Here’s a list with five thoughtful presents that can be ideal resources for recruiters and talent professionals:

1. A library of templates

Anyone involved in the hiring process knows how much time is spent on writing job descriptions, composing emails to candidates or crafting lists of interview questions. So, for this holiday season, give a recruiter a library of templates for every purpose, from job ads and offer letters to interview questions and Boolean searches.

How do you present this gift? If you want to add a touch of holiday spirit, you could send it as a card. Use a relevant service or create your own card using a tool like Adobe Express Card Maker. Here’s one I created with Spark within 10 minutes:

2. A book on modern recruiting

Recruiting has grown exponentially from the time of newspaper job ads, and it’ll keep evolving and changing. Forward-thinking talent professionals who stay updated on new techniques and technologies will be the big winners in the recruiting game.

So why not give a new, exciting book to a recruiting professional? Here are a few great options:

• Culture-Driven Recruiting by Lee-Anne Edwards (the first-ever book on the topic)
• Smart and Gets Things Done by Avram Joel Spolsky (an oldie-but-goody “concise guide to finding the best technical talent”)
• Exceptional Talent: How to Attract, Acquire and Retain the Very Best Employees by Mervyn Dinnen and Matt Alder (a guide on using modern technology, methods and media to hire and retain great employees).
• Writing Without Bullshit by Josh Bernoff (an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to better written communications including emails, announcements, and reports)

As for presentation, nothing too fancy is required. Get some festive wrapping paper and you’re all set!

3. A cool subscription

For recruiters, receiving new knowledge frequently is important – you can grasp new techniques, find hiring methods that work and discover new recruiting strategies, just by keeping abreast of the buzz in the market. But how would a recruiter do that easily, when they’re already so busy with everyday tasks?

One thing you can do is to choose a fun, interesting and reliable newsletter/podcast they don’t already subscribe to, and sign them up or send them a link (you can include a card to make it more of a gift). Here are a few ideas:

4. A new Applicant Tracking System

Yeah, I know, shameless plug of our own product. But the truth is, we wouldn’t be making recruiting software if we didn’t think of it as a definite game-changer. If a recruiter doesn’t have an ATS, or uses an ATS that’s clunky and inadequate, you could address this in the new year. That’s especially so if you’re part of the recruiting team or one of the decision-makers at your company.

What you can do is conduct some research on ATS vendors and sign up for a demo or free trial. Then, invite the recruiter to sit in demos or explore the different software solutions along with you. You can also share an RFP template with them to help in their hunt for the perfect ATS.

5. Recruiting swag

Swag is less useful than the other options on this list, but things that cheer us up and boost our morale are always welcome. For recruiters, you could choose a funny slogan (for example: “Keep calm and call that candidate,” “Trust me, I’m a recruiter,” “Talent superstar”) and print it on a mug or a T-shirt.

You could also go straight to websites that sell swag for recruiters, like Etsy, Cafe Press or Zazzle:

You might even look for a stuffed purple squirrel or a mug or T-shirt that has one on it. Recruiters will probably get the reference!

The holiday season and New Year go hand-in-hand for many people. If that’s the case for you, too, then check out our list of 5 New Year’s resolutions for recruiters.

The post Resources for recruiters: 5 fun and useful presents appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

New Year’s Resolutions for recruiters

1. Learn a new skill or hobby

Whether you want to cover a skills gap or simply expand your knowledge, learning something new can make the difference in your job. It doesn’t have to be a formal training or a totally new field of study. Pick something that you’ve always wanted to learn, ask a coworker to share some bits of expertise with you, or enroll in an online course.

Here are some ideas:

• Take a basic coding course, if you’re usually hiring or plan to hire many tech employees. You’ll understand how to write better, buzzword-free job descriptions that give candidates a clear picture of the position.
• Shadow colleagues from different departments. Next time you’re hiring a new employee for their team, you’ll know which candidates will be a good culture fit/add.
• Refresh your labor legislation knowledge. With new regulations like GDPR, political changes like Brexit and social movements like #blacklivesmatter that impact our lives, it’s important to ensure that you and your company are compliant.
• Review and improve your company’s onboarding session. While your job technically ends with hiring, what happens after that is also important for your employer brand.

2. Save some money

Spreadsheets full of numbers, complex calculations and cost forecasting reviews are never fun. But expense reports are an integral part of HR. For example, if you want to buy a new ATS that’ll make your life easier, you have to first build a case to get your manager’s approval. Or, if you want to hire a junior recruiter to assist with administrative tasks, you need to calculate their salary range based on the value they’ll bring to the team.

Here are some ideas to reduce some of the pain associated with costs and will help you allocate budgets to your benefit:

• First, calculate how much you’re spending on recruiting. Break down costs by category, like job boards, recruitment events and HR software. This will help you prepare and track your recruiting budget.
• Cut – or reduce – unnecessary expenses. For example, work with agency recruiters only for specific, hard-to-fill roles or stop publishing job ads on sites that don’t bring you qualified applicants.
• Set up a referral program. Getting referrals from your current employees on a regular basis can have a great impact on your recruiting budget – even if you offer a referral bonus. You’re saving from job advertising expenses and you’ll reduce turnover (and the costs that are tied to it) as referred employees tend to stay longer.
• Invest in smart HR technology. We don’t recommend buying the most modern software just for the sake of it; it’s all about being strategic. If 2023 is the year that you want to double headcount, it makes sense to purchase a sourcing tool. This way, you’ll reach your goals faster and save money in the long run.

3. Be healthier

Bad recruiting habits tackle your career, without you even realizing it. These habits could be outdated methods to evaluate candidates (see personality tests) or long application forms and drawn-out hiring stages that make candidates lose interest. On the other hand, a positive candidate experience will make your company more attractive for job seekers and you, the recruiter, a more trustworthy professional.

Here are a few things you could try:

• Apply for one of your open positions – as a test. What do you notice? Are there perhaps some questions that are not mandatory? Also, make sure to use your mobile to apply, too. Job seekers tend to look for new opportunities on their phone, so it’s important that your application form is optimized for mobile.
• Redesign your careers page. Or give it a fresh look. An outdated careers page sends the wrong message to potential candidates. Think of ways to make it more appealing, like adding employee testimonials or pictures from your offices.
• Introduce structured interviews. It may look like a lot of work, but once you put your questions in place, you will interview candidates faster and more objectively.
• Revisit your job descriptions. If you’re using the same templates for too long, you probably need to re-write some of the job duties, the requirements, or even the “About us” section. Get rid of any buzzwords that may sound cool but don’t really describe the position, use gender-neutral language, and consider including the salary to increase transparency.

4. Nurture strong relationships

Toxic relationships don’t refer only to our personal lives; they can be work-related, as well. This year, try to build healthy relationships with everyone you interact with, from colleagues and candidates to hiring managers and other HR professionals. Relationships, though, require you to invest time; it’s not a one-time thing you can cross off your list.

Here are some ideas you can implement throughout the year:

• Have regular informal meetings – such as on your lunch break – with team leaders. Your first meeting shouldn’t be when a new job opens. Instead, you should get to know each other and establish a solid, trusting relationship before you end up needing them in your work.
• Book a “sourcing time” in your calendar. It could be an hour or two in your week when you’ll proactively look for potential hires online or reach out to passive candidates, or send a quick email to catch up with past applicants who might qualify for another role in the future.
• Attend at least one local job fair every few months and host a career day at your offices. Not only you’ll get the chance to meet job seekers and see the world through their eyes, but you’ll also build your employer brand.
• Set up a process for communicating promptly with candidates, even the ones you reject. Book some time in your schedule and respond or reach out to people who are in your hiring pipeline. If you have an ATS, simply double-check the settings to ensure that candidates get automated replies when necessary.

5. Exercise more

A mindset of continuous improvement is what separates a good recruiter from a great recruiter. Measure your successes and failures, experiment with different techniques and find your most effective ways of working. Starting this year, track the metrics that matter to you (e.g. email response rates, quality of hires and yield ratios.) These measurements will serve as your guide to determine which methods are working for you and where there’s more room for improvement.

Set tangible sub-goals like:

• This year, I want to decrease time to hire from X days to Y, so I will advertise open roles in more channels including social media.
• By Q3, I’d like to increase my email response rate by X%, so I will personalize my messages to passive candidates and test new subject lines.
• I want to build more diverse teams, that’s why I will connect with local communities that support minorities and host career days specifically for under-represented candidates, such as women and people with disabilities.
• I aim to improve the overall candidate experience, so I’ll design and distribute candidate experience surveys to get a better idea of what’s working and what could be improved in our hiring process.

Bonus goal: Enjoy your life to the fullest

And your job. You’ll have better results if you put your passion into your work. Take a moment to reflect on why you chose this field, in the first place. Stay positive and look for the best – in yourself and in others. Happy recruiting in 2023!

What’s your resolution for the new year? Share with us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

The holiday season and New Year go hand-in-hand for many people. If that’s the case for you, too, then check out our list of 5 holiday gifts for recruiters.

The post 5 New Year’s resolutions for recruiters appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Introduction to Applicant Tracking Systems
2. Overview of Applicant Tracking Systems
3. Is an ATS the Right Choice for your Growing Business?
4. Benefits of Applicant Tracking Systems
5. Choosing an Applicant Tracking System
6. Keys to Recruiting
7. Managing the Hiring Process
8. Optimizing Your Company’s Career Page
9. Managing the Interview Process
10. Assessing Your Requirements
11. Checklist of Applicant Tracking System Features

1. Introduction to Applicant tracking systems

The first applicant tracking systems (ATS) evolved to help employers take that old standby, the paper resume, and scan it into a database. Like most technologies that emerged to replicate analogue ways of doing things, they left a lot of room for improvement.

The processes were bureaucratic, unwieldy and complicated. The aim was to mirror old world paper and filing processes in a custom database. The word “clunky” was often overheard. In its formative years the ATS was similar to basic customer relationship management systems (CRMs), that sought to offer very basic resume screening and trace an applicant’s path through the hiring process.

Just like the CRMs, which began life as digital rolodexes and turned into the current cloud-based powerhouses, the ATS has evolved. Today, there are a wide range of ATS software options, some that concentrate on automating as much as possible of the hiring process and others that help the hiring manager to make their own decisions.

The ATS has become an integral part of every aspect of hiring from building an employer brand and smarter application forms, to resume parsing, automatic retrieval of candidates’ public profiles, and scheduling interviews. Recruiting analytics and reporting tools can now help companies get a clearer understanding of the hiring process and make improvements that have a real impact on the business.

The purpose of this applicant tracking system guide is to help you understand your needs as clearly as possible in order to make an informed choice of recruiting software.

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2. Overview of applicant tracking systems

The quality of a company’s hires are the single best predictor of its future success. Even though this is widely understood, hiring is still seen as frustrating and messy by many business owners, HR Directors, hiring managers and recruiters who grapple with it. But now, better software is righting this wrong.

Human Resources has been poorly served by technology for too long, when compared with the pioneers in sales, but we are seeing a renaissance in HR software, thanks in large part to the potential unleashed by cloud-based computing. At the heart of all of this is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

What is an ATS?

What is an applicant tracking system (ATS)? In its simplest form, it offers relief to these commonly acknowledged pain points in recruitment:

Pain: Submitting the same job ad to multiple job boards costs time and money.
Relief: An ATS integrated with these listings sites can post to a wide range of free and paid job boards with a single submission.

Pain: Building and maintaining a careers page takes up valuable developer time.
Relief: An ATS can make managing a careers page as simple as changing your background image and bio on Twitter.

Pain: Recruiting triggers an avalanche of PDFs and emails.
Relief: ATS recruiting means you collect, organize and show job candidates in the same way LinkedIn or Facebook show your contacts or friends.

Pain: Resume styles are nearly as various as the people sending them.
Relief: Recruiting software can parse these resumes, break them down and present the data they contain in a standardized format where it can be quickly reviewed.

Pain: The absence of standardized information like “how many years of work experience has she got?” add to the time burden.
Relief: Applicant tracking software mines the resumes you receive and presents candidate data in a way that makes comparisons fast and simple.

Pain: Precious time is routinely wasted on irrelevant applications.
Relief: ATS recruiting offers the facility to automatically filter dud applications from job candidates or highlight 3-4 priorities on the application form that enable human judgement to be swifter.

Pain: Using email and spreadsheets to track candidates with a hiring team quickly becomes overwhelming.
Relief: An ATS can enable you to add notes to candidates just like you put comments on Facebook.

Pain: External recruiters remain a great resource for high value hires, but they shouldn’t be a necessity for businesses.
Relief: An ATS can provide recruiting tools that let you fill a talent pool and save your recruiting dollars for the tougher hires.

This kind of pain relief is only part of an applicant tracking system definition but it points to what you can achieve with ATS recruiting. The right applicant tracking software is a major step towards creating a repeatable, systematic hiring process, from posting a job to having an offer letter accepted.

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3. Is an ATS the Right Choice for your Growing Business?

Whether you are looking for your first applicant tracking system (ATS) or considering investing in an upgrade, the best starting point is a clear understanding of your needs. The first step to achieving this is to map your existing hiring process.

Questions to get started with evaluating applicant tracking software:

• How do you do your hiring planning and budget costs?
• How are your job ads written?
• How and where do you post your jobs?
• How do you currently collect applications?
• How do you progress candidates through from applied to hired?
• Do you use pre-screening questions or job-related assignments?
• Do you work with external recruiters?
• Who is on your hiring team (this may differ from one position to another).
• How many steps does a candidate go through prior to a final interview?
• Do you conduct background checks prior to a final offer?
• What kind of data and reporting do you use to improve your hiring process?

Now step back and think about how this could be improved. What are the pain points? How do you cope with the volume of applications, how are communications between your team during hiring, how well does your interview and call scheduling work?

The point of this exercise is to identify the gap between how things are done now and what your ideal recruiting process would look like. If you sailed through the 11 questions and liked your own answers you’re in a happy minority. Most companies, of all sizes, find recruiting challenging, in one way or another.

The vast majority of small and medium-sized businesses are still using email and spreadsheets to run their recruitment. Less than one in five SMBs has switched to applicant tracking software, according to most estimates. But the big switch has begun.

Larger companies have long since adopted software for their ATS needs but many of the enterprise solutions adopted by Fortune 500 firms have inherited the same bureaucratic dysfunction they were meant to cure. It might seem sensible to cram in features for all eventualities but feature-heavy applicant tracking software can be both expensive and unwieldy.

Hiring processes are not the same at an organization with 2,000+ employees as they are at a firm with 250 employees, or one with 25. By being clear from the outset over your real hiring needs you can eliminate the prospect of paying for features you don’t need and concentrate your investment on an ATS that does the best possible job on the features that you do need.

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4. Benefits of Applicant Tracking Systems

Most recruiters report that at least 50% of job hunters don’t possess the basic qualifications for the jobs they are pursuing. Applicant tracking systems came about when employers needed a way to deal with this flood of irrelevant resumes.

Today’s ATS systems are developed to scan for keywords, employment history and college records to identify viable candidates. The best ATS now available will take the data entry out of your hiring and leave you time to concentrate on the chewy human question of who you should hire and work with.

Using recruiting software means you don’t have to stitch together spreadsheets, email and elaborate filing systems. The advantage of an applicant tracking system is that it provides seamless and customizable collaboration features so that you’re always in the loop.

Applicant tracking systems help employers by providing a business process to follow during recruiting:

• Save time recruiting by automating job board posting, resume submission, and pre-screening
• Open the way to better candidates with standardized metrics and access to a pipeline of previous successful applicants
• Standardize your hiring so you don’t have to reinvent the process each time
• Keep you compliant with hiring laws
• Give you a headstart on employee retention with better screened and qualified candidates
• Ensure a striking and personalized candidate experience

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5. Choosing an Applicant Tracking System

One of the first questions you need to answer when making the ATS comparison is whether you want an applicant tracking software solution installed on your own server or hosted by your software vendor. The old way of purchasing was to get “on-premise” software but in recent years this has been overtaken by software as a service providers (SaaS), companies who host the software on the cloud and offer it as a service online.

What are the benefits of SaaS:

• Accessible anywhere where you have an internet connection, with some SaaS applicant tracking systems offering mobile functionality for recruiting on the move
• No fixed server costs
• Updates to the software are the responsibility of the vendor
• Removes the need for an IT department

The nightmare scenario for any growing business that invests in the best applicant tracking system for their needs, is for the vendor to then close down for its own business reasons. Yes, this has happened: there are numerous businesses who have seen their ATS shut down. Due diligence in this case means asking the right questions about vendor viability.

Another route altogether is an open source applicant tracking system. The advantage of this option is clear: it’s free, and you can modify the software as you please. Where’s the catch? Do you want to manage your hiring or to rewrite software? Unless you’re more than tech savvy or have an IT team that can afford to spend the time, you will run into issues installing, running and integrating one of these systems. And when you run into those problems there is no dedicated support to turn to.

The sensible ATS buyers’ checklist:

• Does your ATS match your company profile? The three main categories are enterprise, staffing agencies and SMBs. There are good solutions for each of these categories but these are big tents — think clearly about which one you belong in.
• Does the ATS provide real ease of use? There’s no point in investing in software that no one can or will use, or that is stuffed with features that you will not need or use. Look for an intuitive design that your hiring team will buy into. There are systems that require no installation, training or manuals.
• Does your ATS enable you to post to multiple job sites? Overwhelmingly the most important feature for smaller companies. Check which jobs boards and social networks the ATS is integrated with.
• What kind of search capability does the ATS have? Make sure that it boasts a fast, accurate search with results organized in a logical and intuitive way.
• Does your ATS offer strong customer support? This can quickly turn what looks like the best applicant tracking software into an expensive farrago. Be clear over response times and availability in your time zone. Check to see how well organized and detailed the support section of the ATS website is.
• What kind of reporting does the ATS offer? Be clear about your own reporting needs to track your recruiting efforts. Make sure they are matched and covered before making a choice.
• Does the ATS enable employee referrals? Referrals are the oldest and still the best method of finding employees. The best applicants tracking system will provide you with a clear way to attract and reward referrals from your team.
• What kind of candidate experience does the ATS offer? Your team is not the only user of the applicant tracking system, there’s also the candidate to consider. You will lose valuable prospects if its application process is clunky and off-putting.
• Check your applicant tracking system vendor’s viability. You want a solution that will last, make sure the same applies to your vendor’s financials.
• Get references for an ATS like you would for a hire. There are tons of applicant tracking system reviews online, take them into account. From Trust Pilot to Capterra and Software Advice to Getapp, check what other users are saying on third-party review sites.
• It has become standard practice to work on the move. Smartphones and better software allows us to work when and where we want to. Your ATS should not be the exception. The whole of your hiring team should be able to review candidates, schedule interviews, leave feedback and check the pipeline via your ATS on the device of their choice.
• The best ATS options have useful integrations. Check for integrations with leading and niche job boards and for sourcing tools that help you source and attract passive candidates. Your ATS should help you get more candidates by getting your job in front of prospects you can’t reach when you’re manually posting jobs to job boards. Does the ATS offer easy integrations for background checks and with a modern HRIS, like Namely and BambooHR?

If you’re tight on time, this list of the 12 best applicant tracking systems in the market can help guide your decision.

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6. Keys to Recruiting

If you’re not new to the hiring process or you’ve been working without any recruitment software you have most likely trekked through forests of resumes and descended bottomless email threads. This is not to mention giant spreadsheets, and a constant wrestling match to coordinate interviews and feedback.

If you’ve been getting the job done with an older generation applicant tracking system or candidate management system you will have faced different problems: poor or no customization options, usability problems, no buy in from your hiring team, insufficient integration.

Simplifying recruiting means the ability to post to multiple job boards and source candidates from all over the web, making it as easy to browse candidates as it is to follow friends on social networks. It means beautiful career sites that update themselves and good-looking job ads.

For candidates it means one-click applications. For hiring managers it means candidate timelines that show the ‘when and why’ of who made the shortlist. Hiring software should enable you to message candidates and keep track of comments in context.

Social recruiting is still more talked about than practiced but a first step that an ATS can help with is to bring resumes to life by automatically combining them with public social media profiles. Social media integration is a useful first step to getting your whole team involved in hiring. It’s everyone’s job to share open positions with their networks.

The best applicant tracking software enables you to track and reward referrals. The oldest and still the best source of high quality candidates, an employee referral program, relies on having a simple method for employees to recommend prospects and to record the initial source of job candidates (who recommended who). Companies of all sizes are beginning to recognize and reward referrals systematically.

Candidate management

The full value of an ATS becomes immediately obvious once candidates begin to flow into it. With the proliferation of job boards and the facility to apply with one click, many companies have been overwhelmed with applications.

This is where proper resume parsing technology comes into its own. A resume parser takes the weight of candidate data flooding your way, breaks it down and presents it to you in individual candidate profiles with comparable, standardized fields, like years of work experience and education.

The best ATS will enable customizable application forms with pre-screening questions that will quickly eliminate unqualified or irrelevant applications. Applicant tracking software enables you to standardize the information you’re receiving for each candidate, making it possible to be quick and decisive.

Candidate management then becomes paramount. A single profile for each candidate that keeps all comments, notes and documents (resumes, cover letters, work samples) in one place, revolutionizes hiring teams. No more searching inboxes for hiring managers looking for that all-important piece of feedback on a candidate.

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7. Managing the Hiring Process

There has never been a better time for businesses of all sizes to get strategic with their hiring. The tools needed to attract the right candidates and get from application to hire are both more affordable and more effective than ever before. What the best of them deliver is a hiring process that works.

The right recruitment process is streamlined enough not to waste your time, but inclusive enough to enable you to hire ambitiously. Process is not a word to light fires in the imagination but there’s nothing duller than trying to work without one. Having a series of standardized steps in the hiring process that have been chosen because they maximize the likelihood of a good outcome makes sense.

The most effective way to think of the steps of the recruiting process borrows from sales orthodoxy, with a hiring pipeline. Try this simple exercise. Jot down the current basic steps of your recruiting process. It may vary a bit but it probably looks something like this:

• Applied
• Promising
• Phone screen
• On-site interview
• Executive interview
• Offer

The hiring process is a funnel — you get a lot of applicants, you speak with some of them, you meet a few of them, you hire the one you like best. An efficient filtering process will save you and your candidates time.

Rather than floundering with an inbox full of resumes and a thicket of spreadsheets tracking candidates’ progress, the recruiting pipeline tracks and manages multiple candidates offering simple workflow management.

The recruiting pipeline enables hiring teams to work together collecting all comments, feedback, notes, social media profiles or assignment results on the same page. It removes the need for endless email threads and avoids the possibility of misplacing vital feedback or conversations with candidates.

The efficiency offered by an applicant tracking system takes on added importance when hiring at scale or across multiple locations, as is the case for multinationals or the increasing number of SMBs working across borders.

When your business is spread across regions and/or divisions some form of territory management is typically called for. Territory management can apply to any system which groups candidates according to predefined sets of criteria. It enables hiring teams to co-operate on the basis of location, division or function.

This can become even more important when it comes to assessing and improving your recruitment efforts. It can deliver clearer insight into the recruitment results in each territory, as well as generate reports based on locations and divisions to measure relative progress on hiring.

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8. Optimizing your Company’s Careers Page

The clearest way to think about your company careers page is to see it as a shop window. The careers page is not the only means at your disposal to market the job opportunities you offer but it should be the starting point for all these efforts.

Whether candidates note that you’re hiring after seeing your open position on a job board, or hear about it through social media or even a word-of-mouth referral, they will typically head to your careers page to find out more about the vacancy, your company and the application process. In other words, there needs to be something worth visiting when they get there.

Far from replacing careers pages, the proliferation of job boards that began in the 1990s has made a fully-optimized careers page a necessity. Placing the right applicant tracking software at the heart of your recruitment efforts removes much of the hassle associated with creating, hosting and maintaining an attractive and up-to-date careers page.

For companies without the IT resources to develop a careers page in house, the best ATS options offer simple tools to build a good-looking and professional site that’s connected to your applicant tracking system. An ATS offers automated job posting to ensure that all open positions that you post to job boards, social media or any other platform will also appear on your careers page.

But a careers page is about more than getting your jobs seen. It’s also the anchor for your employer brand, a broader concept of your company’s reputation in the digital age. The main difference with reputation is that it’s easier than ever for prospective hires to get an advanced idea of what it’s like to work for your company.

Wherever you, your colleagues or employees appear online whether it’s your company Facebook page, a Twitter conversation, or a Linkedin profile, you’re talking to two audiences: customers and talent. While this makes some businesses nervous, it’s actually a considerable opportunity for companies of all sizes.

It’s become popular to say that “hiring is marketing” because it’s increasingly true. Happily it doesn’t have to be done on prime time television to be effective. Digital platforms offer an affordable and potentially enormous reach. In many ways the traditional strengths of small and mid-sized businesses like personal relationships, approachability and tight-knit teams are ideally suited to the social media age, where authenticity is rewarded.

Feeling unsure what your employer brand is? Give yourself one minute to describe it on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. Stuck? Get some of your core team together and brainstorm on what is unique or special about working for your company as opposed to other similar companies? Is it the people, the mission?

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 9. Managing the interview process

Interviewing is the most interesting and least automated part of the hiring process. This also means it’s the hardest and frequently the most poorly executed part as well. Unstructured interviews are no more likely to end with the right candidate than choosing a name from your shortlist at random.

An ATS can’t teach a hiring manager how to interview, but it can help them create an interview process that assists them in making an informed decision. Interviews don’t begin on the day someone walks into your office. Done properly the hiring process has worked like a funnel, you spoke to some candidates, you met a handful, now you want to work out which is the best of them to hire.

The support that the best applicant tracking software can deliver at this key phase is to streamline the scheduling of interviews and provide a rounded view of the candidate from sourcing or application, through screening and any assignment to the actual interview. It enables hiring managers to approach interviews in a structured and prepared manner.

Scheduling and communications with candidates goes from tangled to straightforward when your ATS integrates with your company email (typically with Gmail or Outlook) and calendar. Proper mail and calendar integrations ensure the right people are informed in a timely manner whether it’s the candidate who needs the time and location of an interview or phone screen, or if it’s the hiring team who need to know when an action is required.

The same is true for feedback that will inform the interviewer’s approach to each candidate. When all comments, notes, documents and communications are in one place a hiring manager can get up to speed in a fraction of the time an old-style briefing or a review of an email thread would otherwise take.

As well as time saving and automation, the benefit that the right ATS can deliver is a better candidate experience. As the hiring process has become more sophisticated it has begun to take longer. The “time to hire” means that in every hiring cycle you are losing qualified candidates because the interview process is taking too long.

The best candidates are fielding multiple offers, or recent research suggests, losing interest in your company because they assume that the lack of response. The response times are critical for the candidate experience, which is where the streamlining, team tools and scheduling capabilities of an ATS can make the difference.

The hiring pipeline offered by an ATS enables hiring managers to keep track of how many candidates are in each stage and where bottlenecks may be developing. Advanced applicant tracking software can also warn you when a candidate has been left hanging for a certain number of days.

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10. Assessing Your Requirements

At the core of the performance of any applicant tracking system (ATS) are its integrations. A full suite would include not just job board integrations that enable a single submission to a host of free and paid job boards, it would also extend to:

• Social media integration with LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
• Full integration with a trusted background check provider
• Integration with popular office productivity tools such as Slack 
• Give you a headstart on employee retention with better screened and qualified candidates

Since LinkedIn remains the venue for most recruiters’ working lives, an ATS should offer deep integration with the world’s favorite resume repository. Things to look out for include the ability to:

• Use your personal LinkedIn account to sign in to your ATS and post jobs to your own professional network
• Connect to your LinkedIn Recruiter account to post jobs ads
• Buy a LinkedIn job ad directly from your ATS (without the need for a LinkedIn recruiter account)
• Access to LinkedIn Cross System Awareness that enables your hiring team to view full LinkedIn profiles inside their ATS, as well as make candidate information stored on your ATS available in your LinkedIn Recruiter account

Analytics

Recruitment analytics offer a high level view of your whole recruiting effort. Recruiting without the right tools is a disposable experience. To extract full value from any recruitment process the steps taken need to remain visible and repeatable. Recruiting metrics are not just about measuring things, they exist to answer questions about your business and to help you improve your hiring. Which recruiting metrics to use remains contentious with some organizations overly focused on Cost Per Hire (which is open to widely differing interpretations). Some effective recruiting Key Performance Indicators worth tracking are:

• Time to fill: The planning metric
• Time to hire: The efficiency metric
• Qualified candidates per hire: The sourcing metric
• Interviews per hire: The process metric

Most effective recruiting organizations favor a flexible suite of analytics in their ATS that allow for custom reports and a variety of high-level visualizations. Look for an ATS that has the ability to break down reporting areas like candidate flow and candidate source into data that can be exported to Excel.

Complying with the thicket of US equal opportunities employment laws can consume your time and fray your nerves. This process cries out for automation so opt for an ATS with an EEO Reporting feature.

Performance

As we pointed out previously when discussing vendor viability, the right balance of features is ineffective without a viable product and business supporting it. It’s worth checking independent review sites such as TrustPilot, Getapp, Capterra and Software Advice to see how actual customers rate each ATS on its efforts at avoiding downtime.

A minimum should be an up-to-date status page that details all scheduled downtime. But it’s worth spending some time on your chosen ATS vendor’s Twitter timeline to see whether their ATS performance is drawing complaints.

Similar research should quickly establish what levels of support customers can expect from specific vendors. Look out for tiered support tied to the value of your account (with subscription-based SaaS applicant tracking software). At the one extreme you should expect 24/7 support globally but most vendors offer business hours support concentrated on the region where they’re based.

Security

When choosing a cloud-based ATS over an on-premise solution it’s logical to ask some questions about the security of your data. Here is what to ask an ATS vendor regarding security:

• Does the ATS have an ongoing or regularly scheduled process of security and penetration testing of their infrastructure by a reputable third party?
• Does the ATS offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which includes uptime guarantees?
• What is the historical uptime percentage of the ATS?
• Does it have a DDoS mitigation infrastructure in place?

Data ownership

Due diligence in choosing the best applicant tracking software would include a clear agreement on ATS data. Check the vendor’s privacy policy and terms and conditions to make sure that you retain exclusive ownership of all your data (if there are exceptions, make sure that they are clear and justifiable), and make sure that you will be able to export your data if you decide to move to a different vendor.

Search functionality

Without a powerful search facility the full promise of an ATS as a candidate database is seriously undermined. Find out whether the ATS search includes natural language processing, semantic search and any extras.

If this sounds confusing ensure that it enables candidate search by name, headline, tag, education/work experience/skills. Does the search draw data from resumes, cover letters and summaries?

A final feature to look out for is what kind of search is offered on the support section of the ATS. Does it offer prompts and auto-completes to offer help documents relevant to your questions? If not, keep looking.

Customization

When choosing a SaaS ATS one of the theoretical cons is the comparative lack of customization. An on-premise solution can be customized, in theory, to meet any hiring needs. In reality this is only an option for businesses with a large in-house developer capacity. If that doesn’t describe your business (or is not what you want your developers working on), look for an ATS that allows significant personalized settings. Look out for customization options for:

• Application forms
  
• Letter templates to candidates
  
• Custom hiring pipeline stages
  
• Custom reports in recruitment metrics

Take time to understand how your ATS vendor deals with managing classified hiring information. The best ATS options enable clear, customizable hierarchies within hiring teams governing which comments are private between the hiring team and the candidates, as well as notes that are not visible to everyone on the hiring team.

Users should be able to invite hiring team members with different status, i.e. admin, hiring manager, team member that govern their viewing and editing permissions, as well as dictating which communications they’re copied into during the hiring process.

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11. Checklist of applicant tracking system

Even the most affordable business software is an investment. The time taken to conduct a proper evaluation and applicant tracking system comparison will pay for itself many times over. Going with the wrong choice now will mean future disruption for your team and more work down the line. To help you make the right decision for your business as you compare applicant tracking systems, here is an evaluation chart to score your top choices.

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The post Applicant tracking system guide: From A to Z appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Now I report to the HR Director. It’s been a terrible experience, and they have run off two more of my coworkers. I’m overworked, and our HR disrespects TA for some reason. When I bring up my concerns, it’s ignored or gaslighted. I have a meeting with my interim leader next week to discuss this. I’ve always had strong performance reviews and respect from my managers.

I recently shared those performance reviews with them. I’m at a loss here and extremely frustrated. We are supposed to be getting a new TA leader at some point, but in the meantime, it’s such a toxic situation. I’ve updated my resume and will do my best to make things turn out ok where I’m at. I know I’m needed here by the business with the req loads. My hiring managers are great and respect me. Thank you for letting me vent!

There is often conflict between Talent Acquisition and HR. Are they two sides of the same coin or two distinctly different organizations?

Katrina Collier, author of The Robot-Proof Recruiter, asks, “Do you see talent acquisition on the agenda of HR events? Rarely.” If HR doesn’t focus on talent acquisition, can you expect a good synergy in your current reporting relationship? Probably not, but there should be.

Katrina recognizes the need for a close relationship, but there is conflict: “TA should partner closely with HR but, if they’re to be the strategic department they’re evolving into, then they also need to partner closely with the business; marketing, sales, finance and more.”

She’s right, of course. To be successful at your job, you need to work closely with all departments, not just HR. But, for HR to be successful, they need to work closely with all departments as well. They can’t sit in a silo, creating policies and conducting investigations.

And, Katrina continues, “Fact is one lot bring in the people, the other lot look after them. So, no matter the structure, they should focus on recruitment and retention. Together. In partnership.”

Right now, you don’t have a partnership – you have tension and conflict.

This may be because of a fundamental difference in how you, an expert in Talent Acquisition, look at recruiting and how your boss, the HR Director, looks at recruiting. That may be creating the toxic environment that you sit in now.

What can you do about this?

I don’t look through the world with rose-colored glasses, so I agree with your decision to start looking for a new job. If you can find something non-toxic, run and never look back.

But, as a recruiter, you know that job hunting can take considerable time. In the meantime, what do you do?

Likely, the HR Director has always been awful, and your previous great boss just ran interference and protected his staff. But it’s no wonder he moved on. Now, with no protection, you’re seeing the conflict.

If the HR Director is a rational person and perhaps just clueless about TA, you can work with this. If they are just a horrible person, keep your head down and send out resumes.

The rest of this answer assumes some rationality on the part of the HR Director.

It’s time to have a sit-down conversation about the problems and the conflicts. Use your TA skills and work on “recruiting” the HR Director to your side.

A proposed solution: People Operations

What is the difference between People Operations and HR? In some companies, nothing. It’s just window dressing. But there should be a difference.

Related: What’s the difference: People operations vs. HR management

Glenn Martin, Founder & Director of the podcast Never Mind The Job Spec, says that People Operations should have a “blend of expertise across TA, HR, Culture, and really have a progressive people-first mindset.”

That’s what you need. And you need to propose it to the HR Director. How can you work together to help everyone accomplish their goals?

This may mean asking the HR Director what you can do to help them. Your goal is to show the director how working together can be a benefit.

Yes, this method sucks. Your boss should look for ways to make your job easier, not the other way around, but sometimes you have to get creative.

Focus on how good recruitment supports retention and engagement – which are probably high priorities for your boss. Helping to relieve their burden may alleviate some of your burdens. Helping build a people operations team instead of joining an HR team may be the trick.

If that doesn’t work, it may be time to step over the HR Director’s head. If that’s the CEO, so be it. If it’s another layer of HR, then don’t wait so long to go there. The TA team has already lost several people. They can’t afford to lose you too. (Don’t let this make you feel guilty if you go – you go if you find something better.) You may have more leverage than you think.

Speaking up about your needs and how it affects the business as a whole, combined with your efforts with the HR Director, can be beneficial to your career and may solve your problem. Or at least alleviate it enough to make it tolerable.

Have an HR or workplace-related question for the Evil HR Lady? Email contact@workable.com with “Evil HR Lady” in the subject heading and it may be featured in an upcoming article!

The post Ask the Evil HR Lady: How to resolve your TA vs. HR conflict appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here are five hiring skills to have if you’re working in the HR department.

1. Organizing a hiring strategy

Bringing the best talents on board is no mean feat. You need a foolproof strategy in place to do that successfully. But, it will be difficult to create one if you don’t have the skills to do so.

A good hiring strategy defines the best plan of action for seeking the best individuals for the organization’s vacant positions. It describes the kind of candidates that the organization needs and details ways how to attract them. In addition, it explains the different ways that you intend to use in recruiting them.

This might mean coming up with complex or simple strategies depending on the hiring that you intend to do. For instance, if you plan to hire non-local talent, the strategy needs to be more defined as compared to hiring locally. You must think of issues such as compliance, inclusivity, cultural awareness, and more, which are not necessarily important when hiring locally. You need to be in a position to create a strategy that keeps these issues in mind while still being realistic and focused on the company goals.

2. Marketing and selling the employer brand

Times are gone when employers choose the candidates that they want to hire. Modern workers are very particular about the ideal employer that they want to work with.

If you are to attract these candidates, you have to make them choose your brand. Moreover, this involves positioning your brand as the ideal employer and placing it in front of these candidates.

To do this, you need to employ current marketing and selling skills and strategies – in other words, recruitment marketing. This could mean taking videos of your workforce showcasing your best and most positive company culture and posting them on platforms where your ideal candidates hang out.

3. Expertise in candidate experience

In any hiring process, the candidate is the most important aspect of the entire process. As a recruiter, it is very important to make every candidate feel valued in each step through a robust candidate experience strategy.

Otherwise, you risk hurting your employer’s brand and discouraging the right people from applying for jobs in your company in the future. To give the candidates the best experience, you must be able to ensure transparent and regular communication about the hiring process with the candidates that you connect with.

In addition, you have the task of ensuring that all candidates are treated well during the entire process and that they receive a follow-up message whether they got the job or not.

4. Negotiating skills

During the hiring process, you need to be able to navigate situations that might call for negotiations with the candidates as well as any other person involved in the process. A good example is salaries. You need to be able to negotiate smartly, keeping in mind the best interests of both the company and the candidates.

In addition, you need to be equipped with skills to enable you to achieve the desired results while building and fostering a good relationship with the people who are soon to join your organization.

5. Multitasking and time management

The hiring process involves multiple tasks that need to be completed, at times simultaneously. You will be writing compelling job ads, posting them, screening candidates, consulting with management and members of the hiring team, and more. You need to be able to complete these tasks without mistakes if you are to achieve the desired success.

This is not forgetting that time is of the essence when filling positions. You need to be able to find replacements as soon as possible to ensure business continuity. Moreover, this takes strong multitasking and time management skills to pull through.

Level up your hiring skills

Hiring individuals is one of the major responsibilities of an HR department. If you are in HR, developing skills that can enable you to carry out this task with ease is paramount.

Many hiring skills are needed for successful hiring. But, it is important to know about the key ones such as negotiating, multitasking and time management, strategy building, marketing the employer brand and candidate experience.

Leah Collins is a business development manager who is passionate about her work. Her favorite activities include reading and writing regarding her career, but she also enjoys nature and spending quality time with her family. She also helps with content writing at Statyrs. 

The post Hiring skills you should have if you’re in HR appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Today we’ll discuss:

• What does a recruiter do?
• Why you might want to hire an in-house recruiter
• How a good recruiter can help your hiring managers
• Average salary of a recruiter
• When to hire a recruiter to join your HR team
• How Workable can help you find great recruiter candidates

What does a recruiter do?

A recruiter has a broad range of responsibilities that reach every aspect of the hiring process. Writing job descriptions, advertising open positions on job boards, scouring Linkedin profiles to find potential candidates, reviewing cover letters and resumes from job seekers, managing the interview process, extending job offers, and following employment law and legislation are just some of the many tasks associated with being a recruiter.

The ultimate goal of a recruiter is to attract and acquire top talent so that you’ll always have the best candidates to choose from for any position. However, the duties of a recruiter will vary depending on your business, the hiring tools you use, and the specific role you’re looking to fill.

Why you might want to hire an in-house recruiter

When it comes to recruiting, you have two main options: using a recruiting agency or hiring an in-house recruiter. Although hiring an in-house recruiter comes with the extra expense of paying another employee’s salary and benefits, it can actually save your company time and money in ways that may surprise you.

An in-house recruiter has more at stake when it comes to finding the best long term fit for your business. Since agency recruiters have many different clients and often work on commission, their focus is often on filling a new job opening as quickly as possible. Consequently, their search for qualified candidates may not be as extensive — and might even be limited to their own database of job seekers.

Also, in-house recruiters know that the hiring process can be laborious and employee turnover is expensive and disruptive, and will work harder to ensure that a candidate is a good fit for company culture in general, instead of just the role that they’re filling – leading to greater retention and higher employee engagement.

Finding the right in-house recruiter and equipping them with the tools that they need to succeed makes it easier to attract and retain the right employees.

How a good recruiter can help your hiring managers

The advantages of hiring a good recruiter go far beyond the myriad of tasks associated with filling a new position. Understanding the various facets of the business, including the technical details of the role as well as the nuances of company culture, gives an in-house recruiter a significant advantage in providing detailed candidate information that can assist with making the best hiring decisions.

The ideal recruiter has the time, interest, and talent to assist hiring managers by providing more in-depth information about potential candidates, and an in-house relationship is more conducive to candid conversations that might reveal relevant details.

Average salary of a recruiter

The actual salary of a recruiter varies, based on factors that include geographical location and years of experience. However, according to Glassdoor as of April 2022, the average base pay for an in-house recruiter is $56,456 with $27,185 of estimated additional pay for a total of $83,641.

When to hire a recruiter to join your HR team

Knowing when to hire a recruiter is one of many recruiting-related challenges CEOs face. To determine whether or not it’s time to hire an in-house recruiter, consider the following:

• What are your current hiring needs? Are you looking for someone to fill one specialized position or do you have big hiring decisions ahead – or even a hiring plan – that would benefit from insider knowledge?
• What is your budget? Are you limited to a contract of a few months with a recruitment agency? Could you afford to hire a part-time or full-time in-house recruiter?
• What is the anticipated growth of your business? Are you a startup on the verge of explosive growth? Are you an established business with a capable human resources department?

An in-house recruiter is particularly advantageous if you’re hiring high-level positions or have ongoing hiring needs and a strong desire to reduce employee turnover.

How Workable can help you find great recruiter candidates

As an ATS with a full suite of recruiting and hiring tools, Workable is in the unique position of being able to help organize and manage the search for a recruiter and then help that recruiter excel at their new position by automating the tasks associated with their role in hiring others.

From posting on social media and job search boards to self-scheduled interviews and fast-tracking contract execution with e-signature capabilities, Workable is a valuable part of your recruiting team — before you even have one.

The post How to hire a recruiter for your company appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What does KPI mean in recruitment?
• What are recruiting metrics?
• What can you learn from recruitment metrics?
• Which are the most important metrics to track?
• How can I have better visibility into recruiting metrics?
• Who should be tracking recruiting metrics?
• How do I calculate recruiting metrics?
• What metrics should matter most to a Talent Acquisition team?
• Which metrics should matter most to an external recruiter?
• What metrics should matter most to HR?
• Which recruiting metrics matter most to the CEO?
• What metrics should I track when working with an external recruiter?
• How do I increase the number of job applicants?
• How do I increase the number of qualified applicants?

