Category Archives: Technical Recruiting

Recruiting’s Silver Bullet

Posted on by
2

I don’t have a tattoo, but if I did it would say this:

“Pick Up The G*d Damn Phone!”

That’s it.  It would probably be one of those cool barbed wire kind of ones around my bicep, if I had biceps. Maybe I could even get it in another language so people would think it had some really deep thought or meaning.

I get asked weekly for advice on how to make ‘my’ recruiting department or shop better at recruiting.  I get asked advice on if they should have talent communities. Should they use one software, over another software.  Should they buy a LinkedIn seat or spend that money on a Facebook strategy.  I get asked if about every single tool imaginable that is sold to talent acquisition pros.

Every single Recruiting Pro I speak with wants to know the solution, the answer, the trick, to great recruiting.  Every. Single. One.

It’s not a trick, and it’s not hard.  It’s actually quite simple.  I tell them.  Then, they look at me, pause, and then they ask, “yeah, but what about…”

It’s a painful experience.  You see Talent Acquisition fails not because of the tools and processes, talent acquisition fails because the leadership in talent acquisition allows it to fail, because they want it to be something it’s not.  It’s not HR. It’s not sit at your desk and wait for magical software to deliver you magical candidates who magically want to come work for your company.

Talent Acquisition is sales. It’s about me talking you into something.  Like a car, but it’s not a car, it’s a job.  There a reasons you want the job, and reasons you don’t want the job, just like a car.  I have to convince you that you can really live with a green car, instead of a red car, because the green car is a better value or more reliable or something you’ll agree to.  Say hello to recruiting.

I know of one Silver Bullet in recruiting.  It’s as deadly today, as it was twenty years ago.  It’s called activity.  The recruiter with the most contacts will always fill more jobs over an extended period of time.  Bam!  It is that easy. And, that hard.

 

The #1 Technical Recruiting Firm In The World

Posted on by
Reply

I’m happy to announce that today that my company, HRU Technical Resources, is the #1 company in the world when it comes to Engineering and IT staffing!  Yay, me! Is that freaking awesome!!!  Wow, unbelievable, I’m so excited.  If you want to work with us, the #1 Technical Recruiting Firm in the World, just give me a call – 517-908-3156!

How’d we get that honor? Um, next question. We are #1!!!

Let’s face it, I’ve known for so long that my company is number one.  It’s pretty easy to see.  I have a rock star team of recruiters who get it at a level that far surpasses everyone else I’ve seen.  I have an Account Management and Biz Dev team that grinds every day, and my back office is full of chicks on mental steroids.  It’s always great when, not only are you recognized as number one, but when you truly deserve it as well.

My company has never gotten a position it couldn’t fill. True story.  Knows how to recruit socially and non-socially.  They literally breakdown walls in recruiting everyday.  I’m glad we decided to finally recognize ourselves for who we really are, the #1 Technical Recruiting Company in the World!

Have you really ever wondered how this stuff is measured?  Sometimes there are third party organizations that claim to be unbiased, but they only exist if those companies they are touting actually pay them some money to keep them in business.  Analyst really aren’t any different.  They do research, but at the end of the day, someone has to sponsor that research, or they can’t pay their bills.

I would say the only true measure of deciding who is better than whom would be if an organization is willing to work with you over your competition, but we know that is bogus.  Time and again I’ve run into companies who are working with #2 companies in our industry because they have a relationship, or they gave me tickets to see Katy Perry, or they drop off bagels the first Monday of every month.  This has nothing to do with who is better.

Sometimes it’s based on total revenue or number of hires, but that to doesn’t make you better, it just shows you’re bigger.  Our industry loves to use revenue as a key to success, then you’ll see staffing and RPO firms who are growing like weeds and losing money.  Is that success?  Well, yes, if you’re goal is to just buy market share.  I’m sorry but I can’t say a company is number one in anything if they’re losing money.

