Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

4 Things Great Recruiters Do Every Day!

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve hired over one hundred recruiters in my career.  Not a ton, but a pretty good sample size.  I’ve had some of those hires go on to become great Talent Acquisition pros, as well as some who have completely bombed in the profession.  It’s not an easy profession to be successful at, but I’ve seen some basic things that the most successful recruiters, I know, do every single thing day:

  1. Daily motivation. Great recruiters are self-motivated by nature, but the best ones still find ways to give themselves that extra little kick every day. It might be one client or job order they decide they will close on that day. It might be an activity number they challenge themselves with for the day.  It might just be re-centring on a larger overall goal they are chasing and what they’re doing in that day will mean to reach that goal.
  1. Critical of their own work. The best recruiters I’ve worked with own their orders, candidates, interviews, etc. There is no blame.  An interview is a no-show, they own it.  They can look inward and go, next time I won’t have this happen because I’m going to do that one more thing to ensure it’s successful.
  1. They step up. Hey, guys, we have a really critical position that just came open from a hiring manager, who wants it? The best recruiters always step up and want to work those high profile openings.  They want the challenge, and they are comfortable with the pressure.  They also step up with their ideas on how the organization can get better, and share freely.
  1. Daily focus. Successful recruiters can focus in and finish, every day. It’s so easy in recruiting to get pulled in a hundred different directions.  The most successful people stay focused on the job at hand and don’t allow the ‘noise’ to take them off their plan.  They find ways to lock themselves in and keep going until they reach their outcome.

HR and Recruiting both have the same main daily issue we face, we turn ourselves into firefighters.  We run from made up emergency to made up emergency.  It feeds our need to feel like we accomplished something today and became a saviour.

The most successful recruiters are no different.  They get the opportunity to be firefighters, just like we all do, but they make a conscious decision not to allow themselves to slide down the pole. How can you make yourself more successful today?

Is not being anonymous on Glassdoor really a bad thing?

Posted on by
5

If you didn’t see it this week Glassdoor got some bad news from the U.S. Court of Appeals:

Glassdoor, an online job-rating site, must unmask anonymous users who posted damaging reviews about a company under investigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled Wednesday.

A federal grand jury in Arizona served the Mill Valley company with a subpoena in March, demanding the names and IP addresses of reviewers who wrote on the site that a Department of Veterans Affairs contractor was committing fraud.

 The unnamed company, which administers two veterans health care programs, is under investigation by the federal government for “alleged fraud and abuse.” In court documents, the federal government maintained that there is no other way for it to identify the employees who claim the company was committing the fraud.

Glassdoor, which allows people to post anonymous comments about what it’s like to work at a company, said that unmasking the reviewers would violate its users’ First Amendment rights. But in the Wednesday decision, the court said Glassdoor reviewers have a “limited right to speak anonymously.”

Turns out you can’t go online and destroy someone’s reputation without being held accountable! That’s a very good thing for employers who have for years argued that employees, past employees and people who have never worked there but might have ulterior motives to bash a company online, shouldn’t be allowed to do and say whatever they want without recourse.

You can’t run into a theater and yell ‘fire’! You can’t go online and say a company is committing fraud and not expect to back up those allegations and stand behind them.

My question: Why are we even listening to anonymous feedback, to begin with?

If you had your annual performance review and it was given to you, but you had no idea who it was coming from, would you really listen? “Hey, Tim, we just let anyone in the company make some comments about your performance, hope you like it!” You would totally discredit anything that was said you didn’t agree with because you have no idea where it’s coming from.

Employee reputation sites, like Glassdoor, are basically doing the same thing. Now, if someone put their name and title behind those comments, we all would actually listen to those words with a much more credible ear. Would less people leave comments if they knew it wouldn’t be anonymous? Yes. Would it make the feedback less valuable? No.

I’m a big fan of believing in what someone says when they put their name and personal reputation to the words they want to share. I’m much less of a fan when someone wants to hide behind being anonymous to give me that same feedback.

Okay, I get it, people are fearful of retribution if they say something negative. Can you imagine how that would look if you said something negative and your organization fired you?! That would be even a bigger slam to the organization’s reputation.