Intro to Recruiting Email Metrics

• What are recruiter email metrics?
• How do you measure recruiter email metrics?

More Recruiting Metrics

• Recruiting costs FAQ: Budget and cost per hire
• Time to fill and time to hire metrics FAQ
• Recruitment process effectiveness metrics FAQ
• Candidate experience metrics FAQ
• Job offer acceptance rate metrics FAQ

Intro to Recruiting Metrics

What does KPI mean in recruitment?

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and it can be used in any field or business function to measure performance. In recruitment, key recruiting metrics refer to the important factors related to the hiring process that you should consistently examine. For example, the speed with which hiring teams make a decision may be a KPI for a company that values quick turnaround and does mass hiring.

What are recruiting KPIs?

How do you measure success in recruitment? Recruiting KPIs (or hiring metrics) measure how effective and efficient your recruitment process is. Some metrics are expressed as percentages or ratios (e.g. yield ratios), while others are absolute values that you can compare to industry or company standards (e.g. time to hire.) Use them to discover how well your recruitment process works and identify where you could improve.

What can you learn from recruitment metrics?

Recruitment metrics can answer any question you want them to. At a high level, you probably want to know the quality, cost and productivity of your hiring process. More specifically, you could ask the following questions:

• How good are we at spotting the right candidate and how long does it take us to hire them?
• How many qualified candidates do we need to make a hire and how quickly do we move them from one stage to the other?
• Do we effectively engage the best candidates and getting them to accept our job offers?
• How much money do we spend per hire and how does our spending change depending on the role we’re hiring for?
• How efficient is our hiring process and which steps or stages are most productive?

Which are the 6 most important hiring metrics to track?

There are many available KPIs, but what are some common recruiting metrics? Usually, companies choose to track the following recruiting metrics examples:

• Quality of hire
• Cost per hire
• Recruiting yield metrics
• Time to fill
• Source of hire
• Offer acceptance rate

If you want to dig deeper recruiting metrics that matter, add metrics like application completion rate, hiring manager satisfaction or new hire turnover. Choose metrics based on your company’s individual needs.

How can I have better visibility into the best recruiting metrics??

Most recruiting metrics are easy to calculate, but hard to keep track of. The first step is to determine what kind of data you need to monitor. Then, you could invest in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to track your preferred metrics automatically via a recruiting metrics dashboard and generate reports. Alternatively, business intelligence tools (e.g. Tableau) can collect the recruiting analytics you need.

Looking for better reporting analytics? Workable’s reports will refine your recruiting process. Sign up for our 15-day free trial.

Who should be tracking recruiting metrics?

Recruiters or HR are usually in charge of tracking recruitment metrics. If your company doesn’t have a dedicated recruiting team, executives could monitor metrics for their respective departments and functions. Hiring software, like an HRIS or ATS, can help you collect relevant data.

How do I calculate recruiting metrics?

To calculate various recruiting metrics, use the following process:

• Determine what to measure. Some metrics may be important to your company, while tracking others may be counterproductive.
• Decide how to collect recruiting data. The simplest way is to use spreadsheets and enter data manually. But, this method is not efficient if you’re working with large datasets. To make things easier, it’s best to use analytics software or your ATS to store and report on data automatically. You could also import data from these systems to spreadsheets when needed.
• Identify which calculations to do on your own. For example, your ATS can report on your time to fill or recruiting yield ratios, but it can’t calculate your average cost per hire.
• Collect the formulas. Find the formulas and decide the time frame within which to calculate different metrics. For example, you may choose to calculate new hire retention rates annually, but decide to track your source of hire on a quarterly basis.

To get you started, here are the most common formulas you can use for recruiting metrics that matter:

Common Quality of hire formula:

– QoH index = (PR + HP + HR) / 3 where:
PR: Average job performance of new hires (e.g. 80 out of 100 based on quantifiable targets or hiring managers’ feedback)
HP: percentage of new hires reaching acceptable productivity within a determined period
HR: new hire retention rate after a year

See more about calculating quality of hire.

– Cost per hire formula:
CPH = (Internal recruiting costs + External recruiting costs) / Total number of hires

See more about calculating cost per hire.

– Common Time to fill formula:
Time to fill = Number of days between opening of a position until candidate accepts the job offer

For average time to fill, you add all times to fill from different positions and divide them by the number of positions.

See more on calculating and benchmarking time to fill metric in recruiting.

– Offer acceptance rate:
Offer acceptance rate = Number of offers accepted / Total number of offers %

See more on calculating offer acceptance rate.

– Common qualified candidates per hire formula:
Qualified candidates per hire = average number of candidates who were found to be qualified in each hiring process after the initial screening phases (e.g. screening call, resume screening)

See more on benchmarks for qualified candidates per hire.

If you’re interested in more detailed recruitment metrics examples and benchmarks, check out our complete guide.

What recruitment metrics should matter most to a Talent Acquisition team?

Corporate recruiters can use almost every metric to help them improve the recruiting process, though some recruiting metrics will be more useful than others.

Here are examples of the best metrics for recruiters:

• New hire turnover rate or new hire length of stay. New hire turnover rate measures the percentage of new hires who leave your company before their onboarding period ends (usually three to six months.) If you compare turnover rates over time, you can pinpoint when there’s an issue and look into your onboarding or candidate screening processes. Also, many recruiters measure their success according to the length of time a new hire stays with the company.
• Candidate experience scores. Candidate experience is an essential part of building a good employer brand. Companies can benefit from setting up candidate surveys to discover what candidates liked or disliked about their recruiting process. As a complementary metric, track hiring manager satisfaction with the hiring process, too.
• Qualified candidates per hire. This metric measures the number of candidates who made it past the first stage of your hiring process. This metric shows how effective your sourcing and advertising techniques are in attracting the right candidates.
• Offer acceptance rate. This metric expresses the percentage of candidates who accepted a job offer. If this percentage is low, Talent Acquisition teams may need to rethink what candidates want or how competitive their job offers are.

Recruiting teams can track many more metrics. Ultimately, what you choose to measure depends on your company’s unique goals and needs.

Which metrics should matter most to an external recruiter?

External recruiters are usually evaluated on two fronts:

• How quickly they provide candidates.
• And the quality of the candidates they bring in.

Tracking quality of hire and time to fill over time can help recruiters determine whether they are delivering value to their clients. For example, if their time to fill starts increasing, then they may need to revisit expectations with hiring managers or try new sourcing techniques.

What hiring metrics should matter most to HR?

The HR department has a common strategy and budgets for every function, including recruiting. A VP of HR needn’t delve into the mechanics of the recruiting process, but they are likely interested in metrics that indicate recruiting success. Those include:

• Quality of hire.
• Cost per hire.
• Source of hire.

Source of hire measures how many qualified candidates or hires each recruiting source brings in. HR needs to know which sources are most effective in a given period (e.g. a year), so as to rethink its partnerships and external spend.

Which recruiting metrics matter most to the CEO?

CEOs are interested in the strategic impact of recruiting. Metrics that are concerned with business value and promote action are the most useful. For example:

• Quality of hire. This metric encompasses performance and retention rates of new hires. Retention and high performance increase revenue and are important on a strategic level.
• Actual hires to hiring goals. This metric shows what percentage of hiring goals hiring teams met. It indicates how well the entire recruiting function works.
• Diversity goals. This metric measures what percentage of diversity goals were met or the percentage of diverse hires. If increasing diversity is an important company objective, then this metric can say a lot about your company’s success.

What metrics should I track when working with an external recruiter?

When working with external recruiters, you can still use corporate recruiting metrics (e.g. actual hires to goals), but you should also think about how you’ll specifically measure the external recruiter’s success. Usually, you’ll want to ensure that they provide quality candidates as quickly as possible. You could measure:

• Candidates to interview (e.g. percentage of recruiters’ candidates who were invited to a first or second interview.) If you’re working with several recruiters, compare their scores. Those who deliver consistently low numbers of qualified candidates may not be the best match for your company.
• Time to fill. If your recruiters manage more phases of your hiring process, instead of just providing you with resumes, then time to fill is important to track.

How do I increase the number of job applicants?

If you need to bring more candidates into your talent pipelines, aim to attract more people to your job openings and encourage them to apply. To achieve both of these goals, you could:

• Advertise in both niche and mainstream job boards.
• Enhance your sourcing by using various techniques (e.g. social media recruiting, Google and Boolean search.)
• Hire a recruiting agency that will provide you with qualified resumes.
• Create a short, straight-forward and mobile-optimized application process.
• Ensure your careers page has useful information for candidates (e.g. benefits, culture, perks.)

How do I increase the number of qualified applicants?

Here are ways to attract more qualified applicants:

• Advertise in niche job boards or websites to target a specific audience.
• Write detailed and complete job descriptions to clarify your requirements.
• Add qualifying questions in your job application forms. Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can automatically disqualify candidates who don’t answer important questions.
• Conduct screening calls to ensure that only qualified candidates will advance to your assignment and in-person interview stages.
• Enhance your sourcing. When sourcing passive candidates, only contact those who are fully qualified for the job.

Introduction to Recruiting Email Metrics

What are recruiter email metrics?

Recruiter email metrics measure the impact that recruiters’ emails have on candidates. If your emails are attractive, informative and aimed at the appropriate candidates, then candidates are more likely to open, click though and reply to them. Here are four recruiter email metrics:

• Recruitment email open rate: Percentage of (delivered) emails that candidates opened.

• Recruiting email response rate: Percentage of emails that candidates replied to.

• Recruitment email click-through rate: Percentage of recipients who click at least one of your links in an email.

• Recruitment email conversion rates: Percentage of emails that translate into a desired action (e.g. recruitment emails that result in interviews.)

How do you measure recruiter email metrics?

Just count emails that were delivered, since candidates can’t respond to emails they didn’t receive.

More Recruiting Metrics FAQs:

• Recruiting costs FAQ: Budget and cost per hire
• Time to fill and time to hire metrics FAQ
• Recruitment process effectiveness metrics
• Candidate experience metrics FAQ
• Job offer acceptance rate metrics FAQ

The post Introduction to Recruiting Metrics FAQ appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Automate boring and time-consuming administrative tasks

One of the greatest challenges of finding new employees is the sheer amount of work required. It’s far more involved than simply reading resumes and making a list of questions to ask during an interview; it involves posting listings for job seekers to find, follow-up messaging, interview scheduling, and other tedious tasks that are important but don’t feel like a productive use of time.

2. Improve collaboration and easily involve relevant people in the hiring process

Due to the many tasks involved, it’s fairly common for multiple people or departments to be involved in the hiring process. Aside from the administrative aspect, including relevant managers and team members in the decision-making process is an effective way to protect and promote company culture, as well. ATS software offers a collaborative space to evaluate applicants, offer feedback, and more.

3. Say goodbye to wasted time on non-relevant candidates

Correctly identifying top talent takes time. There are so many different facets to what makes a candidate a high-quality hire — do you want the smartest person in that stack of resumes if they lack the ability to communicate effectively? Is the most experienced candidate a good fit if they’re incapable of accepting feedback? An ATS can help you strike the right balance between cognitive ability and personality with assessments that offer a deeper look at candidate data.

4. Reduce recruitment cycle and time-to-hire

Streamlining the recruitment cycle and reducing time-to-hire helps minimize the distraction of hiring efforts and maximizes productivity. Collecting and assessing recruiting metrics helps deliver actionable insights about your hiring process, and can highlight potential bottlenecks or recurring patterns. Using an ATS to collect and report data can help answer valuable questions about how your business is handling hiring and what improvements could be made to speed up the process.

5. Streamline your hiring process and make it predictable

Regardless of how refined your talent acquisition strategy is, the process of finding, processing, interviewing and onboarding ideal candidates involves a lot of moving pieces. Writing a job description, posting job openings on social media, scheduling interviews, and guiding new team members through the onboarding process could easily involve four or five different departments. It’s easy for confusion to crop up along the way. One of the most significant ATS benefits is organization; the system ensures that no follow-up email or interview appointment is forgotten and helps create a replicable routine around fulfilling hiring needs.

6. Scale your hiring pipeline without losing your sanity

Growth is good for business and managing an abundance of potential candidates is a nice “problem” to have. ATS software can create and scale a talent pipeline strategy so that you can source, attract, and screen hundreds of candidates more efficiently and effectively.

7. Supercharge employer branding

Although the main objective of the hiring process is for prospects to impress you, the reverse is true as well—presenting your company well can help attract top talent. Having a branded job board, customized emails, and a polished look for all collateral and communication that relates to recruitment assures candidates that your business is established, professional, and trustworthy.

8. Offer a better candidate experience

The functionality of an ATS can help streamline the hiring process from the candidate’s perspective, as well. Prospects can initiate the application process via mobile or desktop, receive follow-up communication that keeps them informed, and offers greater flexibility in scheduling interviews. Using an ATS benefits your business and its prospective employees by making the process more convenient and keeping all parties informed along the way.

9. Put an end to hiring bias

Creating uniformity around the talent acquisition process helps prevent hiring bias. An ATS ensures that everyone is going through the same steps, which protects candidates (and employers) from the risk of unconscious bias. Eliminating unconscious bias in the hiring process provides the opportunities that come with selecting from a larger pool of talent.

10. Measure, report and improve

Good data helps drive better decisions. The ability to track and report recruiting analytics can help you refine the hiring process and improve your quality of hire. Tracking metrics that relate to time of hire, candidate sources, and diversity surveys helps accurately gauge the productivity and performance of your hiring process.

11. Make compliance easy

Build inclusive hiring processes and demonstrate compliance with EEO/OFCCP/GDPR guidelines with ATS tools that optimize job posts, expand your hiring reach, and help navigate local, national, and international regulations. Automated tools and reports take the administrative effort out of compliance.

12. Sourcing tools

Job boards are an important piece of the hiring puzzle, but an ATS can help expand your reach even further by using AI and public data to search, sort, and deliver qualified candidates before your job listing is even posted. Reach passive and existing candidates as well as valuable prospects with instant sourcing.

13. Integration with job boards

Attract more candidates with automated posting to hundreds of job boards and social media platforms. One click can help you instantly reach millions of prospects without the time investment of finding, visiting, and posting job openings on sites across the internet. Diversify your applicant pool and stand out in a crowded hiring space with job board integration features.

Ready to discover your own ATS benefits? Let’s grow together. See Workable in action.

The post 13 ATS benefits and what they mean for your business appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Your recruiters are telling you they can’t handle any more job requisitions.

Your head of talent just gave notice.

Sound familiar?

Could you possibly be responsible for burning out your hiring team?

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the national average across all industries and employer sizes is somewhere between 30-40 open requisitions per recruiter at any one time. Sounds like a reasonable number, right?

Before you agree, it’s essential to understand that this data point doesn’t tell the whole story of what may contribute to recruiter burnout.

The following are other factors to consider when determining what a reasonable workload is for your recruitment team and the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts.

1. Unemployment rates

When the unemployment rate is high, more applicants will lead to a more robust applicant pipeline and an increased offer-acceptance rate. The time to fill rates, affording a recruiter time to manage a greater number of job openings, will also decline.

However, the opposite is true as well. When we have low unemployment rates, which we’re experiencing right now, employers are seeing significantly fewer qualified applicants, which means it’s taking considerably more time and effort to fill positions. So, in essence, we’re asking those responsible for recruiting to produce the same results with no additional support.

2. Absence of a dedicated recruiting team

Many organizations don’t have dedicated recruiting teams, which means that many HR folks are under enormous pressure to fill jobs while balancing the rest of their responsibilities. At the same time, those who work for companies with limited budgets are told they cannot pay recruitment fees. If this is what’s happening in your business, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

If you continue to ask your HR team to do more with less, you’ll soon be in the unenviable position of recruiting a new HR department. You want people to feel good about their work. For many, that means having the necessary resources to do their jobs well, such as a budget for recruitment fees and approval to hire a contract recruiter.

3. Lack of resources available

We briefly touched upon resources available (i.e., budget for recruitment fees, headcount for contract recruiters, etc.) However, there are more factors to examine to ensure you’re up for the hiring challenges that 2022 will bring.

Have you updated your talent strategy? If you haven’t, then no wonder why your people are frustrated. Working off a talent plan established pre-pandemic is the equivalent of reading the user manual for your old Sony Trinitron when trying to figure out how to operate your smart TV. Throw that plan (and that manual) into the trash and establish a relevant strategy, given the times we are in.

Do you have an effective employee referral program? The key word here is effective. Many of you have programs in place that your employees aren’t aware of. Now’s the time to rebrand those programs to ensure they are top of mind in your organization. Do you have a robust social media recruiting program? If not, your recruiting team may be working way harder than they should be.

4. High employee turnover

Most people don’t understand the full impact of high levels of employee turnover on attracting candidates and filling jobs. It’s no secret which companies churn employees, which means that your people must work twice as hard to land a candidate as a competitor with low turnover.

You can’t go back and change history. However, you can take immediate steps to stop the churn. First, you can find out the real reason why people are leaving. Many people on the way out the door say they are leaving for a “better opportunity.” But what you really want to know is why they considered a better opportunity in the first place.

Next, you want to have your managers meet with their teams and ask the following questions:

• What were your hopes and dreams when you took this job?
• Are you advancing towards your dreams?
• What can I do to help you get there?

Remind managers to listen for those areas where they can support their team member’s wish to achieve a desired state of being.

5. Underutilized resources

The quickest way to help your recruiters fill jobs is to turn your entire team into a hiring machine. Every person in your organization should be responsible for recruiting talent. To make this happen, you must train your people to recruit and select for success.

These are some of the ways to reduce the burnout and stress recruiters are feeling these days and suggestions on how your organization can better fill jobs rapidly with suitable candidates. The next step is up to you. Do something now to ensure your hiring team is refreshed and ready to face the challenges 2022 will bring.

Roberta Matuson, The Talent Maximizer® and President of Matuson Consulting, helps world-class organizations like General Motors, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and Microsoft hire and retain world-class talent. Roberta is the author of six books on talent and leadership, including the newly released, Can We Talk? Seven Principles for Managing Difficult Conversations at Work, and Evergreen Talent. Sign up to receive her free newsletter, The Talent Maximizer®. Follow her on Twitter.

The post Recruiter burnout: Why it’s happening and what you can do appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What can you do? Here are five ideas to help you build an agile recruitment process, and hire when there aren’t extra people and extra dollars in the budget.

1. Target your recruiting efforts

The big job boards cost a lot of money and provide access to a wide variety of candidates. However, you don’t need a wide variety of candidates – you need candidates to fill your positions. Who cares how many plumbers there are in Pomona when you’re recruiting accountants in Akron?

Focus your recruiting efforts and money on niche job boards and through networking. You need to find people who can and want to do the jobs you need to fill. Narrowing your search can help you find those people.

2. Utilize your current employees’ networks

Everyone talks about networking to find a job, but you also need to use networking to fill positions. Who is likely to know a bunch of people that do X? Why, people who work for you that also do X!

Many companies have employee referral programs to help encourage people to refer their former colleagues, and that can be a reasonably inexpensive – and quicker – way to gather candidates. But, you can go a step further and ask hiring managers to take a look through their own networks and see what they can find. Have them look at their LinkedIn connections and see if anyone seems qualified.

This part of agile recruitment has another distinct advantage: Hiring managers know what they are looking for better than a recruiter can know, so if the hiring manager looks through contacts, something may pop out that a recruiter would overlook.

3. Focus on your current staff

Yes, we were talking about hiring, but too many companies make the mistake of focusing on hiring new people and forgetting about your current employees. For every employee you keep, that’s one less person you have to hire!

Take a look at what it takes to get new people in the door and make sure your current employees have that salary and benefit level. If all your competitors offer sign-on bonuses for new hires, your employees may jump ship if you can’t provide a stay bonus.

This seems like it costs a lot of money, right when you’re trying to stay lean, but what costs more?

• Giving a stay bonus and a raise to a current employee who does a good job and is already fully ramped and trained; or
• Going through the recruiting process, offering a market rate salary and a sign-on bonus to someone new?

And keep in mind you then have to train that person. No matter how experienced this person is, they still have to learn your systems and methods. It’s always cheaper to retain than it is to recruit.

4. Ask the employees themselves

Sometimes employees have insights that managers (especially senior managers) don’t have. This isn’t because managers are bad – it’s just that sometimes they don’t understand the day-to-day. They’re not in the trenches, after all.

When trying to run agile recruitment, ask the people who do the daily running what they need. Maybe no one sees a need for a senior team leader for their group because Jane is handling it well, and everyone likes her. Perhaps everyone wants the most is a group administrative assistant to help with the paperwork.

While it’s true that managers have a more empirical perspective of what’s needed and what’s not needed – but you won’t fully know unless you ask employees as well. Forget about traditional structures and ask away. You may be surprised how much you learn where you can cut back and which positions you need to target immediately.

5. Put the money where it counts

Often companies have salary budgets, travel budgets, and facilities budgets, and they cannot take money from one category to pay another.

Why?

What is the most important thing to your company? The default reaction is “the people!” That is probably true, but it doesn’t have to be. It depends on what your company does and what product or service you produce. It may be that the best use of your money is something that will automate tasks (including in recruitment itself), meaning you can have a smaller headcount.

But, I’ll tell you what it almost surely is not: your location.

Sure, location, location, location. But, with many people wanting (and expecting) to work from home and fewer people willing to do a long commute, having that downtown office space may not be the best use of your budget.

Of course, not all companies can or should have a fully remote workforce, but you need to consider the rent costs of where you are when you’re attempting to recruit people. If your employees commute long distances, moving to where they live may be better. If many jobs can be done at home, maybe a smaller office is in order.

Focus your money on the most important thing – which is probably your employees.

Recruiting isn’t easy at any time, but with tight budgets and high salary demands, it can be even more complicated than usual. Hopefully, some of these elements supporting an agile recruiting process will help you get through it.

The post The agile recruitment process: hiring with leaner teams and budgets appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how do you get them to apply to your open roles? As anyone in sales knows, getting someone’s attention is easy enough. But getting them actively interested is another thing altogether.

Once you have an interaction with a passive candidate lined up, you need to first understand what would excite them about a job in your company. We’ve already done that research for you. Let’s dive in!

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

The law of attraction

Think about passive candidate attraction in terms of magnets. For them to move to you, your company’s “magnet” needs to be stronger than their existing company’s magnet.

So, what are the primary properties of a company magnet that would pull a passive candidate into a new direction? Let’s take a look.

Job attractors

Passive candidates in the UK would be very attracted to jobs that offer work flexibility and competitive compensation. If they care about training, they’re likely already actively looking.

Employer attractors

And what about companies themselves? Passive candidates are interested in companies that have a strong moral and social foundation – company mission / vision / values and social / environmental / DEI engagement and action rank very high among passive candidates. Company culture is big as well.

The law of retention

Now, let’s look at their existing company’s magnetic qualities. Not everyone wants to move to a new job. They’re fine with where they are, but there are some “nice to haves” that would boost their loyalty to a company.

Here’s your opportunity: when talking with passive candidates, highlight those “nice to haves” and promote them as already existing in your own company, and you might attract them to your open roles.

So what are those “nice to haves”? Let’s have a look:

Job retainers

If your company promotes the potential for advancement within its ranks, that’s a huge attractor for both passive and active candidates – but the biggest difference is seen in those who cited compensation as something that could be better in their existing job.

Employer retainers

Passive candidates aren’t loving their current company’s level of transparency or responsiveness to individual worker concerns. The same holds true for overall company culture, executive leadership and social / environmental / DEI engagement and action, all of which could play a role in attracting them to your own company.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests.

Check out our other infographic to understand who these candidates are and where they’re actually working. And what about passive candidate attraction in the UK? We have that covered too.

In the meantime, you can save time and resources using powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company. For instance, Workable’s AI Recruiter automatically sources the best 50 candidates for every job from a diverse pool of 400 million-plus potential jobseekers worldwide.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: How do you pull passive candidates in the UK? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

And there’s a lot of them out there. Our recent Great Discontent survey of UK workers found that 45.1% are passively open to new opportunities.

But, before reaching out to passive candidates, let’s first understand who they are so you know who you’re dealing with.

So who are these passive candidates?

Passive candidates by sector

Let’s start with where they’re working. If you’re hiring in tech, logistics / supply chain, education, or healthcare, passive candidates are your opportunity to get ahead.

Interestingly, no sectors showed more active than passive jobseekers in the UK.

Passive candidates by company size

The larger the company, the more likely they’ll have far more passive than active candidates. Although all company sizes showed more passive than active candidates, those in the 500-999 FTE range showed the most even balance between both.

Now, let’s look at their actual jobs:

Passive candidates by function

Those working in product, service / customer support, and operations are more set in their roles but they’re open to talking about a new job.

Those working in recruitment are the polar opposite – they’re very much actively looking!

Passive candidates by job level

If you’re hiring for senior positions – especially VP level – the majority of those are actively looking, as well as those at the entry level. Managers, directors, individual contributors, and executives are much more passive.

That last group also includes owners – perhaps they’re happy to take on a job rather than deal with all the hassle of running a company, but not actively looking (yet)?

Passive candidates by job status

Full-time workers and those working for themselves are the most passive of all job statuses – likely because they’re in a good situation at the moment.

But to the previous point about owners, perhaps those working for themselves are likewise open to taking on a full-time paid position so they don’t have to run their own operation.

And finally, their demographics:

Passive candidates by age

The most passive age group in the UK job market is in the 50-59 year range – in other words, those likely to be already established in career and life and nearing retirement, but perhaps still open to one more job jump.

Meanwhile, the youngest adult cohort is more actively hunting for new work opportunities.

Passive candidates by minority status

One of the demographic questions we asked in the survey was; “Do you identify as a member of a minority group (be it race, ethnicity, language, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender, or another characteristic)?”.

We found that those identifying as a non-minority are more likely to be simply curious about other jobs but not outright applying. And those identifying as a minority are more actively looking and far less settled in their existing roles – perhaps because they’ve decided their current situation is no longer acceptable or tenable.

Passive candidates by gender

Those identifying as male are far more likely to be passive than active candidates than their female counterparts. Females are either more actively looking or not looking at all.

And importantly, the reason why they might be open to new work:

Workers who are looking for a better balance between their work and home lives are far more likely to be passive candidates. The same rings true for those interested in career progression and those who see more work opportunities out there than in hte past.

The opposite is true for those who need more support in their work – those candidates are much more likely to be actively looking.

We hope you found these insights helpful. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Check out our other infographic to understand what would attract these candidates to a job with you. And what about passive candidate identities in the US? We have that covered too.

In the meantime, you can save time and resources when utilizing powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: 45% of UK workers are passive candidates. Who are they? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how do you get them to apply to your open roles? As anyone in sales knows, getting someone’s attention is easy enough. But getting them actively interested is another thing altogether.

Before interacting with them, you need to understand what would excite them about a job in your company. We’ve already done that research for you. Let’s dive in!

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

The law of attraction

Think about passive candidate attraction in terms of magnets. For them to move to you, your company’s “magnet” needs to be stronger than their existing company’s magnet.

So, what are the primary properties of a company magnet that would pull a passive candidate into a new direction? Let’s take a look.

Job attractors

Passive candidates would be very attracted to jobs that offer work flexibility and have plenty of day-to-day logistical support. Oh, and compensation is big as well. They don’t care as much about training – if they do, they’re likely already actively looking.

Employer attractors

And what about companies themselves? Passive candidates can be attracted if your company is transparent with employees, possesses a healthy company culture, and has great leadership.

The law of retention

Now, let’s look at their existing company’s magnetic qualities. Not everyone wants to move to a new job. They’re fine with where they are, but there are some “nice to haves” that would make a difference in their loyalty to a company.

You do have an opportunity here: when talking with passive candidates, target those “nice to haves” and promote them as already existing in your own company, and you might attract them to your open roles.

So what are those “nice to haves”? Let’s have a look:

Job retainers

If your company actively supports its employees at work and offers job security and advancement potential, that’s a positive attractor as many passive candidates wish they had those in their existing role. Salary, perks and benefits are of course big as well.

Employer retainers

Passive candidates aren’t loving their current company’s social and environmental positioning, or even reputation. They’d also like to see better leadership, transparency and overall company culture where they currently work.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests.

Check out our other infographic to understand who these candidates are and where they’re actually working. And what about passive candidate attraction in the UK? We have that covered too.

In the meantime, you can save time and resources using powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company. For instance, Workable’s AI Recruiter automatically sources the best 50 candidates for every job from a diverse pool of 400 million-plus potential jobseekers worldwide.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: How do you lure passive candidates in the US? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But there’s one potential solution. Have you considered reaching out to passive candidates? They may not be actively looking, but they’re open to a conversation. More so, they may not even know they want to work for you until you talk with them first.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

And there’s a lot of them out there. Our recent Great Discontent survey of US workers found that 37.3% are passively open to new opportunities.

But, before reaching out to passive candidates, let’s first understand who they are so you know who you’re dealing with.

So who are these passive candidates?

Passive candidates by sector

Let’s start with where they’re working. If you’re hiring in accounting, education, retail, or healthcare, passive candidates are your opportunity to get ahead. Supply chain, tech and design have the most active jobseekers.

Passive candidates by company size

The larger the company, the more likely they’ll have far more passive than active candidates. But the sweet spot for candidates in general are in the 100-999 FTE range.

Now, let’s look at their actual jobs:

Passive candidates by function

Passive candidates by job level

If you’re hiring for senior positions – especially VP level – the majority of those are actively looking. Managers, directors, and individual contributors are less active.

Passive candidates by job status

Unsurprisingly, full-time workers are the most passive of all job statuses – likely because they’re in a good situation at the moment. That doesn’t mean they’re not open to a new opportunity though.

And finally, their demographics:

Passive candidates by age

The most passive age groups in the job market are in the 40-59 year range – in other words, those likely to be already established in career and life – whereas the youngest adult cohort is very actively hunting for new work opportunities.

Passive candidates by minority status

One of the demographic questions we asked in the survey was; “Do you identify as a member of a minority group (be it race, ethnicity, language, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender, or another characteristic)?”.

We found that those identifying as a non-minority are more likely to be fine where they are, but open to conversations about other jobs. And those identifying as a minority are more actively looking and far less settled in their existing roles – perhaps because they’ve decided their current situation is no longer acceptable or tenable.

Passive candidates by gender

Among those who consider themselves available for new jobs, those identifying as female are more likely to be passive than active candidates. There are studies finding women to be less aggressive in applying for new opportunities, which may be a factor.

And importantly, the reason why they might be open to new work:

Interestingly, those who see more work opportunities out there than in the past are also more likely to be passive candidates. That’s also the case for workers who need more balance between their home and work lives.

We hope you found these insights helpful. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Check out our other infographic to understand what would attract these candidates to a job with you. And what about passive candidate identities in the UK? We have that covered too.

Most of all: you can save time and resources when utilizing powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: 37% of US workers are passive candidates. Who are they? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Also, when recruiting, you’re not only competing with other companies for candidates. You’re also competing with candidates’ life priorities. People now want work that aligns better with their personal lives – whether that’s family, passion projects, personal plans and ambitions, or something else outside of the daily grind.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

Yet, many employers don’t seem to be especially attuned to this. A Future Forum Pulse survey in Oct. 2021 finds a major disconnect between decision makers and employees when it comes to return-to-office plans.

This is especially true for those identifying as a woman:

Or as a minority:

But it’s not as simple as offering flexible work arrangements as a company policy. Well – it is that simple, but the idea of flexible working itself is a little more nuanced. Flexible work is actually comprised of two very different things under one umbrella: flexible work schedules and flexible working by location.

And one can exist without the other. As it happens, both are valued – but one much more than the other:

Now here’s where it gets interesting. A significant chunk of respondents in the US think their employer will return to the way things were before the pandemic.

Are you one of them? Perhaps there’s a need for on-location work or on-time work in your industry or sector – which is fully understandable. But perhaps there isn’t – and the only thing holding you to the traditional on-location, 9-to-5 grind is because you’ve always done it that way.

When you have workers who do think they can do their jobs remotely or on their own schedule, perhaps it’s time to evolve your value proposition as an employer.

So, is there a candidate shortage? Maybe not. There’s potentially an employer shortage – in that not enough employers are offering flexibility in the workplace.

This is your opportunity. Adapt and update your policies to support your employees to bring their full selves both to home and the workplace, and you’ll find more candidates knocking at your door.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also learn how to implement flexible work schedules into your workplace and use our flexible working hours policy template to get started.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests. 

The post INFOGRAPHIC: Flexible work arrangements and US priorities appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Also, when recruiting, you’re not only competing with other companies for candidates. You’re also competing with candidates’ life priorities. People now want work that aligns better with their personal lives – whether that’s family, passion projects, personal plans and ambitions, or something else outside of the daily grind.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

Yet, many employers don’t seem to be especially attuned to this. A Future Forum Pulse survey in Oct. 2021 finds a major disconnect between decision makers and employees when it comes to return-to-office plans.

In all of this is an emphasis on flexible working in the UK. UK workers want it, according to Workable’s Great Discontent survey:

This is especially true for those identifying as a woman:

But it’s not as simple as offering flexible work as policy. Well – it is that simple, but the idea of flexible work itself is a little more nuanced. Flexible work is actually comprised of two very different things under one umbrella: flexibility in schedule (working hours) and flexibility in location (remote work).

And one can exist without the other. As it happens, both are valued – but one much more than the other:

Now here’s where it gets interesting. A significant chunk of respondents in the UK think their employer will return to the way things were before the pandemic.

Are you one of them? Perhaps there’s a need for on-location work or on-time work in your industry or sector – which is fully understandable. But perhaps there isn’t – and the only thing holding you to the traditional on-location, 9-to-5 grind is because you’ve always done it that way.

When you have workers who do think they can do their jobs remotely or on their own schedule, perhaps it’s time to evolve your value proposition as an employer.

So, is there a candidate shortage? Maybe not. There’s potentially an employer shortage – in that not enough employers are offering flexibility in the workplace.

This is your opportunity. Adapt and update your policies to support your employees to bring their full selves both to home and the workplace, and you’ll find more candidates knocking at your door.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also learn how to implement flexible working hours into your workplace and use our flexible working hours policy template to get started.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests. 

The post INFOGRAPHIC: Flexible working and talent priorities in the UK appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

They’re there for a reason – to keep the books aligned. The person in charge of finance is an empathetic, patient person with enough organizational skills to ensure that everything is as much balanced at year-end as at year-beginning, and with enough contingency planning in place to allow the company to successfully navigate even the rudest awakenings that befall organizations.

That’s where Craig DiForte comes in as Workable’s CFO. He’s been in the finance biz since graduating with an MBA in Finance from Boston University Questrom School of Business in 2002 and has been managing Workable’s money since 2016.

So, he’s seen a lot in his work. He also knows what costs money and what makes money, and to take it to another level, he knows where money can – and can’t – be spent in order to have it reflect on the bottom line. And mostly, he knows how to make sure it all ties together into a nice bow.

So, according to Craig, here are seven ways you can optimize the recruitment pipeline without getting hit too hard by the actual cost of hiring staff:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate
2. Measure the process regularly
3. Remember, timing is money
4. Consider different timing processes
5. Plan for the inevitable turnover
6. Implement clear processes
7. Keep checking in

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate

“The one thing you have to make sure that you’ve done,” Craig says, “is that you’ve effectively communicated the plan to all of the hiring managers.”

He explains, using an example: everyone – including the hiring managers – needs to be fully informed on how many they can or need to hire that year. “If your VP of Sales doesn’t know that she only has the budget to hire 20 heads,” he says, “and she opens up a requisition for 30, you’re immediately going to have a problem.”

That scenario is a lot of things, but it’s especially a problem for Finance. This planning conflict will throw the books out of whack because your VP of Sales has put a process in place for something that your budget won’t allow for. Ten additional heads being hired means 10 more salaries than you’ve planned for. And 10 more interview processes that are a time and resource suck for your hiring team. And, of course, there’s the expensive damage control in rolling everything back to the original 20. All of these things cost money and force Finance to move things around to accommodate.

You don’t want that to happen in your company, so you need to make sure everyone is on the same page for absolutely everything. This means meeting regularly, keeping communication channels open and keeping everyone together in the loop as to where you are and where you’re going in the hiring plan.

“You need to make sure that this hiring plan is communicated,” Craig reiterates. “You want to be sure that the plan has been communicated out, and that you’re now executing on it.”

2. Measure the process regularly

You must continually check the pulse of your recruitment process at regular stages, and measure where you’re staying on plan and where you’re going off plan, Craig says.

“Your [hiring] plan basically comes down to the question: ‘Have I hired the people that I meant to hire, at the time that I meant to hire them?’ There’s a timing variance you need to think about.”

Measurement doesn’t just apply to timing and scheduling – true to Craig’s background, he reminds us to look at the actual money being spent on payroll: “Did I hire them at the right salary that I thought I was going to hire them at?” he asks as an example. Again, a slight variance in salary for multiple roles can add up, creating a fresh headache for Finance.

Salary differences isn’t the only flux in the cost of the hiring process: measuring also means looking at reports and identifying the areas where you can optimize the recruiting process.

For example, Craig asks: “What are the savings related to cancelled hires?” Once that’s in place, he says, “then you can have a net hiring plan adjustment number, where you can say; ‘OK, the original hiring plan has 100 people, but we added 15 and took out five, so now we’re really at 110.’”

“The extra cost of doing that is Y, whatever Y happens to be. That’s one metric you want to be able to track,” he says, because you’re going to want to measure your anticipated outcome against your real outcome. “You want to be able to ask, ‘How am I doing against the original plan? And what are my variances?’”

When you look at reports regularly, and identify opportunities for optimization, then you’re tightening up the process and making it move more effectively – making things more cost-effective. You’re not just saving money, you’re also making your existing money go further.

3. Remember: timing is money

Drilling down deeper, Craig says that looking at the savings opportunities in the hiring plan isn’t just about looking at salaries. When you’re looking at the cost of hiring staff or hiring ahead of schedule, you also have an opportunity to cut back costs.

Craig says, “Hiring people too slowly can be a bad thing from a performance standpoint, but it can save you some money because you thought you were going to fill a role in January and you didn’t fill that role until March. That might be a problem from a company performance standpoint – but from a headcount standpoint, you just saved two months’ worth of salary.”

It’s just one example of many, but the intricacies of the many moving parts of the recruitment pipeline are such that money will always play into the overall equation. It’s not so easy to budget for a hiring strategy, particularly since you’re often accounting for unexpected events and benefits.

Crunch those numbers: learn how to calculate recruitment costs for budget planning in our new tutorial.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking timing alone is a valid criterion. For instance, you may need to speed up the hiring process and hire someone earlier than originally planned – despite the cost of doing so – if this means you’ll hire an exceptional candidate who may not be available later.

Or, in some cases, it makes sense to offer a higher salary because of the higher productivity that new employee can bring to the table. You’re not necessarily costing your company money if you paid a higher salary than a competitor – you’re recruiting better talent who will ultimately boost productivity.

In short, keep an eye on timing (when you open up a new requisition and when you hire a new person compared to when you need them), but also factor in these other qualitative and quantitative gains.

Craig explains further: “You need to be able to find the mechanism to take all of those things into consideration to determine; How much am I saving on my hiring plan right now? Or how much am I costing myself more? Because if I’m hiring everybody fast, and I’m hiring them at higher salaries than I thought, I’m costing myself too much money.”

“But maybe,” Craig notes, “I’m making myself more productive. There can be a benefit.”

4. Consider different timing processes

You also have to think about onboarding schedules for new hires and upcoming projects that you’re hiring for. These both take into account the type of roles you’re filling for.

“For instance,” Craig says, “if they’re salespeople, there can be a great benefit to hiring early because they start ramping faster and they’re going to get to full productivity earlier.”

The impact to the bottom line is easily tangible for sales: with more salespeople – particularly if commission-based – you get more sales, and your company is more productive.

But what about engineers? “If you’re hiring an engineer for a certain project that you’re going to work on, but the project doesn’t start until April and you hire them in February, that might not be the best early hire; depending on the project, and the skills of the person you’re hiring, the ramping time can be different in each case.”

Whether you’re hiring ahead or behind, Craig says, it’s a strategic decision based on the role you’re hiring for. You don’t want employee salaries burning a hole in your pocket when they’re not contributing anything to your bottom line or producing anything.

5. Plan for the inevitable turnover

“You’re going to have something come up during the year,” Craig warns. “The ubiquitous backfill. Some people will leave – there’s no getting around it. You’re going to have to replace them.”

Of course, turnover is a real fact of business. But there’s something else impacting the cost of the hiring process: “One of the things that you need to make sure of in your plan is that when you backfill, you’re not adding an extra position.”

This could happen if, for example, “Jane tells you she’s leaving, but gives you a month-long notice and you say, ‘Well, Jane is very important. She has to be replaced.’ So you open a new request for Jane’s replacement while Jane’s still there.”

Which is fine, until: “A month later, Jane actually leaves. Then if you’re not watching your hiring plan, somebody might open a new request for Jane’s replacement because Jane has actually left now,” Craig says.

“That’s how one position turns into two positions. You want to make sure that you have a good process for managing your backfills and how they go into your hiring plan so that you don’t double-count them.”

6. Implement clear processes

“You could have created the greatest budget in the world, and within a month or two months depending upon the industry that you’re in, it will start to go sideways a little bit,” says Craig. “You’ll find out that either because certain people leave or because you come up with new initiatives, or because something changes the economy or the market, that you need either more or less people than you thought you did.”

So, you need to have a procedure in place from the get-go for removing or canceling hires and requests in the hiring plan. You’ll also want to open up some resources – be it time, money, or otherwise – to accommodate unbudgeted hires.

And what’s more, Craig says, you have to have a clear approval process in place. “What’s your process for making sure those [new hires and cancellations] get approved? Sometimes people forget to get approval on both sides of that – they know they need an approval to add a new hire, but they forget they need an approval to remove one.”

And communication, again, is key. “Sometimes they’ll remove one, and then the manager will think they still have a request in place and they’ll try to hire for that role.”

Check out here how GCC Services fosters a more inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews.

7. Keep checking in

We come full circle here: in the spirit of communication, keep checking in with each other on a regular basis. “You need a clear communication and approval process for making sure everyone’s coordinated on how you put in new positions and how you take out positions you decide you don’t need anymore.”

Once you have those kinds of changes, you’re adding another level of complexity to your reporting where, Craig notes, you want to measure, for instance, the added cost of unbudgeted hires.

Again, communication is key, Craig says. And this involves everyone who’s involved in the hiring plan, including HR, Finance and hiring managers. “Plus, the hiring manager should understand clearly what’s happening with their respective teams so people know where they are.”

In the end, your hiring strategy for the upcoming year should be run like a business within the business. Have regular meetings and check-ins with everyone who’s a part of the whole process. “Make sure that you have policies and procedures in place to handle changes to the plan, which could be additions, subtractions, cancellations if you will, or backfill positions. You need to have processes for all three of those.”

And then make sure you have the numbers crunched regularly. “You want to know: what are your metrics and what are you reporting against in terms of total cost-to-hire, total time-to-hire. Then, there’s the other more nuanced pieces that we talked about; that is, how many are you hiring early? How many are you hiring later? What’s the net effect of that on your numbers for your total cost?”

