to get employee referrals by HR Pros.
3. A diverse workforce will perform better in most circumstances, then I homogeneous workforce will.
4. Diversity departments, if you’re lucky enough, or big enough, to have one in your organization, traditionally tend to do a weak job at “recruiting” diversity candidates (there more concerned about getting the Cinco De Mayo Taco Bar scheduled, etc.)
Now, keeping in mind the above assumptions, what do you think is the best way to recruit diverse candidates to your organization?
I’ve yet to find a company willing to go as far as to “Pay More” for a black engineer referral vs. a white engineer referral. Can you imagine how that would play out in your organization!? But behind the scenes in the HR Departments across the world, this exact thing is happening in a number of ways.
First, what is your cost of hire for diverse candidates versus non-diverse candidates? Do you even measure that? Why not? I’ll tell you why, is very hard to justify why you are paying two, three, and even four times more for a diversity candidate, with the same skill sets, versus a non-diverse candidate in most technical and medical recruiting environments. Second, how many diversity recruitment events do you go to versus non-specific diversity recruitment events? In organizations that are really pushing diversification of the workforce, I find that this figure is usually 2 to 1.
So, you will easily spend more resources of your organization to become more diversified, but you won’t reward your employees for helping you to reach your goals? I find this somewhat ironic. You will pay Joe, one of your best engineers, $2000 for any referral, but you are unwilling to pay him $4000 for referring his black engineer friends from his former company.
Yet, you’ll go out and spend $50,000 attending diversity recruiting job fairs and events all over the country trying to get the same person. When you know the best investment of your resources would be to put up a poster in your hallways saying “Wanted Black Engineers $4000 Reward!”.
Here’s why you don’t do this.
Most organizations do a terrible job at communicating the importance of having a diverse workforce, and that to get to an ideal state, sometimes it means the organization might have to hire a female, or an Asian, or an African American, or a Hispanic, over a similarly qualified white male to ensure the organization is reaching their highest potential.
Workgroup performance by diversity is easily measured and reported to employees, to demonstrate diversity successes, but we rarely do it, to help us explain why we do what we are doing in talent selection. What do we need to do? Stop treating our employees like they won’t get it, start educating them beyond the politically correct version of Diversity and start educating them on the performance increases we get with diversity. Then it might not seem so unheard of to pay more to an employee for referring a diverse candidate!
So, you take pride in your diversity hiring efforts, but you’re just unwilling to properly reward for it…
Someone is Banking on You Being Lazy!
I work in an industry where I’ve been told for a decade technology is going to take my job. The staffing industry is half a trillion-dollar industry worldwide. The entire industry is built on us banking on the fact that someone in corporate TA is going to be lazy.
Ouch! That should sting a little!
So, I don’t really bank on you being lazy at my company. We do contract work so we are looking to fill contingent roles, not direct hire staffing, which is an industry almost completely built on lazy! For my staffing brothers and sisters out there, I hear you, I know you’re ‘just’ filling in when ‘capacity’ is an issue. (wink, head nod, wink)
There are other industries that bank you us being lazy. The entire diet industry! You’ve got overpriced awful foods, bars, shakes, workout gyms, at home gyms, etc. Because we won’t eat less and move more, because we are “lazy”, we pay a lot for that! Believe me, I pay my fair share! Just because I’m too lazy! Ugh, it’s embarrassing!
Direct hire staffing as an industry could be gone tomorrow if corporate TA just did what they were hired to do. You have an opening, you fill the opening. We aren’t trying to put a woman on the moon! This isn’t rocket science!
But, we don’t fill the opening. In fact, we do just about everything except filling the opening. We post the opening. We meet about the opening. We send whoever applies to the manager of the opening. We meet some more about candidate experience. We have another meeting about employment branding. One more meeting with the manager to see if anything has changed.
That doesn’t sound lazy, does it?
But, deflection of more difficult work is just another form of laziness.
My kid doesn’t want to go out in 90-degree heat and mow the lawn. It’s a hard, hot job. So, they come up with ‘alternative’ work that they have to do that just happens to be inside in the air conditioning.
As TA Leaders, we have to understand how are others are banking on us being lazy, and then make adjustments to stop lazy. So, how do you do that?
Well, I wrote an entire book on the subject – The Talent Fix – you can buy it here – but until you can get it, here are some tips:
- Have clearly defined measurable activity goals set for each member of your TA team.
