Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

What if you let your TA Interns run your campus Career Fairs? #TC18Live

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I’ve noticed something when I go onto campus for career fairs. The TA Pros that are there representing your company, don’t really want to be there. They don’t really want to be talking to students. They find this beneath them in many aspects.

That is if you’re over one year out of college! It seems like the only people who want to go on campus are your new hire recruiters. They’re super excited to go on campus! Then they get a year out and the culture beats them down and they become too ‘professional’ to talk to lame students who only want an internship, or they just want some of your swag!

Here’s what I know, when your TA interns go back to school for the year, they would love to represent you on campus to students at the fall and spring career fair! LOVE!  They would advocate for you, like your own people ever could!

What would it cost you? Like a few hours of $15/hr wage or something like that!

What would you get in return?

– “Recruiters” who love being at that career fair!

– “Recruiters” who love being at that school!

– “Recruiters” that candidates at that school would listen to!

– “Recruiters” that would do a better job than your current team!

What could go wrong?

I mean really, what would really go wrong if the interns took over a career fair? I’m guessing absolutely nothing! Oh, they might not spin bull shit as good as your internal team could spin bull shit, but on the positive side, Gen Z doesn’t really react to that style anyway!

The reality is Interns will take career fairs more seriously than your normal team. They are trying to impress you. They are trying to impress their classmates. They’ll give it their all. When was the last time you looked at your internal team and thought, “Oh boy, the team really gave it 110% on campus this season!” Never! You never thought this!

This isn’t about your team not doing well. They do fine! They’re representing you just fine. Fine. No, really, fine! The question is, do you want ‘fine’?

Sometimes the craziest ideas are the best ideas! I mean, if you have a campus that you’re just not making it happen, what do you really have to lose? Let the interns take over and they might just surprise you on how great they do. If they fail, oh well, you were sucking on that campus anyway!

Never Say “No” for a Candidate! #TC18Live

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Average recruiters say “No” for candidates a lot! It sounds like this:

“You probably won’t be interested in this, but…”

“I’m doubting this is for you, but…”

“I’m guessing this position is below you, but…”

Average recruiters give candidates an excuse to say No, even before we know if the candidate is interested or not!

Because we all know how the above statements end! “You’re right, that position is below me, but thanks for calling.” Hang up. “You’re right, I’m not interested. Thanks. Bye.”

Great recruiters don’t do this. Great recruiters use silence as their friend!

A great recruiter will ask a candidate a question and then they’ll shut up. They won’t fill the silence. They will wait. 5 seconds. 10 seconds. Just wait…

It’s so hard! We naturally want to fill that silence with something, and average recruiters fill that silence with bad answers and excuses to the question we need the candidate to say “yes” to!

Great recruiters use the powerful psychological tool in the world – a candidate’s desire to be desired!

“Mary! It’s Tim over at HRU! I’ve been waiting so long to talk to you! I had a conversation yesterday with Sue, our group manager, about you. We both agreed, if we can get you over here, you’ll change our life! Do you have a minute to discuss?”

OF COURSE, I DO! Tell me more about how great I am!

Great recruiters never even believe a candidate isn’t interested or the position is beneath the candidate. All they see is a great opportunity to introduce a candidate to a potentially great opportunity, and make that candidate’s life better.  They know they’ll hear a “Yes” I want to hear more!

Average recruiters know they’ll hear a “No” before they pick up the phone. Well, the last person said “No”, so I’m sure this person will say “No”. Average recruiters won’t even call the best candidates, already believing they’ve lost.

I love green-as-grass, brand new recruiters because they don’t even know this concept yet! Every time I hire a new recruiter who doesn’t have experience, they always, 100% of the time, find candidates that no one else on the team will. Why? Because they just call everyone! No preconceived notion that a candidate could even say “No”!

The experienced recruiters around entry level recruiters will always ask, “How’d you find that person?!” Um, I called them.

Today, pick up the phone like you’ll never hear “no” and start making calls. Reach out to the candidates that you think will never say “yes”. Something amazing will happen. A few will say “yes”!

 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Technology: @Dice4Employers – New IntelliSearch Helps Uncover More IT Talent!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review Dice’s new product offering IntelliSearch. IntelliSearch is a proprietary recommendation engine simplifies the complexity of candidate search by allowing recruiters to input a job description, the ideal resume, or a list of skills to return relevant matches.  Boolean expertise is no longer required.

