7 Words Mathematically Proven To Get You More Hires!

Wired recently worked with OkCupid and Match.com to find out which words were used on the most popular dating profiles on their sites.  Millions of data points were done for this data analysis and they came up with the most popular 1000 words.  What they came up with were the exact words to use in your profile descriptions to get the most clicks.  I’m going to take this one step further and say if these words attract singles to another single, I’m quite certain they would attract a job seeker to a job.  My theory being singles are also job seekers.  Okay, I hear you, just because some words might attract one person to another person doesn’t mean those same words will attract a person to a job – but it might.

It is my belief that we can totally re-write Job Descriptions in a way that is a lot less HR’ish, and much more real, which will make more people want to work in the jobs you have.  My good friend, Kris Dunn, is a master at this over at Kinetix (click through to see some of KD’s work). Here is another one I put together when I was hiring a Recruiter for my staff.   The positive is, it lets us in HR get our ‘creative on’.

Let ‘s give it a shot. I’ll give you 7 categories of words that were mathematically proven to get more dates hires:

1. Active Words: Yoga, Surfing, Surf, hiking, athlete, etc. These words were popular because people want to be associated with things that are good for them. Do you highlight active things you do at your organization in your job descriptions?

2. Pop Culture Words: 30 Rock, The Great Gatsby, Homeland, Arrested Development, The Matrix, The Big Bang Theory, The Hunger Games, etc.  People want to work with an organization that has a personality.  Pop culture references in your JD give you a personality.

3. Music Words: (FYI – some of these could also be considered Pop Culture) – Radiohead, Nirvana, live music, guitar, instruments, etc .Does your organization have a musical preference? Why not?  Maybe you’re a little country, maybe you’re a little rock and roll, either way, it’s alright to let candidates know!

4. Calm Words: Ocean, meditation, beach, trust, respect, enjoy, planning, dedication, openness, etc. Words that project a feeling of safety and security. In today’s employment marketplace, don’t discount the value of your jobs based on how calm and secure the work is.  Anxiety is at an all-time high.  Having the ability to say “we’ve never laid off in our history!” could pay you huge dividends.

5. Food Words: Chocolate, cooking, foodie, pizza, sushi, breakfast, etc. Food is a gathering and sharing point in most cultures.  If you do food related things in your work environment it brings all of your people together. Everyone eats. Not everyone will do Yoga or want to watch movies.  Chili cook-offs, company happy hours, Donut Fridays, etc.

6. Descriptive Words: Creative, motivated, confident, driven, passion, awareness, etc. Most HR pros see JDs as a means to an end.  They’re a legal necessity.  We should be looking at them as mini-commercials for our jobs.  I would love to see a company go full video JD – nothing written, just watch our Job Description. 60 seconds of someone telling you what this job is.

7. Spontaneous Words: Tattoos, F*ck, wasted, kissing, puppies, sucking, lucky, etc.  Words that most people would never expect to see in a JD.  This word has absolutely no usefulness in a JD – that’s exactly why we put it in there.  It might not attract an older conservative candidate, but it might be just what a newer generation is looking for.

I’ve never met a senior executive that had a problem with any job description I wanted to write – not matter how bland or how crazy.  That being the case, why do we continue to write JDs that put people to sleep?

 

 

 

Bad Hires Worse

I wrote this 2 years ago.  It still rings true.  I still need to be reminded of this.  I still run into examples of this monthly. Enjoy.

If I could take all of my HR education, My SPHR and 20 years of experience and boil it down to this one piece of advice, it would be this:

Bad Hires Worse.

In HR we love to talk about our hiring and screening processes, and how we “only” hire the best talent, but in the end we, more times than not, leave the final decision on who to hire to the person who will be responsible to supervise the person being hired – the Hiring Manager.   I don’t know about all of you, but in my stops across corporate America, all of my hiring managers haven’t been “A” players, many have been “B” players and a good handful of “C” players.  Yet, in almost all of those stops, we (I) didn’t stop bad hiring managers from hiring when the need came.  Sure I would try to influence more with my struggling managers, be more involved – but they still ultimately had to make a decision that they had to live with.