One issue I see with anonymous reputations sites moving forward is the whole Google for Jobs schema. GFJ has said that a company’s reputation matters, so they will now include your ‘reputation’ into their algorithm in ranking your jobs. Which means anonymous feedback is going to impact how well your jobs perform on Google’s search results. That sucks!

Do you really want some ex-employee who sucked and got fired, impacting your Google for Jobs search results!? Heck no! It makes no sense that any organization thinks that is a good thing. I say take away anonymity on reputation sites and then hold me accountable to my reputation. Right now, the current system is too flawed in allowing misinformation to be public.

So, I know I’m taking a minority stance on this issue, but tell me why you believe employer reputation sites should allow anonymous reviews?

What is the right diversity mix of employees for your organization?

Posted on by
8

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 you 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% white employees and 50% female. Your leadership team should be 60% female leaders.

But!

What about special skill sets and demographics?

This 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 are 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 their 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 Recruiter Name Generator! What’s Your Recruiter Name? @atapglobal

Posted on by
5

I’ve noticed that certain recruiters have it easier than others. If you have a ‘unique’ name, you know what I’m talking about! You might spend the first two minutes on your conversation trying to get the candidate to say your name correctly! If you leave a message and they call back to your office it’s often hilarious at what name they ask for.

It’s a real problem for our industry, especially in America, where we tend to only want to respond to names we know we can pronounce. Think this isn’t a problem? Go out on LinkedIn and search for recruiter working for Indian RPO services. You’ll find a ton of these recruiters have changed their name to a more ‘American’ version because it helps get higher responses.

The thought process is, from the candidate’s perspective, is that if a recruiter’s name is “Paul Raja” vs. “Praveen Raja” that “Paul” probably speaks great English, so I’ll call him back, but “Praveen” might not speak as well. Is that dumb logic? Yes! Is that happening? YES! (By the way, this has happened for decades with Chinese engineering students as well, who will take very American first names because recruiters are more likely to call “Joe Lee” then “Huang Lee”)

So, what does it take to the have the perfect Recruiter name to get candidates to call you back?

First, you need a name that is recognizable and easy to say for the population you’re trying to recruit, and usually, one syllable is better. Thus, if you’re recruiting traditionally Hispanic employees, you would want a traditional Hispanic name, etc.

– In America: Mary, Mark, John, Jill, Jose, Maria, etc.

– In England: Holly, Simon, Henry, Olivia, etc.

Second, you shouldn’t have a name from a TV show or movie:

– Theon, Skyler, Tristen, Miley, etc.

Third, you want a last name that is common, but not too common, like it’s made up:

– Smith is out, but Brown is okay, as long as Brown isn’t paired with Charlie

– Bonernose is out, as would be Newbutt.

Finally, you don’t want to be the person with two first names or two last names. It’s too confusing for candidates:

– Kevin Johns or Mary George

– Turner Wilcox or Lee Nelson

That’s why I put together this easy to use Recruiter Name Generator! All you need to know is the month you were born in, and your favorite color, and BAM! You’ve got your very own, easy to use, will probably get a callback, new Recruiter Name:

So, using the easy to use charts above my new Recruiter name is: Mark Wilson!

Wouldn’t you want a call from “Mark Wilson”? Doesn’t “Mark Wilson” sound official, while also being competent and kind? Of course, he does!

What’s your new Recruiter name?

The Recruiter Nation Live Hangout Series – With Jobvite and Fistful of Talent!

Posted on by
Reply

Our first hangout is at 1 pm ET on Tuesday, November 14th 

Google for Jobs/ROI of Recruitment Marketing Spend! What You Need to Know to Look Smart!!

 REGISTER FOR THE HANGOUT BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!

If you’re a client or follower of Jobvite, you know the Recruiter Nation Live series.  It started with the Recruiter Nation Live Conference in San Francisco last June and continued with the Recruiter Nation Live Roadshow that brought real recruiter talk to 9 cities in North America over the last three months. 

The feedback was great – you loved it, so they are back with the latest in the series – the Recruiter Nation Live Hangout Series.  Once a month, they’ll be hosting a Google Hangout designed to keep the conversation among recruiters going – focused on things you can use, like the best-kept secrets of today’s smartest and most efficient recruiters, Jedi-mind tricks proven to make you more persuasive/ get great candidate response and strategies to hold your hiring managers accountable for their choices–so everyone wins.