IntelliSearch is super easy to use. Just cut and paste a job description or even a resume of a hire or candidate your hiring manager loves and IntelliSearch will go out and find others that fit the criteria you need.

Dice’s IntelliSearch uses machine learning and A.I. to quickly match candidates to your requirements without you as the recruiter having to have deep technical knowledge about the type of candidates you’re looking for.

One of the issues I hear about constantly from corporate TA Pros around new sourcing technology is that they now have way too many candidates to search through and while they can find more ‘potential’ candidates than ever before, the tech has actually made their job harder!

Dice attempts to solve this problem with the IntelliSearch matching technology. The Dice funnel starts with hundreds of millions of potential profiles that can be found around the web, and quickly gets that number down to a few millions of actual candidates in the hiring pool in the U.S.

From there they return the best possible fits with contact information and a new feature to Dice which is “Likely to Switch” signal based on a number of factors in their algorithm. Based on these factors Dice will give you a Green, Yellow, or Red signal in terms of the potential that a candidate is ready to switch to a new job.

IntelliSearch is also driven by Semantic Search, not Boolean Search. Why does this matter? Semantic search describes a search engine’s attempt to generate the most accurate results possible by understanding:

  • Searcher intent.
  • Query context.
  • The relationships between words.

In layman’s terms, semantic search seeks to understand natural language the way a human would. Whereas Boolean is basically searching on keywords. Semantic search will produce a higher quality of search results.

The Bottomline? 

If you haven’t taken a look at Dice recently, it’s worth a new look, especially if you’re struggling to find IT talent, and you don’t consider yourself a full time IT recruiter. I find those who are less ‘techy’ will really be helped by Dice’s new IntelliSearch!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Your EEOC Job Posting Statements are Hurting Your Diversity Hiring!

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Employers discriminate in hiring. This is a fact. It’s been a fact for generations. It’s the main reason anti-discrimination statements show up on job postings. That and it’s the law for Public employers and Government contractors who are required to have these statements. Many private employers use these as well to show they don’t discriminate in hiring.

For fifty years we’ve seen these statements on job descriptions and job advertisements. Recently, two Economists from the University of Chicago did a study looking at the impact of candidate behavior when these statements are added to a job posting and their findings were shocking!

In their study, the two economists posted advertisements for an administrative assistant job in ten large American cities. Of the 2,300 applicants who expressed interest, half were given a standard job description and the other half were given a description with an equal-opportunity statement promising that “all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, colour, age or any other protected characteristics”.

 

For racial minorities, those who received the pro-diversity statement were 30% less likely to apply for the job—and the effect appeared to be worse in cities with white majorities (see chart). In a follow-up survey, the prospective applicants said the statement prompted worries that they would be token diversity hires.

30% Less Likely To Apply!!! 

What the what?!?!

This isn’t a study that was done decades ago. This was done in the past twelve months!

So, what should we do? 

One thing the study found that had a positive impact on increasing diversity application is to show your senior executives, including your CEO, talk in a ‘real’ transparent way on the impact that diversity has on your organization.

No, not some overly-produced puff piece about how we are all part of the same rainbow. Include video on your career site with your CEO telling stories about how D&I isn’t just a marketing tactic, but how it’s really impacted the organization in a positive way.

Have diverse employees ask the CEO question that gets to the heart of where D&I is in your organization. Don’t be afraid about keeping this conversation open and maybe a bit uncomfortable. The more real, the more candidates will understand that you’re really trying to make a difference.

If you really want to make sure you’re not missing great minority applicants who are skipping even applying to you, embed these videos right into your job postings!

Don’t think that when you put an “EEOC” statement at the end of your job posting is letting a diverse candidate pool know you’re a great place for them to work. They don’t buy it! You have to be better than that!

7+ High Volume, Low Unemployment Recruitment Strategies!

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Gather ‘round talent buffs and let me tell you a story – of a time not so long ago in a land not so far away. A little agency called The Bureau of Labor Statistics (you may have heard of them) released a report claiming that the unemployment rate dropped below 4% for the first time in 15 years. Did I mention that this is a true story?

That’s right, in April 2018 the unemployment numbers dropped to 3.9% in the good ol‘ US of A. This information is great for the domestic economy, but not so great for employers who are using outdated tactics to build their teams.

But have no fear – Fistful of Talent and Canvas have put me on the case to help organizations refresh their TA approaches during our WEBINAR, Help! We Can’t Hire Anyone! How to Hire When Unemployment is at Historic Lows (Click to register), on October 9th at 12 PM ET.

