Helping Employees Refer Applicants

I was watching a marketing video today and a great idea hit me. How about creating some links so your employees can put them in their Facebook accounts. Let them recruit for you. This way they can let their friends know about "hot" jobs that need to be filled. This sounds like a great idea.

I'm going to look on my Facebook account and learn more about the features of this social network. I'll keep you posted on what I find out.. Happy New Year!

Assessments of Assessments

ERE constantly puts interesting articles in their daily newsletter. This Survey of Assessments is unusually good. Mostly because the company I work for (Jobscience) works with a testing company. The assessment product is integrated with our TalentPath Enterprise system. We are receiving more and more requests for assessment services as the number of applicants increases during this economic time. Here is a portion of the article with a link to the whole.

Sixth Annual Screenng and Assessment Usage Survey

by Dr. Charles Handler and Mark C. Healy, M.A.
We I/O psychologist-types tend to be real data hounds. Much of the work we do for our employers/clients involves the use of data to investigate specific hypotheses in order to illuminate the underlying truth in a situation. The outcome of this work often has tremendous value to organizations because it provides them with hard data on which strategic decisions can be based. Additionally, the collection and analyses of data often helps us to identify new trends that we haven’t yet thought about.
Many of you who follow our articles know that we have a keen interest in the pre-employment assessment industry, and write quite a bit about its trends and happenings within. Our interest in data and trends has led to an annual online screening and assessment usage survey.
The idea for this survey was born back in 2002, when we became frustrated over the lack of available information about the usage of pre-employment screening and assessment tools. This lack of information has been a challenge because though everyone seems to be saying that screening is becoming a hot area, there’s little actual data available to confirm this statement or to tell us how hot it really is. This lack of information also makes it hard for those of us who follow this industry closely to provide factual information about how companies are using online screening and assessment tools, and what the results of this usage have been. This year we have made a few changes to the survey questions to help us be sure we are staying up to date with some of the major trends and issues that pertain to assessment and the manner in which it is integrated into the hiring process.
At the end of this article, you’ll find a link to this year’s survey. Take a few minutes to help other members of our community by providing information about your company’s screening and assessment practices. The more data that’s collected, the clearer existing and emerging trends will become. Last year, we had a record number of responses, a fact that seems to indicate the increased interest level in screening and assessment. Given the steady increase in interest and the lack of information about this industry, we feel the results will continue to have value for the ERE community. We look forward to reporting our findings right here on ERE sometime this coming Spring.
In order to provide some extra motivation, here’s a quick summary of the trends identified in last year’s results.
keep reading…

Sales 2.0 versus Recruitment 2.0

Waiting in the airport is one of my favorite things to do because it gives me countless hours of reading time. There is a magazine that I recently subscribed to called Selling Power. If you are in sales, you need this magazine. I've received three so far and I've read it cover to cover each time. Today there was an awesome article on Sales 2.0 and the analgy to recruitment was uncanny.

According to the authors (Pelin Wood Thorogood and Gerhard Gschwandtner) there are five tenets to Sales 2.0. Making the connection to recruitment wasn't hard.

Tenet 1: Acceleration

You need the ability to get to your jobseekers faster and process them with the kind of speed you get from the internet. If you don't have a web-based application system you need one. We all understand about the early bird.

Tenet 2: Collaboration

Collaboration between the recruitment team and the hiring managers needs to happen. Even though it is difficult to pin people down, to be successful you need a relationship with your hiring managers (each one).

Tenet 3: Professionalization

Do you know where your recruitment dollars are being spent? Can you tell your management team which job board brings you the most qualified candidates? You need a system that can tell you that. Have you tried an applicant tracking solution that tells you where your jobseekers are coming in from? If not, you need one that does.

Tenet 4: Accountability

This tenet is tough because it means that if a recruiter doesn't produce you need to cut them loose. If they are disengaged, they need to re-engage. Recruiters that do well should have a compensation program much like a sales rep would have. Make the sale, receive a reward.

Tenet 5: Alignment

As recruitment continues to be competitive you need an advantage. Do you meet with your marketing department on a regular basis to ask for assistance? Does your website provide the most up-to-date information because recruitment and the webmaster meet regularly to update the site? Develop creative recruitment/marketing campaigns and measure results. Recruiters can't be all things. Utilize the people in your organization that can provide the expertise you are lacking.

Web 2.0 has brought us and unbelievable new world to use. Make sure you stay current on everything that is happening in recruitment by reading blogs (mine!!), newsletters, magazines, networking, etc.