I know I’m not the only one – it happens every single day.  Everyday we allow bad hiring managers to make talent decisions in our organizations, just as we are making plans to move the bad manager off the bus.   It’s not an easy change to make in your organization.  It’s something that has to come from the top.  But, if you are serious about making a positive impact to talent in your organization you can not allow bad managers to make talent decisions.  They have to know, through performance management, that: 1. You’re bad (and need fixing or moving); 2. You no longer have the ability to make hiring decisions.  That is when you hit your High Potential manager succession list and tap on some shoulders.  “Hey, Mrs. Hi-Po, guess what we need your help with some interviewing and selection decisions.”  It sends a clear and direct message to your organization – we won’t hire worse.

Remember, this isn’t just an operational issue – it happens at all levels, in all departments.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is look in the mirror at our own departments.  If you have bad talent in HR, don’t allow them to hire (“but it’s different we’re in HR, we know better!” – No you don’t – stop it).   Bad hires worse – over and over and over.  Bad needs to hire worse, they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to protect themselves, they make bad decisions – they are Bad.  We/HR own this.  We have the ability and influence to stop it.  No executive is going to tell you “No” when you suggest we stop allowing our bad managers the ability to make hiring decisions – they’ll probably hug you.

It’s a regret I have – something I will change.  If it happens again, I won’t allow it.  I vow from this day forward, I will never allow a bad hiring manager to make a hiring decision – at least not without a fight!

Job Seekers Still Mostly Offline!

I was sent some research recently from Whale Path, a business research company, that was looking at how employers really find their employees.  What they found might surprise many within the Talent Acquisition space.  Their research found that a majority of employees under the medium U.S. wage scale (around $50k per year) actually found their jobs offline!

Does this jive with your hiring?

Here are some of the actual stats from their research:

– Only 7% of jobs paying $25 per hour or less are filled through online sources

– Personal referrals account for 46% of hires for positions paying less than U.S. median income, up from 41% in 2008

– Craigslist was cited by more than half of businesses as a low-cost resource for finding employees.

We tend to believe everyone is online.  We then believe since they are online, they must be looking for jobs online.  Do you know why you believe this?You’ve been told to believe this, over, and over, and over, through great marketing by companies who are selling online hiring solutions.  We see Monster.com and CareerBuilder ads on the Superbowl.  We are bombarded with emails daily about easy, fast ,cheap hiring solutions.  We see constant media reports about the growth of LinkedIn.  We are told everyone will be searching for a job on their phone, you MUST have a mobile solution. Yet, we don’t actually know anyone personally who applied and got a job on their phone.  We are conditioned to believe everyone must be searching for a job online.  Marketing is so strong, you don’t even know it’s happening to you.

But they aren’t.  At least millions and millions and millions of our potential employees aren’t searching for job online.

They’re finding jobs like your grandparents found jobs.  They are networking, they’re letting their friends and family know they’re looking, they’re letting the members of their church and synagogue know they’re looking, they’re letting their bowling buddies know they’re looking.  Eventually, someone refers them to a job, and they get hired.  We tend to thing we’re all just trying to hire professionals for $100K jobs, but we aren’t.  Most of the hiring done in the U.S. is for positions under $50K, and most of your budget is being spent on tools that don’t attract these individuals.  Individuals that don’t need a resume, they just need to fill out an application, because they have people who will vouch for their skills.

Interesting research, much of it we don’t normally focus on.  What are you spending your hiring budget on today?

How To Pay A Headhunting Fee in 15 Easy Steps

I hear statements like this all the time: ‘Ugh, I don’t want to pay a headhunting fee!’ I know this is because corporate HR folks think that it’s really hard to do, but I’m hear to show you that it isn’t hard!  In fact, in 15 easy steps, I’ll show you how you can do this all the time!

Here are the 15 Easy Steps in Paying a Headhunting Fee:

1. Post all of your jobs and wait for applications/resumes to come into your email and/or ATS.

2. Weed out as many candidates as possible for stuff that doesn’t really matter, like: too many jobs, not enough time at a job, going to the ‘wrong’ school or not high enough GPA, working for a company that was too big or too small, making a grammatical error on the resume, not living in the ‘right’ area, etc.

3. Email the few candidates you have left with a message about their interest level and make them fill out stuff like applications and questionnaires to be considered for the next step.