I’ll be dropping the following silver bullets of recruiting wisdom. When used together these bullets can help you hit the hiring bullseye every time:

* Not one, not two, but SEVEN new strategies to attract the best of the best during this low-unemployment era, from hourly workers to C-suite-grade talent

* The top talent attraction technology working for high-volume recruiting teams RIGHT NOW to level the playing field in this hot job market

* Three moves you are currently making that are putting a damper on your hiring efforts, and how you can make your recruiting dollars really count

It’s all going down on October 9th at 12 PM ET – register to save your spot for our WEBINAR, Help! We Can’t Hire Anyone! How to Hire When Unemployment is at Historic Lows (Click to register), TODAY to make your TA shop full-employment environment proof)

Register Here! 

I won’t be handing out one silver bullet in this webinar, I’ll be handing out handfuls! There isn’t a single silver bullet that will fix the problems we have, but a bunch that when used together, will help your organization succeed in hiring…even when unemployment drops below 4%.

About Canvas:
Canvas is the first text-based intelligent interviewing system that empowers organizations and recruiters to screen more job candidates and market employment brands. For more information, visit www.gocanvas.io and follow Canvas on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Everyone Wants a Talent Brand That Candidates Love, But…

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Everyone wants a talent brand that candidates will love, but almost no Talent Acquisition function is actually willing to love those same candidates back!

You get this, right!?

Do you know why you love certain brands? It’s usually a combination of an experience you had with that brand. You loved their product or service, how they/it made you feel, how you were treated, etc. The brand made you feel like you were apart of it. That it ‘loved’ you, just even a little.

We all want to have these amazing talent brands (employment brands), but part of having that amazing brand is you have to actually truly like the candidates who are reaching out to you. This is the single biggest struggle most organizations have with establishing a real Talent Brand. We want candidates to love us, but we don’t want to love them in return!

In fact, we don’t even really want to be friends with them! Or at least that’s how we act! Most TA shops treat candidates like they’re the enemy. Very similar to how celebrities treat the media. Love us! But, we’re going to act as you annoy us! Um, what!? This is about 90% of TA shops, and they’re completely flabbergasted when the data says candidates think they’re crap!

So, you want a Talent Brand candidates will love? Try doing some of this:

1. Change your internal TA culture to start believing candidates are our friend, not the enemy! Without these wonderful candidates, we don’t have jobs! We need you!

2. Do not allow your recruiters to talk negatively about candidates. This is really hard. It’s the teacher’s lounge mentality. Well, we’re behind locked doors they don’t know what we say. It’s not about what you say, it’s about the mentality of us vs. them you’re allowing in your shop!

3. Treat your candidates like you treat your hiring managers. Unless you also treat your hiring managers like crap, then don’t do that.

4. Invite random candidates in to talk to your team about their experience, especially those who didn’t get hired. This will really open eyes.

5. Don’t allow your team to use the excuse “we don’t have time”. Nothing is more important than communicating with candidates. Nothing. It’s really your only job. Stop doing everything else, except this. Then you’ll have time.

The reality is, it’s much easier to love a brand when you believe they love you back.

What Makes a Great Talent Acquisition Conference? #SourceCon

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Hey gang! I’m back from attending and speaking at my first ever SourceCon conference. Can I be real for a second? I never attended SourceCon in the past because I was intimidated. For real!

Let me explain. I’m not a Sourcing Nerd! I’m not going to sit down on my laptop and go deep diving into the national archives to find names of whatever or build search strings that are 5,000 characters long, so I thought, yeah, this just isn’t for me. I was wrong! It is for me! Okay, not the super sourcing nerd stuff, but I even like watching that!

SourceCon was filled with passionate Talent Acquisition pros and leaders, not just Sourcing Pros. Like I’m just going to come up and introduce myself and start asking questions about how I can better and share with you on how you can get better. The interactions at all levels at the conference is off the charts, and unlike I’ve seen at other recruiting conferences, especially around how to make you as a professional better!

So, what do I think makes a great Recruiting conference like SourceCon?

– Leadership to break away from the normal content stream and put different stuff on stage. Shannon Pritchett and the ERE leadership are always willing to push the envelop and try stuff!

– A culture of sharing! Everyone at SourceCon seems to be there to share openly with everyone else, and it makes for interactions and conversations happening everywhere!