Craig smiles, knowing this is a lot to take in if you want to run things smoothly with an outcome as optimal as possible. What if you don’t have the time to incorporate all of that into your hiring process? Well, he has an answer to that, adding a joke about shamelessly plugging the Workable product: “That’s one of the reasons the Hiring Plan module in Workable is incredibly useful, because everybody has access to the same platform and can check in and see what’s happening at every step of the way.”

That’s a sure-fire way to get Finance on your side in the hiring process. Your work life will be a lot easier in the end, and the bottom line will thank you.

Want to figure out what’s normal and what’s not in your budget calculations for a hiring plan? Check out our tutorial on how to do that.

You can also see Craig and Matt Buckland – who was Workable’s VP of Customer Advocacy for two years – on planning a strategy for high growth in this webinar:

The post Devil in the details: The cost of the hiring process and what you can do about it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Building a better candidate experience with automation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We’ve seen a volatile transition from one presidential administration to another. We’ve seen the increased awareness of issues in the form of Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and other socially dynamic movements. We’re still navigating a terrifying virus.

And what’s happening among all this is that we’re experiencing an upheaval of the way we operate as a society – both at home and in the workplace.

What’s also happening – and something you’re likely noticing as an employer – is unprecedentedly high levels in job quit rates in the United States, coupled with equally striking levels in job openings. This graph from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) speaks volumes:

People in the United States aren’t merely changing jobs. They’re bowing out of the traditional workforce altogether. It signals a discontent unseen in our history.

“The Great Resignation” is no longer a prediction; it’s a current reality, and it’s evolved to a Great Discontent. It’s becoming more challenging to motivate people to stay in their jobs, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

We see this, and we want to help you – the employer – overcome this challenge. After all, you need your people.

So we surveyed 750 people in the US – some employed, some self-employed, some unemployed, all more or less employable – to understand the most important factors influencing their career priorities. And now, we have results.

We identified four major themes in the dataset:

Money still talks

Despite all the new workplace developments, salary, perks and benefits are still top of mind. People want – and need – more of it when working.

Flexy is sexy

Flexible work arrangements are important to many workers – and much more for women than men – but it’s not as high of a priority for their employers.

The power of connectivity

No matter the kind of work involved, people are at the heart of it all. When people feel connected to their colleagues and leadership, they’ll stay and they’ll thrive.

There’s no place like home

Integrating personal and professional lives is very important for people – it’s the top reason why those not working aren’t working and the top benefit of flexible work.

Major takeaways include the following:

• Want to attract people? Increase the salary, and build up the perks and benefits. 63.4% say it’s the reason why they’re looking for other opportunities, and 62.2% say salary, perks and benefits represent the top factor influencing their decision whether to accept a new job.
• Build strong teams with people who work well together. Relationships with colleagues is the number-one most attractive factor about a potential new employer (37.1%), and a major area for improvement at their current employer (31.3%).
• Make it worthwhile for your workers to stay. Seven out of 10 (70.7%) respondents say they are either actively or passively looking for work, and 54% started looking just in the last half year.
• Pay attention to your younger workers. More than two out of five (42.8%) of those aged 21-29 say they’re actively looking for a new job, compared with just one quarter (24.7%) of those aged 50-59.
• Establish remote work and especially flexible schedules as a permanent policy. Both are highly valued by workers, with 58.2% saying flexible schedules are important to them – particularly because it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives.
• Keep an eye on the potential disconnect between you and your employees in the importance of flexible work. Nearly half think their employer will ultimately return to in-office (44.7%) and set schedules (46.8%).
• Support your employees’ home lives as well as their work lives – especially if they’re women. Females are more than twice as likely as males to cite family priorities as the reason why they’re not working (39.4% vs. 19.3%).

Read more: check out our in-depth analysis of what matters most to workers in the United States in a job. Or stay tuned for the next excerpt from our Great Discontent survey report for the US.

Interested in seeing what’s going on at the other side of the pond? Check out our UK version of the Great Discontent report in its entirety.

The post Great Discontent: It’s time to evolve your US talent attraction appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But even for the most abstract tests, there are still best practices that can ensure you can learn what you need to know about a candidate.

Enter science and technology. Since you’re digitally transforming your entire recruitment process, it makes sense that you can and should digitize your assessments as well. Plus, you want to have a standardized process like in every other stage in the recruitment process.

Workable’s cognitive and personality assessments are specifically designed to fit in seamlessly within that environment to ensure you make the right hire for your business. There are five areas where you can test candidates:

1. Workplace personality
2. Abstract reasoning
3. Verbal comprehension
4. Numerical comprehension
5. Attention & Focus

The first of these, of course, is the personality assessment, while the other four are for assessing cognitive abilities.

These tests weren’t designed on a whim. A great deal of background and research – including input from international psychology experts – have gone into the design and development of these tests.

We know you want to ensure these assessments are valid and rooted in science before using them in your recruitment process, so we’ll give you some quick highlights to save you the time of researching the deeper material. Once you understand the science, you can then think about how you might include them in your process – please see our resources at the end that can help you with that.

Personality test science and methodology

Workable’s personality assessment is deeply rooted in scientific methods, and is built on the Five Factor model of personality testing accepted in psychology circles worldwide as the de facto model of personality.

The five factors come from statistical analysis of the adjectives used to describe people across five dimensions – and have been translated to many languages and cultures. They are:

1. Agreeableness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extraversion
4. Openness To Experience
5. Emotional Stability (or Neuroticism)

These factors are sometimes referred to as the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. They’re not based on an either-or measurement, but rather, on where a test-taker places on a scale or continuum. It’s been scientifically linked to predictors around health, education and on-the-job behaviors, which makes it a valuable test to evaluate candidates for a role.

Workable’s version of the Five Factor model goes deeper, analyzing 16 additional areas that are selected and modified to be most relevant in the selection process. Workable’s personality assessments have also been analyzed for consistency using Cronbach’s alpha testing and other indexes. For some quick context, this is a common statistical analysis designed to ensure the validity of Likert scale surveys (i.e. sliding-scale or continuum surveys).

Many questions have been adopted from the public domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), which have contributed to questionnaires in more than 850 published studies. The IPIP scales have demonstrated high internal consistency metrics along with strong correlations with the scales of many established personality questionnaires. (You can examine the comparisons here.) This further validates many of the scales we measure in our personality assessments.

Cognitive test science and methodology

Professionally designed by testing experts at Psycholate, Workable’s cognitive assessments are likewise modeled after common cognitive tests in the industry.

The verbal and numerical comprehension question sets have been professionally designed by testing experts, and cross-checked by psychologists with a background in psychometrics to ensure validity and accuracy. Other tests were also performed including the above-mentioned IRT testing and parameter estimation, and items that met the criteria were added to the abstract reasoning and attention & focus question banks.

Meanwhile, for the abstract reasoning and attention & focus assessment tests, multiple prototypes were created and tested, contributing to the final version that a candidate sees when they take these tests. Again, these tests were professionally tested and reviewed by psychology experts to ensure each test meets psychometric and industry standards of quality.

Cronbach’s alpha testing was also applied during design and pilot stages.

Real-time scoring, adaptability and length

These tests are not simply scored via ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ answers. Rather, they utilize the universally recognized Item Response Theory (IRT) framework. It uses complex statistical algorithms with each question having a measured level of difficulty and quality metric based on historical data.

Scoring for all four cognitive assessment tests is conducted using the Expected A Posteriori (EAP), which allows for real-time scoring of the candidate with each question answered, and updating upcoming questions based on that scoring. This means the next question is presented based on previous answers.

An adaptive test will estimate the candidate’s ability after every new response based on answers up to that point. It will then adjust and display the most suitable or relevant question to match that just-estimated ability level. As a result, an adaptive test is shorter because it only asks the questions that are needed, without burdening the candidate with potentially irrelevant questions.

Also, unlike preconfigured tests with a set number of questions, an adaptive test decides when to stop based on answers received up to that point. IRT scoring offers not only a score for the ability of a candidate; our assessments can also calculate the positive or negative quality of this score via the Standard Error of measurement (SEm).

Obviously, a score based on more items is more reliable. So Workable’s adaptive tests will stop once a candidate’s score reaches a satisfactory and measurable level (i.e. a low enough SEm) or when a maximum number of questions (for example, 20) has been reached in order to protect the test content.

This all ultimately means that each individual candidate will experience a different and unique set of questions. Along with other measures, this ultimately assures test security: It’s practically impossible to replicate the exact same test or create a cheat sheet to assist in ‘passing’ a test.

There are safeguards in place to ensure that the same question isn’t asked twice in the same assessment.

Want to learn more?

This is, of course, just a summarization of the main science and methodology that have provided the foundation on which Workable Assessments is built. Now that you have a high-level understanding of the science behind the tests and what they’re testing for, it’s now time to think about how you might incorporate that as an essential tool in your hiring toolbox.

If you’re interested in learning more about our assessments feature – or even taking it for a test drive – don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Finally, if you’d like to learn more about some of the concerns around assessments from a candidate’s perspective and why you needn’t worry, we cover that in this article. Meanwhile, here’s a tutorial on how to conduct a post-personality assessment interview.

The post Workable Assessments: The science behind it all appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Avoid bad hires

A bad hire is shorthand for a new employee who leaves the business within 12 months of their hire date. The US Department of Labor estimates that the individual cost of a bad hiring decision is roughly equivalent to 30% of that new hire’s first year salary.

Bad hires can be especially costly. For one, a longer time to ramp can result in delays in other areas of the business, such as a product launch. Even after all that time and training, a bad hire may never ultimately realize their revenue-producing potential at your organization.

In short, you have no choice but to cut your losses and start over with a new hire.

So, how can you quantify the cost of all bad hires to your business? First, you need to estimate a few numbers:

1. Estimated number of hires in the next 12 months
2. Average % of new hires that leave w/in 12 months
3. Average employee salary

Once you have those numbers, it’s time to start calculating. Follow this formula:

Cost of Bad Hires Calculation

For example – let’s say your company is planning to hire 20 new employees this year.

The average salary of those 20 employees is $55,000.

Historically, 15% of your new hires churn within the first year.

(Avg. employee salary) * (30%) * ((estimated # of hires in the next 12 months) * (% of hires that leave w/in 12 months)) = Annual cost of bad hires

First, multiply that average salary of $55,000 by 30% to calculate the cost of one bad hire. Then multiply that by the projected number of bad hires in a year (20 employees * 15% churn).

That brings your total annual cost of bad hires to your business to $49,500.

Total Annual Savings: Avoiding Bad Hires Calculation

Now, in this same example, using the formula below, imagine you’re able to decrease bad hires by 25% using the ATS you’ve selected. It’s as easy as taking that $49,500 total above and multiplying it by 25%.

(Annual cost of bad hires) * (% decrease in bad hires) = Total annual savings from avoiding bad hires

That totals $12,375 in bad hires, alone – a worthy addition to the ROI of an ATS.

So, how does a good ATS help you avoid bad hires? It helps you:

• Find more qualified and diverse candidates to choose from. With Workable, you can find more qualified candidates using proactive sourcing tools like AI Recruiter, People Search and Referrals.
• Make better hiring decisions with fair and consistent evaluations. With Workable, use standard interview kits and scorecards, objective cognitive pre-employment assessments, and one-way video interviews to help you screen more thoroughly at scale.
• Engage your hiring managers from the start. With Workable’s click-efficient UI, global support and industry-leading mobile app, hiring managers will be more engaged throughout the entire process.

2. Reduce external costs

Think about all of the extra money you spend on different softwares and services in your tech stack – can you eliminate any of them with a good ATS? In the short term, your ATS will cost money, but in the long term it can actually save you money.

With Workable, for example, most customers can rely less on external agencies and costly third-party sourcing tools because Workable has a full suite of sourcing features built right into the ATS.

Now, you need to show that to finance. How can you calculate the reduction in external costs to your business with an ATS? Think about the following:

1. Average annual spend on job boards and third-party sourcing tools
2. Average annual spend on agency fees
3. Average annual spend on third-party tools (like e-signatures, assessments providers, video interview providers, texting providers, etc.)

First, add these costs together to understand the total cost of all of your external recruitment tools. Then, think about which ones a good ATS can help with. You’ll find that you can reduce some costs – and eliminate others outright. Remember, in the eyes of finance, every little bit of savings helps.

For example, if you can decrease reliance on expensive external staffing agencies by just 20% AND get rid of just one other third-party subscription, the combined savings from these alone will likely far outweigh the cost of the ATS you’re asking finance to approve.

Total Annual External Costs Calculation

Let’s try out this scenario: every year, your company spends $20,000 on sponsored job posts and third-party sourcing tools. Add to that another $37,000 on agency fees, bringing that total to $57,000.

That’s not all; there’s another $15,000 being spent per year in combined costs for e-signature software to get those employment contracts signed, plus a texting tool so you can quickly contact interested applicants.

Just put them all together into one tidy sum: your total external costs per year.

(Avg. annual spend on job boards and third-party sourcing tools) + (Avg. annual spend on agency fees) + (Average annual spend on other third-party tools) = Total external costs per year

In this case, the total annual cost to your business of these external tools amounts to $72,000.

Total Annual Savings: Reducing External Costs Calculation

Now, imagine that you decrease the reliance on your sponsored posts and external agencies by just 20% now that you’re able to use passive sourcing features and a referrals platform. Plus, the new ATS includes e-signature offer letters and texting built right into the software – so you can fully eliminate the cost of those subscriptions.

So, in this case, you take that $57,000 spent on agencies, sponsored posts, and other third-party sourcing tools, multiply that by 20% – bringing the total to $11,400.

((Annual spend on agencies, sponsored posts and third-party sourcing tools) * (% decrease in)) + (Average annual spend on other third-party tools)) = Total annual savings from reducing external costs

Add the annual costs of the other third-party tools ($15,000), and you have $26,400 saved in external recruitment costs with the addition of an ATS. That’s a compelling addition when presenting the ROI of an ATS.

So, how does a good ATS help you reduce external costs?

• Native sourcing tools bring sourcing in-house. With Workable, best-fit candidates are automatically recommended for every job. Prefer to reach those candidates via social media channels? Workable makes it easy to extend your reach through custom Facebook and Instagram campaigns to those highly valued passive candidates.
• Most hiring teams rely on a suite of tools from different providers to get hiring done. With Workable, most of those tools are built right into the ATS, eliminating the need for additional, costly subscriptions. Native video interviews, assessments, texting and e-signatures not only save your organization money, but they create a more natural and cohesive candidate experience.

3. Increase recruiter productivity

One way to demonstrate the value an ATS provides is to calculate the bottom-line impact of a more productive recruiting team. This is especially important for scaling companies, where the talent team is often asked to do a lot more with the same resources – or in some cases, leaner teams and budgets.

Our first impulse is to often use time-saved to demonstrate ROI — but for a finance team that’s focused more on revenue, time doesn’t always calculate well. Yet, you can still make a strong impression on your C-suite and decision makers when you highlight the real value of time in terms of salary.

So, what’s the best way to calculate this? You’ll need these inputs:

1. Number of recruiters on your team
2. Average recruiter salary + benefits
3. Estimated increase in productivity

Added Recruiter Productivity Calculation

Now, let’s say there are three recruiters on your team, with an average salary of $71,500 (including benefits). You can increase the productivity of the team by 20% with an ATS that reduces or even eliminates bottlenecks via automated email scheduling, automatic approval workflows, and more engaged hiring managers.

You’re looking at total cost savings of $42,900 – that’s over half the cost of an additional recruiter! That speaks volumes for the ROI of an ATS.

Total Annual Savings: Increased Recruiter Productivity Calculation

(Number of recruiters) X (Average salary + benefits) X (% increase in productivity) = Total cost savings from increased recruiter productivity

So, how does a good ATS help you increase recruiter productivity?

• Intelligent automations that eliminate tedious, administrative tasks and reduce human error. With Workable, automated actions keep interview scheduling and candidate communication completely streamlined.
• Engagement and collaboration is key. Your ATS should keep the entire hiring team engaged from the start. Workable’s mobile app is the perfect personal hiring assistant for busy hiring managers, and our two-way email and calendar sync keeps all communication easy to find in one place.

4. Decreased time to fill

Reducing time to hire and time to fill are at the top of every recruiter’s wishlist. And, at first, it seems pretty straightforward to measure. After all, if your time to fill was reduced to 29 days from 36 days after you implemented your ATS, it stands to reason that your new ATS reduced your time to fill by seven days. Pretty simple stuff, right?

But, that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Reducing time to fill can have a massive impact on your business. With a few simple calculations, you can help your C-suite understand how critical that seven-day reduction can be to the success of your organization.

So, how can you better quantify the ROI of decreasing time to fill?

You’ll need a few key inputs for this one:

1. Current time to hire
2. Desired time to hire (what you think a good ATS will help you achieve)
3. Estimated number of hires in the next 12 months
4. Annual company revenue
5. Number of full-time employees in your company

Total Cost of Time to Fill Calculation

Calculating the total cost of our time to fill will take a few steps. The first thing we’ll do is calculate revenue per employee:

(Annual company revenue) / (Number of full-time employees) = Revenue per employee

Next, we’re going to to calculate the cost of vacancy, per day using 220 (roughly the number of working days in a calendar year if you’re in the US, for instance):

(Revenue per employee) / (220) = Cost of vacancy per day

To calculate the total vacancy cost for your organization, simply multiply cost of vacancy per day by current time to fill and the number of estimated hires for the next 12 months:

((Cost of vacancy per day) * (current time to fill)) * (Number of estimated hires in the next 12 months) = Total cost of time to fill

For example: you’re a company with $2.9 million in revenue. You have 60 full-time employees and you want to add 30 more over the next 12 months. This means your revenue per employee is roughly $48,300. Divide that by 220 working days, and you have a cost of vacancy per day of roughly $220.

Multiply that cost of vacancy per day by those 30 additional employees you plan to hire, and multiply that by your current time to fill of 36 days – and your total cost of time to fill is about $237,600.

With that, you can calculate the total annual savings when you decrease your time to fill by seven days. That calculation can give you a pretty compelling case when presenting the ROI of an ATS.

Let’s give it a try: subtract the desired time to fill from the current time to fill (resulting in seven days in this case), and multiply that by the cost of vacancy per day ($220).

(Current time to fill – desired time to fill) * (Cost of vacancy per day) = Money saved per hire

The result is your money saved per hire, which totals $1,538.

Total Annual Savings: Decreased Time to Hire Calculation

You can then project your savings out over the entire year when you multiply your money saved per hire ($1,540) by the 30 hires planned over the next 12 months.

(Money saved per hire) X (Number of estimated hires in the next 12 months) = Total annual savings from decreased time to hire

The result is your total annual savings from your decreased time to fill, which in this scenario would be $46,200. Your ROI of an ATS just got even stronger!

So, how does a good ATS help you decrease time to fill? It helps you:

• Attract more qualified candidates. The faster the right candidates find you, the faster you can hire them! With Workable, you can expand your reach with one-click job board posting and boost your brand with a highly customizable and engaging careers page.
• Create a modern candidate experience. From the moment a candidate applies to the moment they (electronically!) sign the job offer – Workable is designed to make it easy, fast and enjoyable for candidates to move through the process.

5. Total ROI of an ATS: Putting it all together

Now that you’ve done your research, gathered all the inputs and made your calculations, it’s time to put it all together into one compelling case. Here, you’ll want to show all of the expected monetary savings, along with the added value the ATS provides.

Using the examples and calculations above, here’s how you can pull it all together into a simple sheet presenting the ROI of an ATS:

The post How to calculate the ROI of an ATS: A step-by-step guide appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s not all. There’s the extra burden placed on your day-to-day with legal and moral expectations to meet diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, increased compliance obligations including data privacy, employee vs. contractor classifications, and wage regulations.

And all of that while working on the same hiring budget you’ve had on your desk since before the pandemic – but with one or two less people in your team. That’s a lot to ask of a hiring team – especially in terms of time.

So, to help you out, here are 11 recruitment time-saving tips to help you optimize your hiring process while working with a lean budget and lean team. Spoiler: Workable’s recruitment solution can help you with pretty much all of them.

11 recruitment time-saving tips to speed up hiring

1. Automate the process
2. Offer self-scheduling options for candidates
3. Take advantage of templates
4. Enable mobile-friendly recruitment
5. Introduce e-signatures
6. Utilize a user-friendly career page builder
7. Take advantage of AI
8. Clone the process
9. Post to multiple job boards with one click
10. Automate your reporting
11. Remote interviewing

1. Automate the process

When handling large numbers of applicants, it becomes nearly impossible to engage each and every one of them personally, even when shortlisted.

Luckily, there are tools available that allow you to automate different steps in the process. Steps that can be automated include:

• An initial thank-you email in response to an application
• A rejection message for those who are not the right fit
• Moving candidates through the pipeline based on assessment scores
• A calendar self-schedule link sent out to someone who’s been moved to the next stage (more on that later)

Remember, you’re still dealing with human beings in the process. An automated, impersonal, careless rejection email can be off-putting for the candidate and may even impact impressions of your company in their network. Ensure that the tone and style of the email is appropriate, and always prioritize that candidate experience!

Workable’s automated actions tool can help you preset emails and processes while providing the templates (more on that below) to help you get started on recruitment time-saving.

2. Offer self-scheduling options for candidates

Whether you’re a recruiter or hiring manager, you know how much time can be spent communicating back and forth when planning for a phone screen, a video interview, or an in-person interview at any stage in the process. Factor in the number of candidates involved, and you can see how you might be wasting time that’s better spent on other, more applicable tasks.

All of that can be eliminated, however, by giving the candidate the opportunity to reserve an available time slot right through a link to your calendar. Workable’s self-scheduling tool enables easy scheduling from start to finish – and is one of the leading recruitment time-saving tips in this list.

3. Take advantage of templates

Writing a job description or a series of interview questions from scratch for every job opening can be a time-consuming task, especially when you’re hiring en masse after a new funding round or expansion to a new market. It’s also potentially susceptible to bias in terms of the language used, job requirements listed, and questions asked.

Save your time by utilizing templates. Templates, of course, don’t need to be posted as is – rather, they provide a great foundation for you to start to customize to each job. Plus, they save you a lot of time in the workflow.

Workable has more than 700 job description templates, 390 interview question templates, dozens of company policy templates, checklists, emails and much more that can be imported right into your applicant tracking system.

4. Enable mobile-friendly recruitment

Recruiting is a full-time job for recruiters, but is an added workload for hiring managers and executives whose decisions are needed to move candidates through the pipeline. Bottlenecks will happen as a result.

You can alleviate those breakdowns by giving busy hiring managers and executives the option to sift through candidates on their smartphone. Think about it – they’ll be able to check in during their commute, while taking a break in their day, or when (ahem) taking care of other business. That’ll speed things along.

Workable’s mobile-friendly app enables all of that, and more. Ben O’Mahony, from Cytora, commented on why the mobile app is awesome for busy hiring managers:

“They don’t need to see the entire recruiting pipeline at all times. They just need to see who they’re interviewing. And this is quickly done through the Workable app.”

5. Introduce e-signatures

Getting candidates to sign that job offer so you can close the books on the process is easier said than done, especially when it’s a remote hire or a new employee from another location. Having contracts delivered to and from the new hire is a time-consuming process, and that piles up when you’re handling multiple hires at once.

E-signing can solve all of that hassle. Everything’s going digital now – especially as the work world becomes increasingly remote. That includes all the legal stuff, like contracts, in a fully secure online environment to boot.

Workable’s ATS comes ready-made with its own e-signature tool to meet those important signature needs and is a small but important recruitment time-saver.

6. Use a user-friendly career page builder

Careers pages, like anything else in your website, can involve a lot of design work involving a team that’s already busy working on marketing and sales materials day in and day out. Plus, there’s a lot of back-and-forth involved where you have a ‘perfect’ careers page in mind and you’re working with design to make that happen.

You can skip all of that by bringing in a feature that enables even the least tech-savvy HR manager to build an impressive careers page using click-and-drag options.

Workable has its own advanced careers page builder built into its software. And this tutorial can help you whip together an amazing careers page in a short time, putting your employer brand on a pedestal and attracting the very best candidates to your company.

7. Take advantage of AI

We’re now in a strange time where many companies are experiencing difficulty finding the right candidates – or even a satisfactory number of candidates – for specific job postings. This especially applies when you’re hiring in a hyper-competitive space, such as developers or software engineers, or when looking to fill a niche role – both situations that often result in a shortage of candidates. This can put the onus on the recruiter to seek out potential applicants – including passive candidates – which involves a lot of legwork and time invested.

But there are ways around that. Artificial intelligence, when used in the right way, can seek out and find great candidates for you based on your job description and other parameters that you set – including specific keywords, qualifications, and other directives.

Workable’s AI Recruiter was introduced specifically for this purpose. And it can come in especially useful for you right now.

8. Clone the process

When someone – especially one of your top employees – puts in their notice, it feels like you have to start all over again. Not only is it like capturing lightning in a bottle, it also takes time to set up a new job ad, put together a new series of interview questions, create a new assessment, etc., etc., etc.

What if you just went back to that original process that led to the hire of this amazing employee, and simply cloned it? Not only can you replicate what was successful before, you can skip those steps doing this for high-turnover roles such as in sales and hospitality.

9. Post to multiple job boards with one click

Your job description is approved and you’re ready to distribute. Next steps:

• Step 1: Post job ad to LinkedIn.
• Step 2: Post job ad to Facebook Jobs.
• Step 3: Post job to Indeed.
• Step 4: Post job ad to Glassdoor.
• Step 5: Post job ad to Monster.
• Step 6: ….

You get the point. Doing that over and over and over again can eat up all the hours in a day, and that’s just for a single job opportunity. Although it’s standard to expect an ATS to deliver job ads to numerous job sites automatically, you want to be sure you have the right ATS to post to not just the most job sites, but the right ones.

Check out the list of Workable’s existing job site integrations to get an idea of how many job sites you can post to with one click using our recruitment software.

10. Automate your reporting

Reporting on recruitment metrics is crucial to successful hiring, but it can take quite a bit of time to analyze data and then break it down into reports for the C-suite who are most interested in how your hiring process impacts the bottom line.

There are many different reasons you need reports in hiring, such as:

• Identifying breakdowns and bottlenecks in the process that can prolong time to hire and time to fill
• Understanding where your best candidates are coming from
• Tracking diversity metrics in your candidate pool
• Staying compliant with government-mandated requirements, including EEOC, CCPA, and GDPR protocols

All that data in your recruitment process can be automatically turned into reports to benefit all of the above, including having reports sent directly from your software. Workable’s software has reporting functions to meet each of the above needs.

11. Remote interviewing

While it’s not necessarily time taken out of your own work day, you’re asking a lot of a candidate when you schedule an in-person interview. Assuming the commute takes an hour each way door-to-door, you’re making the candidate spend three full hours – or more – for a one-hour interview. Not only that, it doesn’t bode well for candidate experience, especially in an increasingly digital work world. A recruitment time-saving tip here will be invaluable.

With a few exceptions – such as the more intensive later-stage interviews – do your candidates a favor and carry out your interviews via phone or, ideally, video. There’s a multitude of tools out there that can help you – including Workable’s one-way video interviewing tool which can take care of the screening stage and even that first “interview” stage in one step.

Optimize and grow

Of course, these time-saving recruitment tips won’t free up your entire day – but they can free up a good number of hours in your workflow that can be better spent on the more in-depth work.

You can now invest time and energy into branding yourself as an employer, meeting with hiring managers to best understand what they want and need in a new hire, and overseeing new employee onboarding.

Not only do these increase your profile within the company as someone who can do the job without fail, you can better participate in more high-level discussions around workforce planning. It’s a win-win all around – for yourself, for candidates, and the company as a whole.

The post 11 recruitment time-saving tips for the overburdened recruiter appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With automated actions, our newest efficiency-boosting tool, make recruiters’ jobs easier and speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks and emails. Automate and personalize bulk candidate communication to increase productivity, allow candidates to self-schedule meeting times to streamline interview scheduling, and ensure every applicant gets a customized and personalized response to improve both the candidate experience and your employer brand.

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries efficiently scale up their hiring processes with tools like hiring plan, interview self-scheduling, native video interviews, and top-notch customer support.

The post Introducing automated actions: Increase productivity and hire more efficiently appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how can you choose who to move to the next phase based solely on those criteria? Even though you have some evidence, it’s easy to get lost in translation, especially when you have numerous applicants to screen.

That’s where Workable Assessments can step in and do the trick.

First, you’ll get a better overview of each candidate’s skills on different cognitive areas that you define as important to thrive. Second, you’ll learn more about their workplace personality and behavior to see if they’re a good fit for your current team and workplace.

Certified by psychometric experts and designed within the Workable platform, the Workable Assessments feature is not only credible, but also a handy solution for hiring teams. With easy access to performance insights and a user-friendly interface that enables collaboration, it’s an asset for organizations who want to introduce pre-employment testing into their screening process.

Inside Workable Assessments: Understanding different test types

Here’s a brief breakdown of Workable Assessments: the cognitive part consists of four tests measuring different types of mental skills – abstract reasoning, numerical comprehension, verbal comprehension, and attention & focus.

1. Cognitive Assessments

Abstract reasoning: This looks at the ability to logically analyze multiple information that are presented in a more abstract form – usually not numbers or words. For example, software engineers and researchers often need to think abstractly and out-of-the-box to recognize patterns and resolve problems in a resourceful way.

Numerical comprehension: This assesses how candidates handle and analyze numerical data in order to reach appropriate decisions. For example, an accounting candidate should have a high degree of this skill in order to perform their daily responsibilities. Overall, positions in Finance, Banking and Audit require a high numerical comprehension level.

Verbal comprehension: This measures the ability to understand and analyze verbal information, such as arguments and written statements, e.g. reports. For instance, it’s a critical skill for lawyers and journalists, among others.

Attention & focus: This assesses abilities that require observation and acute working memory. This is vital for roles that require a high attention span or switch often between tasks, such as content editors and data entry agents.

The jobs mentioned in the examples above are indicative. Every company shapes their roles based on its business needs and for similar job titles, requirements may vary. Once you define the mandatory skill set needed, you can hand over the related assessments to candidates.

2. Workplace Personality Assessment

Workable’s personality assessment is based on the Big 5 Model and unveils how people behave in a professional setting. More specifically, they measure the degree of the personality traits below – and 23 related factors, that define their workplace personality:

• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Emotional Stability
• Openness to Experience

Before you administer the assessment, determine what traits the ideal candidate should have based on the role, responsibilities, and current team dynamics. For example, if you’re looking for a salesperson, then a high extraversion level would be an asset, but it’s not the same if you’re looking for a content marketer.

Even though Workable’s cognitive assessments are targeted to white-collar professionals, the personality assessments benefit all types of companies and roles. And remember, you don’t have to provide all tests in bulk; it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your hiring process.

About candidate experience

As with every other Workable product, this is designed with candidates and hiring teams in mind. We understand that pre-employment assessments could be stressful for candidates, so we made sure to provide an easy-to-navigate experience in an intuitive interface.

Before the assessment starts, candidates learn how the tool works. They have time to warm up, get comfortable with the instructions and answer a few practice questions.

In addition, we’ve introduced adaptive technology, which means that the difficulty of the provided questions varies and adjusts to the candidate’s ability. This minimizes the time needed to complete each test and makes candidates feel more confident throughout the process with their performance.

So, these are Workable Assessments, everyone. We’re thrilled to offer you this hiring solution – we hope you are, too.

The post Introducing Workable Assessments: Make data-driven hiring decisions appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Before we go into detail on assessment concerns, let’s take a look at the types of assessments. There are five core assessments:

1. abstract reasoning
2. numerical analysis
3. verbal communication
4. attention & focus
5. personality

Each of them have their distinct best practices for specific job roles – for instance, verbal communication skills are desired for those working in public-facing roles such as customer service or sales. Numerical analysis can be applied to those working in finance. And so on.

Now, let’s look at the concerns about these assessments.

Why you should use cognitive assessments

Let’s first look at cognitive assessment concerns, with reasons why you should include them anyway.

Concern #1: They reduce the candidate to a number

The concern: A standardized recruitment process – especially for larger organizations who have built a scalable hiring model – can make candidates feel like they’re on a conveyor belt. When you add assessments, candidates will feel like you’re just adding another statistic to them.

The reality: A standardized process is also more susceptible to bias – despite the sincere intent for the opposite. Likewise, AI screening of resumes can lead to a new problem, as seen in the example of Amazon. Even if you take AI out of the picture, humans can still be influenced by the reputation of the school the candidate went to, or their charisma in a face-to-face interview.

When you add assessments to the process, you can analyze cognitive abilities and potentials in an isolated environment without being influenced by these other factors.

Concern #2: There’s plenty to learn in other stages of the process

The concern: In between the resume, cover letter, interview, and even the reference check, you already have plenty of information to help you make a good decision on the candidate. Adding assessments just further complicates things.

The reality: Each of the stages in the evaluation are designed to understand specific parts of a candidate’s eligibility for a role. But gaps remain: for instance, it’s hard to discern how much of a candidate’s success actually comes from their own contribution or just from the environment they worked in. Plus, exaggerating one’s accomplishments in a resume isn’t entirely uncommon.

With assessments, you’re future-proofing your company against those potential bad or misleading hires by directly analyzing what they can actually bring to your company.

Concern #3: Assessments prolong an already lengthy process

The concern: Adding assessments just adds time to an already lengthy recruitment process – a common gripe among many candidates.

The reality: Yes, they’re right – if those other stages are clumsily managed with slow turnaround at the recruiter’s side due to an excess of work. But optimization tools, such as automated emailing, self-scheduling options, and one-way video interviews, can shorten those stages. This gives you the luxury to seamlessly add assessments to the mix – also in a semi-automated way – without prolonging the process. In effect, you’re getting more for less.

Now that we’ve covered three main concerns around cognitive assessments, let’s look at the more charged topic of personality assessments.

Why you should use personality assessments

While cognitive assessments are already a widely accepted element of the recruitment process, the value of personality assessments isn’t as universally acknowledged. The controversy around Myers Brigg and DiSC profile testing is widespread, and there’s little consensus on their usefulness.

Concern #1: Personality assessments promote biased hiring

The concern: Testing for personality promotes biased hiring. For instance, if you find that someone’s not a so-called “team player” or a good “cultural fit”, you may opt not to move forward with them. It also unfairly favors extroverted “go-getters” and “problem solvers” over equally qualified introverts who prefer to focus on the work at hand.

The reality: Personality assessments should not be dealmakers or dealbreakers in a hiring decision. They only help provide stronger insights into a candidate that may not be found in other stages. Perhaps a candidate seemed quiet and unmotivated during an interview – a personality assessment may find them to be introverted yet still just as qualified as a louder, friendlier candidate who made a stronger impression in the interview stage.

Concern #2: Candidates will try for the “right” answer rather than being honest

The concern: When jobseekers take a personality test, they’re going to be naturally inclined to try and give the ‘right’ answers to further their candidacy for the role. They may not be wholly honest.

The reality: It’s not a test. It’s an assessment. You’re trying to get a deeper understanding of their personality and traits. The result can help you learn how they’re likely to behave in the role, how they like to be managed, the job environment in which they most thrive, and their preferred communication style, among other things that help you understand who the candidate is and what motivates them.

Concern #3: Personalities have nothing to do with the job

The concern: Many see personality assessments as irrelevant and even as an invasion of privacy. What do they really have to do with candidacy for a role?

The reality: As stated above, having a good understanding of how a candidate might act or behave in the workplace will help you build better teams and a work environment in which they can thrive. This can create a better all-around employee experience with more engaged and productive employees.

Assess your own team first

That being said, personality assessments have their limits. To use them to their fullest benefit, have the existing employees in your company take an assessment as well.

Not only can you identify opportunities to build stronger teams, more motivational environments, and better management structures, you can also set up mentorship programs specifically tailored to specific personalities that can bring the best out of a new hire.

This means a much stronger onboarding and a shorter time to maximum productivity.

It’s not a dealmaker or dealbreaker

Boston-based management consultant Laura Crandall seconds that. Personality assessments shouldn’t be the defining factor in making a decision – nor should they even influence a decision.

Laura adds: “The name is a bit misleading, as, at their core, these tests aim to identify how personality traits, be they assertiveness, optimism, extroversion or introversion, and the like, will manifest in workplace behavior.”

And she adds succinctly: “They’re just lenses.”

In the end, while they are great tools to overcome the “one size fits all” solution, cognitive and personality assessments need to be utilized properly for them to be effective. You also want to communicate their intent and benefits to the candidate as clearly as you can to maintain that all-important candidate experience.

Think of it as adding another tool to your HR toolkit that focuses on bringing the best people to your company, and bringing the best out of them while they’re there.

The post 6 major assessment concerns and why you shouldn’t worry appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

How to scale up your hiring: 13 features for rapidly growing companies

1. Hiring Plan
2. Department Hierarchy
3. Access rights and permissions
4. Integrations
5. Compliance
6. Interview self-scheduling
7. Automated actions
8. Bulk actions
9. One-way video interviews
10. Mobile app
11. Customer support
12. AI Recruiter
13. People Search

Maintain transparency, accountability and control

When you scale up your hiring in a company that’s growing aggressively, that hiring process no longer involves just the recruiter or hiring manager. There are other stakeholders involved, including those at the executive level, department heads, finance managers, and others. Plus, the recruitment process grows in complexity as you’re no longer hiring just to fill a seat.

For that, you need to have a recruitment system that maintains transparency to all interested parties, holds them accountable to their respective roles in the hiring process, and is controllable all in one place. The following features will enable you to have such a system in place.

1. Hiring Plan

Rapid growth requires a strategic hiring plan that’s as dynamic as your company. You might be able to manage requisition approvals manually for one or two employees, but certainly not two hundred at a time. When you’re hiring at high volume, you need an organized approach so you can prioritize requisitions properly, budget them accurately and maintain visibility at all times.

With Workable’s Hiring Plan, you can track requisitions, manage approvals and review budgeting data, all in real time. Hiring managers create requisitions when they need to hire, and follow standard or custom approval workflows. As roles are opened and filled, your Hiring Performance report updates automatically, so you can track changes, make adjustments and forecast your hiring budget for the year.

2. Department Hierarchy

As your organization evolves, so does your organizational structure. As teams change and expand, you need a system that makes it easy to adapt.

Enter Department Hierarchy. This centralized department management makes it for you to manage custom departments and hierarchical structure — meaning, as your company grows your hiring structure does, too.

Filter your careers page, dashboards and reports based on the departments you’ve set up and organize key features of the hiring process by department and location. Super admins control every aspect of department management and setup, so you can maintain strict control and organization as you scale up your hiring process.

3. Access rights and permissions

When you grow from five to 500, the number of people involved in the hiring process expands exponentially. With more users and varying degrees of seniority, it becomes more difficult – and more essential – to protect sensitive data. Control who sees what, when with Workable’s roles and permissions.

User roles define which hiring tasks team members should (and can) perform, and user permissions ensure they get just the right amount of access to get the job done.

4. Integrations

Growing companies usually don’t depend on just one system to get their hiring done. From SSO to background checks to HRIS and onboarding Workable connects with the tools you rely on.

With Workable you can transfer candidate data seamlessly and safely or connect to your business intelligence suite to access robust analytics and measure custom KPIs. Need to go custom? With Workable’s open API and world-class Tech Solutions team, nothing is out of reach.

Check out Workable’s extensive list of integrations.

5. Compliance

Managing compliance can get more complicated as your business grows. As you expand across countries and continents, so does the list of regulations and laws you must comply with.

Workable helps you navigate local, national and internal regulation – no matter where you’re operating. Our suite of automated compliance features make it easy to manage and demonstrate compliance. Whether it’s GDPR, CCPA or EEO – Workable has you covered with features like automated data deletion, candidate opt-out links, and anonymized candidate surveys and reports.

Save time, automate admin and hire at scale

When you’re processing hundreds of applications for a single job opening, that’s a lot to manage. That number grows exponentially when you’re filling multiple positions at once and on a regular basis. The following features will help optimize the process in a scalable way, and avoid lengthy delays in the recruitment process.

6. Interview self-scheduling

It can take days to coordinate scheduling for just one candidate — imagine trying to do it for one hundred! At a rapidly scaling company it’s downright impossible to schedule interviews the old-fashioned way — 100% admin and 0% value added.

With Workable’s self-scheduling option, you can eliminate the back-and-forth and book timely, convenient interviews with just a few clicks. In your initial outreach template, simply include the self-schedule link. The candidate can view the available slots on your calendar and book on the spot. All you have to do is show up!

7. Automated actions

Stuck doing the same old boring hiring tasks over and over again? They’re not just tedious, they can also cost you serious time and effort when multiplied over hundreds of open positions. What seems like just two minutes can easily turn into two hours of admin work per day as candidates and open roles pile up.

With Workable’s automated actions you can increase productivity and speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks, emails and invites. Develop custom email templates and create automations by job, department or hiring stage.

Whether you’re sending an assessment test, self-schedule interview links or disqualification emails – Workable makes it easy to set up, cancel and edit automations.

8. Bulk actions

At a rapidly scaling company, you’re likely dealing with hundreds or thousands of candidates. Taking basic actions like sending emails or disqualifying applicants, can take ages if you’re forced to do it one-by-one.

Luckily, Workable’s bulk actions make it easy to take action with just a few simple clicks. In Workable, you can use templates with bulk emails to email sourced candidates or send mass rejection emails to disqualified applicants.

Simply open the hiring stage, select the candidates you’d like to email and click ‘send bulk emails’ from the bulk actions menu. Workable even has built-in duplicate detection to prevent candidates from receiving emails twice.

9. One-way video interviews

When you’re scaling up, you need your time-to-hire to go way down. You need tools that will help you screen at scale, and more easily identify qualified candidates. Enter, Video Interviews. Video Interviews reduce the time you need to spend communicating, scheduling and carrying out the screening process.

Workable’s one-way video interviews are built with the candidate in mind – there’s no messy tech, no downloads and no leaving the application form. It’s all built into the Workable platform, which also makes it easier for the hiring team to collaborate and compare feedback. And since hiring teams can review responses and provide feedback at any time, from any device, you’ll identify your best candidates faster, too.

Engage the entire hiring team

Hiring may be in your day job, but it’s not always in the day job of the hiring manager or executive. Nevertheless, to do your job well, you need their active participation. The following two features will help you make their part in the process easier – which in turn makes it easy to do your own job even at scale.

10. Mobile app

The hardest part of hiring at scale can be getting hiring managers on board and engaged. The mobile app makes it easy for hiring managers to stay connected, no matter where they are.

The mobile app acts as your personal assistant giving you an overview of upcoming events, overdue tasks and all the helpful context you need. You can screen, communicate, evaluate and even hire, all from your phone.

Learn how a Workable sales executive hired 20 salespeople in three months using her smartphone, despite a packed schedule.

11. Customer support

When you’re at a high growth company, you can’t get hung up on a tech question. You need real answers from real people, real fast. Workable’s global support team has you covered, no matter what timezone you’re in.

An agent is never more than a simple call, chat or email away. And, with a 95% customer satisfaction rating, you could say we specialize in solving problems.

Fill your (rapidly growing!) talent pipeline

Finally – talent shortages and niche roles often pose a challenge to recruiters who need to attract the best and brightest candidates to your company. This feature will help you.