4. Wait for email replies.

5. Send the 2 that reply as your ‘best candidates’ onto the hiring manager. 7 others reply after, ignore these, they weren’t quick enough to be the ‘best’ candidates.

6. Don’t follow up with the hiring manager on the two candidates you sent.  If she is interested, she’ll get back to you.

7. Don’t respond to candidates following up looking for feedback on next steps, you want to keep the power position in this arrangement.

8. Send another email to hiring manager after two weeks looking for feedback on original candidates you sent.  Hiring manager won’t like the two, wants more candidates.  You go out and see who else has posted for the position in the past week (forget about those other 7 who first applied, they are old by now).  Send 5 additional emails to the new candidates. 1 replies. Send to hiring manager.

9. Let Hiring Managers return calls go to voice mail, you know they just want to complain about the quality and lack of candidates. Call her back end of business tomorrow. She’s already gone for the day.

10. Hiring manager comes to your office. Crap. They caught you. You tell the manager you’ve been working non-stop on their opening, the three candidates are the best you can come up with.

11. Hiring manager goes back to their office. I call your hiring manager.  She tells me she can’t get any good candidates.

12. Hiring Manager sets up their own interviews.  Three days later, if not sooner, I send your hiring manager 5 candidates all capable of doing the job.  I call your hiring manager to highlight two of the candidates who I feel would be the best fit for your organization.

13. Hiring manager picks a favorite from the great interviews they just had.  I’ve pre-closed both on an offer, so I’m what they call in the business, a ‘sure-thing’.

14. Hiring manager calls you and tells you they found a candidate through an outside source.

15. You process my invoice.

See, it’s really not that hard to pay a headhunting fee, in fact, you practically don’t have to do much of anything!   Just keep doing what you’re doing.

 

Hire More Pretty People

This post originally ran in January of 2012, and in one of the most read posts I’ve done.  It as so popular, Kris Dunn, stole the idea, tweaked it, and made it his most downloaded whitepaper in Kinetix history!  You’re Welcome, KD.  After 2 years, I still find this concept has merit! It’s also very close to how Hitler’s Germany started! Enjoy.

What do you think of, in regards to smarts, when I say: “Sexy Blond model type”?

What about: “Strong Athletic Jock?”

What about: “Scrawny nerdy band geek?”

My guess is most people would answer: Dumb, Dumb, Smart – or something to that context.

In HR we call this profiling – and make no mistake – profiling – is done by almost all of our hiring managers.  The problem is everything we might have thought is probably wrong in regards to our expectations of looks and brains.  So, why are ugly people more smart?

They’re Not!

Slate recently published an article that contradicts all of our ugly people are more smart myths and actually shows evidence to the contrary. From the article:

 Now there were two findings: First, scientists knew that it was possible to gauge someone’s intelligence just by sizing him up; second, they knew that people tend to assume that beauty and brains go together. So they asked the next question: Could it be that good-looking people really are more intelligent?

Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains. Most recently, the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa pulled huge datasets from two sources—the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom (including 17,000 people born in 1958), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States (including 21,000 people born around 1980)—both of which included ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on standard intelligence tests.

When Kanazawa analyzed the numbers, he found the two were related: In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size.

That’s right HR Pros – Pretty people are smarter.  I can hear hiring managers and creepy executives that only want “cute” secretaries laughing all over the world!

The premise is solid though!  If you go back in our history and culture you see how this type of things evolves:

1. Very smart guy – gets great job or starts great company – makes a ton of money

2. Because of success, Smart guy now has many choices of very pretty females to pursue as a bride.

3. Smart guy and Pretty bride start a family – which results in “Pretty” Smart Children

4. Pretty Smart Children grow up with all the opportunities that come to smart beautiful families.

5. The cycle repeats.

Now – first – this is a historical thing – thus my example of using a male as our “Smart guy” and not “Smart girl” – I’m sure in today’s world this premise has evolved yet again. But we are talking about how we got to this point, not where are we now.  Additionally, we are looking at how your organization can hire better.  So, how do you hire better?  Hire more pretty people.

Seems simple enough. Heck, that is even a hiring process that your hiring managers would support!

Recruiting without actually doing it

Most recruiters believe they are actually recruiting.