BusinessWeek had an article that helps straighten this all out:

“The organization in charge of policing this dispute and the several dozen like it in the U.S each year is the National Advertising Division. There are laws against publishing misleading advertisements, and in the early 1970s it seemed as if Ralph Nader-style consumer groups would result in more regulations. “There are ticking sounds that we hear in all the pressure groups, congressional hearings and other forums that are meeting to decide our fate,” said Victor Elting Jr., the chairman of the American Advertising Federation, at the time.

So the advertising industry founded the National Advertising Division in 1971. While various federal agencies and state attorneys general have authority to regulate misleading advertising, the division is the way for the industry to handle things before they get to that level. Cases often originate with one company complaining about a competitor’s sketchy claims. NAD holds hearings and asks fibbers to cut it out. While it has no enforcement power, it does have an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that it will look at any case in which the violator doesn’t change its ways. That threat is usually enough to keep companies in line.”

So, now you know, the NAD will let us know who’s number one.

Until then, I’m still happy to announce we are #1!

What is your Favorite Job Board?

Posted on by
Reply

Funny thing happened last week.  Glassdoor sent me one of those email surveys that companies send out. You know the ones – please fill this out, it only takes 5 minutes and if you do we’ll send $5 to cure dyslexia of Whales in the Eastern Arctic.   Of course I support Whale dyslexia so I did it.  Here is the first screen shot that came up:

Glassdoor surveyNotice anything interesting about the list of ‘Job Boards’?

Yep!  You caught it – LinkedIN everyone’s favorite job board 2.0 made the list.  I can honestly say, this is the first time I’ve ever seen LinkedIN (LI) described by another vendor as a Job Board.  I think that is telling to how LI’s competition are positioning themselves to go after some of that LI cash!

Beyond LI, CareerBuilder and Monster both have been working hard to shed the old Job Board tag as well.  No one wants to be known as a Job Board any longer.  Although, job boards still have a very valuable spot within the industry.

John Sumser, wrote a piece over at HR Examiner last week that describes this evolution brilliantly:

“The future of job boards is in competition with its customers some of the time. This isn’t really new, but we’ve forgotten that the core business model is a market of competing self-interests. While it is delightful to imagine a world where all candidates know about all jobs and vice versa, the reality is more mundane.

If you are a big brand (and there are 3,000 or 4,000 of those), the existing value of the company’s market awareness covers the cost of candidate acquisition. If, on the other hand, you are one of the several million brands no one has ever heard of, you have a different problem.

That’s where job boards come in. Companies that are expert in acquiring and aggregating audiences (not data) can help employers find workers. It turns out that this is an extremely valuable communications channel.

Where big brands are becoming their own distribution channels, little brands need help reaching the people they need. Job boards are less useful in the big enterprise game and way more useful everywhere else.”

One telling miss from the list?  What about Indeed?  Aren’t they the biggest job board of them all?  Also, is The Ladders still in business?  I haven’t heard form them in 2-3 years!

Revenge Hires

Posted on by
1

Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up!

From the land of Bad HR comes something I’ve only heard about as urban legend, the Revenge Hire!

A revenge hire is when someone hires a person to stick it to another person in their organization.  I can happen in a number of ways.  Here’s a few:

1. The Fired Re-hire:  This is when an employee gets fired by one leader, then another leader in the same organization hires that person back into a job that is almost exactly the same.  Usually this happens when the first leader and employee just had a major personality difference, and another leader saw real talent in the employee, and possibly, thinks the original leader is a tool.

2. The One Level Up Hire:  This is when your supervisor overrides your decision not to hire, and makes the decision to hire someone you didn’t want.  I’ve seen this happen within a department where the executive had a relative interview and the department manager didn’t want to offer, but was forced to hire the person anyway.  That always turns out really good in the end…

3. The HR Hire:  This is the one that just happened to me!  The one thing we know as HR Pros is, we really don’t ever hire anyone or fire anyone (unless it’s within our own department).  We do a whole lot of advising on hiring and firing, but ultimately it’s up to each leader to make these decisions.  Unless, there’s some sort of issue at play where HR is going to pull their ultimate legal trump card and make the call on their own.  This almost never happens!  For me, the manager wanted to hire one person, HR wanted to hire another person, the reason had to deal with some background issues with the managers person.  HR pulled their card, hired their person, the manager was not happy.  Ultimately it took about four weeks for the manager to sabotage the HR hire, then she went over HR’s head to an executive to make the hire she originally wanted to make.  Revenge hiring at its best!