12. AI Recruiter

When you’ve been tapped to help your company double in size by scaling up your hiring, the best place to start is with a healthy talent pipeline. But instantly filling your pipeline with a host of diverse, qualified applicants is easier said than done.

Until now. With Workable’s unique sourcing toolkit you won’t need external recruiters or additional sourcing software to get a leg up in the talent market. With AI Recruiter you can take sourcing into your own hands. Get a list of the top 50 passive candidates for every job in your account, instantly. Add them all into the sourced stage with one click.

13. People Search

Already know what skills you’re looking for? Leverage the power of the internet in an instant. Be as specific or as general as you like while running a full boolean search based on experience, keywords, location, education, etc. You’ll get matching passive candidates with their best contact info.

Learn how an insurance startup tripled their employee base in 2.5 years, hiring for difficult-to-fill niche roles using People Search.

The post How to scale up your hiring process: 13 features for rapidly growing companies appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The challenge here is that such an interview cannot follow the traditional structure of an interview, with a preset series of questions. Additionally, many post-personality test questions are customized based on individual test results and will differ from one candidate to the next. So, you’ll need to allow for flexibility here to gain a better understanding of the more intangible aspects of a candidate’s eligibility for a role.

With all those factors in play, here’s how you can use post-personality test questions to conduct a fair and equitable interview process.

Why should we care?

Often, interviews include questions like “What is your biggest flaw?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?”. Research shows that questions such as these are most prone to interviewer bias.

Nevertheless, this approach may work when evaluating a handful of candidates. But when the number of candidates grows and each candidate needs to be assessed, a traditional interview with typical questions becomes more difficult when so many variables and intangibles are involved in an analysis.

This is why a structured way of conducting and recording a candidate’s post-personality assessment interview is crucial during the hiring process for a specific job. To maintain structure, follow these five steps in mind to ensure you’re set for success:

1. Prepare beforehand
2. Invite every candidate
3. Set up the interview
4. Perform the interview itself
5. Report immediately afterwards

1. Prepare beforehand

The first step is to prepare ahead of the interview. Review a map of all available personality factors and facets. Consider the relevance of each for the job, and focus on eight to 10 core facets that you want to evaluate.

If you’re unsure whether or not to include specific personality traits or characteristics in this list, consult with someone already in that function or team to get a better understanding of what traits are beneficial to the role.

Once you have the list of traits and characteristics you want to look at, it’s time to start collecting insights via the interview.

Now that you know what you are looking for, it is time to start collecting data and invite candidates to interview.

2. Invite every candidate

To ensure a fair and equitable process, make sure every candidate gets an interview. Remember, you’re looking at specific behaviors and characteristics that are better analyzed via assessments and interviews than via candidate profiles.

Another factor is that candidates’ own biases can factor into the assessment results – for instance, they may be naturally inclined to give the “right” answer to further their candidacy for a role even if there’s no actual right or wrong answer. There will also be those who don’t seem to match what you’re looking for in an ideal candidate.

A post-personality assessment interview gives you the opportunity to hear them out. You may find candidates who use uncommon tactics to turn disadvantages into advantages. Some may have different approaches to handling dissatisfied customers, for example.

3. Setting up the interview

Now it’s time to set a standard for the pre-interview period. Your goal here is to make sure each candidate feels welcome, comfortable and respected. That also means creating a comfortable environment and allowing enough time for candidates to respond in depth – and for you to really listen without distractions.

This is especially important when conducting a post-personality assessment interview because you want the candidate to feel at ease.

Meanwhile, make sure you’ve done your homework on the suggested interview questions – which are customized as well. These questions, via Workable’s personality assessment feature, can come up in cases where greater clarity is needed in specific areas.

For example, a candidate may show significant “friendly” or “distant” traits, which would trigger questions via the feature (which are, again, customized) to help understand those elements at a deeper level. These questions will be available via Workable’s personality assessment feature in cases where the candidate has scored below or above average in specific personality characteristics.

Some of these questions may not correspond to characteristics included in your list you made in Step 1. In that case, you may skip them.

4. Conducting the interview

During the interview, you should always go back to the priorities you’ve outlined in your initial preparation. Ask yourself:

• “Why is this characteristic important?”
• “How will a candidate with this characteristic perform better in this job?”

There will be a corresponding question or statement for each characteristic. Follow-up questions are available if you want to explore further. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve learned what you need to know about the candidate, move on to the next question(s).

It’s important to pay close attention to the candidate’s responses. Your goal is to understand how the candidate will perform in the job in terms of personality traits.

5. Report immediately afterwards

After the interview is over, record your assessment of the candidate’s qualities. It’s best to do this immediately after the interview, and in a standardized format that allows you to compare results with other candidates.

Post-assessment interview best practices

When interviewing, follow these best practices:

• Be actively engaged in the interview, and pay attention to the candidate’s responses. These questions are as much for your benefit as they are for the candidate’s – don’t treat this as an afterthought.
• Ensure a stress-free environment that allows the candidate to bring their best self to the interview. Even if you want to see how a candidate responds in a stressful situation, there’s a time and place for that; don’t deliberately create that atmosphere in this particular interview.
• Be intensely aware of the most important personality characteristics for the specific job position that you’re interviewing for.
• End the interview in a professional and respectful manner, and be sure to note your impressions of the candidate immediately afterwards, as to not miss any important details.

Consider a training program or consultation with fellow HR professionals to ensure an ideal outcome for yourself and other members of the hiring team.

You may also find the following tutorials and templates to be helpful in ensuring best results:

• Personality interview questions
• How to read candidate body language in an interview
• How to assess soft skills in an interview
• 12 behavioral interview questions
• Emotional intelligence (EQ) interview questions

The post How to conduct a post-personality assessment interview appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is an Applicant Tracking System?
• What are the Benefits of Applicant Tracking Software?
  • Are They Worthwhile for Startups and Small Businesses?
  • How does an ATS Work?
• How We’ve Compared the Best Applicant Tracking Systems
• Top 12 Best Applicant Tracking Systems
  • Workable
  • Greenhouse
  • Lever
  • Teamtailor
  • Jobvite
  • iCIMs
  • Taleo
  • SmartRecruiters
  • JazzHR
  • Zoho Recruit
  • BreezyHR
  • Recruitee
• Time to make a decision

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software that automates administrative tasks in recruitment and hiring. For example, an ATS enables faster interview scheduling, easier job advertising, optimized referrals, automated processes, and more. Overall, a good ATS helps relieve many recruiting pains that recruiters and hiring managers often face.

Alternative names for an applicant tracking system include: ‘hiring software’, ‘talent acquisition software’, ‘hiring platform’, and ‘recruitment software’.

What are the Benefits of Applicant Tracking Software?

It’s not out of sheer luck that applicant tracking systems (or generally, recruiting software) keep gaining popularity in the business world. They take a huge burden off the shoulders of hiring teams and give them time to focus on what matters – connecting with candidates and making hiring decisions.

Some major benefits of applicant tracking systems include:

• Increase in productivity and efficiency when hiring – particularly at scale
• Better candidate experience through faster scheduling and communication – especially in remote and hybrid work environments
• Access to multiple job boards and the ability to manage all applications in a centralized location
• Improved employer brand that attracts great candidates
• Valuable metrics and reports to improve the hiring process (e.g. HR analytics)
• Easier compliance with laws related to recruitment

Are They Worthwhile for Startups and Small Businesses?

In a word, yes. Everyone involved in recruiting, such as business owners, hiring managers, and recruiters, will find an applicant tracking system or recruitment software to be incredibly useful when building teams. Whether they’re making those first few hires or growing their business by adding team members, an ATS can help optimize the hiring process both in terms of time and money.

How does an ATS work?

Simply put, an ATS is a software that helps you standardize your recruitment process for a variety of reasons, including hiring at scale, operating with leaner HR teams, making a quick hire, and more. With an ATS, you can do the following:

• Posting to multiple job boards at once, exponentially increasing your reach across popular and niche job sites
• Scheduling screening calls, one- and two-way video interviews, in-person interviews, assessments, and other key components of candidate evaluation
• Moving candidates from application to offer in the hiring pipeline
• Communication between candidates and hiring teams
• Collaboration with teammates to enable unity when it comes to making hiring decisions
• Legally compliant candidate sourcing
• Candidate evaluation with the use of assessments and scorecards
• Employer branding to convey the company culture and vision
• Measuring hiring effectiveness through recruiting reports, e.g. candidate sourcing reports

How We’ve Compared the Best Applicant Tracking Systems

Each ATS may specialize or excel in specific recruiting areas. Before purchasing an applicant tracking system, it’s useful for organizations to compare several options with each other.

To do so correctly, they may map their individual hiring methods, analyze the problems they need to resolve or identify opportunities for improvement. Then, they can evaluate available systems based on important criteria.

Top 12 Best Applicant Tracking Systems

We’ve researched the top ATSes extensively so you don’t have to. And we’ve come up with these 12 best applicant tracking systems that will help you make the best decision on what to use for your organization. Of course we’re aware that we’re in this list, but rest assured, we’ve done our best to be as impartial as we can because we want to help you make the best decision for your company’s needs.

Workable

We know we’re patting ourselves on the back here, but we really think we have good reason to do so. Workable provides best-in-class recruitment tools, processes and automation in one complete solution. Whether you’re hiring employee #2 or 200 new employees, Workable’s scalable tools, know-how and support help you make the hires that make your business great.

With clients including RyanAir, Sephora, and Soho House, Workable is the solution of choice for many reputable brands interested in boosting their employer brand, attracting the right candidates, managing high volumes of applicants, and streamlining their recruitment process.

Companies who use Workable get from requisition to offer letter faster, with automated and AI-powered tools that source and suggest candidates, simplify decision making and streamline the hiring process.

More than 20,000 companies ranging from local chains to global enterprises have used Workable to hire over one million people in 100+ countries.

Workable leads all other ATSes in G2’s Best Applicant Tracking Systems list for 2021, with a cumulative score of 4.5 out of a potential 5 stars.

Greenhouse

We won’t lie – Greenhouse is one of the world’s leading recruitment software companies. It is listed near the top alongside Workable in many lists of best applicant tracking systems. Headquartered in NYC, its software caters primarily to the mid-market and enterprise, and integrates seamlessly with many other HR tech vendors.

Greenhouse offers many of the same features as Workable, with notable differences in product implementation, integration options, sourcing capabilities, hiring team communication, and hiring manager engagement.

Compare Workable to Greenhouse

Lever

Joining Workable and Greenhouse in many best applicant tracking systems lists, Lever is a recruitment solution based out of San Francisco and Toronto. It’s tailored to tech startups as well as midsize and enterprise organizations.

Again, like Workable, Lever offers many similar features, with notable differences in native product offerings, integration options, implementation and support, candidate sourcing, and scheduling capabilities.

Teamtailor

Teamtailor is a Swedish recruitment solution operating primarily across Europe, with a heavy emphasis on its employer branding and recruitment marketing capabilities. It prides itself on its native careers page feature, capabilities for marketing to specific talent markets, and features including text recruitment, referrals, and candidate nurturing.

Jobvite

Headquartered in Indianapolis with locations in Portland, the UK, and Canada, Jobvite started out as a social media-focused approach to recruitment for enterprise-sized businesses. Its platform augments the recruitment process with AI-powered processes, including the ability to automatically screen and rank candidates based on preset parameters.

ICIMs

iCIMS, which stands for Internet Collaborative Information Management Systems, was one of the very first SaaS companies in a fledgling recruitment software market in the early 2000s. It’s a reliable legacy solution suited for enterprises, and continues to present itself as innovative and forward-thinking with a continually evolving product roadmap. It operates out of the US and UK and enjoys a worldwide market base.

Taleo

Originating in Quebec, Canada, and now headquartered in California, Taleo is more of an all-inclusive talent management software than a dedicated ATS, presenting modular offerings based on the size and complexity of customer needs. It describes itself as an easy-to-use Fortune 500 ATS interface catering to candidates and hiring teams alike, and focuses on a mobile-first and data-driven approach.

SmartRecruiters

Unlike other ATSes which focus on startups and SMBs, SmartRecruiters is tailored towards enterprise-sized organizations looking for a larger solution for their recruitment challenges. Headquartered in San Francisco, SmartRecruiters is one of the largest ATSes in the recruitment solutions market, offering numerous integrations in a number of languages.

JazzHR

This US-based recruitment SaaS presents itself as a lower-priced solution that offers users the opportunity to rank, track and collaborate in the candidate evaluation process with custom workflows for each job opening.

Zoho Recruit

Zoho Recruit pitches its ATS as being designed for both recruiters and corporate hiring teams working together to build workforces that adapt quickly to evolving talent needs. Offering solutions to both in-house recruiters and staffing agencies, Zoho Recruit is a part of Zoho’s one-stop stop of business tech solutions including email, project management, budgeting and other needs.

BreezyHR

Florida-based BreezyHR offers an affordable, pared-down solution for companies just starting out. It promotes job openings on job boards, enables its users to organize existing applicants via drag-and-drop, and pulls hiring teams together into a streamlined communications channel that also includes the candidate.

Recruitee

Founded in Amsterdam, Recruitee is one of the newer kids on the block, having launched in 2015. It’s growing rapidly as a presence in the ATS market, with a user-friendly system that enables drag-and-drop options to move candidates through a customized hiring pipeline. It’s tailored primarily to SMBs with <100 employees.

Time to make a decision

Need help making a decision on the best applicant tracking system for your business? Hop into a no-obligation call with one of our product experts for an in-depth discussion on your hiring needs and pain points, and we’ll help you decide. Alternatively, try out our recruitment software for 15 days – for free – and see how it goes from there.

The post The 12 best applicant tracking systems appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Table of Contents

1. Candidate experience

• On sidestepping “Where do you see yourself in X years?”
• On recruiting passive candidates

2. Lean recruiting

• On start-up recruiting without benefits and perks
• On sourcing diverse talent on a tight budget

3. DEI in the recruitment process

• On supporting DEI in hiring
• On the efficacy of Workable’s anonymized screening tool
• On hiring diverse candidates for a school district

4. Competing for talent

• On compensation in different markets
• On finding top talent when you’re not the ideal

5. And one more for the road… on hiring after COVID

Following are some exchanges from that Q&A session (with names of guests removed to preserve privacy):

1. Candidate experience

On sidestepping “Where do you see yourself in X years?”

Guest:
What is the best question to ask potential employees about retention in the office?

Melissa:
Hi, thank you for your question! To clarify, are you asking how to respond about retention at your company if the answer is not positive?

Guest:
Yes, we have a lot of longevity in our office. I have worked there for over 20 years. It takes about a year just to learn the job. I wanted to think beyond the “where do you see yourself in 5 years”. I know there are some gray areas to avoid, but any advice would be great!

Melissa: 
Assessing staying power can be hard to navigate, I would focus on sharing your company’s lengthy ramp time and the need for time commitment that employees need to invest in order to make an impact. For the right candidates, this transparency and approach will resonate.

However, we also have to recognize that workforce behaviors have evolved when it comes to tenure and the average time in a role is around 4.5 years and those aged between 24-34, it’s around 3 years, so employers have to adjust in order to maximize the impact employees can make in that timeframe.

Guest:
Great advice!! thank you so much!!!!

Melissa:
My pleasure!

On recruiting passive candidates

Guest:
Could you provide advice on best practices when it comes to sourcing passive candidates?

Melissa:
Hi again, of course! RESILIENCE. Candidates are cautious to leave jobs right now so don’t get offended if you don’t get responses to your reach out.

Personalization is key, show that you have a good understanding of their background and why you think making a move into your organization would be worthwhile. Projecting warmth and enthusiasm goes a long way and sharing as much about your company and why it’s a stellar place to work.

It’s difficult but you also have to do this as succinctly as possible. And don’t be afraid to use multiple methods of reaching out, direct email, LinkedIn or even a call.

Keith:
Think of it in terms of recruitment marketing. You are marketing yourself as an employer. You want to show your value as an employer to the candidate. Usually, it’s the other way around, in that candidates are trying to market themselves to you.

Show your value as an employer, in terms of what that candidate can gain from making such a move. As Melissa says, passive candidates aren’t just going to jump ship. You’re asking them to take a risk. You want to show them that you’re worth that risk.

Guest:
Thank you so much you two! I really appreciate it! I often do get discouraged when I don’t get a reply back. I will consider trying different approaches and watching which one works and have really been looking into recruitment marketing.

2. Lean recruiting

On start-up recruiting without benefits and perks

Guest:
What is the best way to recruit people into a start up that currently has no formal benefits and very few perks. It’s hard in the world of free lunch and a games room!

Keith:
Oh yeah, that is always tough. You’re in a very competitive space already. Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis offered some great insights around that theme in an interview a few years ago:

To your point about free lunches and games rooms, he offered this: “No one ever came to work because of the ping pong tables. Even less so, stayed for them.”

He does have a point. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about benefits and perks – you can communicate the value of the work itself, which can be unique and interesting in so many ways compared with other startups.

You may also find this to be a good resource.

Melissa:
Hi! You have to capitalize on the things a startup does offer – a chance to be part of building and shaping structure, tech tools, teams and culture! Post your jobs in places that might draw in candidates that are inspired by that type of opportunity – AngelList, VentureFizz and Built In to name a few. At this stage of your growth, count on referrals too, they’ll have a better sense of what they’re walking into.

On sourcing diverse talent on a tight budget

Guest:
What are some strategies for sourcing diverse candidates when the organization doesn’t have the budget to invest in diverse platforms?

Melissa:
Hi … thanks for your question! To me, it’s about posting in multiple places to source from as many diverse job boards/candidate pools as possible. There are organizations who also focus and partner with companies to support diverse hiring. Also, using technology like anonymized screening will help.

Training hiring managers to identify biases is a crucial starting point when interviewing in order to to avoid unintentionally disqualifying candidates. Getting commitment from the hiring team will sometimes take longer than you wish, so patience is required.

Just so I can try to help further, what are the diverse platforms you’re referring to?

If you’d like to do some reading on the topic, here’s a great resource for you (and definitely, watch the video!).

Guest:
Melissa, thank you for the advice. This is very helpful. Currently we have looked in areas like Dice or POCIT. And I have been told we do not have a budget to post on paid platforms at the moment. Current postings are those provided via our current ATS. Thank you again for sharing this resource.

3. DEI in the recruitment process

On supporting DEI in hiring

Guest:
There are some new recruitment products, touting support of DE&I with this process, that is championing for even more increased “blind” selection criteria to go beyond hiding names, home addresses, school names, etc. which have been known to elicit hidden biases to not utilizing Zoom or video interviews to further cut down on unconscious biases from creeping into this process – ie. voice, dialect, dress, hairstyle, etc.

So these products are focused on the employer asking work-based questions for the candidate to submit in writing. Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this new burgeoning recruitment strategy to further support DE&I efforts?

Melissa:
Hi … thank you for your question! This is a tough one, but definitely a good one. While there is research available that shows the positive impact of anonymized screening, it needs to be part of a wider DEI initiative to have an impact.

For example: According to a study completed by Harvard Business Review, “Before any anonymization, men outperformed women by about 5%. After just the removal of the names, that number dropped to less than 3%. When the applications were fully anonymized, women outperformed men by 1%.”

However, even if this method does improve your diverse hiring metrics, it does not guarantee the organization’s culture is inclusive. Anonymized screening is one piece of the puzzle – it’s a tool companies can utilize to meet their goals – but so much more needs to happen as well.

On the efficacy of Workable’s anonymized screening tool

Guest:
I also noted that you have anonymized the Workable ATS, could you please let me know to what extent this has reduced unconscious bias and how, in cases where the content of the CV or application either countries where one has worked, college or university can give an indication of nationality

Melissa:
Hi, great question! This article has a few screenshots that can help you visualize what our Anonymized Screening tool does. As you can see, college & country are considered identifying information, so these would be blocked out.

According to a study completed by Harvard Business Review, “Before any anonymization, men outperformed women by about 5%. After just the removal of the names, that number dropped to less than 3%. When the applications were fully anonymized, women outperformed men by 1%.”

Guest:
Great feedback, that’s good analytics. I noted that some panel members try as much as possible to have women in the shortlist and sometimes this can be at the expense of men.

This happened last time, I pointed this out to the team and they thought, it’s good to have an all-women shortlist. The results were anything but; we did go back to the longlist and selected the next group which was a mix and the second round was much better and men did better compared to the first group.

On hiring diverse candidates for a school district

Guest:
Hi! As a recruiter for a school district, my biggest challenge is to recruit diverse candidates for all positions. What suggestions or ideas do you have on how to do this?

Keith:
Hi – great question. We talk a lot about this in Workable’s own content. First things first, you want to diversify that initial candidate pool. In that, you’ll need to think about where you’re actually posting your job ads and where you’re announcing opportunities at your school district. The more diverse your outreach, the wider range of candidates you’ll attract, so to speak.

Another thing to think about is the overall messaging of your school district. An overt statement that shows you value diversity, equity and inclusion can do a lot in terms of candidate attraction.

If you’d like to do some reading on the topic, here’s a great resource for you.

If the challenge is about making a case for it with stakeholders, then this may be helpful.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question!

I agree with Keith, you want to increase posting in multiple places to source from as many diverse job boards/candidate pools as possible. There are also many organizations focusing and partnering with companies in support of diverse hiring. Also, you’ll find using technology like anonymized screening will be helpful.

On the hiring manager side, training them to identify biases when interviewing to avoid unintentionally disqualifying candidates will get the ball rolling. When it comes to commitment from the hiring team, it will sometimes take longer than you wish, so patience is required.

4. Competing for talent

On compensation in different markets

Guest:
I recently joined a fully distributed company with employees all over the country. When it comes to hiring cross-country and compensation, what philosophy do you think makes the most sense? Different compensation for different markets? Same compensation regardless of market, which can mean you’re priced out of the most expensive markets?

What’s your advice when coming up with compensation recommendations knowing how much markets can vary?

Keith:
Hi! This is obviously a tough one, because there’s no “right” answer. It’s been debated widely, especially as more companies move to remote-first operations during the pandemic. There’s a great discussion from Forbes on it – highlighting Reddit and Zillow as companies that opted to pay the same regardless of location, and Facebook at the other end, preferring to pay based on location.

And if you wanted to go down the rabbit hole on the topic of distributed teams, we do have some great reading for you. First, an interview with SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone, whose company was fully remote way back before it was cool.

And another, on the topic of hiring in different countries.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question. Definitely a hot topic right now. But really, it comes down to your company’s compensation philosophy. Do you want to lead the pack on comp or stay conservative or middle of the road?

It’s unrealistic to expect a company of a certain size and revenue located in one geography to compete with the likes of large enterprises in NY and San Fran.

So the best advice I can give is, make a fair and realistic budget for roles based on comparative comp data, budget approval and cast your net far and wide in your candidate search. You’ll soon get a pretty good picture from candidate feedback if any comp adjustments need to be reconsidered from there.

And sometimes, you have to accept, this is how much a role is going to cost to fill, and you gotta pay if that’s the position your company needs.

Guest:
Yeah, it’s interesting. We’re a small 30-person series A company so our resources are very different than many of the companies frequently mentioned in regards to this topic. I think the biggest challenge has been helping my hiring managers realize that our budget for a role is X.

We might find someone great in an expensive market, but there’s only so much flexibility we have in regards to compensation.

I think they are struggling to understand that there’s always going to be great talent out there that we simply can’t afford–and I know that’s not unique to just my company.

Melissa:
The way I look at it is, if budget is non-negotiable, then time and patience is required to advertise and source for this needle in a haystack. The other, less ideal option, a re-assessment of the job might be required and understand that you might have to get someone who checks 70% of the boxes or a more junior profile.

As much as we’d like to move mountains for our hiring teams, we’re also not miracle workers.

On finding top talent when you’re not the ideal

Guest:
Melissa, thank you for your time and expertise. I am at a small, regional, rural public university in the PNW and we are challenged finding qualified IT faculty to hire. Suggestions?

Our comp structure is “average”, benefits are very good, and livability is superb (if you don’t need a city to live in). Thanks again.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question! Happy to help as best I can. IT / tech talent can notoriously be difficult to find. Do you find you’re not getting enough quality candidates to fill the pipeline? Or, are you getting candidates, but they fall off during the hiring process?

Guest:
Unfortunately – both. Lean applicant pool and quick bailouts when offers to our best candidates come in ahead of us. We cannot sponsor H1B visas and that portion of the labor market appears to be the applicants most available.

Melissa:
This is a tough one. Advertising and promoting those stellar benefits is key and the livability, it will help make your position stand out. Thank you for clarifying, if it’s a lack of qualified candidates, focusing your sourcing efforts on passive candidates at other educational institutions would be where I’d start first.

Keith:
Hi! Seconding Melissa’s comment that IT/tech talent is tough to find. We have written a lot about that in our website. You’ll probably find these articles particularly helpful, especially if you’re finding that talent attraction is a challenge:

• Office in an ‘unsexy’ area? Use these 5 talent attraction strategies
• Hiring tech workers when you’re not on their A-list

Guest:
Super! Thanks for the tips and online resources. We will move ahead optimistically!

Keith:
De nada! If you search “tech talent” in our site, you’ll find plenty of other helpful stuff as well.

Guest:
Thank you again. Your online availability is just great…

Melissa:
Our pleasure!

5. And one more for the road…

On hiring after COVID

Guest:
Any recruiting recommendations for hiring pre & post COVID?

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question!

In the past year, we opened our scope to other states offering greater flexibility on location, resulting in a larger pool of candidates. We’ve also focused on a higher utilization of video interviews. As we’re working remotely and will likely continue for the foreseeable future, that comfort with technology and video communication is key.

We’ve also been looking at our scorecards and how we assess candidates to evaluate autonomy and greater emphasis on communication skills. We’ve found by doing these activities, we’ve had greater success in securing hires that do well under our new ways of working.

Keith:
Melissa basically answered it… but thought you’d be interested to know that we surveyed our employees on the kinds of skills that are needed in a remote work world, with some great results.

We also sat down with a CEO of a company that has been fully remote for nearly a decade. He had some great tips on how to identify ideal candidates for that kind of environment.

Have more questions for us?

We are always here to support recruiters and HR professionals in doing what they do best. If you have any more questions that you wish you had the answer to, don’t hesitate to email us at content@workable.com with “Recruiting Q&A” in the subject headline. We’ll assemble your questions and have Melissa answer them for you in a future article!

The post Recruiting Q&As from Bamboo HR’s Employee Experience Week appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With candidate surveys, our latest DEI feature, assess DEI performance in your hiring strategies and evaluate ways to improve. Collect anonymized data post-application to understand candidate demographics, identify sources that generate more diverse candidates, and monitor pipeline performance by demographic to improve inclusion within your company.  

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries create a more inclusive hiring practice with diverse candidate sourcing, anonymized screening, candidate surveys, structured interviewing, and enhanced reporting.

Read more on this topic:

• How to measure diversity using candidate surveys
• Candidate survey template

The post Introducing candidate surveys: Improve inclusive hiring practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With Texting, Workable’s latest premium feature, you can now message candidates directly from the platform or app. Reaching out about a new opportunity, or scheduling an interview? Texting makes it easy for you to reach candidates quickly, wherever they are. Track responses in real time on the candidate timeline, just like you would with email.

Texts have a 98% open rate and a 60x faster response time than email, and 95% of all text messages are read within 90 seconds. Communication templates help you personalize with ease and seamlessly switch from email to text at any stage of the recruiting pipeline. By getting in front of candidates faster with Texting, you can focus on what actually matters: hiring great candidates.

The post Introducing Texting: Make the right hires, faster appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The Series A crunch may be tough but the talent crunch is brutal. We talk to high-growth startups every day and we keep hearing versions of “compared to recruiting, fundraising was easy”. Just like fundraising, it’s very competitive. It takes time, preparation and selling, and getting it wrong can slow down or kill your startup. It’s the hardest thing to get right. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

You need to be a hiring obsessive

Whether it’s two founders talking to an angel investor, a team of 10 making something from nothing, or a high-growth company with 50 staff, team quality is the single best predictor of success. If you can get great people then everything else becomes so much easier.

Growth hacks versus talent hacks

Silicon Valley has figured out how to build great products and turn them into successful business models. Methodologies have emerged like Lean Startup, agile product development and growth hacking. They function as roadmaps for the non-experts and inspire conversation and innovation in those fields. In comparison hiring practices have remained in the dark ages.

Getting from 5 to 50 and beyond

Your first five hires pretty much picked themselves but in getting from 5 to 50 you will need the best tools and analytics, and you will need to be systematic. It’s about more than ping pong tables and bicycle racks. We’ve spent the time to curate the best thinking on everything from employer branding and headhunting to every step in the interview process, whether you’re building a distributed team or you’ve got an office. We’ve thrown in ideas, tricks, talent hacks and real life examples from great companies. The result is this startup hiring guide that offers some structure when hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50. It’s a starting point. And my aim is to get all of us to talk about hiring.

1. Building an attractive company: Employer branding
2. Always be hiring: developing a hiring process
3. How to write job descriptions
4. What to look for: Hiring for a startup
5. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates
6. Creating an interview process
7. Workplace benefits and compensation
8. Recruiting software and tools
9. Where to post your jobs

1. Building an attractive company: employer branding

Smart companies typically operate in competitive talent markets. This means that the people you’re looking for are likely to be juggling several job offers. Competing for outstanding candidates with the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter might seem like a losing proposition but it’s not.

It can be done but, first, you have to realize that hiring is marketing. We live in what’s called the “age of transparency”. It has never been easier for employees to be able to tell who you are or what working with you would be like. Digital platforms mean that even the youngest companies can affordably showcase why they’re an exciting place to work. There’s more to social media hiring than just tweeting your jobs. Everything you do or say on social media is building your brand.

PRO TIP: Intercom’s blog is a great example of doing marketing and employer branding at the same time.

You’re speaking to two audiences: Customers & talent

In the early days, the way you market your product and the way you think about the problems you’re solving, says a lot about the kind of company that you’re about to build. If you become known for doing interesting things for your customers, you will attract talented and ambitious people. Smart people want to solve interesting problems. They’re not looking for a job, they’re looking for a mission. Smart people want to work with smart people.

Your presence in communities, your reputation, your contribution and ideas represent you. Use blogging, social media and public conversations to keep speaking to your ideal future hires. Signpost your involvement in events and your own content to make it easy for people to find out what you stand for and why you matter.

PRO TIP: Buffer’s focus on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative which has created huge buzz and awareness of them.

Who the hell are you?

In the beginning were the founders. The early hires in startups don’t have a company reputation to buy into, so usually they’re taking a gamble on joining the founders in their big initiative. When you’re in the early phase, it’s the personal brand of the founders that’s going to be the strongest component. Simple steps like having an engaging personal blog can project why you’re worth working for and what you’re trying to do. Let prospective candidates get to know you.

Even in the early days of a company your employees become your brand and signal what kind of people work there. Chances are you’ve hired people who reflect your company’s brand and values well. Showcase your employees on your website and empower them to talk confidently about your business. Employees attending meetups and events, sharing a video of their home working environment, or just speaking with genuine passion about their jobs are a powerful marketing tool.

Hire people who can build teams

Good people know good people. Hire people who are already networked and know much of the talent you’ll be needing. When you can, go for people with a personal brand. This is also a signal to future hires. Remember, some of your best people will be high-potential junior hires who will grow with the startup. So, always look for those who can nurture and grow your young talent.

PRO TIP: FullContact’s paid-paid vacation initiative offers holiday bonuses to staff who go completely off the grid. Everyone needs to from time to time.

Live in the real world

Don’t just be digital. You’re going to be employing people after all and they congregate at events and around offline communities too. Be an active participant in these ecosystems. An event sponsorship or even a few beers can go a long way. Even as remote work becomes more of a standard in 2020 and beyond, human interaction is highly valued and appreciated.

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2. Always be hiring: developing a hiring process

Networks are king

Ask any startup where most of their hires came from or ask bigger companies where their best people came from and the answer is usually the same: friends, friends of friends or ex-colleagues. It’s all about networks for one simple reason: good people know good people. Part of being a good CEO is building a great network with quality and reach. There are no shortcuts here, it’s real work. The better your network is, the easier your next hire is going to be.

If you don’t know the right person you will at least know someone who does. Remember quality as well as quantity. It’s not just about having thousands of LinkedIn connections (although it can’t hurt). Are you working hard enough to be an authentic member of the community where your talent pool is? If your tech is built with Ruby are you taking part in the relevant meetups and hackathons? Are your developers known for their thought leadership and contribution in your sphere?

Hiring is everyone’s job, especially sourcing

Just as you look for candidates through networks, the best candidates are looking for their next job in the same way. Word of mouth matters. The best recommendation you’re going to get will be when someone you’d like to hire is told by a friend of theirs who is already on your team that your startup is great place to work. If your team is proud of where they work they’ll tell their friends.

What happens when your own network runs out? Keep trying. There will always be someone you haven’t told that you’re hiring. You can go further, take the time to sit with your employees one by one and go through their online networks (LinkedIn is a good example). You’ll find good people and you can get your colleagues to message them then and there. This is a time-consuming process but worth it.

There’s tremendous value in referred employees in the form of greater job satisfaction, higher retention rates, quicker applicant-to-hire conversion – all metrics that ultimately reduce the cost of recruitment, especially when hiring for rapid growth.

PRO TIP: Set up a formal employee referral program in your company, with incentives for your current colleagues. You can even gamify the process to further motivate employees to refer people in their networks.

Get out of your bubble

Your own network can only extend so far and the chances are your colleagues’ networks have a lot of overlap with yours. Plus, there’s the potential for bias – as the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. If you’re hiring friends of friends or former colleagues of existing employees, that’s a potential trap in homogenizing your workforce. Get out of that bubble and speak to new people, ask for introductions from your own network so you can start tapping into adjacent ones.

Learn how a tech sales VP established gender balance in her team in a male-dominated field, by looking outside of the usual candidate resources.

PRO TIP: Sending your developers to the best conferences is a sure fire way to grow your network, as well as encouraging them to spread the word through their online networks where they live and play.

How to do social the right way

If you’ve done most things right so far you’ll start with an audience. This means you have something to bootstrap your social media recruiting effort to. Using social for hiring isn’t just about tweeting jobs and getting your colleagues to retweet. The companies who are most successful at social hiring have built up a relevant audience and target their tweets to influential people in their community. Not all retweets were born equal — you want to be talked about in context. You want influential people in your field talking you up as an authority.

PRO TIP: Netflix put their culture presentation online:

[slideshare id=36216034&doc=netflixorganizationalculture-131001173045-phpapp02-140623172442-phpapp01]

That open presentation promoting Netflix’s Culture of Excellence went viral – clearly boosting their employer brand and reputation.

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3. How to write job descriptions

Don’t go with the flow

Job descriptions could and should sweep candidates off their feet. But all too often, we’re content to lean on the old-fashioned and generic with the result that most job ads are mediocre. We’re guessing you don’t want to be average. You’re not one of those guys looking for superheroes who is too lazy to craft a job description that might actually attract them.

PRO TIP: The first time we came across Medium’s careers page was in Lou Hoffman’s article: The best job descriptions on the planet. Enough said.

Love at first sight

We all know that applicants like to scan. They want to look at an opening and be able to recognize in the blink of an eye if it’s their dream job. Like all busy people they have a thousand things competing for their attention; especially the passive candidates for whom you’re trawling. Make every job description seductive. Start with the job title, keeping in mind that most job boards work like search engines, therefore candidates use keywords to search for jobs.

The about-the-company part

This is your chance to make a good first impression, so start thinking about the distinctive characteristics that make your company special. The type of job description you publish is closely related to who you are as an employer. Give them a glimpse of your company that will charm them into coming to working for you.

PRO TIP: Check out some of our favorite job ads from the Workable job board – each of which can fit different needs in your business.

Candidates need to be able to relate to job descriptions on a personal level. Tell them a story about your company that will make them sit back and picture themselves working with you. Start with an educated guess, with something simple, ask for feedback and then optimize. Ask employees why they enjoy working for your startup. If you have a marketing department lean on them for some content marketing advice. Hiring for rapid growth should not to be done in isolation – it’s a team effort. You’ll need to put in some extra effort but it will pay off.

The about-the-job part

You know that if you go with the flow then your job descriptions will be deathly dull but you’re tempted to do so anyway. Because that’s the way everybody is doing it. But it won’t help your company stand out, it will just add to the mountain of identical job descriptions that grows larger every day.

How are job seekers (let alone the precious, passive ones) supposed to spot that you’re offering a dream gig when it looks like a machine wrote your job description? It’s not necessarily because they’re not well-written, it’s because they’re presented as if they were not written by or for a human being. Do everyone a favor and stick to the important stuff. There are tons of job descriptions out there listing every tiny little task a future employee might perform. That’s not the point.

It’s all about clarity

Start writing job descriptions that build businesses. They will attract the best talent and convert prospects into candidates. How?

• Sell your company and their future in it in an engaging fashion
• Get rid of the boring corporate tone
• Keep it chatty and friendly
• Use words that evoke feelings
• Make them aspire and then act on that desire
• Use “you” or “we’; drop the passive voice

To up the ante you can also add a list of people the future hire will get to work with on a regular basis.

The about-the-requirements part

We’ve covered the basics in our “There’s a difference between what you want and what you need” blog post. If you’ve used Workable, you may have noticed the must-haves and nice-to-haves requirements. Why did we add this feature? To make sure that candidates won’t get excluded from the hiring process just because they clicked “NO” on a secondary skill that is unlikely to be pivotal. Think about what skills would make sense, adding to the equation the fact that they are individuals and not miracle workers. Must-have requirements are the bare minimum: the can’t-live-without list. Nice-to-have requirements are the extras: they belong on the we-can-live-without list.

Jobseekers also have a hierarchy of needs that you need to keep in mind as you craft the perfect job ad. In fact, if Maslow were alive today, here’s what he might think about your job ads.

PRO TIP: Worth looking at KinHR. They might not have a careers page at the moment but this sales job description rocks.

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4. What to look for: Hiring for rapid-growth startups

Punch above your weight

A startup literally is its team in the beginning. These are the people who will signal your ambition and set your limits. So, go for the people you think you can’t get. You’ll be surprised and once you’ve got the first few heroes it will become a lot easier to attract more of them. This is not a luxury. It seems obvious to punch above your weight but a successful startup will continually shift up the weight categories. If you don’t get these people you’ll get stuck.

Hire deliberately

You’re not hiring to fill a job, you’re building a company. Make the first 20 hires deliberately with the future in mind. Don’t hire people just because they’re good in general and available. These kinds of opportunistic or bad hires early on in a startup’s life can sink you. The cost of a pointless hire can be astronomical. That’s money that most startups cannot afford to waste. Beyond the cost of getting it wrong, your first few hires will set the tone for the future. Getting it right will make something that’s intrinsically hard a lot easier.

PRO TIP: Avoid hiring a candidate who badmouths their previous employers and coworkers.

Hire for potential

A successful startup will quickly outgrow everyone’s current skills and roles. If things work out as intended it’s going to grow and morph unpredictably. So will the demands on your employees. One of the most exhausting aspects of startups is this constant evolution, or as some founders call it “keeping up with their own company”. While it can be fairly simple to assess a candidate’s current skills rating their potential is less so.

Look for people coming into their professional prime. The past is a good guide, so take into account lifetime achievements whether they’re jobs, schools or hobbies. With few exceptions, smart, decisive and hard working people usually manage to go to a great school and do well in exams they care about. Look for high achievers.

PRO TIP: Include pre-interview assignments in the hiring process. Those who bother to go the extra mile will prevail.

The culture fit

This can be hard to pin down but it’s almost always important. It has its roots in the unfashionable word “congruence” — the fit between personality and organization. It means that you need to assess people on their behavior, mentality and match to the values of your organization.

PRO TIP: Valve’s Employee Handbook (the production quality, akin to what you would expect from their best marketing material) tells you a lot about who they are and how important this is for them.

But there’s one simple rule: never hire people with a bad attitude. It only takes one to poison an otherwise stellar team. That little problem you noticed in an interview will be magnified one-hundred fold by six months of hard work in a small team. Don’t overlook it. Go for people with an opinion, people who can honestly explain what they like and dislike. The kind of people who believe in missions, values and visions. They care. Those are the people who will be telling the truth when they assure you that they believe in your startup’s vision.

Hire for attitude, train for skills

You have to like a candidate before you hire them. This sounds highly subjective and unfair to them, especially when the context is strictly professional. However, someone’s ability to blend into your team, get along with you on a daily basis and build up some emotional reserves for tough times will ultimately determine their performance.

Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Ferriss can argue all they want about what and how fast a human being can learn but the truth is that certain human traits can’t be acquired beyond a certain stage in life. Focus on the fundamentals: intelligence, personality, diligence. Instead of testing for specific knowledge, check how a prospect reacts when you ask them to do something they haven’t worked on before.

PRO TIP: Carry out behavioral interviews, in addition to the standard ones. Always have a good store of questions.

Look for things you can’t train

You can teach financial management or how to interpret Google Analytics reports, but it’s probably too late to instil manners, ethics or numeracy. Skills and experience are worthless when not put to use. Knowledge is useless when not shared with others. The smaller your business, the more likely you are to be an expert in your field, so transferring those skills to new employees is relatively easy. But you can’t train enthusiasm or a solid work ethic.

According to a LeadershipIQ study, only 11% of the new hires that failed in the first 18 months did so because of deficiencies in technical skills. The majority failed due to lack of motivation, an unwillingness to be coached, or problems with temperament and emotional intelligence.

PRO TIP: Always ask for references. Poor players struggle to provide solid and believable references.

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5. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates

Build a profile

Most people don’t know how to fish for talent that’s not looking for a hook. These elusive prospects are known as passive candidates. Sourcing is the process of finding people who are not overtly looking for a job. Your starting point is to know what you’re pursuing and as much as possible about where you’re likely to find it. Think about what the ideal person looks like. What experience do they need to have? What kind of job are they doing now? Which companies must have good people doing this job? Start building a profile. The key to sourcing is figuring out what you’re pursuing and where it lives.

What is sourcing?

Mature companies: You’re looking for established companies doing a great job at what you’re looking for (eg. selling to SMEs, content marketing). You’re looking for people trained by the best, whose options have vested, who are ready to move on to a new exciting gig.

Vulnerable companies: Startups are volatile. When a company experiences a shakeup, there’s a window of opportunity. Signs to look for include the departure of a leadership figure; ventures which have gone 18 months with no follow-up funding or rumors of layoffs. You’re looking for drift and discontent where the talent works so mine the industry reports (Crunchbase, Mattermark, CBInsights, Owler) and listen to the gossip.

Events: Where do the best people on your shortlist hang out? Think about what kind of events they attend and make sure you’re there – be they virtual gatherings or in person. These settings give you the chance to meet people who you may want to approach in the future. When the time comes you will have less cold calling to do.

Universities: The very best talent are only truly unemployed once in their life: right out of college. Universities have structures that help you identify this top echelon. They’re at careers fairs, on internship programmes, or even doing work experience that contributes course credits.

PRO TIP: Look for companies 6-12 months after a seed funding without followup.