They ensure they have well written job descriptions.

They have a great process set up to screen applicants.

They’ve gone out and chosen the best pre-employment assessments for their organizations.

They implemented an awesome new applicant tracking system.

They’ve posted their opening on their careers page of their organizations website.

They’ve contracted out with the best background screening company.

They’ve done everything but pick up a phone and talk to someone…

You see recruiting is a lot like painting a picture.   Of course you have to have canvas, and paints, and brushes, but mainly you need to start painting.  In recruiting all you really need to have is one contact to contact.  That’s how it starts. You turn one contact into another, repeat. All the other stuff is great, but it’s not recruiting.  Although, it’s what most recruiters will tell you recruiting is.

The hard part of recruiting, is actually recruiting.

 

External Hires Are Sexier

It was announced last night that the University of Southern California (USC) will hire the University of Washington’s head coach, and former USC assistant, Steve Sarkisian.  It was been an up-and-down season for USC who fired their head coach, Lane Kiffin, halfway through the season after starting 3 -2.  Kiffin was replaced by current assistant coach Ed Orgeron, who then took the team and went 6-2 the rest of the season after taking over for Kiffin.  The players wanted Orgeron to get the head coaching job.  USC’s athletic director decided to go outside the program to find his next head coach, despite Orgeron’s success.

I know, I know, you thought you were coming to read about HR stuff – well you are – kind of!

Doesn’t this sound familiar to you?  Not the coaching and football stuff, but how the decision was made to hire?

Here you have someone internally who has been loyal and successful, and instead of giving that person the promotion, the organization decides that an external person, who really hasn’t proven anything (in this case Sarkisian has been marginally successful at the University of Washington).  This just doesn’t happen with football coaches at big universities, this happens at every level of organizations all over the world!

The fact of the matter is, external hires are sexier!

It’s a weird organization dynamic that takes place.  Internal people become idiots, external people are genius.  Why do you think your organization pays big bucks to bring in consultants to basically tell you to do things you already knew you needed to do, and have been trying to get your organization to do?  It’s because you’ve hit ‘idiot’ status in your organization – which means, you’ve been there over a year, and are no longer considered and external genius!

I see it constantly when I go and consult in the Talent Acquisition field.  I’ll go and talk with the rank and file workers who are doing the work each and every day.  I’ll then go and talk to the executives.  The rank and file know what needs to be done, the executives don’t thing their people have a clue, and the big miss is usually the executive who is unwilling to give his or her team the resources needed to make the change.  That is until I tell them that is what is needed, then all of sudden ‘my’ ideas, the same ideas the team already knew needed to be done, are ‘genius’!

How do you combat this phenomenon?  You have two routes:

1. Quit every 12 months and move to a new company to regain your sexy status.

or

2. Don’t make your ideas your own.  We get caught up in wanting ‘our’ ideas to be what we do.  If you know you’ve reached ‘idiot’ status in your organization, this will work against you, because your ideas will be considered worthless.  Show your executives who else in the industry have tried this and how it went.  Give examples of companies outside your industry having success with it.  Best of all, show how your competition has had success with something.  Make you idea, someone else’s idea, someone more sexier than you!

Remember, you’re not alone in feeling this way.  It’s very common for organizations to believe external hires, thus their ideas and beliefs, are much sexier than you.  It doesn’t mean you need to give into this belief, you just need to show you can be more savvy about how you move things through your organization.  Also, be positive about using the influence a new sexy hire has.  They have this brief window of being a genius, find out ways to work with them to use this fading power!  Soon they’ll be an idiot like you.

 

Candidate Experience Isn’t a Real Product

I love watching really good comics.  Sarah Silverman has a new special on HBO called “We Are Miracles” it’s brilliantly funny in the way where she makes her self laugh at some of the things she is saying.  I love that.  I find it funnier when the comic finds themselves funny, not fake funny, but naturally tickled at what they are thinking and saying out loud.  There is one part in the special where she talks about a product that is being marketed to women for a certain kind of odor, in areas we don’t talk about on family blogs like this.  She describes how these odor fighting products, marketed directly at women, going after their worst fears, aren’t really products.  We think they are because we see the commercials and someone holding a can in their hands and talking on TV, I mean it has to be real, it’s on TV!