Real Recruitment is Real Costly and Real Time Consuming

Wow, I've been totally out of touch for the past 8 days while on site with a client.  We are installing a new recruitment solution in their system.  It never ceases to amaze me the dollars that are being spent on recruitment.  As I call company after company everyone wants to spend money on some gadget they think will help them recruit.

But it takes more than the next shiney gadget to recruit effectively.  You need to be a relationship builder, a person who listens to the needs and wants of the customer (both of them).  Even learning the correct way to present offers or proposals to prospects (oh sorry, potential clients/employees) is a tricky navigation.

Do you have a standard presentation memorized?  Do you have different ways to present it depending on the audience?  Sometimes my head is exploding trying keep it all straight.  

So sorry for no words of wisdom tonight... Hopefully I'll have my brain back on Monday.  Until then, take care.

The Web 2.0 Job Seeker (Jobs2web Blog)

This year in the recruiting industry there has been a lot of talk about how companies are tapping into Web 2.0 technologies to enhance their recruiting. But how is the candidate community also using these technologies for their own purposes, and what impact is it having on our recruiting strategies?

Web 2.0 Candidates Are:

• Faster. Candidates can gain access to more available jobs within minutes on any day.
• Smarter. Access to salary, compensation, and corporate performance data is everywhere.
• More Connected. Social networks help candidates identify insiders at any employer before or after they apply for any position.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are Faster

When job boards came on the scene 10 years ago, they made accessing available job information much easier for candidates. No more digging through the classified section of the Sunday newspaper, crafting up witty cover letters on fluorescent letterhead to get attention and postal mailing resumes. Remember when we’d put our fax numbers on our ads? Come on: how many candidates really had fax machines in their houses? Today, there are “job aggregators” such as indeed.com and simplyhired.com which put all the jobs from multiple job boards into a single search engine that stream directly into any candidate’s personal home page on Google via RSS feeds every day.

I think one of the main reasons that recruiters are after “passive candidates” is that we think we have more time to get them through the interview process, versus “active candidates” who machine-gun apply from job boards to a dozen jobs on any Monday. With the latter, we have to get them setup with an interview within 24 hours and make a hiring decision within two to four days. That’s how fast the market is moving with so much job data available online.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are Smarter

In addition to having access to an ocean of jobs, most candidates tap into salary and compensation data via sites such as payscale.com and/or salary.com. Not to mention that the younger generation of workers aren’t shy about sharing their comp levels in the lunchroom or over beers, unlike our parents’ generation who considered salary discussions to be so taboo they would only share this information with the IRS when filing their annual tax returns.

Many recruiters have candidates show up with a salary report printed from one of these salary sites and demand that their pay be at or above the level on the report. Candidates don’t care if our job descriptions aren’t perfectly matching the ones on those websites; they just see the numbers and get an expectation that’s usually out of line with our compensation levels. Regardless of how you handle this situation in your interview process, employers are under pressure to know how their pay grades compare to other major employers in their markets.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are More Connected

Remember when you would get an applicant resume, see which companies a candidate previously worked for, and then quickly find which of your internal employees had worked with the applicant in the past, in order to get “inside information” to determine if they were a good or bad prospect? (Never mind that 51% of people will comment positively or negatively on someone because of how they liked their personality — and not their actual work performance.)

During the interview process, candidates were lucky to run into a former colleague in the hallways. Or if they get lucky in the interview, they will discover who they might know in common with the interviewing managers and try to discover which “moles” they could find within the prospective company, which would help them do their own due diligence on the employer — not to mention that they will try and gain advocates to help them get the job should their interest grow.

Well, because of the growth of social networks (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Jigsaw, and many more), the minute most candidates apply for any job (and sometimes even before they apply for a job), they can now instantly see who they know at any prospective employer, all the way back to their old high school or college buddies.

This tilts the access of information toward the candidate community — who can now see if there are bad previous bosses or old enemies working within your company, which they may wish to avoid. The candidates’ reasoning will be if your company hires personalities the candidate disliked, it indicates that your culture prefers those types of individuals, which will have an impact on your employer brand whether you get a chance to enter the conversation or not.

This puts a new pressure on employers to create a working culture that will attract these more web savvy candidates. These Web 2.0 candidates don’t believe most of our career sites’ language about having an exciting work environment. They want to find out for themselves (via networking) what it’s really like to work within the sub-cultures within our company, which are driven by management personalities and business cycles which are exciting to certain candidate types, and a turnoff to others.

http://hotgigs.typepad.com/jobs2web/2008/10/the-web-20-job.html

Do you "date" your recruits?