Revenge hiring is like cancer. If you have it in your organization you need to cut it out immediately.  It’s not something a healthy organization can have.  As an HR Pro I always put a stop to it the moment I heard about it.  Each time it happens the leaders involved act like it’s totally something different and not a revenge hire.  They have to do this because the alternative should get them fired! It’s to think of a more unhealthy behavior from a leader within your organization.

What about you?  Any good revenge hire stories?

 

How Zappos Ruined Job Posts!

Posted on by
6

Zappos made a big splash last week announcing they were no longer going to post their jobs!  From this point forward, or as soon as they can get out of their legacy system, they’ll stop posting their open jobs.  Instead of the good ole post and pray strategy used by the majority of companies worldwide.  Zappos’s Talent Acquisition team will now only proactively search for candidates, build networks of possible candidates and always have a slate or ready candidates available for each hiring manager whenever they have a need arise.  Sounds like the same line we’ve been feeding all of our organizations for a long time, right!?!

The difference is, Zappos can actually do it, you can’t.  You see Zappos is a ‘one-percenter’.  They are one of the very few employment brands who don’t need to post their jobs to get candidates, they have more candidates than they can handle.  They have one of the most engaged employee bases known to man, who refer more great employees like themselves.  Zappos can kill job postings, because job postings, in their environment, actually make them less efficient!  Their Talent Acquisition team is smart and doing exactly what they should to kick their competition to the side – taking advantage of their greatest strengths!

I do wonder, though, isn’t Zappos very big public announcement of ‘killing job postings’ just one very, very big job post!  Ah, employment branding and marketing.  Silly rabbit.

Let’s be clear you are not Zappos.

While you’ll need to keep running your post and pray strategy, I do think there is something valuable to take away from Zappos’s new no job posts posting strategy.  Zappos has publicly shown all HR and Talent shops, you don’t really have to post your jobs!  “What!?! Yes, Tim!  Yes, we do!  You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about!”  Calm down, calm down.  There are a few shops around that will continue to be forced to run job postings do to government contracts, or other ‘contractual’ arrangements, I’ll give you that.  But there is nothing legal, for most employers, that forces you to run job postings.

Most employers can hire whomever they choose. It is a best practice to post jobs, internally and externally, to ensure you are pulling in a widely dispersed pool of candidates, and not opening yourself up to potential hiring biases, or even illegal hiring practices.  But most employers do not legally have to post a job.  And just because you post one job, doesn’t mean you have to post all of your jobs.  That is the big takeaway from what Zappos is doing.

Let’s face it.  Zappos’s operations is mainly a call center.  They sell shoes over the internet and on the phone.  They are customer service, and the best customer service job option known to man.  They are in Vegas which has thousands of crappy customer service jobs.  If you’re good at customer service in Vegas,  you’ll eventually want to work at Zappos.  They have no need in posting call center jobs!!!

You probably have similar issues.  When I worked at a large health system we had no need to post openings for cafeteria workers and lower level positions.  We had people contacting us daily wanting those jobs.  Yet, every time we had an opening, we would post the job and have to deal with hundreds of applicants.  Our ‘legal’ department made us do this.  It was do ‘reduce’ potential risk, of which, was almost zero to begin with!  It was stupid.  It made us do more work.  It wasn’t needed.

Zappos has put the entire Talent Acquisition industry on notice.  To stop doing stupid stuff, like posting jobs you don’t need to post.   If you think you can get away with not posting any of your jobs, well, good luck to that.  You’re not Zappos!

The micro-blog post, after the blog post:

You know what really pisses me off about this announcement from Zappos!?  For the next 3 years I’m going to have to go to conferences and listen to people like Stacy Zapar and Mike Bailen tell us how Zappos is changing the recruiting world! Ugh! More Zappos HR conference speakers…didn’t we already go through this with them?  Oh, yeah, I wrote about it, like three years ago and Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, actually commented on the blog post – that was really cool!  Check it out here!  How Zappos Ruined HR! 

