Category Archives: Talent Acquisition

The NCAA Transfer Portal in the New College Athlete Job Board!

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If you are into college athletics, you have heard of the NCAA Transfer portal. If you are not into college athletics, basically the transfer portal is the technology used for an athlete of one school to let everyone involved know they intend to move from their current school to a new school.

There are over 500,000 student-athletes at NCAA sanctioned schools.

For the most part, we only hear about athlete transfers for the big sports of football and basketball, because that’s what the media covers, but it’s happening in all the sports.

So, what’s the big deal? 

Let me give you a quick history lesson. For centuries these NCAA schools have pretty much held all the power. Kids want to go to school to play sports, coaches at these schools recruited the athletes they wanted, and once they got that kid to sign his/her letter of intent that kid was basically stuck. Of course, they could leave, but if they did the transfer rules were so restrictive they almost always had to sit a year at the very least.

The coaches could leave for other schools, without any waiting period. Could be fired, etc. All the while the kid just had to stay and put up with whatever was thrown at them.

Recently though, the transfer rules have been relaxed allowing the vast majority of kids to transfer without having to sit out, if they are willing to give some reason that the NCAA feels are remotely close to being true and in the kid’s best interest.

“Oh, Johnny, didn’t get to play this year and he’s upset. Oh, his Mom is stressed out!? Well, we better let Johnny leave State U and go to HomeTown U so he can close to her and play football.”

So, yes, it’s become a complete cluster of movement!

What if this was your company? 

Now, I know what you’re going to say. Tim, this isn’t one company, this is thousands of schools that compete against each other, it’s just fair market dynamics at play. But, that is not quite true!

While we like to think of schools competing against each other, they’re all still staying in the NCAA! All the money is still being split up amongst the NCAA institutions. And just like a real company, some “divisions” are getting more resources than others, even though we talk about “equity” all the time!

HR gets less budget than sales because guess what, sales makes us money.

Football gets more resources than Men’s swimming because guess what?

D1 gets more resources than DIII because guess what? Turns out, some things are more important than others, or at least someone at the top made that decision.

This is more like one organization with 500,000 employees who all of sudden went out to all 500,000 employees and said if you don’t like your current job, or boss, or team members you work with, go ahead and apply for any job in the company, and we’ll let that manager determine if they want you or not!

Can you imagine the chaos?

All that said, I love it! 

The recruiter and leader in me love the transfer portal! I work hard to attract great talent and get them to sign on the line that is dotted. I then have this obligation to live up to what I sold this recruit on. If I don’t, I lose. If I do, well, that’s what the hell I was supposed to do, right?!

Too often, we are asking 17 and 18-year-old kids to make decisions on their life that isn’t reality. We wine and dine them, they show up to campus and learn that real life isn’t the recruiting trip. But then we expect them to live by this decision their adolescent mind made. This makes zero sense when you put into play that all these coaches lie and say whatever it takes to get them to sign.

Traditionalists in college athletics hate the transfer portal. They want it back to where they can control kids through a contract. I think this is the best, long term, for all involved. It is less likely you’ll have a few elite programs stash away all the great athletes. Once these athletes get to school and find out they won’t be playing any time soon, they can make a move that better fits them.

College coaches will have to be more transparent to recruits, or risk having a roster they need to rebuild each year. Kids will have to take more time to think about their long term future, or risk being seen as the kid who just jumps around when they don’t get their way.

This has all kinds of angles to corporate internal mobility! 

We love talking about internal mobility in corporate HR, but rarely can we point to organizations where it works great. Why? No, it’s not about technology. It’s about the same thing college athletes are facing. I thought I signed up for “X” and I got here and it’s “Y”, but oh, hey, great, I see “Y” over there in that department, let me move!?

Well, sorry, you can’t move, at least, not right now. First, you need to stay here for a year, and perform great, and get your boss to like you, and… “But, I just want to move over there and be great!?” Yeah, no.

It leads to the question, why don’t we allow employees to post and move jobs whenever they want? You hired them believing they would be great. They show up and almost immediately determine that the position they have isn’t right for them, but another one is. If you hired them believing they would be great, we should let them go be great, without waiting, right?

It’s messy. Like the transfer portal. Messy isn’t always wrong, it’s just messy as we work through it and figure it all out. The reality is, overall, the number is way lower than we think.