I’ll be on the first hangout and it is at 1 pm ET on Tuesday, November 14th and will be hosted by Kris Dunn and me, focused on the following juicy topic:

 Google for Jobs/ROI of Recruitment Marketing Spend! What You Need to Know to Look Smart!!

 REGISTER FOR THE HANGOUT BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!

Let’s have some fun and learn from each other at the same time.  See you at 1 pm ET on November 14th!!!

LinkedIn and Microsoft launch “Resume Assistant” and it’s a big deal!

Posted on by
2

Big announcement today coming out Microsoft/LinkedIn. The two companies are figuring out more and more how to integrate LinkedIn into the Microsoft office ecosystem and their new Resume Assistant is the first major feature announcement.

What’s Resume Assistant?

Microsoft’s Resume Assistant is a Word product integration that brings the power of LinkedIn directly into Word when you’re crafting or updating your resume.

How does Resume Assistant work?

It’s pretty easy. You upload or open an existing resume, made an old resume you have, and Word will automatically recognize that document is a resume and open up the LinkedIn integration. The integration pops up as a right-side window in Word so that your resume is on one side of Word and the LinkedIn Resume Assitant is on the other.

From here, Resume Assistant will do a lot of things but mostly use artificial intelligence to help you craft a better resume that will more likely be selected for jobs by recruiters. Resume Assistant does this through analyzing LinkedIn data of those profiles, work experiences, titles, etc. that are getting hired and moving into new roles via profile changes.

Don’t know how to phrase your work experience? The Resume Assistant will pull in specific examples, similar to you, of people who got hired and show you phrases, skills, and words that will help you get hired. RA will also easily allow you to go directly to other profiles on LinkedIn from Word to see how others have structured their profile.

Why is this a big deal? 

So, Microsoft and LinkedIn shared a bunch of data that led to this product creation:

  • LinkedIn data shows ‘job hopping’ has doubled in the past twenty years
  • LinkedIn is seeing 40% growth in job applies through LI
  • On average 100 candidates are applying for each position on LinkedIn
  • 80% of resume updates in the U.S. happen in Microsoft Word

Okay, and, so?!

Connect the dots! One part of the Resume Assistant is to also show each Word user updating their resume the jobs that most match the resume being created. So, 80% of job seekers will have LinkedIn’s 11 million jobs showing up in Word, right next to their resume while they’re updating and thinking about looking for a new job!!!

I would not want to be a job board today and be reading this. In fact, for how much Google has been swinging its weight around recently, this is also a pretty big punch back from LinkedIn and Microsoft to let them know they are not giving job search away!

Game changer!

Think about how many people use Microsoft Word. 100% of those people will now have a direct link to LinkedIn and the LI jobs when they are doing anything with their resume – Resume Assistant opens automatically when a resume is detected. It’s really a genius move by LI and MS.

If this is the first integration that the two sides have figured out, I can’t wait to see future integrations as well, and from the sound of things, both sides are moving quickly to make these a realities.

One note of importance. Resume Assistant will launch today for Microsoft 365 Insiders, at the beginning of 2018 for all Microsoft 365 users, and soon after for all other Word platforms.

At 4% Unemployment, 2nd Chance Hires are Looking Very Attractive!

Posted on by
1

I’m a big fan of 2nd chance candidates. Candidates who were fired, terminated, let go, etc. for many various reasons, most of which come down to wrong job fit, the wrong personality fit with their boss, wrong skill fit, etc.

I don’t have actual numbers, and I wouldn’t believe any study who told me a number because here’s what really happens. An employee gets fired for ‘performance’ because the manager thought the person could do the job, even though the person had never done the job, and both continued to get frustrated. HR puts that down as termination for performance, not poor job fit, or lack of skills, or something else.

Is this person a bad employee? No. Did this person not try hard? No. Did the organization look to move this person into a role they were better suited for? No. It’s just easier to cut bait and move on to another hiring mistake.

The problem most employers are facing right now is at 4.1% national unemployment, almost any candidate that you find out of work is going to have a ‘hickey’. Maybe they require too much money, maybe they don’t have the education you require, maybe they won’t move, etc., etc., etc. We all know the deal. It’s tough sledding finding talent right now, it’s even tougher if you’re looking for someone out of work to fill your job!