Make a shortlist and lean in

Now that we know what to search for, all these sourcing tools (LinkedIn, TalentBin, GitHub, Sourcing.io, and of course, Workable) actually become useful. Start browsing profiles and make a long-list of prospects. Prioritize people who you can reach out to through your extended network. If you can’t get an intro, then see if you can engage them on social media (Twitter) or engineer a chance meeting.

PRO TIP: Attend startup community meetups, design conventions or hackathons.

A courtship doesn’t begin with leaning in, it starts with people getting to know each other. If you do this well the prospect will have already gotten to know you before the conversation turns to a job offer. These are people you may not hire today, or even one year from now. They may also be the key to introducing you to your best hires in the future.

External recruiters

This is where you turn when you’re short on time or confidence to follow the steps above. They can be a fantastic shortcut. It might look simple but there are a couple of things to bear in mind. Look out for recruiters who have hired for small companies before and have a track record of placement in the role you’re looking for. Most startups use contingent recruiters whom you pay only when they deliver someone you hire (typically one-third of the hire’s annual salary).

The upside is that you only pay for what you get. The downside is that your aim and the recruiter’s aim are not the same. You want to hire great people. They want you to hire someone. This subtle difference can lose you time dealing with uninspiring candidates.

PRO TIP: Pay your recruiter more than they ask for. They’ll think twice before referring the next high-quality candidate to another competitor or well-funded company.

A nod to ethics

You need to be competitive but you also live in a community. Employee poaching can backfire on you, especially when you’re just starting out. Getting the balance right can be as simple as being mindful of basic good manners.

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6. Creating an interview process

One of the biggest mistakes made when hiring for rapid growth in a startup is to think that just because you’re small you don’t need a process. If you think “process” means doing things slowly, think again. Get the right tools, remember to hire as a team and you will stay on track. The selection process is a funnel – you get a lot of applicants, you speak with some of them, you meet a few of them, you hire the one you like best. An efficient filtering process will save you and your candidates time.

Pre-interview questions

This all starts with the pre-interview questions, the questions you ask a candidate when they apply that will help you decide whether to progress with an applicant. Make sure candidates can sensibly weigh themselves against the requirements. Do you know anyone who will say “no” to the requirement “must be hard working”? Neither do we.

PRO TIP: Get candidates to do an assignment or task related to the job as part of the pre-interview.

Pre-interview questions can only get you so far. They weed out the most inappropriate candidates and give you an insight beyond a basic resume. However, a major factor in your hiring decision will be how well a candidate will fit in with your business. It’s personal and you need to get to know the candidates.

Screening assignments / testing

Ever walked in to an interview and known within 30 seconds that the candidate you’re meeting is never going to work out? Sure, most people have been there. The worst thing is that it wastes your time. You can’t just stop the interview after half a minute so you go through the routine and waste an hour of your time. It doesn’t have to be that way. An initial phone call, Skype screening conversation, or asynchronous video interviews will prevent that scenario nine times out of 10. Resumes, pre-screening questions, screens, interviews – we use these techniques to use past performance as an indicator of future success.

But what if you want to better understand how candidates will actually perform in the job you’re hiring them for? One way of finding out is to get candidates to do an assignment or task related to the job – in other words, a skills assessment. Hiring for a customer support associate? Test candidates by getting them to answer some hypothetical customer queries. If you are hiring developers, there are online tools like Codility which can put developers through their paces so you can see exactly how they code.

Interviews

Have a plan. Don’t just ask the same questions over and over. Take the time to know who you are meeting before you walk in. Not just their name and not just the job title of the role they’re interviewing for. Get to know them a little, check their resume and note some questions in advance.

Interviews shouldn’t slavishly follow a script. There are probably some standard questions you want to ask all candidates, such as whether they’re eligible to work in your territory. But these are just hygiene questions – you have to go further. Ask open questions that encourage a discussion, engage with the candidates’ responses and consider follow up questions you want to ask. If it’s boring, it’s not working. There’s nothing worse than the candidate feeling like the interviewer hasn’t read their resume and is just going through the motions: “Tell me about this job, now this job, and now this job…” No one gets much out of this kind of interview.

Interviews work both ways

When you leave an interview you should have a much better understanding of the candidate’s credentials and suitability. Equally, they should leave knowing a lot more about the role and the company. If you’ve screened your shortlist properly then everyone you interview should be a real contender – which means it’s worth selling to candidates in interviews. Chances are you’re going to offer them below market rate if you’re an early stage startup. Generally people don’t like getting paid less so you’d better give them a good reason to be excited.

PRO TIP: Note down personalized questions for candidates before the interview but don’t stick slavishly to the script.

Take a deep breath

If you have a nagging feeling that something isn’t right when you’re making an offer, don’t rush. Take your time to identify where that uneasiness comes from. Talk it through with a colleague. Don’t be afraid to ask a candidate to come for another meeting. Chances are if you have a concern, the candidate will be feeling the same and a quick conversation will iron out any problems. In the long term a bit of caution will pay off.

When you’re hiring for a function where you have little or no personal experience, it can be very hard to assess resumes or know what to ask during interviews. You might want to consider bringing in some outside help. This doesn’t need to be paid help, it could just be a friend or ex-colleague who can help you out with the skills-based aspects of the hiring process.

Keep it challenging

This is where you set the bar and show your rigour and ambition. A challenging interview process is a signal to candidates that your company doesn’t do average. This doesn’t have to mean a drawn-out 15-phase interview – even Google is moving away from the huge number of interviews they put candidates through – but you absolutely should establish a thoughtful pipeline that gives the candidate an opportunity to prove their mettle.

PRO TIP: Level the playing field by posing customer support queries for a tool most people are familiar with or can access easily e.g. Facebook.

Taking references

Not everyone believes references from previous employers are useful way in determining future performance. Candidates are unlikely to provide a reference whom they expect to say negative things about them. And many people don’t want to talk badly about someone so even if your candidate was terrible in a past job their reference won’t tell you.

This is not a reason to ignore references. It’s a reason to work harder at getting them right. Get more references. Successful entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster recommends getting at least five, including people the candidate didn’t propose. If we assume people are smart enough to gather good references, ask yourself: “Are they glowing?” If not, why not? Ask candidates why they chose the referees they did.

PRO TIP: Get at least 5 references and make sure some of them come from people the candidate hasn’t put forward. Read this.

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7. Workplace benefits and compensation

You can’t pay for groceries with equity

You’re not going to compete on salary with Google and Facebook but you need to get survival out of mind. Even your earliest hires ‐ and that includes you, the founder ‐ will need to pay bills. Some startups go to extremes, trying to make their runway last longer. Don’t build your runway on the backs of an exhausted and underpaid team. You objective is not to delay the next round but to get to it in the best possible shape. Here’s a few things you can do to achieve the right balance.

The power of perks

You’re not going to have the swankiest offices but you can make them reflect why people came to work for you. You don’t need a big budget to create a friendly, informal and energetic work space. Our environment helps to shape our mindset and reminds us who we are. Spend the time to make it attractive to your team, even if you can’t initially spend much money. There are many ways to make your company an attractive place to work – even if you’re in an “unsexy” location.

PRO TIP: Buffer’s emphasis on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative, which has created huge buzz and awareness of them.

Perks are powerful and cost effective. When you take into account tax and deductions a $10 lunch is worth more to your employee than $10 on their salary. But it’s about more than a free lunch. Taking care of peoples’ needs makes them feel taken care of. This pays off handsomely in productivity and morale.

That shouldn’t mean that you neglect traditional benefits. Before you start on the ping pong tables and games consoles make sure everyone has access to health insurance. When people know the basics like health are covered they’re more prepared to live leaner when it comes to salaries.

Compensating risk

Equity compensates risk. It is a form of deferred reward. When deciding whether to join your startup a prospect is looking at what they could earn at market rates for their skills over the same time period and balancing it against a potential future return that should be several multiples of the income they lost out on. It’s mathematics.

All early employees should have a significant amount of equity. This ensures their sense of ownership and mission. A properly structured stock option is also a commitment on the part of the employee. Equity grants usually vest over a period of three to four years and there’s a “cliff period” (typically one year) before a new employee earns their first tranche of shares.

This way, you’re not giving your company away. Instead, you’re binding the core team to your mission for long enough to make meaningful progress. With that in mind, don’t wait till the best people are restless. The best companies also give retention equity packages to fully vested employees. You need to think about this, before your star performers do.

How to research market rates, equity standards

Knowing the going rate for salaries and equity is notoriously difficult. A good place to get a benchmark is AngelList (for startup equity and salaries) or Glassdoor (for market rates). Make sure to compare yourself to similar companies. For each hire, check what’s on offer for jobs they could take so you know what their other options look like.

Especially when it comes to equity, it’s always better to err on the generous side. Rather than being hung up over a 0.1% more or less, think about whether this employee will improve your chance of success by that amount. A good hire will make it worth your while.

PRO TIP: Wealthfront’s Startup Compensation Tool is one of many benchmarks you can use.

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8. Recruiting software and tools

You need tools

We consider an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to be the centerpiece of any effective toolkit – especially when hiring for rapid growth. This is why we built one from scratch and obviously consider it to be the best of its kind. When choosing an ATS, ask yourself how well it integrates with other tools that you’ll need. A good one will integrate or at least play nicely with most of the software we recommend below.

Even then, it helps to know which ones are tops in the market. We’ve compiled for you the 12 best applicant tracking systems to help inform your decision on purchasing an ATS.

Sourcing and referral platforms

TalentBin, Sourcing.io, 3Sourcing and Gild are people aggregators with searchable, often pre-evaluated or classified profiles of people. Professional networks or communities like LinkedIn, GitHub, Dribble, AngelList are good places to do manual sourcing. Zao is one of the best referral platforms we came across. It’s made based on best practices, optimizes matches across all companies’ open jobs, has a gamification layer making it fun to participate and allows extended referrals. Another one to consider is RolePoint.

Online interview systems

Interviewing has gone video and this lets you record video questions, invite candidates to submit their responses so you can review them. Set time limits for responses, pause to take notes, tick the ones that are a perfect match, share if you’re not sure to take a second opinion. Workable’s Video Interviews can set you up for success here – particularly if you’re hiring for rapid growth in a short period of time and need to establish a standardized screening process with minimal breakdown.

Assessment tools

Codility is a niche, engineers-only, database. These guys are loaded with millions of engineers — active and passive. Considering the gap between demand and supply then this app is a treasure trove of prospects and a pretty straightforward tool to use if tech job boards aren’t cutting it. You can browse and filter data, collaborate with your team and do social recruiting too.

Smarterer have revolutionized skills assessment. Just give them 10 questions, 2 minutes and voila! you get a quantified skill. It’s basically a skills testing app but different. All of its test content is crowdsourced from the individuals who take the tests.

SHL has ability and personality tests if you need to test for critical qualities. They only offer science-based assessments and benchmark data.

Weirdly has your cultural fit riddle all figured out. It’s a four-step culture assessing recruitment tool. Define your desired cultural profile, publish the vacancy, watch candidates complete the quiz and select the right kind of weird.

Onboarding & talent management

KinHR is probably the best when it comes to onboarding new hires in a comprehensive and thoughtful way. The new employee signs in and reads about the company and the team they’re going to work with and what tasks they should start working on.

Zenefits is good for payroll and benefits management.

The shift to remote work also means onboarding remotely – such that you’re bringing people on board without them having met anyone on the team in person. Learn some tips and tricks of successful remote onboarding for you and your company.

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9. Where to post your jobs

You know exactly what you’re looking for so what’s your next step? Plaster your ad over every job board out there, right? Wrong. It pays off in time and money to do a little homework. Consider these questions:

• Where does the rest of your industry (in your city or country) post jobs?
• Did you get enough qualified candidates the last time you hit publish on XYZ job board? Did you get any candidates at all?
• Did you get too many candidates, maybe?
• Ask people who already have this type of job, where they first saw it?
• Visit alexa.com to see how popular the job board you are considering is.
• Find out where the audience you want to reach hangs out online
• Study the other job postings on that XYZ job board where you’re thinking of publishing your opening

The job board forest

To facilitate the job board selection process, we brought together a handy list of the top ones (below).

Horizontal

LinkedIn is the leader due to its three-way nature; professional social network/headhunting tool/job board – the biggest of its kind with 760 million members. It enables you to search profiles, pay to post jobs and more besides. With LinkedIn InMail, you can even contact candidates directly.

Indeed is the premier job site globally with 250 million regular visitors. You can post all types of jobs, sponsor the ones from your careers page, pay per click and search resumes.

Craigslist is the site for classifieds. Doesn’t match the traditional job board criteria, is famous for its no-frills user interface but beats everyone for inbound traffic.

Monster is one of the oldest job boards that keeps expanding worldwide. It’s a bit expensive in some countries (unless you post through Workable), has a lot of traffic and loads of resumes and free content.

Careerbuilder operates in the US, Europe, Canada and Asia. CareerBuilder is used by 80 million job applicants and has three million job postings per month.

Stepstone is one of the most successful job boards in Europe.

Beyond automatically distributes postings to niche sites and talent communities based on specific criteria. What’s in it for you? Targeted exposure and more relevant applications.

Tech

StackOverflowCareers is the careers platform of StackOverflow. It’s used by more than 100 million developers and technologists and is the trusted first destination of tech recruiters. If you’re looking for developers, it’s the place to go.

Dice is also a leader in the tech job boards industry. It has a cross-posting network and minimizes unqualified clutter due to its niche nature, with a database of more than nine million members.

Github Jobs taps into developers and engineers by being the place they hang out. Good place to trawl for passive candidates – especially with 50 million developers checking in regularly.

Creative

Behance is where some of the top brands post their creative jobs. It’s also the place where professionals showcase their work enabling you to take a sneak peek before you decide.

Dribbble gives you access to designers’ portfolios and profiles. Workable’s designers are really fond of it. Plus you can post your jobs and connect with top talent.

Authentic Jobs introduces recruiters to creative professionals. Simple and efficient.

Remote & flexible jobs

We Work Remotely is the job board without borders allowing you to narrow down talent without it having to be in the same location as you.

Upwork is free and for freelancers only. If you’re looking for one, check out their well-rounded freelancers’ database.

Flexjobs is free and effective when it comes to flexible jobs job posting. Only applies if you’re in search of part-time, telecommute or freelance employees.

Startups

AngelList ‐ you probably already know it if you’re a startup. Candidates get to apply privately and see salary and equity up front and startups get to access a huge list of developers and designers actively looking for a job. On top of that, it’s free!

Startuply is a free job listing site aimed mainly at small startups, which find it rather difficult to attract engineering talent. Startups can create a detailed company profile to give prospect candidates a sense of what it’d be like working for them. You should definitely give it a shot.

StartUpHire lists hundreds of jobs, but only for venture capital backed companies. It also comes at zero cost and has a widget that enables you to automatically add your open positions to your website

The Muse lets job seekers look behind the curtains of great companies. You can “showcase the heart and soul of your company” in 500 words, videos and photos and then display your job openings.

The post The Startup Hiring Guide: Hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We asked employers about that and got pretty good responses. For instance, Agneiszka Kasperek has a lot to offer on the topic as the CMO of Estonia-based Taskeo.co, a software supporting companies moving to cloud management. She recommends deliberately hiring people who would be a good fit for remote work.

“That is,” she explains, “people who aren’t intimidated by software or learning how to use it, self-starters, motivated and independent. In remotely working companies, certain character traits are more important than the skills that the new person comes with. The skills can be learned. Character traits – not so much.”

In other words, different people thrive in different environments. When you’re screening applicants for remote jobs, you may need to update your hiring criteria. So what ‘character traits’ can you look for when evaluating candidates?

Let’s start with four common worker archetypes. They are Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther.

Jennifer

Jennifer is an extrovert who thrives off interaction with others. For her, ideas happen between people, not inside one person’s head. Not only does she inspire others through her contributions to the team; she also is inspired by working closely with others towards common goals.

As such, she excels in a driven office environment where she can walk into a room and take over that room’s energy, and comes up with her best work through meetings and presentations. She can rapid-fire her way through a brainstorming session and thrives in spontaneity. She’s the talkative one at lunch who breaks the ice immediately.

If you had a project that needed multiple team members dynamically working together for it to succeed, Jennifer would be the first person you’d recruit to ensure a successful project.

Pam

Pam, on the other hand, is much quieter. She’s an immensely creative and productive employee, but in a different way than Jennifer. In a busy and noisy office environment, she struggles with all the distractions when she’s trying to get work done. As such, she’ll come early in the morning when few people are in the office to hunker down and do some deep work for a couple of hours. She’ll also find a spot away from others – whether it’s a vacant meeting room, a cafe, or in a quiet corner of the workplace – and work diligently with headphones on.

Those who know Pam know not to bother her when she’s got that game face on. They know they’ll get what they need from her at lunch hour, on a coffee break, or during a pre-scheduled meeting. With all that, you know that if you give Pam a project to complete by a certain date, she absolutely will deliver on time.

Lukas

Then there’s Lukas. Like Pam, he likes to have control over his schedule, because he works better in a predictable and structured work environment. He doesn’t like surprises – he likes to know what he’s in for. He likes to know that the weekly team meeting happens at 10 on Mondays, and that his project is expected on his manager’s desk by EOD on Wednesday – provided it’s been discussed ahead of time.

He doesn’t like to have extra work thrown at him with a “Lukas – I’m really needing to get this done by mid-afternoon today, can you clear your calendar and give this a quick look?”. Likewise, he doesn’t like seeing a meeting on his calendar bumped on 30 minutes’ notice. But if there’s a clear structure and a well-thought-out plan already in place, and if he knows exactly what needs to be done, Lukas will absolutely crush his part of the project.

Esther

And finally, there’s Esther. Like Lukas, she prefers structure and predictability in her work world. And, like Jennifer, she thrives off interacting with people. But she also understands that things pop up and priorities get moved around on a regular basis. She gets frustrated at first, but she’ll take it as it comes and adapt accordingly, knowing it’s better to adapt.

And there’s also a lot of Pam in her – she will absolutely revel in a setup where she can block off a few hours a day to do some deep work and churn out a day’s worth of productivity in those hours. But she knows that she needs to make herself available at any given time in the day, and that she’ll need to adapt accordingly.

And also – if you had a half-baked but novel idea and needed someone to take a deeper look and even bring it to fruition without needing a lot of guidance, Esther’s your go-to person. Likewise, if you had a last-minute project that needed immediate attention and you needed someone to say “Don’t worry, I got this!”, Esther would excel there too.

Evaluating candidates for soft skills

Now, imagine you’re a hiring manager evaluating candidates for a remote position. These four are your finalists. They all tick the same boxes – work experience, education, qualifications, skills. But you’re looking for someone to specifically excel remotely. First, let’s look at the soft skills needed for that.

In the aforementioned survey, adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits in the new remote world of work.

Also, a recent survey of Workable’s own employees found that time management, effective communication, and adaptability were the three most common new skills developed when they went fully remote at a moment’s notice in March. While the first two can be good soft skills in any work environment, the third one – adaptability – can be more important when evaluating candidates for a fully remote company.

Does it work in practice?

The signs point to ‘yes’. SmartBug Media CEO Ryan Malone – who has run a fully remote company since launching in the late 2000s – looks at two specific properties when evaluating candidates for their ability to work in a distributed team:

Social energy: Ryan will ask a simple question: “When’s the best time for you to work?” The answer may help him see whether a candidate gains a “freedom” in setting their own hours and removing all the distractions typical of an office environment, as opposed to losing the social aspect of office life (i.e. a lunch with colleagues).

In other words, he’s looking for where they get their social energy from – and that helps him determine if they can thrive in remote work.

Resiliency: Ryan is also looking for people who can adapt and pivot quickly in a less structured work environment, where there are very few windows for employees to walk to a colleague and vent after a hiccup in the workflow.

“So,” Ryan says, “we have to find people that have handled some adversity, and our resilient people can understand [that] maybe a client emergency comes up that you need to move stuff around.”

Alison Bernstein, the president of New York-based real estate firm Suburban Jungle Realty, is also pragmatic about remote work. The ability to be self-organized is high up on her list of highly valued skills when evaluating candidates.

“Having an organized schedule with space, time and childcare (if need be) to take calls, attend video chats, and simply execute daily activities is a great start,” she says. “One must begin to set their own goals and timelines and make sure those goals and deadlines are met.”

Sheena Ponnappan, the Chief People Officer of Singapore-based business outsourcing/offshoring agency Everise, also likes to look for those special signs that a person can thrive in a home environment.

“We have built a high-touch model through the recruitment process where we strategically interview for work-at-home propensity and demonstration of abilities to be successful without face-to-face contact.”

Sheena will go as far as to look for specific regions and population groups with high retention rates when evaluating candidates. Additionally, like Alison, she’s looking for “the ability to self-support home technologies and [candidates] who are committed to remote work as a life choice.”

The same goes for Inna Shevchenko, the CMO at iGMS, a short-term rental management SaaS company headquartered in North Vancouver, Canada. For Inna, determining a candidate’s potential to succeed within the existing remote structure at iGMS is a core focus of her candidate evaluation process.

“I believe that if you hire the right person, getting buy-in, user adoption, and the desired level of learning become less challenging,” says Inna. “This way, we ensure that the new hire will adapt easily and fit into the culture.”

So, who is that ‘right person’?

Let’s go back to evaluating our candidates in the final-four list – Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther, paying attention to their ability to thrive in a remote work environment.

Jennifer

Jennifer’s productivity might falter without being able to organically interact with her deskmates and colleagues on a regular basis. Unless her calendar was booked with meetings back-to-back or if her manager was connecting with her every day, the hours on end in an isolated home office might negatively impact her energy and motivation.

Pam

Next to a desert island, a remote job would be Pam’s dream job. She would love to stay at home and work 24/7 in her home office, where she’s able to maintain greater control over her own schedule and not “have” to talk or engage with others on a regular basis. She can muster up the needed energy for meetings, but the times in between are those golden solitary times where she can really crank out her best stuff.

Lukas

Like Pam, Lukas may see this remote job as a perfect setup for him. But a remote work environment is not necessarily absent of those unpredictable “pop-up” meetings – loved by Jennifer, Lukas not so much. He functions better when he knows precisely what everyone else is doing and what is expected of him each week. In a remote environment, there’s more of a need to fly by night. If he isn’t 100% informed of his expectations and deliverables early on, his productivity might falter.

Esther

Finally, Esther understands and appreciates the ambiguity of a remote work world and has the resilience that allows her to overcome the little trip-ups and changes throughout. Even if it’s not ideal, she can pivot as needed, whether it’s for a meeting being moved or a lack of clarity as to what’s needed for the client presentation on Friday. She also has the self-confidence to go forward without needing a greenlight or validation from her manager. She can take on a task or project with minimal supervision, and can be trusted to turn out a great product in the end.

Don’t put all soft skills in one basket

So, with all of that, who would you hire for a remote position? At first glance, it might come down to Pam or Esther, with the latter getting the job due to her ability to perform even in a volatile or ambiguous working environment. And in remote – you really do need that because it’s such a hands-off climate.

But take care when evaluating candidates for soft skills. Just because a Jennifer comes off as more outgoing does not necessarily mean that she cannot thrive in a remote work world. Maybe she’s an incredibly quick learner and can adapt to a new balance in her work and life.

Likewise, an Esther isn’t necessarily set for success remotely – maybe she rolls with the punches, but when direction is needed, she doesn’t handle that well or doesn’t know how to follow instructions step by step. You may even come across a Pam or Lukas who turns out to be the very best candidate for the position based on their amazing output and performance in spite of everything else – and that’s OK, too.

Not only that, soft skills are not always easy to gauge in those first few interactions in the candidate evaluation process. Jennifer’s demeanor may seem outright extroverted, but there may be some deeper aspects to her you might not initially perceive in an interview. Likewise, Pam and Lukas might be more adaptable to unpredictability than you – or even they – realize.

In the end, the ‘environment’ matters

Also, while you’re evaluating for skills and best cultural fit, it bears noting that if the rest of your system isn’t conducive to success and productivity, it doesn’t matter who you have in your team. You still need a quality recruitment process, a standardized onboarding, and a strategy to build connections with others.

But do you know what the trickier part really is? In the long haul, it’s still up to you to set them for long-term success regardless of the environment they’re in and their individual traits. That’s ultimately your job as an employer and manager – to bring the best out of your team whether remotely or in the physical workplace.

The post Evaluating candidates for remote work? Your hiring criteria matters appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are businesses planning for the remote work future?
• How important is technology in remote work?

Digital transformation is a long-time buzzword that now means the digitization of information, industries, organizations, and operations. And if remote work is the biggest paradigm shift prompted by COVID-19, remote work technology is the vehicle to make that a smoother transition.

Technology – the great enabler

When we asked respondents what made them able to move to a remote workflow without disruption, more than two thirds (68%) reported it was because they already had the technology for remote workers to do so.

“… industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” – Survey respondent

Of those planning to remote operations or distributed teams, nearly half plan to introduce or increase digital capabilities in that transition – in short, more technology for remote work.

Those in senior-level management prioritized tech adoption in the post-COVID work environment, much more so than those at entry/mid-level. Perhaps executives see tech adoption as a company-wide, internal digital transformation while entry/mid-level employees see it primarily as technology for remote work day-to-day.

“COVID-19 has shown … that weak link [in] being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology were able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” – Survey respondent

Those in entry/mid-level employee positions are more concerned about the readiness of their business than those in senior-level management. Also, several custom entries from our respondents indicate the lack of senior-level buy-in.

Some of these differences may indicate potential issues around employee engagement.

“The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, [and] more adaptive to remote working style. The expenses for office rental & travelling will be cut as well, [and] more creative ways in employee engagement events.” – Survey respondent

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 6 on remote employee engagement in the new world of work 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote work technology: the road ahead is digital appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Onboarding remote employees – in many cases, without having ever met them in person – is no easy task. In Workable’s New World of Work survey, 37.4% cited remote onboarding and training as major issues when hiring in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, while 49.7% said candidate onboarding would be problematic in recruiting in the post-COVID work world.

But Eric isn’t one to be discouraged by those numbers.

“Regular meetings and discussions on Zoom, Hangouts, and Google Duo have helped us in overcoming all the challenges,” he says.

He adds that there are business benefits as well.

“There’s been a reduction in costs because no infrastructure is required in the workplace. Team members are arranging it at their distant locations themselves.”

That’ll be a welcome reassurance to the 26.4% of budget-conscious senior-level executives in the above-mentioned survey who said new hire onboarding would be one of the main overall challenges in the new world of work.

Camaraderie makes the team merry

Eric is just one of the dozens of business owners and managers who responded to our query for tips and tricks on remote onboarding. One lesson was clear from many: while a standardized process is especially important in successful remote onboarding, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Companies thrive on teamsmanship and camaraderie, so you want to build those strong connections from the first day forward if you want the new hire to be set for success.

That’s easier when it’s done face-to-face, as those connections are built via introductions, meetings, and team exercises in a shared physical space. But strengthening work culture and bonding between colleagues is tougher virtually.

“Remote onboarding has been a big challenge because with this we’re not able to introduce the new team members to the culture and environment of the organization,” Eric says.

So, how do you get started on building connections in a remote work world, particularly when onboarding? It’s not easy, but if you follow these best practices from those we heard from, you’ll be able to build those important connections between your new hire and their new colleagues.

Here are four best practices for you to stay ahead of the new trends in remote employee engagement.

1. Be even more hands-on

It’s easy enough for new hires to spontaneously chat with others when in the same physical workspace, but it’s not easy when that new hire is sitting invisibly in front of their computer. They can’t look around and chat with their desk neighbors or take a tour of the office and introduce themselves to people. That can severely impact new hire engagement from day one.

This puts the onus on you to be even more hands-on than you would in a normal onboarding process. This applies not only to HR but to colleagues and managers as well, says Neal Taparia of Solitaired.

“You have to be very hands-on to ensure successful onboarding,” says Neal, the CEO of this new NYC-based company that ties classic games to brain training. “New employees are [more] hesitant to speak up via online channels than they are in person to get an understanding of everything. They don’t want to ask too many questions over Slack, and ask for additional Zoom calls.”

He adds that you also need to check in regularly to ensure that a new hire is headed in the right direction and is on track throughout your new hire onboarding plan.

Involve the hiring manager

The value of inclusive leadership is especially crucial for new hire engagement when working remotely, Neal emphasizes.

“It’s easy for managers to forget to check in on new employees that have started remotely. [At Solitaired], we train our managers on what successful remote onboarding means. Specifically, we have a rule where managers should be checking in at least 10 times through the week to make sure everything is going in the right direction.”

Husam Machlovi is the founder of digital studio With Pulp, which operates fully remotely out of New York state. His company has served notables such as AMC Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment. He also advocates for the active participation of hiring managers in the new hire’s engagement.

“The most effective remote onboarding tool for us is simply to check in with each other,” says Husam. “I like to check in with new hires and ask them how I can support in any way, how things are going, do they have any questions? My goal is to create a space where people feel safe to ask questions.”

Grant Aldrich, CEO/founder of the Los Angeles-based online learning site Online Degree, says the manager or CEO is responsible for making sure everyone feels connected throughout the company, keeping new employee engagement high at this crucial time.

“This goes beyond checking in and extends to starting conversations and asking questions in your communication channels,” he adds.

Michael Alexis, the owner of New York-based Teambuilding, a virtual team cohesion service, emphasizes the importance of active participation by all parties included – both the newly hired and the ones doing the hiring and onboarding.

“Following documents and watching videos alone is boring,” says Michael. “It’s important to us that these early days and weeks for a new team member are as engaging as possible.”

Make yourself available – and ensure the new hire knows it

Dan Bailey of WikiLawn, an online lawn and garden care resource center which lists services all across the United States, notes that it does take more time to onboard someone remotely, as he simply cannot sit next to the new hire and walk them through all the steps of their job. But it’s still important that he and his colleagues are available to the new hire for anything they may need on the spot.

Not only do his teams record videos with instructions and prepare documents to be more detailed, but also set response time as a critical measurement. In fact, he applies customer support standards to ensuring his new hires get what they need quickly.

“We’ve found that new hires often have many questions that can go unanswered for an hour or more if someone isn’t assigned to being available to help them, so that is one way we’ve improved how we manage onboarding,” Dan explains.

“At least one other teammate is available during working hours by messenger, email, and phone so the new hire doesn’t have to waste time and become frustrated waiting on a reply.”

2. Make the employee feel welcome

Austin Heerwagen of Koda Digital, a medical marketing agency operating out of Carrollton, Texas, admits that disconnection was an issue when operating remotely, especially with new hires coming on board.

“Our biggest pain point initially was gaining buy-in from new employees. There is no tour around the office, parking space, elevator ride, or birthday parties – employees can feel like they are a replaceable cog in a machine.”

That makes it even more critical to make your new hire feel welcome and connected.

Caitlin Byrnes can speak firsthand to the value of this. When she was hired as VP at Peppercomm, a public relations firm in NYC, she found that her new company had a great new hire onboarding plan in place, but some things stood out above and beyond HR obligations particularly in a remote work environment.

“For instance, team members carved out time for virtual coffee with me, and gave me a positive ‘shout-out’ in my first all-hands meeting,” Caitlin says.

“These personal touchpoints made me feel more comfortable working with a team I’d never met in person. Even more importantly, it helped me understand who I could go with questions when I couldn’t just pop around the corner.”

Line up meetings with everyone

Shayne Sherman, the CEO of TechLoris, a computer service in Brookline, Massachusetts, highlights that importance in the absence of water cooler conversations and “quick drops by one’s desk”.

“We made sure to make company intros and offer the chance to say a few words at the latest company all-hands meeting. From there, the new hire’s manager would schedule a remote lunch or after-work drinks, via Zoom, to get to know each other and open the chat up to be a bit more informal.”

Greg Hayes, CEO and co-founder of venture-backed office furniture startup Branch in NYC, makes sure the new hire is properly and formally acquainted with their full team right away.

“We ensure that each new team member has a lengthy 1:1 video chat with everybody on our team, to ensure they better understand everyone personally and what their scope of work entails. We also plan a happy hour around each new member’s arrival to welcome them in.”

Tara Lilien, the Chief Talent Officer at Peppercomm, takes it one step further.

“I think giving the new hire an opportunity to lead a meeting, facilitate a staff learning event or shadow a client meeting or call are all great on-the-job moments that will allow for stronger and quicker integration into the team.”

Send them a welcome package

Austin at Koda Digital likes to make sure the new employee receives a gift basket containing company swag and attire, business cards, and gift cards for restaurants near them. He’ll even make sure to include personal gifts based on interview discovery.

“For example, one employee really liked sloths, so we sent her a desk-buddy sloth to let her know that we care about her too – not just her work. In addition, on the employee’s first day, we send out UberEats gift cards to everyone and have a ‘catered’ nice-to-meet-you lunch.”

Kick things off with a friendly, informative email before their first day, setting the tone going forward.

3. Don’t assume everyone knows your tech, because they don’t

When you’re working in a company that utilizes a lot of technologies and has fully jumped on board the digital transformation train, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone knows your tech stack. Don’t do that, says Neal at Solitaired.

“Some of us use Google Apps and Microsoft apps so regularly, we assume everyone knows these systems as well as we do. This is definitely not the case.”

He learned this the hard way, too. One time, he hired an employee that had never used the Google productivity suite and they were too embarrassed to admit that. That made onboarding an especially painful process.

Doesn’t matter who’s at fault for it – it’s a negative first experience for the new hire that starts things off on the wrong foot.

Get them acquainted with tech quickly

Get ahead of the problem, Neal recommends. “Take an intake survey beforehand. If someone does not know about Google apps, we ask them to read up on it beforehand, and give them a tutorial on their first and second day of work.”

Amy McWaters, the CEO of Gifts Australia, a souvenir e-commerce company in Sydney, Australia, also finds that tech adoption remains an issue in the remote new hire onboarding plan. Late logons, lost connections, and struggles with tech integrations continue to be a pain point for her company. She recommends taking care of things even before the first day of onboarding or training – effectively preventing a problem before it even occurs.

“Work under the assumption that tech issues will arise, if not on your end, then on the trainees’ end,” Amy says. “Give installation instructions at least three days out.”

Gargi Rajan, general manager of human resources at Mercer / Mettl, an HR technology company operating just outside of New Delhi, India, likes to get several birds with one stone: hackathons. The benefits are multiple: it helps onboarding in a remote manner, gets new hires quickly acquainted with their new colleagues, and puts everyone on a level playing field bonded by a common interest. Tech adoption is a huge, huge bonus.

“Since everyone understands the challenges at hand,” Gargi explains, “they all come together to accept the technological tools and processes as partners in working smoothly and seamlessly.”

But don’t be fazed if you do run into some issues with tech adoption among your existing and new employees. It may seem daunting on the surface, but with a silver lining underneath.

“Every aspect has its limitations,” Eric at Couture Candy says. “Maybe we wouldn’t have known the creativity required in businesses if tech adoption was quick and easy.”

4. Make it a two-way street

Even as an employer who knows your company inside and out, you can’t assume to know everything that the new hire needs. So, establish a two-way street – solicit feedback from your new employees and refine your new hire onboarding plan based on what they’ve shared with you.

Neal at Solitaired is quick to that point, having new employees fill out a daily survey about their onboarding during their first week on the job.

“It became a forum where they could clear up any confusion, and for us to get them back on the right track. It’s simple and effective.”

At Branch, Greg encourages new employees to be “hungry learners” and not to be afraid to ask any questions.

Listen, learn, and improve

Phil Strazzulla, the CEO at the online review site Select Software Reviews, doubles down on collecting feedback from your new colleagues, acknowledging that it is new ground for many companies.

“Ask your new hires for feedback on the [new hire onboarding plan], what worked and what didn’t. Get your HR team as well as your managers together to go over the results and make changes to address them.”

Jitesh Patil, SEO and content specialist at project management software company Toggl Plan in Tallinn, Estonia, also advocates for this measure of successful remote onboarding – and himself works remotely from Maharashtra, India.

“We request regular feedback from new joinees — end of week 1, end week 2, end of the first month, and so on.”

This series of sample questions for your new hire can help you collect valuable feedback on your remote new hire onboarding plan.

Set up an open Q&A channel

Michael at Teambuilding takes a unique approach to the two-way street in his company’s remote onboarding strategy.

“One way we’ve made the onboarding process more engaging is using employee journaling. For each new hire, we create a private channel in Slack where they can share their thoughts and ideas,” Michael explains.

“For example, it might be a note like, ‘I’m a little confused at who these people are’, and then we can chime in with info about team members or organizational structure. The journal also introduces fresh eyes to our systems to help improve. For example, ‘I noticed that XYZ is inefficient, and in previous roles I’ve done it this way that was more efficient’.”

It can also be a morale booster for those doing the actual onboarding, he adds.

“[We] are happy to receive feedback like ‘never felt so welcome in any of my jobs before’ or ‘everyone is so welcoming here’”.

Maximize the connectivity

Nuances are often lost in the remote work world. You can overcome that by getting everyone as involved as possible, ensuring the new hire feels part of the team from day one, staying on top of any potential tech hiccups, and establishing open two-way communication channels. That will set your new hires for success as early in the game as possible.

It also helps your existing employees get better acquainted with each other – including their individual styles and working habits – and fosters a more cohesive team environment, even in a world where few people have actually met but still work together on a daily basis.

And this doesn’t need to be a chore, either, says Eric at Couture Candy.

“Remote onboarding is fun if you enjoy it,” he says with a smile.

Want to read more? Check out our tutorial on reducing new hire turnover in your company.

The post Your remote new hire onboarding plan: Build those connections appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

After all, our customers are important to us. As Workable’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, it’s very important to me as well. We want to give you an added level of confidence that Workable is a fully secure organization.

The good news for you is that after being rigorously audited and assessed, we’re proud to say we’re officially ISO 27017:2015 and SOC 2 Type 1 accredited.

ISO 27017:2015

ISO 27017:2015 is SaaS-oriented and certifies that we have guidelines for information security controls applicable to the provision and use of cloud services.

SOC 2 type 1

SOC 2 type 1 proves that Workable has designed appropriate controls to provide reasonable assurance that our service commitments and system requirements were achieved based on the AICPA Trust Services Criteria relevant to Security, Availability, and Confidentiality. We will be moving forward with SOC 2 type 2 to further validate the strength of our security controls over time. For more information, check out our documentation on it.

This isn’t just about being able to prove that our tech is safe and secure. It’s also about proving that Workable operates safely and securely – meaning you, your business, and your information are safe and secure when working with us as well.

The post Workable evolves with even higher security accreditation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

During a hiring freeze, technical recruiters can proactively position themselves and their teams by adopting more efficient remote sourcing techniques, interview processes, and by embracing ways to build work-from-home cultures while social distancing. For recruiters that have been furloughed or laid off, now is the time to reinvent their own habits and skills for a new economy.

We talked to six uplifting recruiting leaders from CNN, Airtable and others to understand their perspectives and recommendations on how to keep moving forward during an economic downturn and surviving crisis.

Recruiting leaders

Aleks Derikonja Technical Recruiter, CNN	Jacob Chavarria Lead Technical Recruiter, Formation
Victoria Day Technical Recruiter, Airtable	Geno Miller CEO & Cofounder, Shtudy
Bryan Menduke Senior Technical Recruiter, Kensho Technologies	Analisse Dunne People Operations Manager, Nulab

Increasing productivity and staying positive while WFH

“It’s always those simple things that make a whole lot of difference in your day to day. I’ve had to accept that it is OK to take a break at any point in the day or week, to go walk your dog, do a yoga class in your living room, listen to your favorite podcast or meditate. Even on some of those meeting packed days, I’ve scheduled in time for myself to make sure there is a good balance.”

– Aleks Derikonja, CNN

“I have been using the app, Focus Keeper, to make sure I give a good amount of time to work as well as when to shut off. Right now the lines are being blurred between personal and work time. That can lead to a high amount of stress. By using the app, I know when to shut off for the day and when to give myself time to take breaks.”

– Jacob Chavarria, Formation

“The best investment I’ve made is a standing desk converter and an anti-fatigue pad. They are life-changing! My time investment was moving apartments and then decluttering the space so that my ‘office’ can coexist with my workspace without being intrusive. I have a setup that’s easy to break down at the end of the day, so I just have an empty desk with a small box underneath (with my laptop, stand, keyboard/mouse, headphones, notebooks, etc). I know many of us don’t have the luxury of extra space, so being able to clean up my space helps me disconnect from work life and pivot my mind into my personal life.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“I’m sort of a news junkie, so I always check tech and recruitment news first thing in the morning. I also love having 1-on-1 personal interviews with real job seeking engineers. News is good to see what’s going on from a bigger picture, while 1:1 personal interviews allows us to empathize with what developers are going through emotionally. This is super important because every engineer’s journey is different, and after about 20-30 interviews, it’s usual to start noticing common themes between the interviewees. This helps us provide new scalable solutions to help them quickly.”

– Geno Miller, Shtudy

“For staying on top of engineering trends – one great way to do this is to sit in on engineering all hands meetings and different team meetings to understand what the team is doing. You will be able to learn about the different tools the team currently uses, what they may be evaluating, and the why behind it all.”

– Bryan Menduke, Kensho Technologies

Advice for recruiters who have been laid off

“Please don’t rush into anything if you have a choice. I know several of my colleagues took at least two weeks after it happened to them to clear their heads. Try to find gaps in your resumes and take one of the many free learning courses. I know Linkedin has some great courses to help. Even spend some free time researching recruiting tools that are out there. I feel we get stuck using the same tools and do not see what has changed out there. Really start working with your network and if you don’t have a network this is a good time to start to build one. Connect with other recruiters that are in the same position to help each other.”

– Jacob Chavarria, Formation

“Go above and beyond where you can – if you’re looking for a new job, put more effort than you think you need to into preparing for interviews (for the jobs you really want)! One of the best pieces of feedback I received during my interview process was to make myself stand out for the jobs I want. For example, before an interview, research a role at the company, and come with an idea of how you engage candidates (bring a search string), how you’d sell the company and engage with the candidate from the first message until their offer is signed. Also, share the resources you have – I talk about resources I’ve created in past jobs, and even re-created them on the fly with a screen share. Answers sound similar when you’re asking the same questions again and again, and people who go outside of the box are the ones who stand out.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“The market is tough, but there are still firms and companies looking to hire recruitment consultants to help with hiring. Connect with anyone you can in the industry via LinkedIn or be on the lookout for virtual groups via Meetup networking!”

– Analisse Dunne, Nulab

Advice for job seekers

“Use your network, and engage with recruiters. There are so many talented applicants on the market right now, and many recruiters have told me they can’t even get through their inbound applicant pool each day before it completely fills up again overnight. Personally, I don’t know if I would have gotten an interview with Airtable if a recruiter hadn’t passed my resume along to the top of the pile. If you’re interested in a company, check out their LinkedIn and see who you know through 1st and 2nd degree connections (don’t be afraid to ask for an intro to a second degree connection!). Also, once you identify these connections, you don’t have to ask them to talk or have coffee – most times, when I’ve asked for a casual conversation about the company, I don’t get a response. If I send a quick note saying I’d really appreciate it if they could refer me, I’m significantly more likely to get a response. I’ve found that Zoom fatigue is real, and while people are mostly happy to refer you, sometimes they don’t always want to take time to talk about their work (especially outside of work hours). Basically, don’t be afraid to start the conversation by asking for a referral.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“There are many hiring lists for people who have been laid off or furloughed. Parachute List is a good one for all kinds of people and skill sets. I highly recommend EVERY engineer adds their resume to at least one of these, even if you haven’t been laid off yet. Here at Shtudy, we’ve created a hiring table for tech talent of color to anonymously sign up so you can receive new career opportunities – it’s a step-by-step guide on exactly what technical talent should do to survive after being laid off according to recruiters at Google, Facebook, and more. It’s super valuable for every job seeker and recruiter who cares about their career. They’ll have a significant advantage in your job search if you do.”