Dating and recruiting have a lot in common. Learn how to improve your recruiting efforts by applying the most common dating rules.

Dating rule #1
First impressions are critical.

Recruiting application:
Differentiate yourself. Resist the "I have a great position for you" especially if you have never spoken to them.

Dating rule #2
Don't believe everything you see. We have all heard stories from people that signed up for an online dating service and were shocked when their date was two feet shorter and 10 years older than the profile.

Recruiting application:
Candidates exaggerate their strengths and skills and down play their weaknesses. Do not assume anything. Prescreen, interview, administer assessments, and call the references before you present the candidate to your hiring manager.

Dating rule #3
Play hard to get. Desperation is the world's worst perfume.

Recruiting application:
If you make a huge fuss over the candidate and beg them to interview, you will diminish your negotiating power.

Dating rule #4
Be selective. You can not change people.

Recruiting application:
Look for the red flags; don't avoid them. It is better for you to uncover any candidate weaknesses or issues than your hiring manager discovering them. Your name and reputation is all you have in this business.

Dating rule #5
Prepare for the date.

Recruiting application:
If your candidate has spent 20 minutes on the phone with you and takes time off work to come to interview, and then you ask them "so, tell me what you want to do?" - you are wasting the candidate's time. You should have notes on the candidate's resume that you want to clarify, and if appropriate, the company profiles that best match what your candidate's needs.

Dating rule #6
Don't talk too much. People who express the "enough about me, what do you think about me?" attitude sit home alone, a lot.

Recruiting application:
The candidate should be doing most of the talking. Assess what the candidate has to offer, what they need, and then set expectations of how you will work together. Let the candidate talk about the interview before you disclose the hiring manager's view. If you blurt out "they love you, you are the best candidate they have ever met!" - what do you think happens to the candidate's salary requirements?

Dating rule #7
Follow up with your date.

Recruiting application:
As an industry, one of the biggest complaints we get from candidates and hiring managers is the lack of communication. No news is still considered news to the candidate; make sure you keep your candidate in the loop.

Dating rule #8
Don't be afraid to end the date early.

Recruiting application:
Pre-screen carefully, ask the hard questions, and always tell the candidate the truth. If they are not going to fit into your recruiting focus (skills, salary expectations, location, etc.), coach or make suggestions regarding who may be able to help them in the market.

Dating rule #9
Improve your odds by hanging out where (like) people hang out.

Recruiting application:
If you are recruiting technology talent, sign up and participate in technology activities in your market. Volunteer at association meetings to check members in: you will meet every attending member, every meeting.
Explain to people you meet that there are two types of people you would like to be introduced to: those who are leaders in their field and are looking for an opportunity and those who are leaders in their field and are not looking for an opportunity right now. You are an expert in your market, so people who are not looking now would still benefit from knowing you and the people in your network.

Dating Rule #10
They will not buy the cow if they are getting the milk for free.

Recruiting application:
When you agree to represent a candidate, you are entering into a business agreement. You need to set clear expectations of how the process must work. If the candidate will not agree to the terms, they are not committed to you, so turn them loose.

http://www.ere.net/2008/08/06/10-rules-for-dating-and-recruiting/

We owe it to them.

I consider myself a very patriotic person. On Tuesday, we have the privilege to choose who will lead our country, state, county, city, etc. Unfortunately, we don't always think about why we even have the right to vote.

Every time I see a soldier I thank them and ask God to bless them. When I see a disable veteran I think, "he lost his leg, so I could have freedom." Please don't get discouraged by the long lines. We owe it to all the soldiers who lost their lives to vote. We owe the wounded (physically and emotionally) to vote. We owe all the parents, spouses, sisters, brothers, dads, moms, son and daughters, who lost a love one to vote.

Catch my drift? Please vote.

The Post Better Blog...and how to advertise jobs online.: Top 7 Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Advertising Open Positions

The Post Better Blog...and how to advertise jobs online.: Top 7 Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Advertising Open Positions

Is it pain or is it friendship

When selling a job do you try to find out what the jobseekers pain points are or try the relationship strategy to win them over. This is an interesting concept because in the past I usually tried to develop a friendship. Now, because of having a sales role in addition to my recruitment consulting I understood that uncovering the jobseekers pain points might be a better way to sell. According to sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer, it's the relationship that is important.