That’s why 2nd Chance Candidates can be some of the best hires you’ll ever make, but you need to pick the right ones. Here’s what I look for in 2nd Chance Candidates:

1. A chip on their shoulder. I don’t want them to talk bad about their last employer, but I want to know they feel like they were unfairly evaluated and have something to prove!

2. Job history before the last job. Say what you want, but when taking a flyer on a 2nd chance candidate I find those will more solid work history tend to be the right ones to pick.

3. Willingness to do anything. When you get fired some weird shit happens to you. You get angry. You get sad. You get frustrated. Eventually, you get to a point where you go “I don’t care what it takes, I’m getting back into the game!” Those are my 2nd chancers.

4. The story seems to make sense. I don’t hire a 2nd chancer where the story doesn’t add up. So, you were the employee of the year, last year, then out of nowhere, with no reason, you got fired? Yeah, no thanks.

5. They want to work. You’ve been out of a job for 7 months, and I offer you a job, I only want to hear one thing. “I can start tomorrow!” If you tell me I can start in two weeks, or next Friday, or anything besides “I’ll start working right now if you let me” I’ve got a concern!

People get fired for awful things, but they also get fired over petty things. Being in HR, I’ve been apart of both kinds of firing, and I’m not proud of that fact. It’s super hard to support a hiring manager who wants to fire an employee because basically, the employee cares more than the hiring manager about the work, but I’ve seen it happen!

It’s our job in TA and HR to find out if we’re going to give someone a second chance. It’s not an easy decision. It seems like there’s always a red flag, and it seems that way because there is! The person was let go! It’s now our job to determine was that person being let go going to be a positive for our company, or a negative. I like to think, many of second chancers can be a positive!

But, don’t get me started on 3rd and 4th chancers!

What Does Talent Taste Like? When Recruitment Marketing Keeps it Real…

Posted on by
2

So, have a Coke and a Smile wasn’t good enough, the college recruiting folks in Coca-Cola’s Italian team had to get ‘creative’ and go off script. Here’s how that ended up (hat tip to Jim D’Amico for finding this pic!):

So, I’m not exactly sure from this ad who is tasting the talent. Maybe this is meant to get creepy hiring managers to the university, or maybe it just doesn’t translate to English. But whatever it means the Italian Coca-Cola team doubled down and also dropped in a landing page and hashtag for the event #TasteYourTalent or visit – www.tasteyourtalent.it.   

The site opens up with:

“Allenati per diventare un Champion di Coca-Cola HBC Italia”

Which, when translated means:

“Train to become a Champion of Coca-Cola HBC Italia”

I’m not sure if that is training to be a champion of sexual harassment, but whatever it is I’m interested in seeing how it all turns out!

I can picture this entire creative process playing out in the TA department at Coke Italy. “Hey, we need a great theme for our next university recruitment event! What do you guys have?”

“The Real Thing!” – did it. 

“Coke is it!” – did it.

“The Coke Side of Life!” – did it. 

“Taste the Feeling!” – did it. 

“Taste the Talent!” – Wait! What!? What did you just say!? That is f’ing brilliant. We’re recruiting talent. Coke tastes great! Taste the Talent! Go spend $3 million Euros and make that happen!  

Do you want to know what’s great about blogging? You just can’t make this stuff up! The bar for entry into Recruitment Marketing is apparently very low. Stay thirsty my friends.

T3 – The Reputation of Your Company As An Employer Actually Might Matter!

Posted on by
1

Okay, I know Glassdoor has worked for a decade to make you believe that your employer reputation matters. Their own data says that 70% of candidates will check a companies reputation before making a career decision, and they have 40+ million candidates going to their site on a monthly basis.

The problem is, I don’t think most employers really thought that much about it, honestly.

Quick question: Have you gone out and claimed your company’s Glassdoor profile? 

I always like to ask that question when speaking to HR and TA leaders and it’s not too surprising to find most of the leaders in the room, over 50%, have not, or did, but have no real interaction with the site. If your employer reputation was that critical of a decision point for candidates, 99% of leaders would be on top of this and active in protecting their employer reputation online.

Glassdoor, like most great HR and TA technology platforms, does some things really well. The first thing they had to do was create a problem we didn’t know we had! Welcome to your employer reputation! OMG! I didn’t even know that was a thing until someone made it my thing! It’s actually great marketing!