– Geno Miller, Shtudy

“Don’t just take any job, and brush up on skills you may have not focused on recently. When you are not working, it is easy to just jump to the first opportunity that presents itself. However, it is critical to evaluate the longer term fit of an opportunity because you don’t want to get yourself into a situation where you take a job that is not a fit and then feel stuck there because of the outside circumstances. Additionally, I would suggest technical job seekers to focus on brushing up and also learning new skills that will make them attractive to an employer. This will pay dividends not only in the short term but over the course of their career.”

– Bryan Menduke, Kensho Technologies 

“Partner with a recruitment firm who focuses on your area of expertise, there are companies still hiring! Also, reach out to internal recruiters via LinkedIn at companies whose jobs you have applied to-a message will help you stand out amongst candidates. Also, don’t be opposed to freelance; lots of companies are opening up contract and freelance roles because they can’t commit to long-term at the moment but once the pandemic is over, that could change! Last but not least, don’t fret – furlough is not forever and something will come along!”

– Analisse Dunne, Nulab

Predictions about the future of hiring

“I think the pandemic will change not only how we hire, but also how we work. Many companies have already announced that they will allow their staff to work remotely indefinitely, which I think is just the beginning of this workforce transformation in tech we’re going to see. This will have a massive impact on culture, benefits, as well as recruiting strategies. However, I think it will be less challenging to find and hire top talent since we will not be tied to a specific location with lots of competition and high price points.”

– Aleks Derikonja, CNN

“I think location won’t be as much of an issue (although I don’t think all of tech will become remote in the near-term), and I hope long-term this will bring greater diversity of thought and experience to workforces in general. I’ve always been a huge advocate of self-taught and non-traditional backgrounds when I recruit because I believe great talent can come from anywhere, so I think we’ll see co-workers from all parts of the country, all sorts of backgrounds, etc. especially with the combined forces of online boot camps and remote-friendly companies! Idealistically, hopefully this will make us more empathetic people in general, and the tech industry will truly build products with everyone in mind.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“I personally think that you don’t necessarily need to put someone through rounds and rounds of interviews, in person, or not, to determine if they will be a good fit. Talented candidates will shine just as much virtually as they will in the office; a lot of hiring managers are realizing that and changing the way they interview/hire because of this. It will definitely be a long-term effect.”

– Analisse Dunne, Nulab

This is a guest post from Coderbyte, who is committed to helping forward-thinking technical talent acquisition leaders make an impact. They’ve put together a COVID-19 Report & Best Practices Guide based on surveying hundreds of software developers to better understand perceptions about remote work and company culture.

The post Chin up, recruiters and jobseekers: Expert tips for surviving crisis appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The concern is valid. Time wastage due to non-work-related tasks has been a perennial problem even when managers are in the same building as employees. According to a Salary.com survey, 89% of employees have admitted to wasting time at work, with the top 10% wasting three or more hours each day.

It comes as no surprise, then, that several of the top concerns of owners and managers about employees transitioning to remote work are related to how employees spend their time at work. Concerns include reduced employee productivity, reduced focus, task completion rate, and work-life conflict.

The solution to this problem may seem obvious: time tracking software. It’s not a new technology. Both co-located and remote teams have used it for years. Yet, the debate about whether time tracking is a boon or bane has been going on since the technology was invented.

As with any other technology, the benefits and perils of remote time tracking lie in the details of its implementation. The technology isn’t inherently good or bad. Your time tracking outcomes will depend on how well you use it.

To help you get the best results from tracking with your remote team, outlined below are the dos and don’ts of remote time tracking in three key areas of productivity and performance management.

1. Initial implementation

Don’t: shock your employees with a sudden rollout

Whether or not the transition to a work-from-home arrangement is the reason that prompted you to implement time tracking, make sure not to drop the news on your team like a brick. Any change you introduce needs to follow a specific set of steps for it to be accepted. This includes remote time tracking.

As explained by project manager Michal Bielak, “Don’t just gather your team members in a room one day and say, ‘From now on, we’ll be using this IT time tracking software to see how your work’s going. Click here, now click there, perfect, thanks, the meeting’s over’ — that is, unless you want to bump into a group of gossipers every time you go to the kitchen. People want to be treated fairly: if you introduce some changes, explain the rationale behind it.”

Do: conduct a Time Tracking 101 with your team

Instead of a sudden, out-of-the-blue implementation, notify employees well ahead of time and explain the importance of time tracking to them.

Then, get them up to speed with the software well in advance and teach them everything they need to know about the time tracking system you’re about to introduce. The time you invest in doing this prep work will result in better utilization and a higher level of appreciation for time tracking among your employees.

Below are the key areas you need to cover when doing a time tracking 101 with your team:

• The tool/platform/technology that you will use for remote time tracking
• The activities/tasks you will track
• How the time tracking data you collect will be used
• Privacy protection measures you will put in place
• The benefits of time tracking for your team

2. Employee management

Don’t: use time tracking to micromanage

It’s very easy for managers of newly transitioned remote teams to fall into the trap of micromanagement and to use time tracking to do it. Managers can abuse the capabilities of time tracking software to monitor every minute detail of how employees are spending their work hours.

Some may even use the additional features of time tracking technologies such as screenshots and geofencing to implement a “Big Brother-like” surveillance over their teams.

Do: use time tracking to foster accountability

To address micromanagement, you must understand where the desire to micromanage stems from. Most of the time, it’s the fear that your employees might not be doing the work they’re supposed to be doing during the hours they’re supposed to be doing it. This can lead to resentment and resistance from employees.

Instead of using time tracking to create fear among your employees that you’re watching their every move, empower them to foster a sense of accountability. Give them the leeway to track and manage their own productivity.

Of course, you will still use the data gathered using time tracking to make informed and smart decisions about performance management and employee engagement. However, the ultimate goal is to use time tracking as a tool to enable your team members to be constantly cognizant of their performance and productivity.

3. Time tracking structure

Don’t: leave procedures up to your team

One of the primary goals of time tracking is to generate reports that you can use to help your team meet both productivity and business goals. This won’t be possible if there’s no uniformity in how your team members track their time. While you want to make it as easy as possible for your employees to record their time, you also don’t want time tracking to lack structure.

For instance, one of the common pitfalls of time tracking is the lack of naming conventions, a common problem in project management. Without uniformity in naming protocols, you won’t be able to determine whether resources are allocated properly to tasks and projects. It can also affect how you charge for billable hours.

Do: provide clear and simple guidelines

Even the most sophisticated time tracker will fail if you don’t implement clear and easy-to-follow guidelines. Below are a few of the questions your remote time tracking manual should answer:

• What tasks/projects should be tracked or not tracked?
• How should time entries be recorded?
• How should tasks/projects be categorized?

Having clear and straightforward guidelines is a key time-tracking best practice that shouldn’t be ignored. When tracking remote team time, make sure you have documented procedures in place to make it as seamless as possible.

Making remote time tracking work for your team

Time tracking is a pretty straightforward concept, but its implementation is an intricate process. Following the gold standards and avoiding the pitfalls in your time tracking system’s initial rollout, in employee performance management, and in providing a structured time tracking methodology will create a solid foundation for remote team time tracking.

If you do decide to make remote work your company’s “new normal,” you will discover iterations to these do’s and don’ts and come up with your own time tracking best practices for your team.

The post The 3 dos and don’ts of remote time tracking for you to know appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The style of “working remotely” has brought up challenges (distractions, barriers to productivity, etc.) that many employees have suddenly come face to face with for the first time over the past few months. As a result, new and existing skills have been brought into the spotlight.

The ultimate question arises: What are the best skills for remote work?

Workable employees – operating in a fully remote environment over the past few months – recently filled out an internal survey to help us gain insight:

Here are the resultant top skills for working remotely in an efficient way, and how our peers ranked them:

• Personal skills
• People skills
• Organizational skills
• Strategic skills

Personal skills for remote workers

Resourcefulness & Versatility

Have you ever hit a dead end in a project and rolled your chair towards your teammate to ask for some help? What if you didn’t have that convenience and you had to figure it out yourself? How would you do that?

That’s where resourcefulness and versatility come in. Being able to maneuver your skills and knowledge to learn new things and break down all kinds of challenges – even IT stuff – is a process that you face almost every day when working remotely. In a Workable employee’s own words:

“Resourcefulness – I think this is important in a remote work setting as you do not have someone sitting next to you who you can ask every question to. Being able to find information on your own is an important skill to work efficiently while working remotely.”

Self-efficacy

In the field of positive psychology, self-efficacy is defined as “the belief we have in our own abilities, specifically our ability to meet the challenges ahead of us and complete a task successfully”.

But why do remote workers need self-efficacy? Things are quite simple.

This particular measurable skill comes along with self-control, motivation, confidence, resilience and discipline. Since remote workers are “alone workers” most of the time – especially in an asynchronous environment – this skill set is the main ingredient to maintain internal focus towards completion and success.

“Self-efficacy and time management are by far the most important soft skills for a remote worker (which are also difficult to learn too). They both help the employee to focus on the tasks at hand and execute upon them.”

People skills for remote workers

Communication, Επικοινωνία, Comunicación, Comunicação, Kommunikation

Imagine being at the office, walking down the hallway to ask Steve for clarification about the project you are working on. You find him, share your thoughts, and now you’re ready to get back to work. Great!

Now, what if Steve was not at the end of the hallway, but at the other side of the world, just getting ready to dive into deep sleep? Of course you’ll write down all the questions and thoughts you want to share and send them over – fingers crossed you don’t forget anything – but you will probably not get your answers until a few hours later. So delivering to-the-point messages is crucial for a distributed team with an asynchronous model of communication.

Now let’s make it a little more tricky: Your virtual office will probably have multinational people, which means you won’t speak the same native language, nor share the same culture.

And here is where cross-cultural literacy comes aboard. When it comes to communicating, being understanding, patient and open to diversity are major remote work skills.

As another employee put it:

“Respect. Time sensitivity. (I am respecting my colleagues’ time, do not schedule useless meetings that can be discussed in a Slack channel). Introvert at times. No need to discuss too much in order to get things done.”

Teamwork

As a remote worker, you may physically work alone, but at the end of the day, you are still part of a team spread all over the world – well, at least sometimes – and it is quite easy to forget that you are part of a broader group of people with a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

And you are not to blame!

Sitting alone at your desk at home is the polar opposite of being in an office with busy hallways. However, you are not alone, and teamwork not only boosts productivity, but also works like an invisible chain holding the company together.

One employee highlighted teamwork as one of the best skills for remote work:
“Top skill is to be a team player, always sharing information with your team about your current/future work, blocking issues, etc, as well as proactively help and guide your colleagues.”

Organizational skills for remote workers

Adaptability & Flexibility

Adaptability and flexibility represent the ability to easily adjust and bend to changes. Whether this is a strategy turnaround, or simply the fact that your dinner table becomes your office spot for some hours per day.

A recent Upwork survey on remote work found that 32% of respondents said that increased distractions at home have impacted performance. Even though some circumstances, in fact, cannot be totally controlled – such as parenting at home – being adaptable and flexible are major assets for dealing with and breaking daily walls.

“A lot of it is about discipline and mindset. It’s easy to go through the ritual of getting up, getting dressed, having breakfast, go out the door and into your commute to work,” one Workable employee said. “Working remotely means you don’t have to do any of these things (apart from breakfast). The sudden shift from kitchen/breakfast to your office setting and getting into ‘work mode’ is sometimes jarring – so you have to somehow be able to make that shift in your mindset as you do it.”

Time management & Multitasking

The clock is ticking and each tick brings you closer to two crucial deadlines, your upcoming big meeting, the arrival of that delayed package you’re expecting, and your daughter’s volleyball practice that you will have to drive her to. Can you handle all these in a way so as to sign off at 7 p.m. as scheduled?

Time management and multitasking is all about combining and organizing tasks and being on time – if not ahead. Working from home enables you to add more family time and household chores to your daily routine, but you have to be able to manage all these, along with your workload.

Being organized with time was a popular subject in our survey:

“Time management is the number one soft skill required to work efficiently whether working remotely or in the office. Understanding that even though you’re at home, you have to manage your work day and accomplish everything that you would be expected to accomplish in the office is important”

Another employee highlighted the value of multitasking:

“I am able to juggle several conversations/tasks. An asynchronous work style often bleeds from the macro into the micro, so being able to address a peer’s questions while working on a project while also digesting a previous meeting is a common occurrence during a typical workday at home. Being able to separate and juggle concepts (and knowing when to do which), has allowed me to get more done more effectively.”

Strategic skills for remote workers

Critical thinking & Decision making

These two skills do apply to physical workplaces as well, but that does not mean that they are less needed in a remote workforce.

In fact, both critical thinking and decision making are skills that help remote workers:

• Examine available options
• Manage difficult situations
• Take action effectively

Managers won’t be available the whole time. So being able to analyze and make the right decisions quickly are two of the best skills that any remote employee should have.

One employee said it as much, when asked to highlight an essential skill in the remote worker’s toolkit:

“Independence: because you do not have your coworkers and especially your manager close by for the ‘little things’, you have to make decisions and believe in yourself to make progress.”

Problem solving

Consider this challenging scenario: Your manager values your skills and assigns you a task which is quite new to you. After providing some guidelines of what you have to do, your manager signs off for the day.

You plan your approach to the task at hand and start working on it.

Suddenly, a problem pops up and no one is there to help get through it – at least not for the day.

You slump back in your chair, rubbing your eyes. What do you do?

The above scenario is not as rare as it may seem at first sight. As a remote worker you will have experience with that feeling of not knowing what to do and not having someone to assist you at the time needed.

Who or what can save the day?

Your problem-solving skills, says one employee:

“In a remote environment, it’s important to be able to solve problems on your own. You might not be able to walk up to someone’s desk and ask them a question, so being able to figure out things on your own is very important.”

Bedtime story

Working remotely might be a challenge for some, but it is a great opportunity to gain valuable experience and skills, you think while brushing your teeth before bedtime. At the end of the day what matters the most is evolving, both personally and professionally, whether you’re working remote or not.

And to be sure, having all of those skills will get you a full good night’s sleep and a fresh start to another day of remote work in the morning – after your coffee and breakfast, that is!

The post Company survey: What are the best skills for remote work? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Get all the right data, skip all of the manual admin.

This new automation will eliminate manual admin and avoid costly data errors, freeing up valuable time and resources to focus on other pertinent tasks in your work without worry. Eight fields can be automatically transferred from Workable to ADP, including: First & Last Name, Email, Phone Number, Start Date and more.

Get started, quickly

Like everything with Workable, getting started only takes a few clicks. To get started, simply:

1. Purchase the Workable connector for ADP Workforce Now®  
2. Watch the data flow — auto export is turned on by default

Want to learn more about ADP Workforce Now® 

ADP Workforce Now® is a cloud-based platform for HR management software, where you can easily manage all of your HR functions — payroll, HR management, workforce management, talent, and benefits — and gain insights across them all.  

To purchase the Connector now, visit: http://adp.marketplace.com/workable

The post Announcing: Workable Connector for ADP Workforce Now® appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

There are also many ways in how Video Interviews may be helpful to you and your company. Instead of going into detail about what those benefits are and why, we thought we’d make things more fun and interactive for you with a Video Interview Quiz. In this quiz, you’ll learn how one-way video interviews can be one of the most important tools in your recruiting toolbox.

There are no right answers or wrong answers here – every answer is actually “correct”, but you’ll get a different piece of information or an interesting fact or statistic with each answer. And the best part? You can take this quiz again and again and pick up something new every time.

Whether it’s for your own convincing or for someone else’s buy-in to get Workable Video Interviews to optimize your recruitment process, there’s a lot here for you. Ultimately, this is purely for your own educational entertainment.

Without further ado, here’s the Video Interview Quiz!

The post Take our Video Interview Quiz – and optimize your hiring appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Learning from the front lines

Workable’s early adopter program is one of the tools we use in Workable to make sure that what we provide is as useful and intuitive as we want it to be. We try to incorporate as much feedback as possible from our users, and the early adopter program is one of the most straightforward ways to get that information.

One of the first such programs that Workable ran was for the internationalization feature, a complex and intriguing feature looking to branch the product out to other markets with different languages. Our researcher and product team went into that beta with many questions, but with careful planning and methodology they carved out a much better and more intuitive end product.

Since the goal of the early adopter program is to validate our designs and assumptions from the design phase and make sure that we always serve our customers, choosing the right people to participate and “test” our new feature is key. We have fostered great relationships with a lot of our customers and that helps with ensuring that the feedback we get is as honest and open as possible.

It was a great opportunity for me, since it looked like one of the first things I would get to do with this new product would be to actually talk to our customers about it! So we started gathering feedback and talking with the beta users and improving the product as we went on.

And along came COVID-19

Then everything changed. The virus started spreading and lockdowns were ordered throughout the world. Suddenly everyone started to work from home and use virtual tools for everything. It looked like it would be very useful to have one for interviewing as well.

There are not a lot of opportunities in someone’s life to know that they truly made an impact when it was needed. For everyone on the team it was clear that the tool we had been working on could be helpful in a time when everything was unknown and unprecedented.

Workable’s vision practically shifted overnight to that of being even more socially responsible. We knew that unemployment was going to skyrocket and that, on the other extreme end, some industries needed to hire people really fast. We realized we could help people find new jobs. Teams got together and worked tirelessly to produce Workable Bridge to help out employees that were laid off.

Scaling ourselves to help others

As for Video Interviews, our team quickly decided to offer the tool to any Workable customer who could use it, for free. It was designed for anyone to use – no need to be tech savvy. Candidates could record themselves on their phone, no fancy or expensive equipment needed.

In a time where it was nearly impossible to find an open slot in someone’s schedule, interviews could happen in an asynchronous way and then hiring managers could rate them in their own time as well. Ultimately, a top-notch user experience was key.

All teams involved went into overdrive:

• The marketing team worked day and night to make sure that our messaging was clear: We are not trying to sell anything to anyone – we truly believe our product can be helpful to businesses in their time of need.
• The product team maintained the rhythm, making sure that no loose ends would be left.
• The legal team worked on finding a way to make sure that no bureaucracy would exist for the companies that wanted to use it, since the product was technically still in closed beta.
• Account managers started connecting with their customers to inform them about Video Interviews.

The interest spiked quickly and numerous companies started using the product. Within the first three months, 264 accounts adopted video interviews, with 462 candidates being hired using the tool with an answer rate of almost 50%, compared to the industry standard of 30%.

Like many things in a COVID world, our implementation and feedback loop was accelerated, bringing Workable Video Interviews to the present where we incorporated into the product all of the lessons learned from opening our doors to the public one month early.

We only know that this made us better and strengthened the relationship we have with our customers.

Valia Lekka is a Senior Product Manager at Workable. She was part of the team that developed Workable’s Video Interviews feature.

The post Early adopter program key to Video Interviews success appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is asynchronous communication?

In the modern workplace, whether that’s remote or not, asynchronous communication means that there is a time lag in response between the sender and the recipient, be that another colleague or customer. This is the main difference between asynchronous vs. synchronous communication, with the latter involving in person meetings, live chatting or video conferencing.

Briefly, in asynchronous communication terms, if you want to ask your colleague a question about an ongoing project, you won’t address it to them right away, even when you’re at the same office, but you’ll leave them a message so that they respond on their own time.

We’ve all practiced asynchronous collaboration at work, more or less, and tech tools have played a huge part in this. Emails, messaging apps (Slack, Hipchat, etc.), shared documents in cloud-based platforms (G-Suite) where employees can collaborate and reply are common asynchronous communication examples, among many more.

Now that we’ve explained what asynchronous communication is, let’s turn our attention to “why” we’re talking about it. When done properly, the benefits of asynchronous communication are plentiful and can boost both your performance and productivity – and your teammates’, too.

The assets of asynchronous communication

Have you ever found it difficult to concentrate on your daily job duties after being interrupted by an unexpected casual chit-chat about a project your colleague is working on? It’s fine if this happens sometimes because mutual support and camaraderie is a critical part of being a team. But what if it interferes with your productivity?

Recent research has shown that we live in a more collaborative era; we schedule our working day around meetings, Slack conversations and emails with our colleagues and sometimes these events could take up 80% of a full working day. This can be detrimental to our performance; technically we spend more time hopping from one meeting to another or replying to messages than focusing solely and mindfully on our tasks.

But with asynchronous work we can tackle this issue and spend more time resolving tasks with extra attention and care. The key benefits are many:

More productivity

In workplaces where asynchronous collaboration is reinforced and enabled with technology, productivity is higher. People can follow their agenda and complete daily tasks more easily when they are able respond to their colleagues’ requests based on bandwidth or set up time slots throughout the week to prepare feedback for specific projects. Plus, by focusing their attention on one task at a time they have a more detailed look and bring in better results.

Less stress

Switching from one project to another throughout the day and being unable to stick to your own agenda can also be stressful. You probably can recall a time when you struggled in meeting an important deadline and a colleague asked you for a favor. It can be difficult to prioritize what is more urgent in such circumstances or reject your teammate’s call for help.

With asynchronous communication you allow yourself – or your employees – to put all energy into what you do each time and have better control over your workload, so there is no reason to overstress.

Higher quality

When you go through a request at your own pace you can concentrate on details and process things in greater depth. When exchanging information in the form of a conversation instead, you don’t really have the time to inspect all problem aspects. By documenting details on a work matter to receive feedback from your colleagues step by step, you get and give a better review and more constructive input. This type of documentation helps the whole team equally and results in greater output.

Better talent

When you have embraced an asynchronous collaboration culture it’s easier to attract a wider talent pool around the globe for jobs that do not require colleagues to physically be in the same location. Employees are able to collaborate effectively from different time zones, buildings, or offices in an asynchronous way so place and time zone no longer limit your access to great talent.

Asynchronous collaboration best practices

Asynchronous communication sounds like the real deal, but how can you introduce it to your business and team operations effectively? Here are some good practices to start with:

1. Sync with an asynchronous mindset

If your employees are not used to such a working style, train them to do so. Empower them to own their agenda and workload and emphasize that no one will judge them if they take their time to respond to a request. Define what type of enquiries should be perceived as urgent by teammates on a general or per-project basis. This way employees will have clearer expectations and will be able to prioritize tasks more efficiently.

2. Set clear deadlines

If your employees or teammates operate in different time zones, make collaboration equally easy for everyone. Avoid scheduling meetings over time or reaching out to colleagues for feedback before the end of their working day. Encourage your employees to share transparently how they like to work and when they prefer to operate collaboratively throughout the day.

3. Introduce the right tools

Whether that’s your project management tool or your ATS search for platforms whose functionality better enable asynchronous communication and collaboration, with effective documentation, filing and options like comment sharing and tagging. For example, with Workable, once you’ve screened candidates and move on to the selection phase, you can share comments and tag your teammates inside the platform so that they get back to you when it’s convenient to them.

4. Organize your notes and feedback

To make asynchronous collaboration successful, you have to find ways to provide effective notes and feedback to avoid back and forths in communication and time delays on important deadlines. Plus, going through a task in-depth in order to give clarifications or feedback will probably give you a new perspective and enable you to resolve or address it more quickly than expected.

5. Create/update troubleshooting guidelines

Not all of your employees will be able to fix operational tech issues that come up the same way. Make sure to build some guides with steps and solutions to some common technical problems (e.g. internet connectivity, security, etc.) and help employees concentrate on their day-to-day work.

Remember, not all meetings could be emails…

It seems that the benefits outweigh the losses for both organizations and individuals, but keep in mind that asynchronous communication is not the cure to all problems. Sometimes, you still have to meet in person or virtually with your team to address and solve complex issues. When you figure out that you spend lots of time trying to fix a problem over email or texts, sometimes it’s better to schedule a call or a meeting with your team and tackle it right on the spot.

Also, some processes such as brainstorming gain extra value from get-togethers. One idea builds on another and collectively leads to better results. Plus, meeting with your teammates on a regular basis helps you understand each other’s working habits, lifestyle and interests and enables you to build stronger relationships with them. That’s not easily replicated through asynchronous messaging.

When it comes to sharing some laughs and creating happy memories with your teammates, nothing beats the live version of it all.

So if you’re in the hunt for new applications and tips to manage remote teams successfully or to collaborate effectively with your teammates globally, asynchronous communication is probably your thing. There’s going to be a trial-and-error phase, and that’s OK. You won’t figure out everything immediately.

For starters, ask your employees and teammates for feedback and remind them that they do not have to send it straight away but respond based on their own bandwidth. Now that your employees are given the opportunity to think through their responses, the answers you do get – whether later in the day or tomorrow or next week – may surprise you with their insightfulness and creativity.

The post Asynchronous communication in the workplace: benefits and best practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Founded in 2014, Cytora tripled in size over the past 2.5 years, going from 20 employees to 60. Projecting rapid growth, their old ATS didn’t meet their needs. Struggling to get everyone on the same page and collaborate effectively, they started looking at other options. In Workable, Cytora found a partner who understands the importance of having the whole team on the same page. Cytora’s CFO Tom Coward discusses how Cytora keeps hiring data in one system with Workable Hiring Plan, doing away with disconnected spreadsheets.

“One of the things Workable does really well is that we have the requisition system in operation, so before any role gets started on, the requisition has to be approved.”

Achieving their hiring goals means they need everyone in sync, each with the same information at their disposal. Workable gives Cytora the ability to view a snapshot of what’s happening across the board, from the beginning in candidate sourcing through to scheduling interviews with self-scheduling options, to seeing where job offers stand and what obstacles could be holding up an offer. 

Additionally, Cytora wants and needs to look at their recruitment history and build on their learnings.  They want to see where everything currently stands and investigate reports in order to troubleshoot and improve their future hiring process. 

Says Ben O’Mahony, Director of Operations: “All the way through to working with hiring managers and the leadership team to really coordinate everyone’s feedback, comments and thoughts – Workable provides the reports that show really clearly which stages are holding things up.”

They’re looking at one of the UK’s fiercest talent markets, that of engineers in London. With Workable, they’re able to see who’s out there with auto-suggested candidates and their own queries with our People Search product. Also understanding the importance of referrals in the market, they take advantage of leveraging their employees’ networks by actively leveraging Workable’s Referrals feature.

Says Cytora’s Chief Product Officer Thomas Soulez: “It’s really difficult to find, not just engineers, but engineering roles like product, designers who have domain experience in insurance, but as well are invested to working at the kind of pace we’re working at.”

There’s no room to room to play around. When communicating with top candidates in London, those who are available get snapped up quickly. Cytora’s team understands that, and they’ve engaged the whole hiring team, keeping communication clear with two-way calendar sync allowing the team to access information no matter where they are. 

Courtney Wood, Talent Acquisition Manager, responds to that competition with a powerful toolkit to stay aligned with growth targets:

“We put such importance on moving quickly because we know how competitive it is out there. For good candidates, they have so many options. Being able to move quickly through the process, having the tools that enable us to do that is really important.”

With Workable, Cytora now has all hiring information in one centralized location. As the company grows and hires the best candidates in the UK, they’re moving forward with an inclusive hiring process and stellar candidate experience.

The post Cytora scales by 3X in 2.5 years, securing top talent for niche roles with Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. I’m concerned about hurting my candidate experience by taking a more automated approach. I don’t want to lose the human touch or turn off candidates. How have your customers tackled this concern?
2. Is there a possibility to send the video interview more than once? For instance, if a candidate misses the deadline or doesn’t have a great internet connection, will they be able to re-do it?
3. I’m not a tech expert. I’m still learning the ropes. Is this more for tech-savvy teams?
4. Is there a possibility not to give the candidate time to think?
5. Can multiple members of the hiring team leave evaluations with different scores?

One-way Video Interview FAQs – the answers

1. I’m concerned about hurting my candidate experience by taking a more automated approach. I don’t want to lose the human touch or turn off candidates. How have your customers tackled this concern?

If you’re using video interviews for the first time, it’s normal to wonder how they will impact your candidate experience. Will the candidates respond positively to this type of interview? Will you be able to keep this as personable as possible? The answer to both questions is yes; Workable’s Product Team has been through many trial-and-error phases to remove all kinds of frictions candidates may come across with:

“We’ve taken a lot of steps in order to make it more natural, more easy, not so awkward … for the candidate”, Michalis explained.

With Workable Video Interviews, candidates can test network connectivity and audio/video quality before they start recording. Candidates are also able to practice their answers before sending off the final videos. Be sure to give them more than one take so that they can present the answers they’re most proud of. As Michalis said:

“By taking all these sorts of precautions, we are trying to eventually offer the candidate a great experience and minimize the number of candidates who are going to have problems.”

But how do you personalize this process for each candidate? Michalis suggested explaining the video interview process to candidates step-by-step ahead of time so that they know what to expect and can prepare for success. You can also customize the email video interview invitation with interactive content to make it more engaging. For instance, you can upload a video presenting your hiring team and experiment with a more “laid-back approach to relax the candidates”, in Michalis’ own words.

Zoe also added her perspective on how to make video interviewing more personal:

However, if you sense that some candidates are still hesitant to conduct one-way interviews, perhaps there’s reasoning behind their concern. Address those concerns with curiosity: For example, they may be worried about using older tech which will produce a poor result or they may not have a quiet place to record their answers. As Michalis noted:

“If they [candidates] feel they really cannot do that, offer them an alternative and just use a different way of interviewing for that particular step of the process.”

In other words – video interviews don’t need to be dealmakers or dealbreakers for either you or the candidate. It’s there to optimize the process – not a test of the candidate’s capabilities in itself.

2. Is there a possibility to send the video interview more than once? For instance, if a candidate misses the deadline or doesn’t have a great internet connection, will they be able to re-do it?

Michalis briefly explained how you could respond to cases where candidates could not complete the interview before the deadline:

With Workable Video Interviews candidates can also split the work if they wish to or if a problem pops up. They can record individual interview parts on different days and different devices, at their convenience.

As for technical limitations (e.g. video quality, network issues, etc.), Michalis stated that they took all of them into consideration when building the product. Before candidates record their answers, potential frictions are tested and interviewees receive a headsup about technical problems they could meet down the road and possible solutions (see also question 1).

Whatever the reason, you will have the option of extending the deadline for submitting the video interview, or sending it again if the first one doesn’t come through as expected. Again, this highlights the importance of clear communication with the candidate to set the expectations either way.

3. I’m not a tech expert. I’m still learning the ropes. Is this more for tech-savvy teams?

Video interviews are not just for tech experts. Less tech-savvy hiring teams can also use this feature easily and set up video interviews seamlessly with just a few clicks. Michalis explains:

“We’re also about to launch a new functionality which will basically give them [hiring teams] the ability to have a pre-made, automatically prepared, interview question set based on the algorithms from machine learning and artificial intelligence on what are the the best questions you can have in an interview for a specific role, with specific skills, etc.”

The evaluation part is as handy, too; Hiring teams watch interview recordings on a simple-to-use video player and can leave comments and notes based on candidates’ performance, or even with thumbs up/down emojis. User experience was a priority going in for the Product Team – with particular emphasis on those new to video interviewing.

If you want to get a better, step-by-step understanding of how the Video Interviews tool works both for candidates and users, watch our webinar “One-way video interviews: The new normal”.

Zoe added that those simple tool functions have already allowed many customers from different sectors to succeed with Video Interviews.

Learn how healthy food restaurant chain Salad and Go screened candidates for two new restaurants in two weeks using Workable Video Interviews:

4. Is there a possibility not to give the candidate time to think?

Sometimes you want to assess how quickly a candidate can address a specific question or situation. To test that, you can give candidates a set amount of time to prepare for their answers. The hiring team can either select “unlimited time to think”, which means they can take as much time they need to practice their answer, or set a “time to think” frame which can be as short as one minute. Michalis clarified the reasoning behind these options:

5. Can multiple members of the hiring team leave evaluations with different scores?

Yes, multiple hiring team members can assess and score candidates independently when using Video Interviews. Each member can watch video answers at their own convenience and leave comments or notes as they see fit. Michalis explained:

“Each hiring team member can watch the video answer and can add their own comments, notes, and evaluations for the candidate. A new scorecard will be automatically created and completed for each member.”

Plus, all notes and scores for each candidate will be put together in a structured way inside the tool, making it easy for the whole hiring team to track them and make better hiring decisions.

The post One-way Video Interview FAQs for hiring teams appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Since I am fortunate enough to witness how these kind of products are made, how the teams are working on them and even work with some people that built them, I could not help myself – I wanted to find a similar problem to solve: To design an interface for human beings under stress, with a goal to reduce that stress.

Stress mode: on

On a bright morning at a recent Workable summit, we were told that a new team would be formed with one goal in mind: build a new product to allow candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers to perform asynchronous video interviews. The business case was solid; on the recruiter’s side, it saves time so they don’t have to schedule phone screens and carry them out with candidates.

On the candidate’s side, it provides a reliable platform to record answers and share them with the company they’re applying to. We wanted to examine a scenario: How would the candidates record their answers? To answer this, we held a design sprint. We talked with several real-life candidates – even those who had performed a video interview in the past.

You can see plenty of feedback about the whole video interview concept in public, such as in this subreddit post. Even the negative stuff is immensely helpful for us, because we want to solve those problems and challenges with our new feature.

The number-one problem we would have to solve, as far as the candidate was concerned, was pretty clear. It’s the stress. I know, it sounds rather generic and vague, but picture this: You are a candidate and you have to record and submit a set of five questions via a browser. It’s a terrifying scenario for many candidates. Questions abound:

• This is my first time doing this. How does this platform even work?
• What if my internet fails me halfway through this process?
• How can I possibly look and act normal when I’m talking into a computer?

Reviewing these concerns can take up a lot of time – and it did.

Design comes into play

Since that list of concerns is quite comprehensive, it was obvious that we had the problem outlined. Here’s our opportunity to jump into Sketch and solve that problem. Right? Wrong.

In fact, it was too early to do that. Instead, we gathered more feedback from candidates who had done video interviews in the past and grouped their responses into specific concerns. That feedback gave birth to a set of principles that would guide us when we built the application.

Here’s the set of principles we outlined – a quick and dirty three-point list:

1. Make feedback always visible

This was the first and toughest one. We needed to allocate valuable real estate on the screen to provide platform feedback to the candidate. This feedback isn’t just about error messages; it’s about guiding the user throughout the whole process. It’s more about providing a north star.

Of course, it plays well with error messages too. Assuming the person will get the concept that a message is always there showing what’s going on at any given time, this will be the spot the candidate will look to for feedback if anything comes up (such as a technical issue).

2. Be picky about the options

The interview process – and especially the video part of it – is a high-stress time for a candidate. So, what you choose to expose to the candidate is extremely important. Remember the Google Maps example at the beginning of this story? Google Maps has been doing an excellent job structuring map and navigation information in such a way that you’ll have your route in the spotlight at any step of your experience.

The image below is a great example on how we achieved this for Video Interviews. This is the scenario when the candidate has the maximum number of CTAs displayed in the interface.

3. Separate screen into logical groups (and group relevant actions)

Video interviews in general, is a fairly new concept. That means there’s is no known path to follow and no real precedence to build on. Moreover, it’s not the most widely known or understood interface – yet. Video interviews can be a steep learning curve for many.

So, what I wanted to do was separate the interface into logical groups, and then group those together. By doing this, we would make a more intuitive interface.

In the end, we added three major controls: Navigation, Questions, and Interview. Each one of these three groups represented a specific pool where similar and common actions could be pulled together.

Outcome

Stress is quite intangible – it’s difficult to measure. Business metrics, retention, or adoption is much easier. Because of its intangibility, the stress factor of video interviews was difficult to solve. We can’t outright eliminate it, but we can remove some of the elements that might contribute to it by providing an interface that’s easy to grasp and understand for candidates.

Moreover, we wanted to make the person behind the screen feel that they are in control of the interface. For instance, the recording will start only when they’re ready. The interview begins only when they’re ready. Their answers are sent only when they’re ready to be sent. This puts the whole experience within control of the user, without the need for a “smart” experience that would make decisions and choices for you.

This project has been a great success so far. The numbers prove it too: our data shows that the completion rate of our Video Interviews is much higher than the industry standard. Industry-wide, we found that one-third of candidates actually complete their video interview, whereas candidates using our Video Interview platform completed it two-thirds of the time.

In closing – we set out to craft an interface that was simple to use, to free candidates of the burden of learning the interface and allow them to simply present their best selves during the video interview. Talking into a machine is obviously a bit awkward – we didn’t want candidates to feel that awkwardness. So we set out to make it as comfortable of an experience as possible. While we’re continuing to assess feedback, we’re excited to see how the positive response grows as more and more companies adopt our Video Interviews interface.

The post How we approached (video) interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Second, this guides us through iterations and improvements that can eliminate problems and frustration for the end user. Finally, this can actually decrease the risk of failure and improve profitability for the company, with reduced costs of customer support and happy customers who will spread a good word about our product to the world.

The Video Interviews feature first kicked off about a year ago, with our team gathering for a Design Sprint. The purpose of this week-long structured workshop is to map out and understand the problem, ideate, and agree on a target. We actually ran two separate design sprints:

• First, we did one focusing on the candidate’s experience (receiving a request to complete a video interview, recording answers and submitting the assignment).
• Once an MVP for the candidate experience was ready for implementation we did another, focusing on the recruiter and hiring manager’s experience (setting up a video interview for a job, sending a request to candidates and then viewing and evaluating the candidate submissions).

Defining personas and finding people to talk to

Leading up to the Design Sprint, we identified people who could share valuable insights with us on the topic at hand, which was oneway video interviews for recruiting purposes.

For the candidate persona we reached out to recently hired Workable employees who had experience with video interviews for their current role, or a previous one.

For the recruiter persona we reached out to select customers who had expressed interest in this feature to their account managers, as well as our amazing in-house recruiting team (who always contribute to our research and usability testing).

Understanding and empathizing with the end user

Hearing first hand from video interview applicants was an eye-opener, especially about how stressful this experience can be for them. Anything from a hardware issue to a distraction in their surroundings could cost them a good submission and jeopardize their progress in the interview process, which is critical for active job seekers.

At the same time we learned that candidates think highly of companies that use this type of “high tech and modern” method in their hiring process. These and other candidate insights guided us in designing a helpful and pleasant experience for them.

Recruiters talked to us about how bias can be a challenge for their hiring team while evaluating candidates. This is a challenge that video interviews could potentially augment if the evaluator focuses on the visual appearance of the person or the environment the video submission is recorded in.

At the same time they were very excited to get their hands on this tool that can help them screen candidates better and faster from an early pipeline stage.

Validating and testing our ideas

Equipped with a deep understanding about who we are designing for, what they need and want, the team got straight to work and designed the key parts of the candidate and recruiter experience respectively. We created working prototypes and invited a handful of Workable employees to test them out. This helped us validate the direction we had chosen and helped us identify some issues at an early stage, before spending effort on development.

Finding volunteers to test the candidate experience was easy, since we targeted any person who could potentially be asked to submit a video interview for a job application. to test the hiring manager experience, we targeted any manager who would potentially screen a candidate for their team with a video interview, even if they had never done this before.

Testing the product in the real world

As the development of the feature was reaching completion we engaged our own recruiting team and six key customers in an Early Adopter Program. We gathered their input as they used video interviews to screen and evaluate candidates over the course of a few weeks. Even though we had incorporated user input at multiple points since the beginning of the project and were confident in what we had built, there was still more for us to learn from its performance in real world circumstances.

We did not get much feedback from candidates besides some minor technical issues that were quickly fixed. This could mean that we indeed did a great job and delivered something that works perfectly, or perhaps that candidates were not willing to share their feedback during their application process with a company (and I don’t blame them).

Recruiters, however, shared great feedback with us, most of which has already been added to our roadmap. One of their key concerns was about creating a “good” video interview, in which they ask candidates enough questions to get the information they are looking for, but also does not require too much time to complete, which could lead to them dropping out and not completing the video interview.

Keep listening, keep learning, keep improving

Upon the completion of the Early Adopter Program video interviews became available to all Workable customers. You might have thought that our work was done, but it wasn’t! The world and people evolve and change and so should our product. We will keep monitoring the traffic and usage analytics of the feature to track performance and identify issues. We will also keep listening to all incoming feedback from our customers through different channels, such as customer support and the account management team, in order to react to it.

Salad & Go, for example, shared some great feedback on how they’ve been able to use video interviews to conduct remote hiring:

We will keep asking questions in order to understand what our users need and improve our product for them. This is essential to the quality and success of Video Interviews – and this is important to us as well.

Anything from a casual conversation where you ask a friend for their opinion on something, all the way to a formally structured research or test activity can help you learn something you did not know before. And this is the essence of user-centered design, so start talking to your users today!

The post Video Interviews: Designing for and with end users in mind appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

For recruiters and hiring teams, managing high-volume hiring can be hard, especially if you’re new to it. To overcome some of the common high-volume recruiting challenges, such as finding top talent promptly with the minimum possible cost, you need to calibrate a well-coordinated hiring process from job posting to onboarding new hires. This is not always a piece of cake, especially when hiring many employees at once for different departments and roles.

In this guide you’ll find bulk hiring techniques and tips for each phase of the recruiting funnel. Pick those that complete your current recruiting practices best to reach your goals without compromising quality and candidate experience.

Plan carefully and make technology your friend

Firstly, whether you are creating a high-volume hiring strategy for future use (see seasonality example mentioned above) or you’re facing urgent hiring needs due to unexpected forces (as happened in healthcare sector during the COVID-19 pandemic) there’s one thing you certainly need to have: A good plan. If you’ve recruited in bulk with your team in the past, get together and comb through all your hiring methods and procedures that succeeded.

A kind reminder; automation and tech will prove to be life-saving – perhaps more now than ever. Use your ATS and other tools to automate time-consuming tasks such as scheduling or communicating with candidates and teammates (e.g. follow-up communication email) to free up time for other more valuable tasks.

With these two handy tips in mind, let’s now move to the core guidelines.

1. Define skills and evaluation process

With urgent hiring needs and lots of applications to choose from for multiple roles, it’s important to understand the value each new employee can bring to your business. That’s why you should thoroughly discuss with hiring managers and team what background and must-have skills the ideal candidates should have before moving to the job posting.

Name the top three role responsibilities and what abilities are necessary to nail them. Ask yourselves; What will the new employee’s KPIs be? What values and strengths are essential to thrive in each job position? After you spot these factors, recall them during the next steps to make sure you attract candidates that fulfill all the essential criteria.

Next, create a plan of how you’ll evaluate applications and candidates, and divide roles among colleagues. Who will conduct the interviews and who will provide feedback for assignments? This will save you lots of time you would otherwise spend communicating back and forth with your colleagues or important details getting lost in translation. With so many activities loading at the same time, it’s easy to lose track of who decides what.