Pain does NOT drive a sale. If you’re in a prospective customer’s office or on any sales call, here’s what to look for and here’s what to uncover:

• Find the friendly. All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. No pain there.
• Find the common ground. What is there in the rapport building that “clicks.” Something that sparks the conversation and takes it deeper. Smiles, things of common interest. Things that build initial comfort – maybe even trust. No pain there.
• Find the engagement. How meaningful can you make your questions so that you get to the heart of the prospect’s important issues? No pain there.
• Find the need. In conversation and two-way dialogue precipitated by your questions, uncover the real needs.
• Find the symptoms and address the needs. Needs are not painful; they’re challenges that you can convert to sales. No pain there.
• Find the desire. By exposing desire you at once understand (beyond need) how important your product or service is to the prospect. No pain there.
• Find the opportunity. Common ground, engagement, need, and desire will expose the one element necessary for you to make sales: OPPORTUNITY. Your job is to discover how to take advantage of it. No pain there.
• Find the difference. The difference between you and your competition that the customer perceives. There may be some pain here – if the prospect thinks the competition is better than you. OUCH!

A Product, Experience, Story

Since learning about sales through books has taught me many things about recruiting I came across this phrase today that really made me take a look at how this applies to recruiting.

1. Define your product. Do you really know what your product is? Are you selling a job, a company, a work environment? You need to work very closely with the hiring manager and potential co-workers when defining the product. You could call it branding on the department level.
2. Experience. What "feelings" do you want to promote when selling a job to a recruit? The experience is best defined by those who have recently gone through it. Use testimonials from newly hired employees about their experience with your company so far.
3. Selling the story. Try telling the recruit how your organization has changed your life or the lives of the people that work there. Use promotions, employee drives to help other employees, etc.

Use any "down" time you have to put this information together so you can get to it quickly when trying to sell employment to a recruit.

Selling a Salary or Shift

I hate losing to the competition. Especially when I've invested in a recruit that I believe will be a good fit for our organization. Then the salary discussion starts. It always amazes me how someone will sell out for less than $1.

Since adding sales to my role at the company I've learned that you should start selling value early on in the sales cycle. Especially if you know your product will likely cost more once the demonstrations are all done. If we lose a sale or a good job candidate it is likely that the competition has done a better job at selling the value of the opportunity better than I did.

How do you sell value? What is the candidate looking for? Did you ask them what is their ideal situation? Did you get to know them well enough to understand what type of work/life balance they need? Do you managers know how to sell an opportunity?

I've found that most managers let the candidates have it the moment they get them in the door. All I have is night shift. We will put you on the list and perhaps in a year or less you'll get your day job. Have you thought about having someone from the night shift involved in the interview process? How about someone who recently transferred to days from nights. You need to talk to your managers about the value of the night shift and how to sell it more effectively.

Offer your night shift training on how to transition to night shift. There are materials for that on the internet. Most of your night shift employees are daytime people waiting to get off nights. If you can give them the tools and skills to handle nights physically, mentally and socially you may not have to fill as many night jobs as you think.

Useful Internet Newsletters

Here is a list of some of the newsletters I read every morning:

Seth Godin
BNET
Recruiting Trends
HR
Staffing.org
Talent Management Magazine

I've also set up some automatic Google searches to pull new items from the web about recruting, metrics, staffing, marketing, sales. I tried to look at all the skills necessary to be a good recruiter so I don't limit my reading to just recruiting.

It's also a good idea to start your morning off with reading something positive. There are a number of choices here. There is usually several things that happen over the course of a day that may make you doubt yourself. Starting off on a positive note will get you going in the morning.

Healthcare Recruitment

Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen in on a webinar about setting up a recruiting function in healthcare. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to enjoy the entire presentation. But, what I did hear was important and is worth discussing.

Our speaker was prepared with some interesting data from customer surveys she had conducted. She reported the following applicant to hiring ratios:

• RN's: three applicants for every one hire (3:1)
• Support Staff: ten applicants for every one hire (10:1)
• Allied Health: five applicants for every one hire (5:1)

She was also an advocate for pay-for-performance. The recommendation was to set monthly recruitment goals and then bonus pay the recruiters for exceeding those goals. I had a bonus program at one of my recruiting jobs. However, it was difficult to meet the goal because much of the process was out of my hands.