- Make those measures transparent so everyone can see them every day.
- Have performance conversations immediately when measures aren’t met.
- Course correct as measures need to be adjusted to meet the needs of the business.
- Rinse, repeat.
1 -5 above is like page 37 of the book. So, you can imagine what the rest of the 200+ pages will be like! 😉
If you follow the five steps above about half of your team will quit in 90 days. That’s a good thing, those idiots didn’t want to recruit, to begin with, they just wanted that fat corporate check and Taco Tuesdays. They were being lazy and it was costing your corporate bottom line.
The talent acquisition function is not a charity case. I think in the history of HR we’ve done some corporate charity where we let people keep collecting money even though they were costing us money. They weren’t giving back the value we needed for what we were paying. Great leaders stop this from happening.
Great leaders understand that there are people in the world that are banking on us being lazy.
The Fight Club Recruiting Rules!
Great talent and great hiring are about getting the best candidates to respond to your messaging. It’s our reality as talent acquisition professionals that we have candidates who apply to our jobs, some of whom might be great. We also have to go out and find great talent and find ways to get them to respond to our overtures.
It’s the number one job of every talent acquisition professional. I would argue it might be the only job of talent acquisition. Get great talent to interact with you!
The first rule of Fight Recruiting Club is you need to get candidates to respond!
The second rule of Recruiting Club is you need to keep trying to get talent to respond to you until they actually respond. Wait a second, Tim! You mean we have to reach out to a candidate more than once!? I mean, if they don’t respond to me after my first outreach, that’s their loss! No, it’s your loss! You need that talent!
The third rule of Recruiting Club is you need to interact with candidates in themedium they are most comfortable with. I like it when you text me, most people do. It gets a high response rate. Some folks like email, phone calls, Facebook messenger, handwritten notes, etc. Find all the mediums the candidate likes, not your favorite!
The fourth rule of Recruiting Club is it’s not about you. It’s about them! “I’ve got a great career opportunity for you!” How do you know what I want? Stop assuming you know what I want when you don’t. How about you first to get to know me a little. I mean, you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date!
The fifth rule of Recruiting Club is….(there are ten in total, click through to the rest of my post over on Saba’s Blog)
The New Normal for Hiring Hourly Employees!
Not many of us are actually doing a ton of hiring right now. How do I know? There are 25 million people who applied for unemployment! That means there’s probably another 75 million that are currently under-employed or utilized.
This means that when we all get back to the ‘new normal’ of working, a bunch of stuff is going to change! How we attract, select, onboard, etc. can not be the same as what we did only sixty to ninety days ago.
Hourly hiring has always been a very “hands-on” endeavor and we must change that! My good friend and Recruiting Expert, Madeline Laurano has done a major research project looking specifically at hourly hiring. I’ve been spending time interviewing TA and HR leaders on the changes they are planning moving forward, and we are going to share with you all of those ideas and strategies!
Join us for a free Webinar on Tuesday, May 12th at 1pm EST: The New Normal for Hourly Hiring: 5 Strategies TA Leaders Must Consider Moving Forward!
I’m so excited to have this conversation and share the information that Madeline and I have found! It’s always a great time just talking shop with her, and this is a topic we are both passionate about.
Thank you to the great folks over at Get.Fountain.com for sponsoring this and allowing us to present this information. Fountain is an easy to use Hiring Software trusted by the world’s leading companies. Source, screen, and onboard your hourly workers, giving them a great experience without all of the physical high-touch!
Your Hosts with the Most!
The First Rule of Recruiting!
Sometimes we go so far into the weeds in recruiting we forget what is really important.
We have to have a brand!
We have to have an ATS! Or a new ATS!
We have to have a CRM! What the hell is a CRM!?
Our job descriptions need to be better!
Our career site sucks! Don’t they all!?
We need to relaunch our employee referral program!
There are literally a million things you could focus on in recruiting and you still would have a list of crap you never even got to.
You know recruiting isn’t difficult. It’s not like we’re trying to launch the space shuttle. Recruiting is finding people for your organization. People are everywhere. We just need to talk them into coming to work for our organizations.
It’s the first rule of recruiting – Just let people know you’re hiring.
We make it so difficult when all we have to truly do is let people know we actually want to hire them. Do you have any idea how many people would really want to work for your organization, but they never know you are hiring or were hiring?