– Feeling like you’re being welcomed into the trust circle! That was my initial fear. I’m not really one of them, they won’t want me, what do I have to give them!? It’s the opposite, truly. Steve Levy, an industry veteran is just one of a bunch of actual “Welcome Wagon” pros who volunteer to introduce you into the inner circle and make instantly feel like part of a movement.

– Content where you can’t write fast enough! The content at SourceCon is packed with “oh, crap, I’m stealing that idea and taking that back to my own shop and we’re doing that tomorrow!” Like every session!

– Content that forces you to think differently about what you and your organization are doing. That challenges you, and might even make you feel a bit uncomfortable. Not every session, that would be exhausting, but you need a little bit to force you to think differently about the profession.

SourceCon 2019 is in Seattle, and Shannon and the team just keep finding ways to make it better. Definitely check it out as a great development option for you and your team next year.

Could We Use Congestion Pricing Theory in Recruiting? #SourceCon

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Oh, lord, what the heck is Sackett talking about now!?

Congestion Pricing Theory (CPT) is basically paying more for convenience. We see it used on things like tollways, where if you want to ride on this road you pay a premium, or if you want to use this certain lane on a tollway you pay more for the access to a less congested lane of traffic.

You also see it at places like the movies. You pay $12 per ticket to go to a movie on a Saturday night at 8 pm, but if you go at 10 am on a Tuesday morning, you might get that same ticket for $8. It costs more to go during the busy time.

Airlines fully embrace CPT when you pay a little more to get on the plane first so you don’t have to deal with full overhead bins, etc. Theme parks now have tickets you can buy that lets you bypass the long lanes. Congestion Pricing Theory allows consumers to pay more for what they believe is important to them.

So, could we use this model in recruiting?

Let’s say you’re Google and you have thousands of people apply to your jobs that will never get seen. Could Google use CPT to allow applicants to pay an upcharge if they were certain to have their application examined and given feedback? Maybe it’s $25.

For $25 you can be assured your application will have a real human look at it. Would you pay to ensure that would happen? Depends on the company, the job, the competition, your income level, etc. But, the reality is, if someone turns CPT on in their hiring process, and their brand is very attractive, people would pay the fee!

Now, ethically, is this right?

Ethically is it right to have roads paid for by tax dollars, then to drive on those roads in a less congested way, you still have to pay more money? Is it right to charge one person a different, higher, price for the same service that another person paid less for?

One of the main complaints that candidates have about applying for jobs is the lack of information. The reason they don’t get the information they want is it costs too much money for organizations to properly staff TA shops in a way that would allow them to give this high level of feedback.

Congestion Pricing models would definitely give candidates and organizations an option to offer this service for those candidates who truly wanted the feedback they desired or at least more feedback then they’ve historically been given.

So, we don’t do this because we’ll say it impacts the poor and those out of work the most. They can’t afford the price to ensure they will be seen, so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I think it’s interesting that this is the main argument of doing something like this, but we don’t argue this type of pricing when it comes to other parts of our life where these things used to be free, and now they are not.

I’m not saying that we limit those who apply. All are still open to apply and all will have the same experience as they had before. Some, who choose to have an elevated candidate experience, will choose to pay for that experience.

I’m not saying this will ever happen, but if it does, I’m not going to be shocked because we’ve seen so many successes using CPT in other areas of our lives.

What do you think? Hit me in the comments.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @LinkedIn Talent Insights – LI’s newest product!

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Talent Insights, which is getting released today for public consumption. Talent Insights is LinkedIn’s first self-serve data and analytics product. Talent Insights provides companies with access to LinkedIn’s global database of 575M+ professionals, 20M+ companies and 15M+ active job listings, to help talent professionals and business leaders develop a winning workforce strategy and make smarter talent decisions more quickly.

What we know is if LinkedIn has anything, it has data! I first got to see this product at the 2017 LinkedIn Talent Connect conference when it was still in beta and they weren’t even quite sure what they had yet, and I was like, “Oh, boy! this is crazy cool!”

Here’s how it’s crazy cool. Talent Insights provides access to LinkedIn’s global, accurate and up-to-date data through two reports:

  • With the Talent Pool report, companies will be able to precisely define and understand specific populations of talent with global insights including skills the talent has, what industries and locations they’re in are, how in demand they are, what schools and degrees they have and what companies are hiring them.
  • Using the Company report, companies will be able to understand their own talent at the company level and see how well they are doing in attracting and retaining talent, and develop branding and recruiting strategies to get even better.