P.S. Stacy and Mike if you guys ever want to speak together at a conference just let me know – I’m willing to ride that Zappos gravy train out with you for the next three years!

Would You Pay A Candidate To Interview?

Posted on by
4

Last week I got my ass handed to me for daring to consider that those who interview with a company, should pay for interview feedback.  Not just normal interview feedback, like thanks, but no thanks, but something really good and developmental.  Most people think that idea is bad.  Interview feedback should be free.  It’s not that I really want to charge people who interview a fee to get feedback, it’s just I think we could do so much better in terms of candidate experience, but we have to get out of our current mindset to shake things up a bit.

This all leads me to the next idea (hat tip to Orrin Konheim @okonhOwp) what if companies paid interviewees for their time?

Cool, right!?

We’ve built this entire industry on shared value.  Organizations have jobs, candidates want jobs, let’s all do this for free.  What happens when the equation isn’t equal?  What if candidates didn’t want your jobs?  Could you get more people to come out an interview if you paid them?  How much would it be worth?  It’s a really cool concept to play around with, if we can get out of our box for a bit.

Let’s say you’re having a really, really hard time getting Software Developer candidates to even consider your jobs and your organization.  It’s a super tough market, and you just don’t have a sexy brand.  You also don’t have the time to build a sexy brand, you need the talent now!  How much would it take to entice great candidates to give you an hour?  $100? $500? $1,000?  What if I told you I could have your CIO interviewing 5 top Software Developers tomorrow for 5 hours for $5,000?  Would you do it?

I hear the backlash of questions and concerns already forming in your head!

– People would just take the money, but not really want the job!

– How would you know these people were serious?

– Why would you pay to have someone interview when others will for free?

– Did you get hit on your head as a child?

– This might be the dumbest idea since your idea last week.

When we think about really having a great candidate experience, shouldn’t compensation be a apart of the conversation.  For most interviews you’re asking someone to take time off work, losing salary, time off, putting themselves at risk of their employer finding out, etc.  At the very least, you would think that we might offer up some kind of compensation for their time.  I’m not talking about interview expenses, but real cold hard cash, we appreciate your time and value it!

If you started paying candidates to interview, do you think you would get and have better or worse interviews?

When you put value to something, i.e., an interview, people tend to treat it as such.  Now that interview that they might go, might not go, becomes something they have to prepare for, because, well, someone is paying me to do this.  To interview.  I’m guessing if you paid your candidates to interview, you would get a higher level of candidate, and have a higher level of success in hiring.  It’s just a theory, wish I had the recruiting budget to test it out!

3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates

Posted on by
1

I’ve noticed a run on ‘Highly Effective’ list posts lately!  It seems like everyone has the inside scoop on how to be highly effective at everything! Highly Effective Leaders. Highly Effective Managers. Highly Effective Productive People. Highly Effective Teacher.  If you want a post worth clicking on, just add an odd number, the words ‘highly effective’ and a title.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!):

– The 5 Highly Effective Habits of Crackheads!

– The 7 Highly Effective Traits of Lazy Employees!

– The 13 Highly Effective Ways To Hug It Out at Work!

Blog post writing 101.  The highly effective way to write a blog post people will click on and spend 57 seconds reading.

I figured I might as well jump on board with some career/job seeker advice with the 3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates!

1. They don’t pick up on normal social cues.  This means you don’t know when to shut up or start talking.   Most annoying candidates actually struggle with the when to stop talking piece.  Yes, we want to hear about your job history. No, we don’t care about your boss Marvin who managed you at the Dairy Dip when you were 15.

2. They live in the past. Usually, annoying candidates are annoying because they were annoying employees and like to share annoying stories about how great it was in the past, when they weren’t thought of as annoying.  I guess you can’t blame them. If there was ever a possibility they weren’t annoying, I’d probably try and relive those moments as much as possible.