Should You Build or Buy Talent in 2021?

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Two rules of thumb in acquiring talent:

  • In a good, long-term economic outlook, building talent will ultimately be better.
  • In a questionable, short-term economic outlook, buying/renting talent is the best bet.

2021 is not the time to decide to build talent, at least not in the first two quarters. Most organizations have already started renting talent and we see contingent labor as a percent of the workforce rising in Q1 and Q2 as organizations determine how the economy will come back.

We actually saw this start to increase in Q3 and Q4 of 2020.

If the economic uncertainty continues into later 2021, we’ll see these numbers continue to rise.

With so much talk about “Internal Mobility” in the HR Tech space, it seems like the opposite is being spun as the better solution. For a few organizations, who have continued to stay busy during the pandemic and believe they’ll continue after, this is probably the right strategy.

For the vast majority of companies, the focus on hiring more contingent is a better strategy over the next 12-18 months, to ensure they will have much more flexibility and the ability to move quickly to move their headcount up and down based on immediate business needs.

In Questionable Economic Times, You Need Workforce Flexibility! 

I run into a lot of mid-sized enterprise organizations (500-2500 employees) who freak out when you talk about contingent labor. “We only hire direct, Tim!”

Um, okay, so all those Fortune 1000 organizations that have anywhere from 15-30% of their workforce as contingent are doing it wrong? You know better than they do, is what I’m hearing? Or, are you feeling like hiring contingent labor is somehow a sign of weakness for you as an HR/TA Leader?

Our reality is we saw a decade of crazy growth since the Great Recession. Many organizations during that time forget. Forget the need for a fast flexible workforce that you can ramp up and ramp down very quickly. Large organizations, tend to move slower and forget less. They probably have people around who remember what bad economic times look like.

Quite frankly, I don’t care how or who you hire. 

I do know those TA leaders who move up in their careers tend to understand total workforce strategies better than those who stick to one strategy no matter what the external circumstances they are facing. Also, they are more likely to incorporate multiple strategies and test what works more.

In 2021 we see more organizations buying and renting talent in the short-term. They want to make sure, before adding a permanent headcount, that the organization can sustain itself in the long term. If it can’t, quick and easy ramp down. If it can, they already have some trained and proven workers to pick from for the long term.

You only get talent in two ways, buy or build. Both are valid strategies for corporate TA leaders, and both are used often together. What will you be doing in 2021?

Is More Efficient Recruiting Always Better?

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If you’re in HR or TA and read this blog on a regular basis you know I’m all for making our recruiting process as efficient as possible! Primarily, because so many of us are woefully inefficient in using our technology and the belief that a more involved process must be a better process.

I’m a little nervous about the future and recruiting efficiency.

I think in our rush to become ever more efficient we might miss out on some great talent. At this point in the recruiting tech stack, I can actually automate every single piece. Anything you have a person do in recruiting I can automate. I can even ensure that candidates “don’t” get dispositioned if that’s how you like to play it! I mean about 50% of you don’t do that now, so it seems like that is probably the way you like it.

If recruiting was only about taking a requirement, matching that requirement to available talent, screening that talent, interviewing that talent, assessing that talent, and onboarding that talent, well then, technology can do that better and more efficiently than humans at this point. But, I think recruiting has always been about getting the best talent for your organization.

Available vs. best is where the technology starts to fall down if talent truly makes a difference in your organization. Honestly, for many, “best available” will work just fine, and it has for decades. The vast majority of organizations are hiring the best available at this point.

Technology is exceptional at hiring the best available. Technology hasn’t figured out how to hire the best talent that isn’t openly available at this point. If you don’t have that talent in your database, and that talent isn’t active on LinkedIn, or other job boards, technology has a really hard time getting your message in front of them.

The future of recruiting isn’t about efficiency. That is already here. The future of recruiting is about your organization’s ability to actually go out and discover who is the best talent for your organization. That person might not actually be in the “jobs internet”, or they were but that was five years ago so you’ll never see them as someone you want because the five years ago person isn’t your person you need today.

Efficient recruiting is great until it isn’t. If you suck at recruiting, then becoming more efficient at best practice recruiting (which recruiting technology can definitely make happen) will elevate your function for sure. But, efficient recruiting isn’t world-class recruiting. It’s just efficient.