Remember, the more detailed your plan, the more benefits you’ll reap along the way. Try to picture the obstacles you are likely to hit going forward and potential solutions for each, to avoid nasty ‘surprises’.

2. Optimize candidate-facing content

When advertising high-volume hiring jobs, develop your content strategically to attract as many skilled candidates as you can within a set time frame. You can start by optimizing your content: Firstly, make sure to mention job responsibilities and requirements in job ads as thoroughly as you can. Avoid leaving space for loose interpretation; with high-volume hiring jobs, time is precious – you don’t want to waste time trying to explain or re-explain aspects of the job to hopeful candidates.

Plus, describe the company values and culture in the brief so that potential candidates not only have a clear idea of the role, but also of the company, before they apply. Dare to be creative; share interviews of employees describing daily work-life and habits. Finally, include perks and benefits and photos of your latest get-together or event to show what your company is really made of.

If you hire often at scale, optimize your careers page and job descriptions based on Search Engine Optimization rules and design pages that convert. This way, you increase the probability of candidates landing in front of your job openings while searching the web or even individual job boards. You could also make these pages easy to navigate by dividing the distinct roles into categories.

3. Mark your sourcing strategy

Now that you’ve created the ideal candidate profile and you’ve described it in the job ad, and with a polished careers page ready to shine, it’s officially sourcing time. Let’s face it; it’s not easy to find hundreds of suitable applicants through just one platform. You need to scout through different channels and make it easy for candidates to apply in simple steps, with easy-apply and mobile-friendly solutions.

Post on job boards and social media

First off, post job ads on multiple job boards to expand your outreach. Find also niche job boards based on industry to attract targeted candidates (e.g. TeachingJobs for teaching positions in the US). A bonus: diversifying the job boards you’re posting to also leads to a more diverse range of candidates.

Don’t stick to the same ol’s; search candidates through social media like Facebook, Instagram, and more. You can also run high-level social media campaigns targeting suitable candidates based on detailed requirements you’ve set and share this job opportunity with them.

Boost employee referrals

Good people tend to know good people; all you need is to convince your employees to introduce and refer skilled professionals for your roles. This is even more helpful with high-volume hiring when you need to reach out to more candidates in less time. Your employees know your brand and culture and have a stronger idea of who would be a good fit for a role, with the required skills and work ethics that would fit in nicely. Systemize the referring process as much as you can and offer participation incentives to make it more attractive to employees.

Keep your talent pool updated

If high-volume hiring is common for your business, keep your talent pool filled to the brim with potentially good candidates anytime you spot them and you’ll thank yourself later. They could even be candidates you’ve rejected in the past as they did not meet all the criteria at that time – but perhaps they’re a great fit now. You can also use AI-powered solutions to source passive candidates and add them in your talent pool for future (or current) reference.

4. Screen en masse (and efficiently)

To save time when screening tons of applications, use a resume parsing solution to find the relevant applications for you and disqualify the unsuitable ones based on criteria you have set. In this way, you’ll more quickly filter in those applicants who tick all the boxes.

But if you follow the ideal candidate profile method mentioned above, you might trip over your unconscious biases and miss out on great candidates from diverse backgrounds. To avoid this trap, stay open-minded; don’t put overly strict requirements for the application selection phase, but instead focus on finding the silver lining. Sometimes learning capability is a stronger asset compared to experience.

Following up, structure your next screening steps so that they are equal for everyone; ask the same questions and hand out an assignment and/or a pre-employment assessment tool (e.g. a GAT) that will reveal the candidates’ real abilities. Data will always show you a clearer image if you treat them wisely, especially when things are moving fast and you need to hire people as quickly as you can.

Utilize video interviews

When you have many applicants to review in a minimum time frame it’s difficult to organize interviews at your company’s premises or when you’re hiring remotely. That’s precisely when you can make the most of one-way video interviews. Ask candidates to self-record themselves answering the interview questions you’ll submit to them. You can then evaluate them at your own convenience and sync with your colleagues – who likewise are working in their own schedules – to share feedback online later.

Be mindful of the questions you ask; if you’re using an assessment tool and an assignment avoid asking the same questions twice. You’ll not only save time but also learn as much as you can for the candidates before you qualify them for the last round, the interview with the hiring manager/executive.

Secure candidate experience

One of the biggest challenges in high-volume recruiting is maintaining a good candidate experience. When you have to screen people quickly, after rejecting a candidate during the assessment phase you might forget to follow up with them and move on to other more urgent tasks. This can potentially hurt your brand reputation as these candidates may share their opinion, both online in sites like Glassdoor and offline with friends and peers.

It’s important to remember that even rejected candidates are potential strong assets in your talent pool in the future. Don’t get lost in the noise; follow your hiring process steps and candidate experience strategy diligently and reap the benefits in the long run.

5. Automate documentation and onboarding processes

New hire experience is equally valuable to candidate experience. When hiring and onboarding people in bulk, many nuisances will appear; you’ll have many documents to file, lots of questions to answer and many people to train – and each of them should be treated uniquely. Tech automation can help massively with this.

For example, an HRIS system such as BambooHR will help you obtain and organize all hiring documents. Onboarding software such as Click Boarding can help you keep the planning of onboarding activities and trainings in one place and prepare new candidates for success (both tools are integrated to Workable’s own recruiting solution).

Train wisely

When training new hires en masse, don’t forget to make the sessions as personable as possible. Each of them will have their own learning style and pace; apart from organizing skill training sessions, build guides that explain key aspects of the tasks and include Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to help them figure out the basics. You could also create buddy or mentoring systems to boost their confidence while they learn how to perform their tasks successfully.

6. Analyze recruiting metrics and repeat

Now that the hard part is over and you’ve finally onboarded new employees, it’s time to reflect and report. Analyze key high-volume recruiting metrics such as source of hire, time to hire, and conversion rate to understand what worked well and what should be improved in the future.

What source did you get the most candidates from? How successful were your pre-screening methods based on candidate drop-out? Understanding these metrics thoroughly will not only benefit your mass recruiting efforts but your hiring as a whole.

Happy hiring!

Yes, happy indeed; as already explained there’s no need to overly stress about high-volume hiring – just make sure you have a rock-solid plan to tackle all challenges. Again, sit down with your teammates, discuss openly and plan your strategy step-by-step. And most importantly, don’t forget to reflect back on your wins and drawbacks when hiring is over – it will definitely contribute to your future high-volume hiring success.

The post High-volume hiring: How you can make it work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The challenge

The solution

• Recruitment was hugely time consuming
• Lacked infrastructure to manage recruitment effectively internally and relied on agencies
• Spent several hundred thousand dollars a year on agency fees
• As business grew, HR was under pressure to reduce overhead and improve service levels

• Build a business case to purchase and implement Workable
• Decrease agency reliance because of global job board distribution
• Reduce time to hire with hiring manager engagement across all recruitment stages
• Save more than $300K in agency fees in first year

Alexander Dennis designs, engineers, builds and supports a range of market-leading buses. They operate in the UK, North America, Continental Europe and Asia Pacific. Globally, there are over 25,000 people every minute of every day riding their buses. To break that down even further, more than half of the buses that you see on the roads in the UK are made by Alexander Dennis, with over 3.5 million passengers a day in London alone making a journey on one of their buses.

The company’s revenue tripled in the past decade but the HR Team had not grown at the same speed, requiring Alexander Dennis to rely heavily on agencies and manual spreadsheets. Tasked with reducing spend, David Raphael, Head of Talent Acquisition, made the business case to purchase Workable, saving Alexander Dennis $300,000 on agency spend in their first year with Workable.

“With Workable we’ve significantly reduced our agency spend and at the same time, modernized, standardized and future-proofed our recruitment process.”

The HR Team of 12 needed an easy to use system and one that was quick to implement for 120 hiring managers and counting spread across the world. With Workable, Alexander Dennis took charge of recruitment without having to expand their HR Team by collaborating across hiring teams, thus exceeding the Finance Team’s mission to reduce spend.

“I couldn’t guarantee that I was going to get the results. I knew I would, but I couldn’t guarantee. You know, Workable’s a good product. It’s a great one.”

David, new to Alexander Dennis when he made the business case to purchase Workable, was untested in major business initiatives at the company, but with Workable, the HR Team automated admin and became a true business partner.

The post Alexander Dennis saves over $300K in agency fees in the first year of using Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

When it comes to hiring, we apply a similar lens. For example, you can also think about candidates being at the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.

In February, we opened up two roles on the Tuff team:

• SEO Strategist
• Growth Marketer

Our first step was laying out our hiring strategy. We decided to work with a Talent & People Ops consultant, Mary, from Intention Consulting. We wanted to work with an expert who could help us build a strong and tested process to find the best people for Tuff.

For the SEO Strategist role, we needed a channel specialist who could help our clients increase their organic reach. We work with a diverse set of clients and corresponding business models so we needed someone who has broad SEO experience (rather than specializing in local SEO) and who is comfortable adapting quickly.

For the Growth Marketer role, we were looking for more of a marketing generalist. At Tuff, a Growth Marketer partners closely with our clients to understand the core of their business, their goals outside of marketing, and then get really specific on how we can help drive growth. We needed someone comfortable working closely with clients but in a more generalist role there is flexibility in how they achieve the goals depending on their background.

Here’s what we learned

Specialist vs. Generalist

There is a difference between hiring for a Specialist (SEO Strategist) vs. a Generalist (Growth Marketer). The SEO Strategist role took 47 days to fill from job posted to offer letter signed. We had a more tailored skill set we were looking for. The Growth Marketer role took 29 days to fill from job posted to offer letter signed. We had clear outcomes we wanted this person to achieve and competencies we were evaluating for but there was room for more diversity in their background (i.e. content, paid search, paid social, etc.).

Process

Before these hires, we had 3 full time team members. Now, we are at 5. We learned a few lessons about the process, specifically how much to involve team members who also had a lot on their plate in terms of client work. It was important for us to create a Scorecard (more below) at the start of the process to have clear and explicit alignment on the outcomes we needed these team members to be responsible for.

Sources

We spent $553.34 on LinkedIn. In the end, the two hires came from alternate sources. We break it down more below. We would still spend the money on LinkedIn as it accounted for 80% of the applications and 50% of the interviews. Just not eventual hires.

Employer Branding

In Tuff’s client work, we are very transparent and open. It’s a value Mary came to recognize in our work and it opened up doors when it came to employer branding and helping qualify candidates. With her help, we ramped up these efforts on LinkedIn when we opened up the two roles, posting about our company retreat that happened while we were interviewing and tagging the Tuff team in hiring posts so people could check out their profiles before applying. The person we hired for the Growth Marketer role was a connection of Tuff on LinkedIn.

SEO Strategist hire

We posted the role for SEO Strategist using Workable, on February 6.

Tuff’s new SEO Strategist, Derek, signed his offer letter on March 24. This hire took us 48 days from posting to offer letter signed.

We break down the interview process in more detail below (i.e. what is a topgrade interview?) but here’s a breakdown of our funnel metrics:

Here are a few of our conversion rates we found interesting:

• Applications to phone screen: 5.45%
• Phone Screen to Topgrade Interview: 18.75%
• Applications to Hire: 0.17%

Growth Marketer hire

We posted the Growth Marketer role on February 19.

Tuff’s newest Growth Marketer, John, signed his offer letter March 18. This hire took us 29 days from posting to offer letter signed.

Here’s a breakdown of our funnel metrics:

And, here are a few of our conversion rates we found interesting:

• Applications to phone screen: 3.01%
• Phone Screen to Topgrade Interview: 30.76%
• Applications to Hire: 0.23%

Let’s compare some of these metrics for the two roles:

As you can see, the biggest difference is in the ‘Phone Screen to Topgrade Interview’ conversion rate.

People interviewing for the SEO Strategist role had a lower chance of moving on from the Phone Screen to the next step of the interview process. We did considerably more phone screens for SEO Strategist (32 phone screens) than for the Growth Marketer role (13 phone screens).

In hindsight, this makes sense based on our experience hiring for a Specialist. There are so many areas of expertise when it comes to SEO. We had a fairly specific skill set we were looking for so as we learned more about the candidate’s background and the type of work they were looking to do, disqualifying a candidate or moving them forward felt clear.

Tuff’s interview process:

Step 1: Create a Scorecard

The Scorecard is the foundation of the interview process we held. It is what we used to evaluate candidates at every step of the funnel. By spending an extra 15-20 minutes upfront at the beginning of the interview process, the Scorecard helps lead to a speedier process, better alignment on the team which leads to better hires, and helps mitigate bias by keeping us evaluating on the objective outcomes and skills we needed these hires to achieve and come in with.

The Scorecards we used for both roles had the same four parts:

• Mission – Why does this role exist?
• Outcomes – What will this person be responsible for?
• Hierarchy of needs – What is need to have vs. nice to have?
• Competencies – What characteristics are most important?

Step 2: Post the job!

While this might seem like the first step, it is so important to have clear alignment from the team that it comes after creating the Scorecard. We used Workable as our Applicant Tracking System for a few reasons. As a small (but mighty!) team, Workable was at a good price point for Tuff and offers a 14-day trial that we used to make sure Workable was the right system for us. Workable also posts your job for free on a number of other job boards like remote.co, where our SEO Strategist hire initially spotted the role.

Step 3: Create Interview Plan

Once we had the Scorecards filled in and the job posted, we moved ahead to clarify the interview process and each team member’s role in evaluating candidates.

Step 4: Phone Screens

Goal: Understand motivations and ability to contribute to Tuff client’s + culture. Mary held the resume and phone screens to help save the Tuff team time by qualifying candidates at the early stage.

Here are the questions we asked for the SEO Strategist phone screens:

• What are your career goals? What would your ideal role look like in the next 2-3 years?
• What are you really good at when it comes to SEO?
• What are 1-2 areas you think you could improve?
• Tell me about the most structured and then least structured workplace you’ve been a part of. How did you feel about them?
• Think of someone you have worked really well with in the past. What characteristics, values, or skills did you learn from them and try to replicate?

Step 5: Topgrade Interviews

Goal: Uncover the patterns of somebody’s career history to match with the scorecard.

For candidates who made it through the Phone Screen, we had them speak with me (Founder of Tuff), next. I asked the following five questions for each job on the candidates resume, beginning with the earliest and working your way forward to the present day. Follow-up questions and curiosity are key to keeping this interview conversational.

• What were you hired to do?
• What 2-3 accomplishments are you most proud of?
• What were some low points during that job?
• Who were the people you worked with? Specifically:
  • Your manager: what was it like working with them? What would they tell me were your biggest strengths and areas for improvement?
  • Your team: what did it look like? What worked well? What was challenging?
• Why did you leave?

Step 6: Focus Interviews

Goal: Assess the competencies we’ve agreed are important for success in the role.

As you may have noticed on our funnel metric breakdowns above, we skipped the Focus Interview at times to prioritize speed. These interviews were assigned to Chris and Nate, the other two existing team members at Tuff. These interviews were focused on competencies and attributes the team had identified were important for the roles and culture we’re building at Tuff.

Step 7: Project

Goal: Get a more in-depth understanding of the candidate’s skills.

Here’s the project we shared with our Growth Marketer candidates:

We didn’t want the project to be too time consuming so set the expectation to spend no more than 3 hours on the project. P.S. Snacks is also not a client of Tuff. We wanted to make sure we weren’t asking someone to do work that a Tuff team member would be paid for. So, this is an example of work they’d be doing if they joined the team but it isn’t work Tuff would gain monetary value from.

Step 8: Hire

We did it! Through this process, we were able to find and get to know two great candidates who have now joined the Tuff team.

Sources

Tuff’s new team members came from two sources:

1. The person we hired for the Growth Marketer role was a LinkedIn connection of mine on LinkedIn. He reached out to me after spotting the role and we entered him into the interview process, uploading his resume into our Applicant Tracking System.
2. The person we hired for the SEO Strategist role applied through remote.co.

For more context on what sources were stronger for us, here are two charts below. The first shows Applications by source – you can see LinkedIn brought in the majority of our applications.

This chart shows Interviews by source. These are the people who after we screened their resume, we decided to talk to. Again, LinkedIn is at the top of the list.

Conclusion

We learned so much as a team and with Intention Consulting while hiring for these roles. As a growth marketing agency, the team has a natural inclination for numbers and conversion rates that made our collaboration stronger and more successful. Workable’s own hiring solution helped hugely as well.

The post From 1,018 applications to 2 new hires: Tuff Growth’s hiring process appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Learn how Salad and Go screens candidates with Video Interviews:

The post Introducing Video Interviews: The next evolution in remote hiring technology appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The survey of 150+ software developers shows that the majority of respondents are very comfortable interviewing and beginning a new job entirely remotely, especially if they are actively looking.

Further, 39% of software developers in our survey reported feeling more productive since shifting to work remotely, compared to 30% feeling that they have become less productive (31% estimated no change). So not only is there available and eager talent, but many software developers may be operating at peak productivity. Of course, this is going to vary depending on each individual’s situation and experience, but perhaps it is one bright spot in a truly unfortunate environment.

“Development work doesn’t need to be centered on a physical location. With how wide-spread technology is and how responsive it can be, there’s no need to shackle people to cubicles and corporate offices.”

– Full-stack software developer with 5+ years of experience

Employers in growing industries need to quickly reinvent themselves to attract and onboard the best talent in this new work-from-home reality. Here is how you can rapidly implement a remote tech hiring process:

Set expectations internally and externally

It’s dangerous to assume that you can continue running the same exact interview process you’ve always had with the only difference being a Zoom or Google Hangouts link in the calendar invitation. Several things could easily go wrong:

• Employees may get too relaxed with attire, body language, and overall presentation.
• Internet connectivity, background noise, or other distractions could interfere.
• Sensitive or private Slack notifications and text messages could show up on screen shares.
• Interviews that typically include whiteboarding technical scenarios may lack the necessary tools to assess and qualify candidates.

To avoid these pitfalls, set expectations with the candidate and interviews accordingly:

• Emphasize to the employees conducting the interview that it is important to maintain professionalism despite the circumstances.
• Provide both the candidate and interviewer’s phone numbers in case there are internet issues.
• Remind employees to turn on do-not-disturb notifications before interviews.
• Do role play on a quick dry run with the interviewers and candidate beforehand to make sure all the necessary systems and tools are working.

Further, remember that your candidate (and interviewers) may have been severely impacted by the pandemic in ways you are unaware. Candidates may have recently lost their job or have a family member who is sick. Remind your team members to be sensitive, considerate, and patient.

Revisit your company culture and how to emphasize it

Does your engineering interview process typically contain bells and whistles to impress candidates? For example, do you often introduce a company executive or give an office tour? Do you take the candidate to a fancy lunch with their prospective coworkers? Here are a handful of ways you can rethink how to emphasize your company culture it during a remote tech hiring process:

• Develop an engineering culture packet that includes:
  • a note or link to a video from your VP of Engineering or CEO introducing themselves and how the company is continuing to operate given the circumstances
  • a demo video of your product and services
  • links to relevant Glassdoor, Built in NY, or AngelList pages and articles.
• Reimburse the candidate and interviewers for a coffee and lunch delivery from their favorite restaurants to enjoy during the interview (and support the local economy).
• Let the candidate sit in on an engineering standup (or another meeting where there won’t be sensitive information shared) so that they can see how the team is continuing to collaborate while quarantined.
• Share a snippet of a recent company email or All Hands video with the candidate that highlights the upbeat mood and tempo your company is maintaining during these trying times.
• Emphasize how you’ve transitioned your benefits packages to better accommodate and facilitate wellness during social distancing.

Even if your company culture has temporarily – or perhaps, permanently – changed during the pandemic, you still have the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and impress prospective candidates. Going out of your way to deliberately and thoughtfully rethink your culture puts you ahead of the pack.

Update your recruiting technology stack

You may have to rethink sourcing efforts as meetups and events get postponed. Resumé review could become less relevant as rapid introductions from previous employers take precedence over an updated job history.

For sourcing, you need a new strategy for increasing visibility of your job postings. There are a number of aggregators online to post your remote job or list your company as hiring:

• https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/
• https://www.getsilverlining.com/
• https://www.layoffs.tech/
• https://www.wfhbuthiring.com/

Now is also a good time to monitor LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and trackers for layoffs and for potential candidates who have recently started looking for new roles.

To complement traditional resumé reviews, consider using a code screening platform. Overall, it’s less biased and more scalable due to being virtually automated once integrated with your ATS.

• Medium: The Best Technical Assessment & Code Screening Platforms of 2020
• G2: Best Technical Skills Screening Software
• Capterra: Pre-employment Testing Software

For live interviews where you need to assess coding, architectural, or critical thinking skills, check out Mural and Coderpad.

And, of course, you’ll want to be using a flexible and candidate-centric recruitment solution like Workable to seamlessly manage the entire hiring experience in a remote environment.

These are trying times but you are fortunate to still be hiring! Good luck getting your team aligned and reinventing your technical hiring process. I’ll continue sharing the latest proprietary employment and interview data for software development on Medium.

The post How to reinvent your tech hiring in a remote-first world appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post COVID-19: All the resources you need to survive and succeed appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

NOTE: Those tools marked with an asterisk (*) are seamlessly integrated with our recruitment solution.

CONTENTS:

1. 1. 1. Tools for the recruitment process
      2. Tools for HR
      3. Tools for overall communication
      4. Tools for projects involving multiple people
      5. Tools for organization
      6. Tools for compliance/security/legal purposes
      7. Tools for finance

Tools for the recruitment process

Your recruitment process can be a huge beneficiary of your digital transformation. Learn more about how and why.

1. Virtual recruiting/screening/hiring

Hiring remotely can be a challenge at times, but with the right software in place, it’s a very easy process even if the final hire is someone you have never met in person. Workable’s own ATS – with its new one-way video interview feature – is equipped with all the tools you need to build teams virtually.

• Workable

2. Assessment tools

Assessments are an integral ingredient in the hiring process, to help you identify the best candidates for the position. Workable has numerous integrated tools that will help you along the way – the full list is here, and some top tools are below.

• HackerRank* (technical skills assessments)
• Hireselect – Criteria Corp* (aptitude, personality, skills)
• Bryq* (cognitive skills, personality traits, job match, etc.)

3. Onboarding

Just as hiring can be done entirely remotely, the onboarding process can be done via an online platform as well to bring your new hires to full production mode. These tools will help you get there quickly.

• Rippling*
• Click Boarding*

4. Background Checks

The background check is an integral part of the recruitment process.

• Checkr*
• InfoMart*

Tools for HR

5. HRIS

Benefits, payroll, compliance, all these things that are part and parcel of human resources management can be done entirely via digital tools such as the following.

• BambooHR*
• Bob*
• Namely*

6. Training/Knowledge Base

Upskilling and retraining your workforce is a crucial part of company success. Also, all company-wide documents, policies, know-hows, etc. need to be accessible by everyone at any given time whether it’s for training, best practices, or other purposes. These tools will help you get it done.

• TalentLMS
• Confluence

7. Employee feedback

When you’re not regularly mingling with your colleagues, it’s hard to gauge employee engagement or happiness. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all.

• Chimp or Champ

Tools for overall communication

8. Email communication

Obviously this goes without saying. But if you’re in a company that operates largely in face-to-face communication and paper-based processes – and not email – it will be a good idea to quickly get your team signed up with email accounts so you can share crucial documents in a pinch.

• Gmail*
• Outlook*

9. Online chat functions

Sometimes it’s cumbersome to write out an entire email. Quickly pinging a colleague with a pertinent question can save a lot of time. Think of it as texting via your computer.

• Slack
• Microsoft teams

10. Virtual Meetings and presentations

When everyone is working remotely across locations or checking into meetings from home, a virtual meeting platform will work wonders for having everyone together in one place. Many platforms have options for you to share your screen to assist you in your presentation to the team.

• Google Hangouts* (available when sending interview requests within Workable)
• Zoom
• Zoho Remotely

Tools for projects involving multiple people

Note: You can see a full list of collaboration tools here.

11. Documents

Many of us need to collaborate within a single document, which is easy enough when you’re sitting together in front of the same computer or a single paper document together. You can still work together in the same document online from different locations.

• G-Suite
• Office 365

12. Cloud Storage

It can be a nuisance when colleagues update a document and then email it around as a new file, making it hard to track which one is the most updated. Why not save it in an online drive – in other words, cloud storage – so everyone has access to the same document at any time?

• Google Drive
• OneDrive
• Dropbox

13. Project management

Seeing a big project reach completion requires clean collaboration and careful planning between individuals and teams. This is especially challenging when teams are distributed across locations, but these services can help you keep watch from the big picture down to the granular level to ensure things keep running smoothly.

• Trello
• Asana
• Jira
• Wrike
• Jell
• Podio
• Project Manager

14. Timezone management

Many companies work across different time zones, which does make collaborating on projects somewhat of a challenge. Face it, it’d be incredibly useful to be able to see what time it is for each colleague in each location so you can better align efforts.

• TimeZone.io

15. Screen sharing

Sometimes you don’t need full video integration to make presentations – you just need to be able to share your screen so you can walk colleagues through something. These will do the trick.

• Join.me
• TeamViewer
• ScreenLeap

16. Dev & design

Your dev and design teams are unique such that simple document collaboration won’t cut it. They’ll need more specialized software to continue working together at peak performance – these softwares should do the job.

• GitHub
• Cloud9
• CodePen

Tools for Organization

17. Calendar Management

A work calendar is crucial not only for your own organization, but also for aligning your efforts with others via mutual touchbases, meetings, 1-1s and other purposes. Also, with the right integration, you can see how busy your colleagues are at any given time during the work day without needing to walk by their work station.

• Google Calendar*
• Calendly
• Schedule Once

18. Time management tools

When a portion – or all – of your staff is contracted or paid by the hour, tracking their time when they’re on the clock is a must so you can ensure they’re paid appropriately.

• Teamwork
• Hubstaff

19. Notetaking apps

Having a notebook handy is always useful for keeping track of what you’re doing. You can also do this digitally as well – and even invite others to collaborate in team notetaking sessions.

• Evernote

20. Social Media Management

Social media isn’t just about tweeting photos of your dinner. It’s integral to external business communications. It’s easy enough to go directly to Twitter, Facebook or LInkedIn to push out your latest news, but it’s much easier to do it all via a single portal.

• HootSuite

21. Business Intelligence

Tracking and reporting is essential to business success. Fortunately there are great tools to help you take a deep dive into your business processes to fine-tune your processes to maximize your results.

• Tableau* (can be used with your Workable data)

Tools for compliance/security/legal purposes

22. E-Signature

There really is a digital tool for everything – even signatures for contracts if you can’t be in the same room at the same time to sign those urgent papers to keep things moving along.

• HelloSign (native integration with Workable’s offer letter feature – no separate HelloSign account needed)
• DocuSign

23. Password Management Solutions

Password management is an absolute must when it comes to IT security and compliance. Data breaches can happen via hacking, but sometimes all it takes is for the wrong person to have the right password for things to go haywire. Keep it all contained using a centralized password management system.

• LastPass*

Tools for finance

24. Receipt & Expense Management

Collecting and processing receipts from your team can be a nuisance. It’s also a pain for your colleagues when they need to pull it all together into a report for you. Not to mention – finance has to process this stuff. You can manage all this in one place via these tools.

• Expensify
• Rydoo

25. Accounting Software

Accounting is a real part of business. Manage and keep track of it all in one place, so you can keep those books balanced.

• QuickBooks
• Xero

26. Billing Tools

Billing and invoicing goes without saying. In a remote environment, those paper invoices don’t go very far even if your postal delivery system is great. These tools will help you manage invoicing virtually – for tracking who’s paid what, and collecting on those outstanding.

• FreshBooks
• Bill.com

27. Financial Dashboards

Optimize your business plan so you can get off on the right foot during your growth and expansion initiatives, and line up your expectations with industry benchmarks while consulting with experts.

• LivePlan
• InDinero

28. Budget Management

Manage your budget in every area, from cash flow expectations to real-time financial performance – so you can make quick decisions to capitalize on current trends and mitigate what might come ahead.

• Float
• Scoro

The post Best tech tools for the virtual workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

This call to action can and does trickle down to you in HR. The impact in the workplace is multifold. Office spaces are a hotbed for contamination – whether it’s due to sealed ventilation systems, open-office environments, employees going on work trips and coming into contact with others on a regular basis, and so on.

But guess what? Not everyone realizes this. “While 62.6% of office workers are concerned about COVID-19, it’s also interesting to see that only 41% feel their office will be a hotbed of infection,” says Gabrielle Ayala, principal of Propeller Insights.

However, it’s an inevitability: as the coronavirus crisis continues to grow, your colleagues in your organization – and even your CEO – will be turning to you for direction and support.

This is your time to step up and show that you’ve got this. You need to take leadership in HR and implement a quick coronavirus HR response. It’s also essential to your company’s overall health.

“Perhaps [office worker] awareness and sensitivity to this public health concern will drive proactive measures to keep the virus from entering their work environment,” Ayala continues. “More than 50% say they believe the COVID-19 outbreak will lead to more companies adopting a virtual office environment and are also in favor of using preventative measures [such as face masks], at the office.”

To help you with coronavirus HR response planning, we’ve pulled together the key takeaways on what you need to know and how you can act to build out your own response in your workplace.

1. Stay compliant

First of all, compliance is key. Sure, you’re fine if you address this as a company looking to take care of employees, but as Katie Clarey warns in HR Dive, businesses need to take careful steps to avoid the slippery slope to discrimination. It’s commonly understood that the virus originated in Wuhan, China, and that can lead to dangerous assumptions about people of Chinese origin – a clear rights violation.

Better to be safe in your communications and language, and address actions rather than people – for instance, you can say: if you’ve been to China in the last XX days, then we recommend working from home for a specified number of days as a precaution.

If you’re not sure what to implement, you can look at two federal laws that protect workers in the US: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The key is to not overreact as that could become a compliance issue.

2. Scale your response

Cathy Reisenwitz, head of content at Clockwise, a San Francisco-based calendar SaaS company, told us about three scenarios that their CEO Matt Martin presented during an all-hands meeting:

Level 1: Where we are now

• Wash hands
• Stay home if feeling “off”
• No international travel, etc.

Level 2: If the virus hits around 1,000 people in the area

• No more office visitors
• Cut down on travel to breakout areas
• Plan commutes to outside rush hour, etc.

Level 3: If the virus hits around 5,000 people in the area

• Mandatory work from home across company, etc.

Cryptocurrency trading website Coinbase has publicly released their communications outreach, including a clearly set-out plan for actions in response to specified triggers and benchmarks (at the bottom of the document). Its strategy is similar to that of Clockwise, plus restrictions on meal delivery and contingency plans for managers and teams.

It’s a good idea to outline all this in one place so everyone has the same information and they know what to expect in the short and long term. Having a scaled response plan in place also avoids having to bring out all the stops at once – which could induce unneeded panic in your workforce.

3. Adapt WFH and sick policies

The option to work from home is a common perk offered by businesses. This option can be an especially pertinent tool now. If you don’t yet have a WFH policy, you might want to build one out. Colleagues can also be reminded of the company’s sick-day policy – and especially, the option to work from home if you’re feeling OK to work but not quite well enough to come into the office.

Twitter and Square – among many others – are doing it already. A widely circulated memo from Microsoft has set down clear guidelines for working from home along with other essential information:

David Reischer, CEO of the legal advisory website Legaladvice.com in New York City, is encouraging some of his sales teams to start working from home as a precautionary measure, acknowledging the inevitable spread of COVID-19 in NYC’s large and very transient population.

“We would rather our workers start thinking about the idea of working from home now so that they can transition before the eventuality of the coronavirus arrives,” David told us.

“I think we will be ready when coronavirus becomes more widespread in NYC because of our early preparations.“

Andrew Discolli, HR editor of career service The Corporate Con/noisseur, emphasized loosening up existing WFH policy:

“I would recommend that all employers institute levels of flexibility across their workforce. This means allowing employees to work from home or utilize sick days as needed and in a manner that will maintain the health and level headedness of all staff.”

Simon Hansen, founder of a website dedicated to home brewing and winemaking called Homebrew Advice, adjusted the required hours put in by his colleagues:

“We now have lesser work hours in order to make sure that everyone gets the right amount of rest in order to recharge and strengthen our immune systems.”

Even country governments have stepped in to advise work from home. Authorities in Japan have advised companies to allow working from home to stem the spread of the virus, normally taboo in this notoriously work-conservative culture. Japan has already shut down their schools, followed by Italy, and WFH flexibility will be helpful to parents who have no other option but to stay home with their children.

Meanwhile, HR expert Suzanne Lucas advises taking a good look at your sick leave policy, because an overly regimented system can actually contribute to the outbreak rather than help contain it. She suggests opening up the allowed number of sick days, allowing for greater flexibility, and dumping the “doctor’s note” requirement.

4. Reduce or eliminate travel

A Reservations.com survey found that 43% of those surveyed would definitely cancel an international business trip, and 63% would “probably, very probably, or definitely would cancel” any business trip whether domestic or abroad.

Many employees travel – be it to sales pitches, meetings, other offices, conferences, what have you. Right now, with the emphasis on cutting back on travel, there’s likely to be understandable anxiety around business-trip planning within your workforce. Make it easy on your employees. Don’t put them in the difficult position of having to make that decision for themselves. Put in a clear policy with clear black-and-white decision-making protocols and stick to it.

The same can apply to personal travel either by the colleague in question or someone in their immediate family. The above survey finds that 66% say they’re not likely to cancel a vacation – which heightens the importance of clear policy.

Many companies are doing it. Take it to the next level by outlining clear scenarios, such as the following, to help your colleagues decide:

Scenario 1: I went to Lombardy for work on February 17.
Scenario 2: I’m planning a trip to China in mid-March. It’s for a sale that will be huge for our company.
Scenario 3: My spouse is coming back from a trip to Singapore.
Scenario 4: I booked a trip to visit my family in Tokyo in March. This was months in the planning.

A potential answer to any of these scenarios could be: “Contact your manager and be prepared to work from home for two full weeks on return. No entry to our offices or meeting with colleagues in person until after that.” You’ll also want to include information about absolutely necessary travel tips that apply regardless of whether the trip is for business or pleasure.

Andrew at the Corporate Con/noisseur has adjusted travel policy in his own company: “Unless approved by senior management, all non-essential travel to any location is currently on pause.”

And what if your company’s survival depends on travel? Lauren McAdams, HR manager and recruiter at ResumeCompanion attested to that:

“Our office has a number of employees who regularly travel to China and Taiwan for business trips. While most of these employees haven’t been abroad in the past 15 days, we still want to be as safe as possible. As a result, we’ve requested that anyone who’s recently flown abroad work from home for the following week while they self quarantine.”

5. Enable your employees

Many colleagues – and people in general – will be frustrated with their existing health support system wherever they are. For example, this recent Twitter stream from a physical therapist in Seattle who exhibits all the symptoms of COVID-19 – as of March 5, it was retweeted more than 120,000 times. As she tells it, she’s had to navigate the frustrating bureaucracy of the US healthcare system to not much avail.

You can enable your employees with clear and empathetic messaging on WFH and sick leave (as in #3 above) and allowing for greater flexibility in options and better enable them to seek out healthcare in a situation such as mentioned above. It will go a long way in showing your employees that you care about them.

6. Equip your employees

“The unknown is so much more frightening than the known,” says Canadian medical historian Heather MacDougall in the National Post on the heightened worldwide response to the crisis.

Nothing quells fears better than information. Educate your workforce on what they specifically can do to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to themselves or others, and you’ll assuage much of the potential panic. It helps to know that this is not an entirely uncontrollable situation.

For instance, encourage vigorous washing of hands. Buy hand sanitizer for every desk. Have a handful of thermometers at the ready (but being sure they’re not shared once used). Share updated information in regular memos via email, online chat channels, and notices posted in prominent locations online and around the office (e.g. the aforementioned Coinbase document).

Atilio Spaccarotella, CEO of travel insurance firm Rene Health in California, told us that at Rene, “we are following the WHO’s guidelines of practicing good respiratory hygiene, like sneezing or coughing into a flexed elbow [the ‘Dracula cough’] and washing your hands regularly with either alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.”

7. Keep your office (even) cleaner

Adam Povlitz, president and CEO of commercial office cleaning service Anago Cleaning Systems offered some best practices on maintaining a clean office space, citing his company’s focus on healthy workspaces around the world – which will help you in your own office sanitation initiatives (as well as those of your employees):

• Read the label of your cleaning supplies so you know what’s in them.
• Check the websites – many cleaning supply companies are updating their sites with information specific to COVID-19.
• Know your cleaning supplies – hydrogen peroxide with a dilution ratio of 7% or more will kill the virus. Most household cleaners are 3%, so you’ll need commercial-grade materials.
• Disinfect and wait. All disinfectants take time to take effect, i.e. left on the surface for a period of time. Spraying and wiping will have no effect. And do not use bleach.
• Time parameters also apply to:
  • Washing hands: 20 seconds or more using soap and water.
  • Alcohol-based hand sanitizer: rub solution in for 30 seconds and even up to 2 minutes to be effective.

You’ll especially want to maintain high sanitation in a sealed office space or an open-office environment or, obviously, both. “Open office spaces are among the worst for COVID-19, particularly if they are sealed office spaces without open ventilation and the air is just recirculated within the building,” says E Hanh Le, M.D., senior director of medical affairs at Healthline.

People are understandably nervous about this – a Bospar survey finds that 50.6% of Americans are worried because they work in an open office.

8. Educate yourself

The aforementioned Bospar survey finds: “A majority of Americans (52%) say the media is overhyping the coronavirus and 60.9% believe the media can help ease fears about the coronavirus by educating members of the public about how they could fight the spread of the disease.”

Andrew at the Corporate Con/noisseur says as much:

“Day-to-day, there appears to be a level of confusion and fear throughout our offices. Our primary concern and focus is on the health and well-being of our employees.“

Since you’re in HR, many people in your company will be turning to you for advice and answers. What you can do to help them is brush up on your real knowledge of the virus, how it spreads, where it’s spreading to, and so on. That way you can sift through the online noise and know what’s real and what’s just hype.

Some pages to get you started:

• US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Coronavirus
• World Health Organization Q&A
• World Health Organization public advice
• World Health Organization Coronavirus homepage

9. Tech is your friend

Companies worldwide are understandably nervous about impact on the bottom line in a shutdown scenario. But technology can help you do business as usual – it can continue in a virtual environment.

Computer viruses notwithstanding, it’s impossible to contract sickness via the Internet – so meetings and presentations can still happen via video tools such as Google Hangouts or Microsoft Zoom. Communications can take place via online chat channels and email. Legally sensitive documents can be, at the very minimum, faxed (yes – fax is still a thing). There are also phones, of course.

Bospar’s survey finds that this is understood and expected: “51.4% believe viruses like COVID-19 and the flu will lead to companies adopting virtual offices.”

Michael Alexis, CEO of Teambuilding, talked about how his company launched a new wing of the business in less than 24 hours – enabling team building activities that can be facilitated virtually via online calls. “The expectation is more people will be working remotely, and still need ways to connect and bond,” he says.

Even your own work in recruitment can benefit from technology here. Numerous companies – including Amazon, Facebook, VSCO, Twitter and more – are utilizing video interview tools for candidate interviews.

10. Everyone calm it down

Finally, whatever the level of the situation, panic will not help matters. Staying calm is essential, and because you’re leading the information brigade in your coronavirus HR response, it’s up to you to ensure that everyone feels relatively confident and informed – and safe.

Andrew of The Corporate Con/noisseur, says: “We are looking to remain calm and ensure that our employees have access to the supplies and information they need. Keeping calm and understanding the guidelines of the CDC are our best bet.”

Many notable companies are even going fully transparent with their internal communications and policies in response to the virus. If you want to see what they’ve got, more than 100 company policies have been collected in this crowdsourced Google doc.

People are scared and unsure of what’s going on. This is your chance to help quell those worries with clear policy and clear directives, step by step, with full transparency and uniform messaging and implementation. Your employees – and management – will be grateful.

The post Your coronavirus HR response plan: 10 things to know appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But what is digital disruption and why do companies fail in digital transformation? Digital transformation is all about bringing new, innovative tech into your organization, be it AI, chatbots, AR/VR applications, etc. Doing so, you can boost productivity, optimize internal processes, reach new markets and gain competitive advantages – ultimately cutting down on operating costs and overall benefiting the bottom line.

Changes in tech are exciting, but can become confusing, or even disturbing. Remember that unfamiliar feeling the first time you used a touchscreen smartphone? Or that time when your favorite app went through a complete makeover – completely changing what was familiar and comfortable to you.

The fear of change is real

Now, let’s scale this up: instead of just you trying to figure out how to type in your new smartphone, picture how it is for an entire department at your company trying to get used to a new tool. Or, how difficult it is for all the staff to go from pen, paper and post-it notes to a centralized, company-wide project management system. That’s a pretty big ask especially when you need your entire team on board for the initiative to be successful.

But there are greater risks beyond the normal period of adjustment to new tech. There’s a pitfall in rushing to be an early adopter without considering consequences. There are privacy and compliance issues – such as GDPR and CCPA – you need to tackle. And there’s the risk of using data that this new, shiny software is providing you, in a wrong or inefficient way.

Does this mean that you should not bother with digitizing your company? Absolutely not.

Resisting digital transformation is equally dangerous

In 2018, Lush, the cosmetics company, admitted that they underpaid 5,000 employees because their manual and outdated payroll system could not support their growth. As a result, the company had to launch a $2-million backpay scheme and invest an additional $1.5 million to establish a system that will help them calculate repayments correctly. That $3.5-million hit to the pocketbook doesn’t even include the amount of time spent to identify and fix those payroll mistakes or the inevitable damage control.

Digital transformation is not just about avoiding such mistakes; it’s also about being up to speed with customer needs. Slow-loading websites cost retailers $2.6 billion in lost sales each year. At the same time, an omnichannel approach is usually preferred, meaning that consumers are expecting to interact with brands in various channels beyond the traditional ones. 44% say that they’ve used three to five different customer service channels, with 15% of those aged 18-34 saying they’ve used chatbots.

Falling behind might cost you customers as well. You could also be missing on opportunities to increase profitability. 56% of CEOs say that digital improvements have already increased their profits, while digitally mature businesses are 26% more profitable than their peers and achieve 12% higher market valuations than other large firms in their industries.

There’s a risk in bringing digital transformation to your business too fast and there’s a risk in not bringing it at all. The tricky part is how you can strike the balance between the two extremes. So, how can you make sure that your digital transformation initiative doesn’t fail?

Success lies in change management

As David D’Souza, HR expert, highlighted in a recent interview on the future of work: “Just because a technology exists, it doesn’t mean that it will be implemented and utilized straight away.” Before rushing to be an early adopter, make sure you have a plan in place:

1. Build a digital transformation framework

Decide on:

• What is going to change
• When the change is happening
• Why you want this change

You don’t have to do everything at once. You might want to start with one department that has outdated systems or one process that needs to be automated. But you need to take into account how one change affects other areas inside your organization. For example, if you’re going to update a system and that system is integrating with other tools you’re using, you have to ensure that you don’t cause any disturbances.