3. They lack a shred of self-insight.  That’s really the core, right?  If you had any self-insight, you would understand you’re just a little annoying and you would work to control that, but you don’t.  “Maybe some would say spending a solid ten minutes talking about my coin collection in an interview wouldn’t be good, but I think it shows I’m passionate!” No, it doesn’t.

You can see how these highly effective habits start to build on each other.  You don’t stop rambling on about something totally unrelated to the interview because you don’t notice Mary stopped taking notes ten minutes ago and started doodling on her interview notes, but you plow on because you told yourself during interview prep to make sure you got out all of your bad manager stories.

Highly effective annoying candidates are like a Tsunami of a lack of emotional intelligence.  Even if I was completely unqualified for a job I think the feedback afterwards from the interviewers would be: “we really liked him, too bad he doesn’t have any the skills we need.”   Highly effective annoying candidates have the opposite feedback: “if this person was the last person on earth with the skills to save our company, I would rather we go out of business!”

What annoying candidate habits have you witnessed?

HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26

Posted on by
2

If you clicked over to read Dirty Little Secret #26 and you’re looking for numbers 1 – 25, hold tight, I haven’t written those yet.  I just like picking random numbers for posts because they work, and I believe HR has at least 26 Dirty Little Secrets.  This is just one.  I’m not really ranking them.  Number 26 could be as bad or worse than number 1.  I’ll let you decide when they’re all done.

So, what is HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26?

“We check secondary references, without you knowing, all the time!”

First let me give you the line 100% of all HR Pros will give to you and all employees, all the time.  “We do not give references.  We will only give you employment verification, which includes dates of employment. Thank you.”

You’ve heard that, right?

One of HR’s most dirty little secrets is that we give out references all the time!!!  Especially, if you’re a terrible employee!  We just don’t do it publicly.  The Chairman of JetBlue Airlines, Joel Peterson, wrote a blog post on LinkedIn (first, I doubt highly he wrote it, but his PR team did a nice job with the series) titled “Top 10 Hiring Mistakes, #5 Lazy Reference Checking”, where he gives advice about checking secondary references.  Secondary references are those references that a candidate didn’t give you, but you have through your own connections. His advice was awful, but he’s a public figure, he had to give it.  He said you should always let the candidate know you’ll be checking secondary references so they can reach out and let those people know.

First, thanks for the tip Joel, but that never happens. Never.  Plus, why would I want to give away the one unfiltered piece of the selection process I can get!? You don’t!

Here’s reality.  If you interview for a position, you should assume that someone in the organization is checking secondary references behind your back.  It’s easy to do.  I call up a buddy who works at your current, or old organization,  we talk, catch up on our favorite teams, crazy employees we both know, etc. Then, she let’s me know if you’re a train wreck or not.  Of course, she also first says, “Tim, you know we can’t give references.” Then she says, “Off the record, your candidate is a psycho path!”  End of secondary reference.

You think I’m joking.  It happens just like that, and it happens every. single. day.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, the secondary reference actually comes back positive.  You get more of an unfiltered references than you get by checking the ‘given references’ a candidate provides to you as part of your process.  Given References are completely worthless.  I don’t even waste my time checking given references.  If someone can’t find three people who think they walk on water, they’ve got bigger problems.

If you’re going to do ‘given references’ because you can’t talk the old white guys in your leadership out of it, because it makes them feel all warm, fuzzy and comfortable, at least talk them into automating this process.  Chequed is a company that does it better than anyone, and it will totally take this worthless activity off your back. Plus, Chequed has shown that people who fill out an automated reference check, even a given reference, will be more honest about a person’s actual strengths and weaknesses.  I’m a fan of their science. (FYI – they didn’t pay to say that, although, they should!)

I won’t ask what HR Pros think about this, because they’ll mostly lie and say they don’t do this.  That’s why it’s my HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26.

The Organization With the Most Expensive Selection Mistakes is?