The best talent acquisition in the future will be able to go out and discover the talent that hasn’t been discovered by everyone else. We like to believe that everyone who is anyone is on LinkedIn, or Indeed, or you name the site. But they are not, or they haven’t been active for a long time, so this is a hidden talent.

Too many TA shops are currently working too hard at becoming efficient and not hard enough at becoming experts of the talent for their industry and their marketplaces. You know I love technology. So, be great at technology, but don’t forget to be great at recruiting.

What is the Top Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) in the U.S.?

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Okay, you guys know I love my guy, Rob Kelly over at OnGig and his team, for putting together data around the most used ATSs. OnGig recently released their latest report and I wanted to share some highlights and reactions.

First, let’s answer the biggest question – is this real? Yes, Rob and the team looked at over 1,000 companies and dug into which specific ATS they are using. Most were Enterprise level, but there were also a number of SMBs.

Here’s the breakdown: (click on the pic for a larger version)

 

Tim’s Reactions:

– In 2018, Workday had a 4.20% share in the enterprise ATS market. In 2020, that has grown to 21.92%, and they have thousands of customers going through and waiting on implementation. Workday has taken over the recruiting market at the enterprise level as of right now and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

– In 2017 Taleo’s market share was 25.51%, in 2018, 19.11%, and in 2020, 14.68%. Still a giant piece of the market, but it shows how Taleo didn’t react quickly enough to the changing marketplace to keep or grow their huge advantage. Keep an eye on Oracle Recruiting Cloud and the impact that will have for those Oracle customers looking to move to the cloud and away from Taleo.

– iCIMS share at 8.94% is extremely impressive, given they totally retooled their software over the past year or so, and basically pioneered the recruiting “App Store” marketplace concept which allows users to build an integrated stack with the features they want fairly easily. Also, this number doesn’t include many of the mid-market, SMB customers iCIMS have.

– Along with iCIMS, Greenhouse, SmartRecuriters, and Jobvite are all top best of breed ATS plays on the market and we are beginning to see this separation of organizations who are choosing the Best of Breed recruiting technologies, to those who are using the Giant HCM recruiting modules (Workday, Oracle, SAP).

What does any of this mean to Enterprise TA Leaders?

If I’m a current TA Leader working for an F1000 organization I better be ready to answer this question:

“Why can’t you, or can you, use the recruiting module for our large HCM stack?” 

Every single CFO, CIO, and CEO, if they haven’t already are going to be looking at their financial, operational, and supply chain stack and making a decision, most likely, between Workday, Oracle, and SAP (there are some others, but these 3 own 90%+ of the market).

These leaders are being sold on the power of one platform and the ability to leverage all of that data, and part of that decision will be HR and TA explaining the benefits and drawbacks of going enterprise module solution versus best of breed.

By the way, and this is very important, your input to this decision, as a TA and HR leader, will be weighted by the overall cost of the combined organizational solution and decision. Don’t be confused and think you are an equal player in this decision. The reality is, we (HR/TA) are not, as our portion of this contract is peanuts compared to the rest. The CFO and CIO are the big players, so if you want leverage around what you need, make friends fast!

Final Thoughts:

Many of you will not be given a decision on the TA tech stack you are given. I find that unfortunate, but that is a reality at the enterprise level. HCM Recruiting Module, best of breed ATS, an Excel spreadsheet, they all work, if we make them work.

Workday has a tremendous partner network with some of the most advanced recruiting technology on the planet. You can build a great Workday TA stack. You can build a very strong Oracle TA stack. The key is getting the decision-makers to understand, no matter what system you choose, the core ATS is only the foundational piece, and each of us will have other pieces that we’ll need to add to that stack to make it most effective for our organization.

Those pieces will cost money, on top of the money that is spent on the foundational ATS. Try not to allow yourself to be handcuffed with a new ATS (at any level) and be told this is all you get. Modern-day recruiting and talent attraction take way more than just an ATS.

One last shoutout to Rob and the OnGig team – keep up the great work!

Finding Qualified Diverse Talent is NOT Your Issue!

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During 2020, I’ve spoken to a lot of leaders who are concerned with their diversity recruiting. Every single one of them will say something like, “Tim, we just can’t find the ‘qualified’ diverse talent we need!” Sound familiar? Feel familiar?