Want to sell more airline flight insurance? Share a ton of stories about people dying in plane crashes! Sure you have a better chance of dying from a shark attack while simultaneously being hit by lightning, but hey, you never know when it’s going to your turn!

I think that is until recently. With the launch of Google for Jobs, your employer reputation might actually begin to matter for real this time! 73% of all job searches in the world, start on Google. The majority of the other searches probably go directly to Indeed or directly to your corporate career site, because we’ve trained people that “Indeed” is where they’ll find all jobs.

Google for Jobs is changing how job seekers are searching for jobs by basically keeping them on Google and not sending them to other sites. The other piece that Google for Jobs is doing is looking at the job search behavior, not from an employer perspective, which was done by every other company before it (because as it turns out employers pay money for this kind of stuff), but from the candidate perspective.

Google doesn’t really care how you want to make candidates jump through hoops and give them half-information about your jobs and company. Google is on the candidate side of the equation trying to disrupt. One way Google will disrupt the job search is by placing importance on your company’s reputation when it comes to job search results.

If your company’s reputation sucks, your jobs will show up lower in the Google for Jobs search results. This will be a killer to many organizations who haven’t managed their company’s reputation at sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Google itself has tons of employer reviews (and will be getting a lot more!), plus at least a dozen other sites that track employee and past employee reviews as well.

So, what should you do?

  1. At a minimum claim your Glassdoor profile (the free version) and respond to every single review that’s given in a position way. You might have a poor reputation, but candidates will see that you’re working on making it better.
  2. Glassdoor is just one site, there are over a dozen you probably should be tracking. No one has time for that, but there is a technology already created to help do this on one platform called Ratedly. I actually wrote about this a while back on T3.  Created by Joel Cheesman who is a really smart thought leader in the HR and TA space, and the idea is so simple and effective, and inexpensive, you should really take a look.
  3. Get your executives to understand why this is important. Of course, you don’t want a bad reputation, but also you have this extra issue of having it affect your applicant traffic which just made this reputation thing begin to have real pain!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

Are Recruiting Layoffs a Sign of an Economic Downturn?

Posted on by
2

Have you been watching the recruiting news lately?

My good friend Stacy Zapar (who runs The Talent Agency focused on recruiting recruiters!) and I send notes back and forth on stuff we hear in the industry. She’s in California, I’m in Michigan, we swap all the rumors and verified stuff we are hearing to get a better understanding of what’s going on. In the past few weeks – it’s been a bloodbath on the corporate recruiting front!

Snap, Blue Apron, CareerBuilder, Facebook, etc. and those are just the ones that have gone public!

So, the big question is “Are layoffs of recruiters a ‘canary in the coal mine’ indicator of an economic downturn?”

My first reaction is “Oh, hell yes!” Recruiter layoffs happen when you know you won’t be hiring! So, it has to be some kind of indicator about your business. The broader question would be are those layoffs an indicator of overall economic health across the board? I’m not quite as sure of.

There are a number of factors at play here:

  1. Too many organizations across too many geographic areas have announced recruiter layoffs for this too coincidental. So, something is happening. So…
  2. Could it be just another tech bubble bursting, or is it wider than that?
  3. Is this just a normal 4th quarter correction after TA Leaders see their budgets for next year?
  4. Has TA technology, A.I., and Intelligent Automation, finally started making some impact on how we staff our recruiting teams?
  5. Did TA Leaders over hire over the past few years because we came out of the great recession with almost no TA staff, went right-ditch-left-ditch in our correction, and now we are correcting back to the proper staffing levels are teams should be?

I think it’s all of these things.

I don’t see any economist calling for a major downturn. I do see economist calling for things to slow down, but all of that has been expected for a while. Since the Great Recession, almost ten years ago, we’ve been on a cycle of really good growth, almost historic in nature. What we know is that can’t continue. So, there is some slow down happening, and it will hit certain segments harder than others, like every downturn.

I do think TA Tech automation, A.I., etc. has to have an impact on TA Team size moving forward. As TA Leaders, much of the ROI built into your TA Tech purchase is headcount. It’s the only way it works out. Either you’ll lose some of your team, or you’ll be in a position not to add team members, that’s how ROI works!

So, what do you think Recruiters? Are you feeling anything? Hit me in the comments!