But they aren’t.  There is no real need for this product. Women can use soap and water, like they use on the rest of their body.  As Sarah says, if you do that, your normal washing, and you still sense an odor, you don’t need a ‘perfume’ spray, you need a doctor!

This is exactly how I feel about Candidate Experience.  It’s not a real product.

We think it is because we have really smart folks telling us it is.  These same folks make their living off of consulting to companies who have unrealized fears of a candidate having a bad experience and then those candidates no longer wanting to use or buy their products and services.  This is made up.  This is private parts deodorant.

Here is what Candidate Experience is built upon:

1. At some point an executive had their sister’s kid, a niece or nephew of the executive, apply for a job with the company online.  Your system/process did what is was suppose to do, it weeded out this crappy candidate, sent them the “Dear John” letter, and that was it.  But it wasn’t!

2. Executive hears from her sister that her daughter Mary, a brilliant child, was not selected and not even given an interview, in fact there was no human interaction at all!

3. Executive has to save face with family.  Comes down hard on Talent Acquisition leader about how can we treat our candidates like this!

This is how Candidate Experience was born.  A niece not getting hired.

The executive not wanting to make this ‘about herself’ comes up with other reasons, and all the sheep follow along.  “We need to treat all candidates like we treat our customers!  We need to make candidates advocates of our products and services.  We need to treat candidates this better than we treat each other because it’s a competitive advantage for talent.”  And we begin to buy into the rhetoric.  We begin to believe that we have an odor, that what we’ve been doing is bad.  Our worst fears, that a candidate who feels they have a bad experience will stop using our products, is so overplayed it’s actually funny when you stop and actually think about it!  You will have candidates who feel they are great, you won’t, they’ll get upset and not like your company.  That is life in Talent Acquisition.  A minute percentage will think this way, and there is nothing you’ll ever be able to do about it!

The reality is, for the vast majority of Talent Acquisition Leaders, what we’ve been doing is just fine.  We treat our candidates like normal humans, we communicate with them if we feel they fit or not, and the process works.  Sure, some of us, have some bad processes, or parts of processes that need to be fixed.  But we don’t have an odor problem.  The biggest lie that is perpetuated in the Human Resource Industry is that Candidate Experience is important.  The reality is candidates have extremely low expectations when it comes to applying for a job.  All they really want and need is to know that you saw their application and/or resume, and do you feel they would be a fit or not.  That’s it!  Treat them like normal humans.  Give them enough respect to communicate with them the next step: 1. Thank you, but no thanks we have some better fitting candidates, try again next time; 2. We’re interested, here is step #2.

It’s not hard.  You don’t need to spend time and money on this.  You don’t have a real problem. I know you think you do, so many people are telling you so, so it must be real.  But it’s not, it’s private parts deodorant!

 

 

Snapchat Video Resumes

I hear the all the kids love Snapchat!  Okay, I’ve been hearing this for over a year now, but never really found any reason to write about the product.  I even downloaded the App and tried it out.  I still don’t seem to have a need.  I’m an adult.  Unless I’m doing something I shouldn’t, there is no need for me to have a message that self destructs in 1 to 10 seconds.  I guess it might be something to give your managers who love to say inappropriate things to their staff, but then you’re encouraging them to say and do inappropriate things!

Even though I don’t get it, doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea.  It just means I’m old.  I mean the dude who stole the idea developed the idea just turned down a $3 Billion offer to be bought!  I’m sure the kids will keep using it, that was probably a good call.  Kids never give up on an App, and move on to something else every 27 seconds…

The way blogging works is you have to beat the millions of other bloggers to market with your idea.  They then steal your idea and write it up as if it was their own brilliant idea.  So, I’m hear to share with you the next great HR/Talent Acquisition idea for the last 30 days of 2013!  Snapchat Video Resumes!  Please don’t tell HireVue or WePow, they have more money than me and will have no problem implementing this into their existing product offerings!   I checked and Snapchat is the only technology partner HireVue hasn’t signed a partnering agreement with!

Here how it works:

1. You’ve got 10 seconds, so you have to be able to articulate your entire worth to a company in 10 seconds.   For many of you this is about 7 seconds too long.