I’m not a diversity recruiting strategy expert. I leave that to my friend, Torin Ellis. I do think I’ve got a bit of knowledge when it comes to overall recruiting, though.

When I break down the response I get from most leaders, regarding diversity recruitment I usually have one cringe, and one response. “Qualified?” What do you mean by that? I hear it as, you can find plenty of diverse folks interested in coming to work for you, but none of them, or few of them, are actually qualified to work for you. Is that how you read/hear that?

It makes me cringe a bit because what you’re actually saying is we don’t have a supply problem, we have a training and development problem, but you don’t even realize that. You could have your perfect diverse mix of employees if you just invested a bit in training and developing these great hired into great employees. But, you don’t see the value in that, which makes me think you probably don’t see the value in a diverse workforce, to begin with.

What I actually say to them is this, “You don’t have a diversity recruiting problem. You have a diversity pay problem because finding diverse “qualified” talent is easy. Finding ones that will accept your job, culture, location, and/or average to low pay is really hard!” 

Finding talent has never been easier in the history of humanity. We have more technology and tools than ever before. Finding is easy. Recruiting is hard..

Successful recruiting takes some skill. A success recruiter will find the “qualified” diverse talent you are looking for and then they’ll do a few things:

  • They’ll get them interested first. They will make them feel desired and wanted by the organization. By the hiring manager. By the team. Being Desired is a powerful drug!
  • Next, they’ll discover what that talent actually desires in their career. Quickly, efficiently, like a sniper.
  • Then they’ll make a determination: 1. Are we going to meet those desires. or 2. We won’t meet those desires.
  • One, you obviously move on to screening, assessing, etc. Two, and you move on to giving something back to this person. “I can’t help you right now, but I’ve taken notes and if I have anything that ever comes close to meeting what you need, I’m going to contact you back.” 99% of recruiters will never say that to a potential candidate.

Honestly, about 25% of the time when you tell someone “I can’t help you, but…” they’ll actually state a desire to keep going. You taking the potential away will make some reveal they actually have an interest. Doesn’t mean you will still move forward, but it’s a nice outcome.

I can easily find you “qualified” diversity talent. Don’t think so, call me. I can find anyone. The problem we’ll run into is that some of that talent is rare and will cost a premium to get. It’s a simple economic proposition, you can buy talent or build talent. They each have their costs and benefits. I find most organizations claim they want to hire diverse talent, but aren’t doing what it will take to make it happen.

Breaking Down the 2020 @Jobvite Recruiter Nation Survey with @Kris_Dunn and @KellyWLavin

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(Project fans – sharing a podcast called The Best Hire Ever – this week I was on it with my buddy, Kris Dunn, and Jobvite’s Chief Talent Officer Kelly Lavin! Check it out!)

20 – Breaking Down the 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey – Kelly Lavin and Tim Sackett

In Episode 20 of BEST HIRE EVER, Kris Dunn breaks down the 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey from Jobvite with Kelly Lavin (SVP of Talent at Jobvite) and Tim Sackett. The survey is a leading piece of research on how recruiters are feeling and working annually, and this year’s release speaks volumes about how recruiters are feeling in the middle of COVID.  Serious stuff as well as recruiters use of IG and TikTok, as well as recruiter turn-offs when viewing candidates on social.

Please subscribe, rate, and review (Apple) and follow (Spotify) to get the latest delivered to you.  Click here if you don’t see the player below!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

2:40 – Kelly talks about her love for the HR Capitalist blog, etc. Kris wants to hear more. Tim doesn’t.

5:10 – Kelly breaks down the reason for the Recruiter Nation Survey – the reason for it, what is is and why it is important.

6:48 – KD talks about the survey size and the MARGIN OF ERROR – in a shoutout to an election year.

7:30 – The gang talks about the biggest downwards shifts in where recruiters are no longer spending their time and money during COVID (pipelining, time to hire, employer brand, candidate experience, and increasing retention rate). Wow. So much honesty in 2020.

13:55 – The gang talks about the upwards shifts in time spent and investment (managing layoffs and diversity hiring).  Kelly, KD, and Tim wonder why the focus on diversity hiring didn’t trend upward more.  Lots of honesty in the report from recruiters.