Posted on by
2

The NFL.  This Thursday that NFL will perform their annual selection process on ESPN, with their annual draft.  Just like you, they have no idea what they’re doing, but act like they figured out the secret sauce to great selection.  The big difference between you and the NFL, their mistakes costs them a lot more money!  Check out this chart from BI on the NFL Draft Guaranteed Contracts:

NFL draft

This chart basically shows you that the best, or highest, first round pick will get about $22 million guaranteed, while the lower third round picks will get $600k in guaranteed money over the life of their contract.

How would you like that level of possible expense in your selection process!?

All that money, all that time, all that research, and the NFL draft is still basically a crap shoot.  The pick people, like you pick people.  “Well, we really like Johnny’s football IQ and he just seems so personable! What the hell, let’s pay him $15M!”

What!?!

“Well, we know his ‘past performance’ in college.  We know all his ‘performance metrics’.  We gave him a personality profile.  We ‘feel’ like he’s a safe bet and potential high performer.”

It’s really not that different from you picking a $50,000 per year sales professional.   Many organizations put as much into their hiring selections, as the NFL puts into picking their draft selections.  Obviously, the NFL has more resources to throw at their process, so they probably have a few more bells and whistles.  But, they have no more success than you.  The ones who do the best, like you, are not only concerned about the ‘big’ hires/selections – your executive hires, their high first and second round draft picks, but put as much research and resources into each hire.  Making a great selection in the 7th round might be as valuable, long term, as making a great first round selection.  Just as you making a great entry level sales hire, might be as valuable, or more, to making a really solid Director level hire.

The learning on all of this?  You can’t take hires off.  There are no ‘throw away’ hires, just as their are no throw away draft picks for great NFL teams.

3 Ways to Kill Comparison Interviews

Posted on by
2

I had a great candidate interview yesterday with a client!  This person is completely money!  Close the search, game over.  Just make the offer and pay me.

Then ‘it’ happens.

Client: “Tim, we loved her!  She is perfect!  I can’t believe you guys found her!”

Me: “Awesome. Pay me!”

Client: “Well, the hiring manager would like to just see one more person so she has a comparison, before making an offer.”

Me: “You’re looking for a female Environmental Safety Engineer with an Electrical Engineering background!  I found you the only person on the planet with that profile!  You want another?!”

Client: “Yeah, we just need something to compare her to.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll send over the recruiter who found her and we’ll tell her to talk like an engineer.”

How many times have you had a hiring manager do this to you?  It sucks!  It’s hard to get them to change their mind.  Usually, what happens is it takes you weeks to find another even remotely qualified candidate, as compared to you rock star, and by then your rock star gets pissed off, or cold feet and tells you to go fly a kite!  Opportunity lost!

Comparison Interviews are garbage.  The only way to stop them, is to combat the mindset before the words even come out of the hiring managers mouth.  Here are three things you can do today to stop hiring managers from wanting to do a comparison interview:

1.  Combat the conversation by setting up another interview with another candidate before they even ask, without asking for permission.  “Hey, Jill, we have that really great candidate you liked on paper coming in Wednesday at 1pm, I also set up another candidate for 3pm who was really the next best we could find. I’ll get the paper resume to you before she shows.”

2. Create a higher sense of urgency.  “Jill, you said she’s a rock star, let’s offer now before someone else has a chance to get her before we can.  I know someone of her quality has other options, we can’t look wishy washy on this, if we want talent like this!”

3. Define what ‘great talent’ is before the interview.  Then, when you see ‘great talent’ there is no need for a comparison.  “Jill we hire great talent, that talent by our definition is great talent.  If we find more great talent, we’ll hire that as well.  What do you want me to make the offer at?”

More hires are lost to comparison interview timing, than to counter offers.  We all think we are going to lose a great candidate to counter offers, but the reality is, they don’t happen often, and recruiters have gotten good about preparing candidates for those.  Recruiters aren’t prepared for comparison interviews and the process dragging on for weeks!  The market is quickly changing from where it has been over the past 10 years.  We went almost a decade where hiring managers could take their time and drag out our process. That behavior now costs you the best talent.

Kill the comparison interview mentality now, or it’s going to kill your talent pool!