Recruiting is really only that. Just letting enough people know that you want them to work for you until you’ve reached the right people. It’s okay that you will reach some you don’t want. That’s part of the game.
To reach the people who you want, and who want you, you have to let a lot of people know you’re hiring.
Letting people know you’re hiring goes beyond your career site. It goes beyond job boards. It goes beyond employee referral programs. It’s a philosophy throughout your organization. It’s about an understanding that you want everyone to know that you’re hiring.
Most organizations don’t do this. It’s a combination of issues, but mostly it’s a conceited belief that letting people know you’re hiring seems desperate. That we are too good of an organization to let everyone know we are hiring, because we don’t want everyone, we only want a few.
This is why most talent acquisition departments fail. Simple conceit.
Great recruiting isn’t conceited, great recruiting is about being humble enough to let people know you want them, that you really want them. At the end of the day, that’s what we all want. To be wanted.
Recruiting Facts: People Actually Like It When You Want Them…
If I hear one more person tell me that candidates don’t like phone calls, I’m going to shove a phone up your…
I’m not the smartest cat, but I know a couple of things. Here are a few things I know:
1. You can’t taste the difference of well Gin and high-end Gin after 4 Gin and Tonics.
2. French Fries, Onion rings and Tator Tots taste great fried and taste awful baked.
3. Great tasting chocolate is the reason women can be single. (okay, I stole that one from my wife!)
4. Candidates with car trouble are lying.
5. People like to be told that you want them for a job! It’s flattering. It makes them feel important. It makes them feel valued. They love to listen to what you have to say, regardless of how satisfied they are in their job.
If I called you right now with a job that was something you have always wanted, guess what would happen? You would call me back. You would call me back almost instantly. You would run out to your car, telling the receptionist on the way out you have an urgent personal call, to hear what I have to say.
Those people. Those thought leaders. Those idiots, who are telling you candidates don’t like phone calls are LIARS!
Why are they lying to you? Here is why I think they are probably lying to you:
1. They are lazy and hope the internet will solve all of their problems.
2. They are hoping to talk the world into believing you never have to make a phone call to get a job.
3. They are scared.
I did a survey where I asked 100 people, mostly millennials, (all potential candidates, since all people are potential candidates) if I called you with your “Dream Job”, would you either pick up my call or call me back? Would you like to know the results?
100 out of 100 said they would pick up my call or call me back! 100%!
Recruiters who say candidates don’t like phone calls are not recruiters, they’re administrative professionals. Pay them accordingly.
The #1 Holiday Gift For Recruiting and TA pros Worldwide!
When I worked at Applebee’s in HR we talked about terminations as giving someone a “gift”. Every time I tell someone this, they kind of chuckle. “Yeah! Great ‘gift’ I get fired!”
Of course, there’s an explanation.
Imagine you are working in your dream job (whatever that job might be). You love your job. You love the people you work with. You feel valued. You do great work. The hours work well for you. The location works well for you. You have a really good balance. You are in your dream job.
Now, imagine the opposite. You hate your job. You can’t even stand getting out of bed in the morning, knowing you have to go to ‘that’ job. You don’t like the people you work for. You can’t stand your leadership team. It’s too far away from home. Nothing seems to be right. As such, you probably aren’t giving 100%. You probably aren’t performing at your best. You will probably be fired.
The person who is miserable and not performing in their job needs a gift. That gift is we stop kidding ourselves that this will work out and we terminate them so that they now have the time and motivation to go find that dream job! A job they love! We all deserve that gift! Our life is so much better when we are working at a job we love. It’s a true gift.
So, what’s the #1 gift for Recruiting and TA Pros!?
No, it’s not to terminate them!
It’s to buy my book! The Talent Fix! Yay! It’s back in stock over at Amazon just in time for the holidays, and you can order it in bulk right now! If you want to buy signed copies for your team – send me a note (timsackett@comcast.net) and we can work out the details! I’ll even personalize them with funny messages if you send me what you want to say!
Dear Tina,
I can’t think of a more amazing recruiter who has ever graced the
earth. The world is a better place because you’re in it. Last night,
I wept with joy from the idea of “you”!
Tim (but really fancy signature type “Tim”)
You like what I did there!? 😉 It’s really the gift that keeps giving all year long!
Also, you should probably fire some folks who aren’t performing well and hate their job! They will not consider it a gift in the moment, but if they are lucky enough to find that awesome dream job, a job they love, eventually they might come to see it as the best gift they were ever given!