17:45 – Kelly, Tim, and Kris talk about what the survey says about video interviewing and where recruiters think candidates struggle with video interviews.  95% of recruiters think they are good at viewing interviewing. Tim thinks most of the recruiters think they are good at it because they’ve never been on the candidate side in a video interview.  Kelly breaks down the issues with eye contact in a video interview.

24:30 – Tim talks about where recruiters are spending their time via the survey – social media and LinkedIn. Tim hates it. He rightfully points to the candidate database and referrals as where the hires are.

25:55 – KD mocks the uptick in the use of Instagram and TikTok for recruiter purposes. Kelly learns about how KD gets the best TikTok videos in next to no time spent.  Kelly and Tim lead a real conversation about how TikTok might be used in a smart way by TA teams.

28:43 – KD leads a conversation from the survey results about the biggest “recruiter turnoffs” when viewing a candidate on social media (skin shots, use of pot, and of course – spelling errors. LOL).  Stalk much?

RESOURCES AND SHOW NOTES:

————Kelly Lavin, Jobvite and Tim Sackett

Kelly Lavin on Linkedin

Jobvite

The 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

————Kris Dunn

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

Kinetix

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Boss Leadership Training Series

Kris Dunn on Twitter

Kris Dunn on Instagram

What is the Perfect Diversity Mix for your Organization?

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This is a question I think many executives and HR and TA leaders struggle with. SHRM hasn’t come out and given guidance. ATAP has not told us at what levels we should be at with our diversity mix. So, how do we come up with this answer?

Seems like we should probably be roughly 50/50 when it comes to male and female employees. Again, that’s a broad figure, because your customer base probably makes a difference. If you’re selling products and services mostly women buy, you probably want more women on your team.

The more difficult mix to figure is when it comes to race. Should we be 50/50 when it comes to race in our hiring? Apple has taken it on the chin the last few years because of their demographic employee mix, and even as of this week, are still catching criticism for having only 1/3 of their leadership team is female, and only 17% of their entire team being black and Hispanic. 55% of Apple’s tech employees are white, 77% are male.

So, what should your diversity mix be?

The most recent demographics of race in America show this:

  • 61.3% are white
  • 17.8% are Hispanic/Latino
  • 13.3 are black
  • 4.8% Asian

Some other interesting facts about American race demographics:

  • 55% of black Americans live in the south
  • White Americans are the majority in every region
  • 79% of the Midwest is white Americans
  • The West is the most overall diverse part of America (where 46% of the American Asian population live, 42% of Hispanic/Latino, 48% of American Indian, 37% of multi-race)

So, what does this all mean when it comes to hiring a more diverse workforce? 

If 61.3% of the American population is white, is it realistic for Apple to hire a 50/50 mix of diversity across its workforce? I go back to my master’s research project when looking at female hiring in leadership. What you find in most service-oriented, retail, restaurants, etc. organizations are more male leaders than female leaders, but more female employees than male employees.

What I found was as organizations with a higher population of female employees hired a higher density of male employees as leaders, they were actually pulling from a smaller and smaller pool of talent. Meaning, organizations that don’t match the overall demographics of their employee base have the tendency to hire weaker leadership talent when they hire from a minority of their employee base, once those ratios are met.

In this case, if you have 70% female employees and 30% male, but you have 70% male leaders and only 30% female leaders, every single additional male you hire is statistically more likely to be a weaker leader than hiring from your female employee population for that position.

Makes sense, right!

If this example of females in leadership is true, it gives you a guide for your entire organization in what your mixes should be across your organization. If you have 60% of white employees and 50%, female. Your leadership team should be 60% of female leaders.

But!

What about special skill sets and demographics?

These throws are demographics off. What if your employee population is 18% black, but you can’t find 18% of the black employees you need in a certain skill set? This happened in a large health system I worked for when it came to nurse hiring. Within our market, we only had 7% of the nursing population that was black, and we struggled to get above that percentage in our overall population.

Apple runs into this same concept when it comes to hiring technical employees because more of the Asian and Indian population have the skill sets they need, so they can’t meet the overall demographics of their employee population, without incurring great cost in attracting the population they would need from other parts of the country to California.