2. Push the circle on the bottom of the screen.

3. Look into camera and start talking or do whatever it is you’re going to do to show how great of employee you will be.

4. Select who you want to send it to.

5. Send.

6. Wait for Job Offers to coming flying in!

Before you laugh and say this is impossible, you know I found a company that is already doing it.  File this under “Recruiting Professional with Shortest Career Ever“:

Likeable Media, a social media marketing agency in New York, is also finding value in the photo sharing app — as a recruiting tool.

When applicants apply to the company — which hundreds do each month, says Brian Murray, Likeable’s director of talent and culture — Likeable’s automatic resume processor sends an email alerting the applicant his or her materials have been received. It also offers a chance to follow up with Murray in email, over Twitter, or as of four weeks ago, via Snapchat.

“When you’re applying for jobs a lot of the time, you feel like you’re sending something into the black hole of resumes,” he says.

“We’re always looking for ways to give applicants a way to be creative outside of the resume.”

For the past month, applicants have been sending Murray Snapchat messages showing off their creative sides. Likeable has received more than a dozen messages from prospective employees, and roughly a third of them have been brought in for interviews.

Brian Murray, call on line one, it’s SHRM, they are sending out a kill squad.  Let’s just say if your screening process of candidates has a Snapchat element to it, you should be shot!

This Is Only For the Advance Class

As my friend Laurie Ruettimann pointed out last week, recruiting is easy and can be done by basically anyone, so just go hire some soldier to do it.   Laurie might not be that all far from the truth.  Recruiting isn’t brain surgery, it’s a process.  A process that is hated by the majority of human resource professionals around the world, which is why it is a $9 Billion dollar industry.  Not a hard skill, but many times, a really hard job to be successful at.  Old school recruiters like to believe recruiting is an Art form.  It’s not.  New school recruiters like to believe you can just source everyone you need off the internets. You can’t.

Recruiting is all about activity.  It’s a sales cycle.  The more contacts (phone calls, emails, handshakes, etc.) you make, the more candidates you will find.  The more candidates you find and get interested in your jobs.  The more jobs you will fill.  Not hard, right?  The problem is, ‘most’ recruiters look to do things that allows them not to make contacts!  They will buy every kind of technology imaginable to get people to call them.  They’ll do just about anything, besides picking up the phone and making that one call.

Want to be successful at Recruiting? Find people who are willing to make 100 calls per day and who love your company.  Go ahead, go find those people!  It might be a soldier, it might be your neighbor, it might a former crackhead, who knows!  The fact is, most people do not want to do this, even when you hire them and pay them to do just this!

So being a successful recruiter is basically easy.  You must find the sweet spot in the amount of activity you need to do each week that will get you the amount of contacts you need to get enough people for the jobs you want to fill.  Once you find that level, you need to maintain that level forever. Easy. I’m not kidding.  You don’t need fancy branding, and big ATS Systems and a bunch of processes.  You need people who will bang your internal resume database and job boards constantly, and faster than your competition.  That really isn’t that hard to do, because most shops don’t even do the basics well!

Now for the Advance Class participants:

Want to be Ridiculously Successful at Recruiting?

Do that which is written above and add just one thing.  Maintain a relationship with your companies Alumni.  There is this funny thing about human nature.  When we leave some place, we always want to know what’s going on back there!  If we move to a new city, we love updates from our old city.  When we run into past coworkers at the mall, we love updates on who is still there and who is running different departments, who got fired, who got promoted.  If we know this about human nature, why aren’t we giving it to our Alumni?

It doesn’t have to be constant, but is has to be consistent.

Do a quarterly Alumni update via email to everyone who has every worked for you. Even the crappy ones who you are glad they are gone !  Give them some juicy details about promotions. Let them know some new things you’re working on.  Let them know what jobs you’re trying to fill, and how they can refer people.  Do this every quarter for 2 years.  Want to be class valedictorian?  On a monthly basis call a handful of alumni and just have chat, build some relationships, check on where are they now.  As them if you mind if you share their story in the next Alumni News going out next quarter.  If you commit to do this for 24 months, you will start to see positions fill themselves.

This is advance course stuff, because 99% of companies aren’t doing this with their recruiting!