Here’s what companies can expect.

  • On-demand data: Talent Insights users will have the ability to access LinkedIn insights, in real-time, to quickly answer complex talent questions. As members update their profiles, the aggregated data within LTI also updates, providing real-time updates to help companies keep up with the market.
  • Actionable insights: The tool is simple and easy to use making it possible for recruiters, HR, and talent leaders to understand the most accurate view of labor market trends at any given moment, without relying on a team of data scientists.

So, why is this something HR, Talent Acquisition, Marketing/PR, Sales, and a lot of other functions in your company will want to get their hands on it? 

Talent Insights provides some super cool competitor data you can’t get anywhere else!

Need to know what kinds of people your competition is hiring and where? Talent Insights can show you that! In fact, it can give you insight to stuff your competitors are working on that isn’t even public if you can just connect a few dots!

“Hey, why is ABC, Inc. hiring a ton of autonomous developers in Omaha!? Oh, no they aren’t, are they!? Yes, they are!”

Talent Insights also gives HR leaders insight to your current workforce, like who’s coming after your talent, where are your employees going, where are the best coming from, where should you be looking to build your next headquarters (I bet Amazon is looking at this!), etc.

This is definitely a product that TA Leaders will want to leverage, and I’m in love with it’s ability to pull competitor data. Just know, as you’re pulling your competition’s data, so might they be pulling yours, and there’s nothing you can do about it. LinkedIn Talent Insights is available to anyone who wants to pay for a subscription, and you don’t have to be a customer of other LI products to get it.

LinkedIn Talent Insights is definitely worth a demo. You might find it’s just not data that your organization needs, but I think the more competitive you are within your marketplace, executitves are always willing to listen to you a little longer when your wrap your needs and wants around competitive data, so take a look!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

“Overqualified” is Just another word for Age Discrimination

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Had a really talented lady reach out to me the other day. 49 years old, college grad, great portfolio of work. She has been interviewing and is being told she is “Overqualified”.

There is some truth about her being called this. She does have more qualifications than the position requires, but she fully understands what the job is and she wants to do that job, with no notion of wanting to do more than that job, unless her performance shows she’s capable of moving up and the company needs her to move up.

“Overqualified” is just another way to say “Hey, I think you’re too old to work for me!”

Tell me I’m wrong! Give me all the reasons someone is “Overqualified” for a job they want to work at and understand what the job specs are?

I’m a Heart Surgeon but it’s a stressful job, so I decided to take a step back and just do some Cardiac Rehab work. Still get to work with heart patients, but it’s a less stressful workload and pays a heck of lot less, you need less education to do that job.

Am I overqualified to do Cardiac Rehab if I have experience as a heart surgeon? Only if you tell me I am! It’s a job I want, and I have the skills and desire to do that job, so I would say I’m quite qualified to do that job, not overqualified.

TA pros and hiring managers say someone is overqualified when they’re too stupid to come up with another reason about why they don’t want to hire someone who has great experience and more years of experience.

“Oh, Tammy, yeah, she’s overqualified to work in that job. I mean she wouldn’t be happy long-term reporting to me, and I mean she has more experience than I have!” Oh, she told you that? “Um, no.”

I constantly run into retired people who aren’t ready to retire and want to keep doing valuable work. They have great skills and knowledge, but 32-year-old Steve won’t hire them because Steve believes they won’t take his direction. That’s a Steve-issue, not the candidate’s issue!

By the way, this isn’t a young-to-middle-aged guy problem, women are just as bad! Turns out we all love to discriminate against old people, equally!

Tech companies are the worse. Creative companies are the second worse.

Tech companies believe only young people know technology. Creative companies think the only people who buy products and services are 26-year-olds on Instagram and Snap.

“Tim, you just don’t get it. I don’t want to hire someone who is going to retire in 5 years!” What’s your average tenure at your company? “4.2 years” Yeah, having someone for 5 years would really suck for you!

I had a hiring manager tell me this once when he interviewed a person who was 52! “I need someone who is going to stay long term!” Um, 13-15 years isn’t long term?! You’re an idiot!

I find telling hiring managers “You’re an idiot!” is super effective in getting through to them, and cutting straight through to their bias. It has worked 100% of the time in my career. It really works across all biases.

So, now tell me, why don’t you hire someone who is ‘overqualified”?