Also, many organization’s leaders will say instead of looking at the employee base we have, let’s match the demographic makeup of the markets where our organizations work. At that point, you are looking at market demographics to match your employee demographics. Again, this can be difficult based on the skill sets you need to hire.

If I’m Apple, I think the one demographic that is way out of whack for them is female hiring. 50% of their customers are female. 77% of its employees are male, but only 33% of their leadership is female. It would seem to make demographic sense that 50% of Apple’s leadership team should be female.

Thoughts? This is a really difficult problem for so many organizations, and I see organizations attempting to get more ‘diverse’ in skin color without really knowing what that means in terms of raw numbers and percentages.

What are you using in your own shops?

The HR Technology Conference 2020 ReCap & Top HR Product Winners! #HRTechConf

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For the past decade or so, the HR Technology Conference has been one of the top conferences I attend every year! I’ve spoken and many covered all of them as a blogger or analyst, so when HR Tech went virtual for 2020, you knew I was going to check it out!

Let’s face it, virtual conferences are not the same as in person. It’s a very small percentage of folks I know who like virtual over in-person, so I think we are all hoping that HR Tech 2021 will be live in person back in Vegas! All that said, the HR Technology Conference team put a really good virtual event, using the technology platform Swapcard, and I’m sure some behind the scenes production.

The content was exactly what you normally expect from the HR Tech show – my buddy Steve Boese in a fancy suit, looking great, but from his living room, the keynotes this year were a little less big-name celebrities, and more inside baseball HR Nerd celebrities, which I loved (shout out to Josh Bersin, Stacey Harris, John Sumser, Stacia Garr, Jason Averbook, Dr. Tolonda Tolbert, Marcus Buckingham, Lisa Buckingham, and Ken Solon – go follow of these folks – super smart and they all share great stuff!).

Everyone did very well, but of course, once again, Marcus stole the show! He’s ridiculous, great speaker, sharing “wow” content is always a show stopper. This year, Marcus shared some new data from an ADP study on Resilience (and boy in 2020 do we need more resilience!).

Go check it out, turns out, those who go through more change tend to be more resilient. This seems to make sense, but yet we move mountains and constantly make dumb decisions in our organizations because we believe our employees can’t handle change! Also, age/generational differences have zero impact on resilience!

Who won the award for Top HR Product in 2020? 

-Accelerated Coaching and Scaled Mentoring Program

PILOT, New York, N.Y.

pilot.coach

-Dayforce Wallet

Ceridian, Minneapolis, Minn.

ceridian.com

-Fuel Marketplace

Fuel50, Laguna Niguel, Calif.

fuel50.com

-Language Learning Solution

GoFLUENT, New York, N.Y..

gofluent.com

-Manager-on-the-Go

Paycom, Oklahoma City, Okla.

paycom.com

 Microsoft Teams, Outlook Integration

iCIMS, Holmdel, N.J.

icims.com

-Moodtracker

Workhuman, Framingham, Mass.

workhuman.com

-Next Gen Pay

ADP, Roseland, N.J.

adp.com

-Opportunity Marketplace

Oracle, Redwood City, Calif.

oracle.com

-Paychex Flex Remote Workforce Enablement

Paychex, Rochester, N.Y.

paychex.com

-People Experience

Workday, Pleasanton, Calif.

workday.com

-Pluto

Pluto, New York, N.Y.

pluto.life

-Remote Hiring Solution

HackerRank, Mountain View, Calif.

hackerrank.com

-Skills Graph

Cornerstone OnDemand, Santa Monica, Calif.

cornerstoneondemand.com

-Workforce Insights

pymetrics, New York, N.Y.

pymetrics.ai

-WorkVue

Willis Towers Watson, London, U.K.

willistowerswatson.com

Very awesome list of winners and products as you look to 2021 you should be setting up demos to keep yourself up on what’s the next latest and greatest technology in the HR space!

Big shout out to the LRP team for pulling off a great virtual event, it’s not easy to do this right and you guys certainly did! Thanks, Steve Boese, Jeanne Achille, Tim Burke, and Elizabeth Clarke! Can’t wait until 2021!

The HR Technology Conference is going to do another virtual event in March – HR Tech Spring which is a free event, so go save your spot now!

Does Your Hiring Process Have Diversification Bias? (Diversifi-what!?!)