Another interesting point that was made was the number of applications that go unreviewed due to the volume of electronic applications that recruiters receive. I believe the number was "thousands". She did make a good point. All applications should be reviewed within 24 hours of receiving them. This is a great goal and very achievable if you use good time management.

The speaker also discussed a recruiting tool that is rarely used today. The email address. This is a technology that has great potential in that you can contact the masses with a simple click of the mouse. Recruiters today don't mine their applicants like they should. If you tell your applicants that their information is active for 30 - 60 - 90 days or a year, then you should be sourcing through that information.

Sourcing in applicant tracking systems should be easier than ever. Many have resume search capabilities. The ATS I used has saved searches so I can set my criteria and the system sends me the applicants right to my inbox.

The point I'm trying to make here is that we have tools, resources and abilities to get the job done. As recruiters we need to use all of these things to make our jobs easier. But so many of them fight for the way things used to be. We don't live in Kansas anymore... get used to the way things are.

You are never too small to think global.

This morning I'm listening to a sales presentation from the site Selling Power. Bill McDermott the CEO from SAP Americas is discussing his success and the success of this company. He said something today that really hit home to me regarding business. He said that business is going global. How does this apply to recruiting?

In today's labor market, can anyone still think that they are too small to think globally. I work for a recruitment technology company (Jobscience). We have technology that allows me to see who is accessing our sites and from where. Today there was someone in Italy looking at laboratory jobs that one of our customers had posted on our site. Someone from Europe is looking for a job in a US hospital. Last week I attended the ASHHRA convention in Austin. I heard so many times from attendees, "We are very small and don't need a recruitment solution."

In order to be an effective recruiter you must think globally. That does not mean that you are going to start an international recruitment campaign. It just means that you never know where your candidates are coming from. You need to have processes and solutions in place that connect with people on a global level.

I still need to talk about job postings.

I just can't say enough to you that recruit about job postings. Most of you format your job postings the same, job title, company description, position description and qualifications. So job seekers see a long list of jobs to choose from. Much like the way that you screen candidates by scanning headers on resumes, job seekers decide whether to check out your job posting based on what shows up in the company name, job title and location fields.

Think about it. Just because someone clicks on to review your posting does not guarantee they are going to read it all and apply. So start with something great sales gurus use; your best elevator pitch. Write several sentences to state what you do and why it matters, what the position entails and why it matters. Your job postings should never be generic. Your sole goal is to excite the job seeker enough to read on.

Part Two: Job Postings: Jobseekers are Desparate to Read them but Recruiters dread writing them.

Yesterday I shared something I learned from a book I was reading called, "Recruit or Die". It turns out that the five common on-campus advertising mistakes also apply to advertising in general. Today the information regarding job postings is just as applicable. My background in recruitment has been primarily in health care. One thing that I've noticed is that job postings in general have either too much information or not enough. At one point in my recruitment career I thought about having Marketing weigh in on the message that we were communicating to our jobseekers. This of course was branding before branding was popular.

So to the job posting. In all of the HR positions I've been in there never seemed to be a clear understanding of whose responsibility it was to write the job postings. If marketing did it the jobseeker wouldn't understand the job. If the hiring manager did it the jobseeker would be scared to apply to the job and if HR did it, well you get my drift. At the end of the day, no one wanted to do it.

Another challenge may be that when you decide to post a job you may not have all the information you need to communicate to the jobseeker what you are looking for. An example of this would be for jobs that interns or students are looking at for after graduation.

Bottom line is that your job posting has to be compelling. Most jobs are discovered by word of mouth or after meeting with you at a job fair. But when they finally get around to reading the posting they are turned off by the lack-luster effort to reel-them-in.

If you can sell your jobseekers on the job with a well-written posting your organization will get a huge return on the time you invest. It really doesn't take that much more time to write a great description than one that is average.

Job Postings: Recruits Love to Read them but We Hate to Write Them

I'm reading a good book called, "Recruit Or Die". Although the focus is on campus recruiting I find that much of the book is applicable to recruiting in general. This is the first of a two-part series on job postings. Today I want to take a brief look at the pitfalls of job postings and tomorrow I'll take a look at best practices.

According to the authors of "Recruit Or Die" there are five common advertising mistakes. Looking at the ads in the newspaper and internet we all could learn to manage our job postings more efficiently.

1. Wasting time and money on advertising that doesn't reach the target audience.
2. Leaving jobseekers confused about who you are and what you are hiring for.
3. Not targeting a specific group of people.
4. Not calling your jobseekers to action.
5. Not mentioning the good stuff.