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One of the really great things that have happened in 2020 is the giant spotlight D&I has gotten in organizations, especially around hiring a more diverse workforce. Obviously, organizations have been working on this for a while, but with limited success.

What researchers are discovering is that many organizations might have “Diversification Bias” in their hiring process. What is Diversification Bias?

Diversification bias describes the tendency to choose more variety—to diversify—when making a simultaneous decision, and to choose less variety when making the same decisions sequentially.

For the non-technical definition, we tend to hire more diversity when we hire a bunch of people at one time, verse when we hire one person every once in a while.

This actually then gives a really good explanation around why so many organizations struggle to increase their diversity hiring because most of us don’t hire a bunch of people all at once. Most organizations have one opening for let’s say an Accountant. When that hiring manager goes to hire, they’ll most likely hire someone who is similar to them.

Now, if that same hiring manager was going to hire 3 Accountants, they are forced to look at that panel of hires and they’ll notice that everyone looks the same, thus increasing the chances they’ll offer positions to a more diverse set of candidates. I’m not saying that our traditional way of hiring is appropriate, in fact, it’s just another form of bias, it’s just a researched explanation of why this is happening.

How can we hire a more diverse and inclusive workforce? 

Let’s be honest for SMB organizations this will be difficult because you’ll never really have the headcount numbers to do any type of mass hiring, so SMBs have to have a special focus on each hire and why each decision is being made, if they want to move the needle. For larger organizations here are some tips:

1. Understand your turn over data by position and require hiring managers to hire in multiples verse one hire at a time.

2. Ensure you have a diverse and inclusive interview panel where every person on the panel has an equal vote.

3. Understand your market demographics by position and make the organization aware of where you are falling short. Great you increased your D&I hiring by 18%, but if it’s mostly in an area where you already had great diversity, you really haven’t done anything to solve your problem. Also, if your market demographics tell you that there are 15% diversity candidates in a certain segment, and you are meeting or exceeding that number, executives should know your successes. I find often executives will say, “well we need to be at 30%” without knowing what that really means for the skills you’re hiring.

Awareness and focus solve a lot of issues.

Here’s the reality. Some of your hiring managers believe that hiring a D&I candidate is a risk. They believe that a diversity hire won’t perform as well. Is that bad? Hell, yes! But it’s also reality. So, when they hire one person at a time, they are less willing to take a “risk”, in their eyes, on a diverse candidate. Again, that’s their Diversification Bias, among others, showing up.

We fight this battle on multiple fronts. We address biased hiring manager behavior when we know it’s happening, but we can also address it by changing our own processes and making it easier for hiring managers to make the right decisions.

The more you know.

1 Free Job Posting from @LinkedIn if You Read This Post!

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Pretty cool news coming out of LinkedIn this week! LinkedIn has made a few changes to help job seekers (#ImOpenToWork photo frames, Career Explorer, free skill courses, etc.) and also will be helping employers, especially SMBs, who need help connecting with this talent with FREE job posts! No, really, you don’t have to put a credit card or anything – no bait and switch!

Check out the video below…

How do we post that FREE job? 

Basically, if you’re a hiring manager, HR, TA, etc. and looking to hire, you just go and create a new job posting. You can find the job posting button by going to your main LinkedIn feed page, going to the upper right-hand corner, and clicking on “Work”. A drop down will show you a “Post a Job” button and you can click on that.

For SMBs who aren’t already using LinkedIn to post jobs, you will get one free job post to use. If you fill that job, you can post another. Basically, you get one free job to post at a time. If you are an enterprise LinkedIn user, you’ll get pushed into your account to post a job.

Once you add a job, you will be given the option to add the “Hiring” frame around your profile picture.

Check out this LinkedIn Blog post for additional details and links.

It’s pretty rare for an organization like LinkedIn to give away something so valuable for free! We know LinkedIn job postings work, we also know they can be quite expensive for SMBs to use.

I’m sure the cynics will say this is just another way LinkedIn is getting more people to use the platform and get addicted. Maybe! But, if it works, who cares! And, if it works and it’s free for an SMB to test, seriously, that’s a great thing! Take advantage!

Go post a job out on LinkedIn and then send me a note and let me know the results! I’m super interested to see how this works for everyone!