It’s also important to set goals and expectations for your digital transformation. The “why” will help you get buy-in from senior management, board of directors, or other stakeholders, but it’ll also help you explain the reasoning behind it to those whose day-to-day work is affected by the change.

2. Prepare for and communicate the change

Now it’s time to add a missing puzzle piece to the aforementioned framework: the “who”. These are the people who are going to lead the change across the organization. Internal stakeholders are an integral part of a successful digital transformation program. In other words, someone must own the digital transformation strategy. The way they will communicate why and how change is going to be implemented can make or break the entire process.

Don’t underestimate or try to rush this step. Josh Vickery, CTO at SquareFoot, a US-based commercial real estate agency, notes that this step might actually take up a significant part of the entire project:

“It takes less time to build the technology than it does to convince people that they should change their ways – for the better.”
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Don’t limit yourself into thinking that stakeholders are just the tech-savvy among your company. To initiate a successful digital transformation, you also need:

• C-suite executives who shape the strategic vision
• HR who can manage change and handle concerns on a company-wide level
• Line managers who reinforce changes and provide support on a team level
• Executors who apply changes and can share feedback on best practices and results
• IT who will ensure integration with existing processes and required security compliance

You need all those aligned if you want to see your digital transformation project succeed.

3. Test, then implement

When large-scale changes happen, you can’t predict everything. But you can avoid some pitfalls. Use a demo environment to run tests safely before applying changes. Also, consider consulting external partners who’re specialized in digital transformation – they’ll be able to help have a smooth transition to the digital era. Finally, plan for some necessary downtime or inevitable lag in production as you set up and implement a new system.

Emad Georgy, CTO of Georgy Technology Leadership, a consulting firm leading digital transformation in $100M plus-revenue companies, explains that no matter how thorough your strategic planning might be, ultimately a strategy is a hypothesis.

“A hypothesis needs constant testing and validation. We need to ensure we have feedback loops at all levels of granularity in the organization that answer basic questions such as: ‘Is our strategy working?’, ‘Are we on pace to meet our goals?’, ‘What is blocking us today from doing that?’”

During the test phase and after implementation, adopt an agile methodology. Don’t be afraid – in fact, be prepared – to redesign your processes if you find inefficiencies. It’s those constant feedback loops that allow teams to get back on course quickly. An interesting report from the 2018 Digital Transformation Index shows that CEOs are the top reason why digital transformation might not progress. Having a flexible senior management team should be your top priority in order to be able to adjust to ever-changing business needs and market changes.

4. Train and support everyone involved

Perhaps the phrase “digital transformation” sounds a bit misleading. It doesn’t necessarily refer to a robot revolution or a situation where automated systems replace jobs and humans. “It really is more about the processes than the software,” says Kevin Grice, Director of Digital Transformation at Trace Solutions, a UK-based property management SaaS company.

“The objective is to create processes that are faster, simpler and better than existing ways of doing things.”

But people – especially employees – often tend to be resistant to change. So, when you think about implementing new tools, you should not just worry about the technical aspect of it; your emphasis should also be on people. Learn what kind of digital challenges employees face and give them all the resources they need to adjust to new tech and new processes. Some might be less familiar with tech, so you need to train them on new skills and have them ready to adopt emerging technologies. Others might prefer to stick to the old ways they’ve been working with, so in this case it’s not just about technical training, it also calls for a shift in mindset.

5. Develop a digital-savvy workforce

Digital transformation is not a one-time event; it’s a strategic decision to use emerging technology to solve performance issues, to automate manual tasks and to innovate. You will always need people to be your willing companions on this journey if you want to sustain the business gains you get from digital disruption.

This doesn’t mean that every employee must learn how to code or how to write a machine learning algorithm. But we can’t ignore the fact tech is changing the way we work. Yet, only a third of workers are given many opportunities to develop digital skills outside their normal duties, based on a survey from PwC.

While you’re looking for tech to disrupt your business, it’s important to ensure your people don’t stay behind. And this goes beyond strictly technical skills. It’s also about learning how to embrace change, how to be resilient and resourceful and how to make faster decisions. After all, the new tool that you just installed might be obsolete next year, or simply might not be covering your ever-changing business needs. In this case, adaptability wins over know-how.

The post Digital transformation: how to ensure it won’t fail appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Well, we’ve got good news for you. Recruitment tech is more evolved than ever and can free up your bandwidth in many ways. And while digital transformation sounds like just another buzzword, it’s worth exploring the impact that it could have on your job in recruitment.

What do we mean by digital transformation of recruitment?

First, let’s define digital transformation. For some companies, digital transformation means disrupting business by completely changing how they operate (internal) or how they interact with customers (external). In most cases, though, digital transformation is acquiring tech and data solutions, such as applicant tracking systems, to simplify or eliminate admin tasks and increase operational efficiency in and across departments and hiring teams.

So, what does this mean for you, as a recruiter, again? Less time buried in spreadsheets and paperwork, and more time eliminating your company’s recruiting process gaps.

There are some challenges in implementing a digital transformation recruitment plan. Getting buy-in on the plan and budget with stakeholders and executives and training employees on new tech platforms are just a few of them. But the gains of digital transformation far outnumber the losses.

Technological solutions, such as AI and automation, boost operational efficiency, product quality and customer retention. Let’s tie this to recruitment: all these assets translate into faster hiring processes, happier candidates and employees, and a more polished employer brand. Still doubting? Let’s dive deeper into how digital transformation of recruitment impacts business.

1. Better productivity and time to hire

Digital tools help you speed up daily processes in various ways. For example, you can automate administrative tasks, such as keeping records of applicant documents or scheduling interviews. Recruiters who use an ATS will be able to screen candidates faster, because the ATS will present all necessary candidate information in one place. They won’t have to read a resume and then open a different file to see the candidate’s cover letter, portfolio or assessment; it’ll all be on the same page. And if this sounds trivial, think about all the time you’ll be saving if you have 5 or 10 or 20 open jobs at the same time and you have to screen 50 candidates for each one of these roles.

And, it’s not only recruiters who save time via digital transformation. Candidates will also be able to apply faster with auto-filling application forms and one-click apply buttons. Not to mention that when the candidates receive a more personalized communication, with feedback or follow-ups, they have a more positive experience and are more likely to stay engaged or get back to you.

2. Improved metrics and efficiency

Gathering and analyzing data on your own can be time-consuming, and even inaccurate in some cases particularly if it’s dependent on human processes. Luckily, most recruiting platforms will automatically collect metrics (such as a current pipeline report). With a snapshot of your hiring process, you can identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the pipeline and also capitalize on the most lucrative sources for candidates in a specific job opening.

With this type of data, you can identify gaps and experiment with solutions before they start affecting time to hire and cost per hire. For example, you may figure out that many candidates withdraw at the assessment phase. Perhaps that’s due to a time-consuming assessment or it measures what the candidate sees as irrelevant skills. You could, then, try shortening the assessment and make it more targeted, and see how applicants respond to that.

Remember, with great data comes great efficiency – and great responsibility, too. So, before you start basing your hiring process on data, make sure you check all compliance boxes – a good applicant tracking system will help you do that, too.

3. Easier candidate evaluation

Digital transformation can also add value to candidate assessment. First off, AI solutions and digital tools help screen applications faster with the use of filtering options. After that, there are loads of assessment tools you could use with shortlisted candidates, like game-based or video assessments. For example, if you’re hiring salespeople, you can use video assessments to evaluate their presentation and negotiation skills before inviting them to an in-person interview.

With features like video interviews and video assessments, you can also evaluate candidates remotely. No need to travel long distances or limit yourself to local talent. Hiring teams can also use those recordings in order to avoid multiple interview rounds and, this way, reduce time to hire.

4. Greater access to talent

Finally, tech recruiting solutions help you find candidates faster than mainstream sourcing techniques. With Workable, for example, you can post your job ads to multiple job boards with the click of a button. Job advertising includes the places where job seekers usually hang out, i.e. Facebook and Instagram. You can also benefit from AI-based functionality (check out Workable’s AI Recruiter and People Search features) to reach out to people you wouldn’t meet otherwise.

To sum up, when things change, in this case digitally, it’s not only uncomfortable but also risky to stick to your same old techniques. Start adopting simple tech solutions and track what works for you best. Your recruitment process won’t change drastically overnight – you’re still in the pilot seat after all – but equipping yourself with a vibrant and modern recruitment tech stack will save you a great deal of sleepless nights because you can now tell your boss: “No problem – I’ll get those numbers to you by end of day!”.

The post Digital transformation of recruitment: How can you benefit? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

You won’t see a list of diversity-specific features, though. And that’s on purpose. We believe that D&I is neither a couple of boxes that you just tick, nor a quota that you want to reach. It requires a holistic approach, re-thinking and updating your processes, and adopting practices that contribute to an inclusive workplace. We do offer features that will help you comply with anti-discriminatory laws (e.g. EEO/OFCCP regulations), but we’re mostly focused on delivering solutions that will help you interact with candidates and hire employees bias-free.

Let’s explore how you can increase diversity at each step of the hiring process using Workable.

1. Advertising your jobs: How to attract diverse candidates

When you want to increase diversity within your company, your first priority should be to diversify your outreach when you’re promoting your job openings. If you’re constantly posting jobs and looking for candidates in the same places, you’ll likely come across people with the same background. But researching and trying out new candidate sources can be time-consuming.

Here’s how Workable can automate and speed up your job advertising process to maximize your outreach:

Post to multiple sites and social networks

Instead of creating accounts and logging in to different sites in an effort to increase your candidate sources, you can do all that within the platform with just a few clicks. Pick the free and premium job boards where you want to advertise your open roles, add social media to your advertising mix, and we’ll automatically publish your job ads. This way, we help you get your job opportunities in front of a broader audience without wasting any valuable time.

Find potential candidates where they are

While job boards are the go-to place for job seekers, it’s worth casting a wider net. You can reach out to people with the right skills in the places where they spend a lot of their time daily: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn of course.

Customize one of our inclusive job descriptions

We may not always realize it, but even one word can make a difference in a job ad. Would a boomer apply for a job that highlights the company’s youthful environment? Or, what would a female candidate think if she saw a job ad for a salesman? We’ve built more than 700 job description templates for a wide range of industries and business functions, paying attention to using gender-neutral and inclusive language. You can directly upload and edit those templates when you create your job ad inside Workable:

2. Screening applicants: How to remove biases

Once you’ve advertised your jobs, you’ll start receiving applications. At this stage, it’s important to make sure you evaluate resumes, application forms and portfolios using strictly job-related criteria. It’s common to be influenced by non-relevant factors, so here are two ways that can help you stay on track:

Turn off social media profile pictures

While Workable gives you the option to gather information candidates have shared online in order to build a robust profile, you also have the option to disable their profile pictures. If you think that you or other hiring team members might get distracted by candidates’ pictures and miss out on important skills, you can turn this feature off.

Screen candidates consistently with video interviews

First impressions are powerful. You can instantly like or dislike a candidate as you walk them to the meeting room or during small talk before the interview. What if you could go straight to the interview, though? Picture this: you can send all candidates for the same role a set of questions, which they’ll answer by recording themselves. This way, you only receive their answers to job-related questions, you can avoid the potentially bias-inducing small talk, and can compare candidates without showing unduly favoring one over the other.

3. Making your hiring decision: How to evaluate candidates objectively

You’re now in a good place. You’ve enriched your candidate sources to ensure you reach a diverse audience, you’ve screened applicants with job-related criteria and you’re ready to interview and hire your next star. You have a good base, but the challenge is that they’re multiple people involved at this stage, for example, a hiring manager or senior executives. How can you tell if they are also free of biases?

You probably can’t. And maybe you don’t have the time – or even the power – to train them on D&I practices. What you can do instead, is build a hiring process that eliminates biases:

Ask all candidates the same interview questions

More or less, hiring managers will ask similar questions to learn whether candidates are qualified for a role. However, because interviewers are human and questions may go off in tangents at times, it’s easier to stay consistent when questions are prepared in advance. In Workable, you can build interview kits to evaluate skills and include as many questions as you want. The result is a structured interview process, where interviewers ask all candidates the same questions in the same order and use a scorecard to evaluate answers.

Share your interview feedback impartially

We all get influenced by other people’s opinions, but hiring decisions should be well-rounded, not biased. This means that interviewers should be able to openly call attention to any red flags they spotted in candidates, regardless of what others in the team think. To allow for objective evaluations when there are multiple interviewers in the same hiring stage, each interviewer will be able to see feedback and comments from the rest of the hiring team only after they’ve already submitted their own evaluation. This way, they’re encouraged to share their honest opinion without being subconsciously influenced by the reviews of other hiring team members.

Technology alone is not enough

Diversity and inclusion go beyond software, of course. Technology can help, but it’s the people who make the hiring decisions and it’s the people who are responsible for embracing different traits in the workplace. So, the onus is on people who are involved in hiring and team management to let go of biases or, at least, to be aware of them.

There’s no tool that can enforce diversity. Perhaps your recruiting software prompts you to justify your feedback after you interview a candidate, but it won’t stop you from commenting; “I really liked this candidate”. Likewise, you might get a shortlist of 49 candidates who come from underrepresented groups and still hire the one who looks and thinks most like you.

Technology is not a cure; it can only support your D&I efforts. If you rely only on tech to boost your company’s diversity, you risk being short-sighted or, worse, see the opposite results. For example, if a software helps you gather candidate data to uncover areas for improvement, you could raise legal issues. Candidates might be worried about how you’re going to use this information, even if your intentions are good.

If you are experimenting (or considering to experiment) with masking candidates’ personal details, such as their name, race and school, don’t rest assured that you will indeed pick diverse candidates. Research shows that this is not always the case. Likewise, an overreliance on technology can lead to adverse results in your hiring process. D&I practices should be addressed throughout all your procedures, not just at the beginning of your hiring process.

At the end of the day, diversity is not in the numbers. To build a truly diverse and inclusive work environment, you need to be an advocate for differences, you need to embrace people as they are and you need to actively look for a variety of skills inside your company. Diverse candidates will want to work with you, not because you claim to be an equal opportunity employer, but because you are one. And there’s no shortcut to becoming one.

The post Diversity in the workplace: how to use Workable to boost D&I appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The concept of a ‘talent assessment’ as part of the hiring process isn’t new, but it’s still going strong. According to a 2019 LinkedIn report, 57% of recruiting professionals use soft skills assessments, and 60% think these assessments will make a great impact in the next five years.

That’s because talent assessments provide an indication about whether candidates can do the job you’re hiring for, and also if they fit well in your company culture and team. By using pre-employment assessment tools, you’ll be able to reduce the number of candidates to a small, super-qualified group. That way, you get insight into the candidates’ skills and you make your process much more efficient.

So, if you’re wondering how to evaluate talent, here’s a list of six talent assessment test types that can prove useful to your hiring processes:

1. Work samples

The work sample is a piece of actual work that a candidate will complete. Usually, it’ll be closely related to the job they applied to. For example, an SEO specialist can be asked to conduct keyword research for one specific topic, an accountant could be asked to apply a few formulas, and a developer may be asked to write a short piece of code.

These talent assessment tools have been shown to be the most effective in predicting job performance. And that makes sense; work samples gauge ability to do a specific work first-hand.

Of course, work samples shouldn’t be so much work that candidates feel they’re working for free (this may impact candidate experience and, consequently, your employer brand). Clarity here is essential; communicate clearly to the candidate the purpose of this work sample and that it will not be used for business purposes. In some cases, you may even compensate them for the time invested in producing the sample.

Make sure you’re asking them to produce work that’s as closely related to the position they’re applying to as possible – this way, you can also help them better understand the role and how much they’d like it.

2. Job simulations

You may have heard of the famous interview question “Can you sell me this pen?”. It’s usually presented to salespeople to evaluate skills like persuasion and thinking on their feet. This is what a job simulation is.

This type of talent assessment is similar to the work sample, but it involves more on-the-spot work. A job simulation can be done during the interview or via online hiring assessment tools. For example, you can send assessments to candidates that ask them to handle a disgruntled customer over chat, do a presentation, or sell something a bit more complex than a pen.

Similar to job simulation tests are situational interview questions. These questions ask the candidate to explain their reaction to a hypothetical scenario at work. Each candidate’s answers shed light on their way of thinking and how they’d approach a tricky situation.

3. Cognitive ability testing

Cognitive ability tests can also be called “Intelligence tests” or “General Aptitude Tests”. They usually include numerical and verbal reasoning, as well as logic exercises, but they can also branch out to memory, problem-solving, attention to detail and more. These talent assessments help you evaluate candidates’ general intelligence and ability to comprehend various concepts and solve basic problems.

Before you administer cognitive aptitude tests, make sure they’re reliable and well-validated. For this, you can try out providers that specialize in these types of assessments. For example, a recruitment platform like Workable can help you send assessments via integrated partners like Criteria Corp, MindX, etc.

4. AI-powered video interviews

Asynchronous interviews have started becoming more and more popular: this type of interview lets candidates record answers to questions and allows interviewers to evaluate the answers at their own time. Apart from the convenience of these interviews, AI technology has also turned them into talent assessment tools.

For example, face-scanning algorithms can be used to assess candidates’ tone, word choice, and other factors to determine the best person for the job. Companies like HireVue have developed this kind of technology.

Of course, there are concerns involved. Built-in biases are an issue in most artificial intelligence applications, and there are also doubts about the scientific basis of analyzing expressions to predict job performance. So, this may not be the type of talent assessment to jump into haphazardly, but it’s definitely one to watch.

5. Job trials

A tried-and-true way to judge a candidate’s ability to perform specific duties, as well as how they fit in your existing team. Candidates will usually work for a day or two at an agreed-upon pay rate. That way, both candidate and employer can see if they’re well-matched.

Job trials aren’t possible for every profession, but they’ll usually work well for blue-collar roles. For example, a machinist, a production supervisor, or a pipefitter could easily go through job trials if the law allows it.

Of course, keep in mind the limitations of this talent assessment: first, it’ll consume a few hours from the hiring team’s normal working day, since they’ll need to be close to the candidate to evaluate them and help them when needed. For this reason, it’s best if job trials are conducted only for the finalists in a hiring process. Also, consider that some candidates may already be employed so they might not be able to take time off.

So, use job trials whenever it makes sense for both you and the candidate.

6. Exercises and games

These are the more obscure talent assessments. Exercises are usually done in group interviews where the interviewers may ask candidates to work together to solve a problem or debate a particular issue. The hiring team will observe and draw conclusions about each candidate’s abilities and attitude. A more popular variation may be hackathons that companies often hold for coding applicants.

Gamification is also one of these talent assessment examples. Employers can use online tools that have been specifically developed for judging candidate abilities via games. These assessments are best used at the beginning of the hiring process in order to reduce the number of applicants.

Depending on the form of these assessments, their effectiveness might vary. For example, simply evaluating candidates in a group discussion might open the road to biases. But, letting them win a hackathon or other small competition might yield more impartial results. In these assessments, you have room to experiment and finetune when needed.

How to choose the best talent assessment for your company

First, you may need to take a deeper look at your hiring process. Is your initial screening effective? Are there delays in any step of the process? For example, if the majority of candidates who move to the interview phase are qualified, then your current selection practices probably work well, and you can then look into efficiency and speed.

So, depending on where the improvements need to be made, you can choose the assessments that work best for each role. Determine what you want to do and research recruiting assessment tools that will help you make that happen. Some assessment providers can also integrate nicely with a talent acquisition platform that will power up your hiring process as a whole.

The post 6 talent assessment methods to use for recruiting in your company appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The short answer is because they provide innovative services and products. But, this is an understatement to their accomplishments in the digital innovation field. They have in fact created new business processes and solutions which have impacted the entire tech scene. In other words, they have tackled the “digital transformation challenge”.

What is digital transformation?

The digital transformation definition in business is the use of cutting-edge technologies to improve functions and processes. Companies utilize cloud-based systems, artificial intelligence, and complex data analytics, among others, to modify existing methods or create new ones. These methods help simplify procedures and increase efficiency in functions such as operations, customer service, and IT.

But why are so many businesses going through a digital transformation? In addition to streamlining internal processes, the rapid growth of technology and available resources have changed customer needs and demands. Nowadays, people have access to many services and products through apps, websites, and other tech – and have become more selective in their decisions. To stand out from the crowd, companies need access to more data and faster analytical processes – and need to provide that access as well – to attract and retain customers.

For instance, digital transformation can enhance a company’s marketing activities. By acquiring complex data-driven techniques and advanced analytics, marketers can gain a deeper understanding of consumer behavior. This way, they can reform their marketing campaigns and improve customer experience and retention.

Most of the time, it makes good business sense to take advantage of the technology that’s out there. The real challenge for companies is to choose the right type of technology and also implement it in ways that ensure people will use it properly and securely – and ensure that the new tech integrates seamlessly within their existing tech stack.

What is a digital transformation strategy?

A “digital transformation strategy” refers to all steps and actions a company takes to implement technology and reap its benefits. It starts with understanding current business operations and how they can evolve by means of technology.

Then, the company sets business objectives and analyzes potential risks about implementing software and platforms across processes and departments. Thorough research is essential to identify available resources and how technology can impact the business.

An example of a digital transformation strategy would be revamping the recruitment process via technology. For instance, a talent acquisition platform could include anything from AI that supports sourcing activities to complex analytics on the efficiency and quality hiring methods.

Keep in mind that a digital transformation strategy needs time to produce positive results. Some employees may find transitioning to the “digital world” challenging. Whether these employees are slow to adapt to new technology or whether they’re consciously resisting change, companies need to address their concerns via a well-formulated plan. With the right training and mindset from leaders and managers, these setbacks can be overcome. Digital transformation requires buy-in from all parties – be it executives, employees, or even customers – to truly succeed.

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In this step-by-step guide, you will find useful screening techniques and tips to follow. Before we go into details though, take a step back for a moment to make sure you’ve:

1. Identified all must-have and nice-to-have skills: You may already know the highly important skills applicants should have, but, if you dig a bit deeper, there might be others you had not thought of.
2. Become aware of unconscious bias: We all tend to favor similarities. We are more likely to get on well with people who have the same interests or backgrounds with us. During screening this and other biases can be harmful.
3. Sharpened your candidate experience practices: It’s important to make a good impression as a company to applicants. Be clear and transparent, send follow-up emails and give feedback when possible. Regardless if a candidate will be hired or not, they might fit future openings or be able to refer other candidates.

Once you’ve done all these, let’s get down to business with screening applicants.

Application phase: Hitting the road

1. Screening resumes

Resumes are the most traditional way of showcasing skills and experience to potential employers. Scan candidates’ resumes to find out about the candidate’s educational background, work history, and most related certifications. Recruiting platforms like Workable can make this process much easier by automatically parsing resumes and organizing information under unique candidate profiles.

So, if a candidate seems to have the essential skills, does that mean they should move to the next phase? Maybe. Look at these two factors first:

• The resume format: In most cases, messy resumes with typos and weird wording may indicate lack of attention when writing the text. This may be concerning, especially for roles that require attention to detail, such as software testers or copywriters. However, if the candidate seems like a good fit for the role based on other characteristics, you can evaluate these skills with the use of different methods, for example, assessment tools.
• Unexplained job gaps: These may be alarming, but it’s not a reason to disqualify a candidate. It’s just something to explore during the interview. Find out what they did during this time. For example, they may have used their time off work to acquire a certification that’s useful for the current position.

2. Screening cover letters

Most candidates include cover letters in their applications. If you consider cover letters an essential part of your evaluation process, it’s good practice to ask candidates to submit a cover letter in the application guidelines. Here is what you can figure out about the candidate through cover letters:

1. Motivation for the role and attitude
2. Strengths and weaknesses
3. Future career goals
4. Consistency between resume and cover letter
5. Clear structure

Many candidates will use a template for their cover letter, or they won’t provide much useful information for fear of saying something wrong (especially if they’re junior). That’s why it’s useful to have other sources of information. For example, you can design open-ended application questions, such as:

• Why did you apply for this position?
• What do you want to achieve in this role?
• How do your strengths and weaknesses match the demands of the role?

3. Screening video applications

A video application is an addition or replacement of cover letters. It’s a one- or two-minute video in which applicants can explain why they are a good fit for the position. Ask them to briefly introduce themselves and why they applied for the role. You can also ask candidates to showcase a certain skill during the video application that is relevant to the job (e.g. sell a product in fifteen seconds). If you want to introduce video applications in your screening process, it’s best to use relevant software, so that candidates can easily record their answers.

Phone screen: Making the first move

Now that you’ve narrowed down the most suitable candidates based on resumes and cover letters, you can schedule a phone screen with them. What should you ask in a phone screening interview? First, you can cross-check the applicants’ work and educational background. You can also ask basic information, such as their current location, salary expectations or availability. During the call, focus on how well they are able to communicate and note down their answers.

Create and send calendar invitations to candidates so that they are available and well prepared. Here are some potential red flags for phone-screening:

1. The candidate doesn’t answer the call. It’s called ghosting and is not a good sign of the candidate’s professionalism. Give them the chance to explain what happened and consider giving them another opportunity if their explanation makes sense, and their profile otherwise looks like a great fit the role.
2. The candidate has a rude or indifferent attitude. Nervousness during interviews is normal. However, you can spot a lack of interest and arrogance through certain words and phrases. For example, ‘I don’t care’ or ‘whatever’ are unsuitable in interviewing contexts. Also, the absence of questions from their end may show that the candidate might not be as interested as you’d like them to be.
3. The candidate has provided inconsistent information. From your conversation with the interviewee, you understand that some of the details in their resume are not correct. This means that they either try to hide something or they did not pay much attention when applying.

Assessments: Checking the essentials

After the phone interview, it’s wise to check applicant skills with the use of assessment tools. There is a plethora of tests out there – from measuring coding skills to identifying if the candidate is a cultural fit. Find the ones that will give you a good view of their future job performance. The most common types of tests are:

• Aptitude tests: Use them to measure job-relevant abilities. For example, if you require an employee with a sharp command of English, the English Quiz can help you gauge the candidates’ language capabilities.
• Personality tests: Personality tests can show a candidate’s character strengths and whether they have behavioral traits that are necessary for the role, e.g. be a self-starter.

On-site interviews: Bringing it (them) home

Next stop: the on-site interview. Interviews can be stressful for both candidates and interviewers. Both parties are being evaluated and want to make a good impression. For this reason, a good interviewer will choose the right interview questions and get prepared to answer all types of questions about the company and the role.

During the interview, create a positive environment for the candidate and engage in authentic conversation with them as much as you can. Taking notes during an interview is essential, but it’s also important to focus on the conversation to understand the candidate’s personality and mindset.

Types of questions to ask:

• Situational and behavioral questions to understand how the person reacts in certain contexts.
• Skill-based questions that reveal the candidates’ job-relevant abilities. For example, if you are hiring for an editor, you should assess their attention to detail.
• Values-based questions to examine if they are good cultural and team fit.

What else you should evaluate:

• Effective communication: Are the candidate’s answers on point? Do they appear to be attentive listeners? A good communicator also provides examples to help you understand their point of view.
• Attitude: The candidate is down-to-earth and positive during the interview. They talk about their achievements with pride and not arrogance.
• Consistency: Again, consistency with previous answers and resumes matters. If a candidate’s resume states that they have experience in Java and it turns out they don’t, it’s a red flag.

Video interviews: Shortening the distance

What happens if the candidates need to commute a long distance for the interview? Or if you need to quickly assess job applicants due to rapid scaling and it’s difficult to arrange on-site interviews? Then, you can easily invite them for a video interview. Video interviews have become widely popular these days as they are cost-effective and convenient both for candidates and interviewers.

Live video interviews: You log into a video call with the candidate in real-time and follow the same screening process as in the on-site interview. Make sure to give clear instructions to the candidates regarding the video call and what to expect to avoid confusion.

The same red flags that you’d look for in a face-to-face interview apply here, too. An extra red flag would be if the candidate was indifferent or seemed to do other things at the same time.

Recorded (or asynchronous) video interview: In this type of interview, the interviewer provides candidates a series of questions and asks them to record their answers. The interview doesn’t take place in real time and you can assess candidates’ answers along with your teammates at your convenience. Make sure that the questions you ask are clear enough and do not require explanation (although, it’d be good to give candidates details of a contact person they can reach out for questions, should they have any).

Also consider that candidates know the questions beforehand, so they shouldn’t seem unprepared or give unclear answers.

Background checks: Searching for more

You’re closer to making up your mind about your next hire, but wait: it’s time to look deeper into their background. Even though they have demonstrated consistent behavior and ability throughout the candidate screening process, it’s wise to conduct a background check to uncover issues that haven’t come up until now. Make sure to follow all the legal aspects of this process, respecting the candidates’ privacy and integrity. It’ll be wise to have a clear company policy in place to ensure compliance during this potentially sensitive stage.

You can order background checks for:

• Criminal history
• Driving records
• Credit reports
• Verification reports (e.g. identity, educational certifications)

Depending on the position, you can also examine other aspects, such as drug use history, during the selection process. In any case, inform the candidate about these checks and why you conduct them. Here’s a guide on choosing background check providers and how to spot red flags.

Another way to check the candidate’s background is through referrals. Typically, companies ask candidates to provide the names and contact details of two references. These references are usually past managers or supervisors. Ask questions to learn more about candidates’ previous job responsibilities that relate to the position you’re hiring for, how they dealt with complex and stressful situations and how well they work in a team.

Job trials: Challenging the finalists

During the job trials, the employer invites the candidates in-house to assess their skills on the spot for a few hours, or even a full working day (with payment). The finalists are challenged to complete certain tasks that represent key responsibilities of the role. Job trials are also a good way to assess how the candidate coordinates with the rest of the team and how they match the company culture. After the job trial, ask yourself these questions:

• Did they manage to complete the tasks? Did they face any difficulties and if yes, how did they react to them?
• How well did they collaborate with the rest of the team?
• Is the candidate the best fit for the role?

Remember: always value the candidate’s time during job trials and don’t take their availability for granted. Design the assignments in a way that does not wear them off or overly stresses them. Make them feel welcome and at ease and you will have higher chances to see the best version of themselves.

And the best candidate has shined through!

You have officially completed the selection process – good job! It’s definitely a long and challenging process but with good planning, it’s worthwhile.

In general, a good applicant tracking system (ATS) can help you manage these steps better, with automated resume screening tools, evaluation cards, etc. For example, Workable enables easier interview scheduling, effective communication with team members, and better evaluation through scorecards, among others.

Last but not least; now that you have finished screening applicants, it’s time to assess your own process. Go through each of the screening techniques you used and identify opportunities for improvement in your hiring process going forward.

The post Screening applicants: best methods and handy tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

I still remember going into the first interview with the first candidate. Being a first-time hiring manager, I was probably more stressed than them and ended up doing most of the talking, trying to sell the role rather than getting to know the candidate. I left the interview even more stressed, since I hadn’t made up my mind whether this candidate would be a good fit or not.

A few interviews later and a few more “maybes” later, I realized that I needed to step up my interviewing game if I wanted to hire the best candidates for the role – and quickly, too.

Here’s what helped me run a successful hiring process – plus some things I wish I knew beforehand as a first-time hiring manager:

1. Ask for help early in the process

The more information you get before interviews begin, the smoother the process will go. If other people involved in the process are more experienced in interviewing, they might take some things for granted. So, don’t be afraid to ask questions no matter how basic they seem.

• Understand the scope of the role. First, talk to your boss. Understand what you want to achieve by hiring this person and this will give you a clearer idea of what you’re looking for in candidates.
• Understand the structure of the hiring process. Then, talk to your recruiter about how long the process will (ideally) take, what steps will be involved, and what your role will be throughout the process. You can also ask for tips on how to write your job description, how to screen resumes faster and how to communicate with candidates.

At Workable, we’ve created a hiring guide with useful tips and guidelines that our hiring managers can access at any time. Here’s a sample recruitment policy you can use to create your own guide.

2. Don’t wait till the interview to evaluate candidates

An in-person interview is your chance to learn more about a candidate, talk about their skills and ambitions, and determine if they’re a good culture fit for your team. But interviews take up a lot of resources, and as a hiring manager, recruiting is not a full-time job for you. You must interview candidates on top of your day-to-day tasks, so you need to ensure you only meet with the most promising ones.

• Identify your dealbreakers. Those could be expected salary, lack of knowledge of a required skill or tool and availability. Find out whether candidates meet those minimum requirements before you invite them to an interview at your office by including disqualification questions in the application form or during a quick call.
• Evaluate candidates on job-related skills. You can add steps between the resume screening and the onsite interview. For example, schedule a video interview or send candidates an assessment. This way, you’ll be able to watch for candidates who may look good on paper but lack the necessary skills.

3. Make the most out of your interviews

At first, I was further stressed out because after an interview I still couldn’t determine whether this person was a good fit for the role or not. And I realized that this ambiguity was because I wasn’t asking the right questions. When preparing your interview questions, make sure that each question gives you insights about the candidate that you don’t already have.

• Interview questions should get you closer to the hiring decision. If the question doesn’t add any value, don’t ask it. Make it your goal that at the end of the interview you have to have a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’. A clear ‘yes’ means that you would hire this person, not that you will hire this person.
• Avoid the most common interview questions. Everyone will claim that they’re self-motivated, independent, analytical and methodical, that they work too hard and are perfectionists. I had more success when I started asking open-ended questions that required original thinking from the candidate. For example, I went from:
  • “What are your pros and cons?” to “What skills do you want to develop?”
  • “What did you do during your previous role?” to “What did you like or dislike about your previous role?”

As an inexperienced interviewer, these questions felt quite uncomfortable to ask. But I got responses that were way more honest and opened opportunities for further discussion on pros and cons in practice, rather than what they thought their pros and cons were.

4. Get organized

It’s important to be prepared even before the hiring process begins (e.g. have your questions ready so that you ask all candidates the same things). You need to be organized ahead of time to ensure a low-stress, seamless hiring process because you will undoubtedly devote large chunks of your busy days to interviewing candidates.

• Schedule interviews so they don’t interrupt your flow of the day. For example, if you have a team meeting every Monday morning to plan your week, it’s best to avoid booking interviews around that time so that you don’t get scattered. You can use a self-scheduling feature to eliminate a lot of the back-and-forth communication between you, the recruiter and the candidate, but make sure your available slots are convenient for you.
• Leave feedback right after interviews. I don’t love taking notes during the meeting unless it’s something very specific. What has worked for me is to block time after each interview to debrief and write my evaluation, when my impressions are still fresh. When you have multiple interviews in one day, it’s easy to get confused about which candidate said what. That’s why documenting your feedback right after the interview is essential to prevent a mix-up.

5. Be prepared to answer candidates’ questions, too

During interviews, it’s not only you, the hiring manager, who has questions. Candidates are also interested in learning more about the job and the company, other than what they can already find online.

• Think about the bigger picture. Questions about salary, starting date, responsibilities and working hours are probably the easiest ones. But a good candidate will likely have more questions. For example, they might want to learn about:
  • the culture of the company
  • the strategy and goals of your department
  • how they will be evaluated
  • what skills they will develop
  • what you like about the company

Not having concise answers will make you come across as unprepared and, worse, it may look like you’re trying to hide something.

• Sync with the entire hiring team. You’re probably not the only one interviewing candidates for the role. At the beginning of the hiring process, candidates will probably interview with a recruiter and later, they might meet with a more senior executive. Ensure that you’re consistent with the information you give to candidates. For example, if your recruiter tells candidates that there’s flexibility in the starting date but you tell them that they need to start ASAP, candidates will get the impression that there’s a lack of communication between the two of you.

While I was lucky enough to hire competent people the first time around, I felt more confident in making the right choices the next time I had to interview and hire candidates. And this time, my nerves stayed calm throughout the process.

You can use a cheat sheet like this during your part in the recruitment process, whether you’re a first-time hiring manager yourself or you want to share with a colleague in that situation. You, of course, want to play a role in your company’s growth strategy for the upcoming year, and every little bit can help.

The post Tips for first-time hiring managers appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But what talent acquisition technology is there and what can we expect in the future in terms of TA automation? And how can all these tools help you solve your 2020 recruitment challenges?

To get answers to these questions, Workable hosted an hour-long webinar on Dec. 5, 2019, with the title “The Tech It Takes To Find Candidates in 2020”. In this webinar, we discussed tech in recruitment with two of the most renowned experts in the field:

• Hung Lee: an industry professional with over 15 years experience as a recruiter, head of talent and strategic advisor. He’s also the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, a weekly newsletter with around 18,000 subscribers.
• Matt Alder: a strategic consultant and a globally recognized talent acquisition thought leader with 20 years of experience. He also hosts the Recruiting Future podcast which currently has a monthly audience of 30,000.

Our own VP of Partnerships and former recruiter, Rob Long, moderated this discussion with the two experts, who shared their insights on how to use tech to find, engage, manage and evaluate candidates in 2020.

(By the way, Rob also asked our webinar viewers to vote on their biggest challenge in the year to come and the winner was – surprise, surprise – finding and attracting candidates). Here’s the full video:

If you’re more the reading type, here are six important questions Hung Lee and Matt Alder answered during the discussion:

• First, where have we come from?
• How do you approach the challenge of finding and attracting candidates?
• What technologies help us engage candidates?
• How do you build long-term relationships with candidates?
• What’s the state of assessment tech?
• What are the biggest takeaways from 2020?

1. First, where have we come from?

Matt Alder opened this discussion: “The best way to understand the future is to learn a little bit about the past.” He showed us a helpful diagram he created:

The post The future of talent acquisition: Two experts talk about recruitment tech in 2020 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The challenge

The solution

• No reporting mechanisms to measure recruitment initiatives
• Time consuming candidate experience required to reflect their employer brand
• Hiring managers are full-time managers or chefs
• Fast-moving, competitive hiring market with a highly perishable candidate market
• High annual employee turnover

• Hiring managers who can recruit in one central location, with the option to use on- the-go mobile-optimized tech
• Analytics allowed for more strategic talent marketing spend, yielding higher volumes of candidates
• An increase in candidate volume opened up new ways of interviewing, including the introduction of group interviews, reducing the hours spent in one-on-one interviews
• Better candidate experience achieved through efficient screening and timely comms
• Data-driven hiring strategy resulting in a reduction in agency use and more accountability of job boards

The challenge: A competitive hiring market and precarious recruitment process

JOEY Restaurants brings casual, fine-dining to customers in Canada and the US. It’s a family-founded business with a reputation for providing iconic hospitality to its guests, and for unleashing the potential of its Partners (its 5000+ employees). But a high churn rate is a known challenge of the hospitality industry, with every year bringing almost 100% employee turnover. And JOEY was no exception.

On the back of its strong employer brand, JOEY’s regularly attracts high volumes of candidates to open roles. But its slow, impersonal candidate experience fell short of the company’s world class reputation for service and risked losing them the best talent. Talent they needed to keep delivering for their guests at the highest level.

“In our industry great candidates get snapped up quickly,” says JOEY’s Manager of Recruiting & Employment Brand, Kelsey Bleakney. “If you’re a good server, bartender or chef, you’ve got options. We know that.”

Recruitment across the group’s 39 restaurants is driven by hiring managers who are first and foremost: full-time managers or chefs, running multi-million dollar restaurants. Without a strategy or disposable time and resources, hiring was impromptu and often in a panic.

When it came to job posting, “there was a lot of posting and praying,” says Kelsey. “Our hiring managers couldn’t track where quality candidates were coming from and struggled to keep candidates organized, and ensure they were contacted in time. This ate up sponsorship dollars, lost us some good hires, and reflected badly on the business.”

The solution: Easy to use software, optimized for mobile

With her background in recruitment technology, Kelsey knew that the right hiring software was the answer. A web development company working with JOEY, recommended Workable for its fast deployment and easy integration. Another endorsement came from one of JOEY’s internal recruiters.

“We needed a system that wasn’t going to be a thorn in the side of our operators,” says Kelsey. “Someone on our team had used Workable before at a previous company and loved its user-friendly interface. We tried it out and immediately saw how easy it was to use.’

To provide a seamless, high-quality candidate experience, JOEY’s hiring managers needed the resources to hire on the go, in-store. Optimized for mobile, Workable had the solution.

“Most of our computers are deep down in a basement office next to the kitchen,” says Kelsey. “Using Workable’s mobile app, our restaurateurs can look at their phone as they’re checking sections. They can contact candidates with one click, pop the phone back in their pocket and continue on their floor.”

As well as streamlining day-to-day hiring, JOEY needed software to plan for the future.

“We had to be more strategic in our approach, informed by greater insights,” says Kelsey. “I wanted to maximize the right type of candidates into our process and convert them to hires. Workable has comprehensive and easy reporting capabilities, which were perfect for us.”

The outcome: More applications, faster screening and a new approach to interviews

Since moving to Workable, JOEY’s application volume has grown, and its approach to interviewing has changed as a result.

“We are moving in the direction from several one-on-one interviews scattered across the week, to one group interview,” says Kelsey. “Group interviews are efficient and a great way for people to shine in a crowd. But first, we needed the crowd. We weren’t getting the numbers before, but through Workable’s job boards we now are.”

With faster screening and more responsive, high-touch communication, candidate experience now matches brand expectations. Using Workable they can efficiently manage their growing “crowd” of candidates and book interviews at speed.

“Previously a candidate may not have been looked at in a week. Now, we’re checking every 24-48 hours with the goal of meeting all qualified applicants within 7 days.”

They’re also making labor (and cost) savings along the way, condensing interview hours into a more efficient block of time.

“Even a single tool like the email templates makes a big difference. It means we can rapid-fire invite people to next steps. Over a year, we will see incredible savings in terms of labor costs; so that’s time saved arranging interviews and on manual recruiting efforts.”

The future: Cost savings and data-driven hiring

Looking ahead, more efficiencies and savings are planned—using Workable.

“With the insights we can gather using Workable, we’re able to reduce our dependence on external recruitment agencies to just one or two specialty roles a year,” says Kelsey.

Better reporting and accountability of job boards means money is spent only where needed.

“From my dashboard I get a snapshot of each pipeline and can quickly see where we have enough applicants and where we don’t,” says Kelsey. “I can refocus resources where they most matter, improve our ROI and build better hiring strategies for the future.”

The post JOEY Restaurants reduces time to interview by 60% with Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The challenge

The solution

• Using emails and spreadsheets for candidate data
• No consistent hiring process
• No resilience or systems to scale
• Poor communication with no tracking

• Streamline and speed up recruitment using automated applicant tracking
• An intuitive interface which guarantees fast, company-wide global uptake
• A visible pipeline that follows a sales-funnel approach
• Interview scorecards to standardize and measure the interview process
• Customizable careers pages to promote employer brand
• Wide-reaching, one-click job board posting to maximize reach in seconds
• Flexible pricing options to meet company budget.

The challenge: Hire better people, faster

Bevi needed to build a bigger team, powered by the right people in the right roles. But their approach to recruitment was failing them.

“Our hiring process was a disaster,’ says Lauren Della Morte, People Operations Manager at Bevi. “Everything went into a generic ‘Jobs’ inbox. So it was very difficult to keep track of who was interviewing who and to share feedback on candidates. We’d either update each other verbally, in passing, which meant no documentation, or through email exchanges, which dragged on forever.”

Without a formal system in place, recruitment was ad-hoc, differing from person to person. This impacted their employer brand as well as their internal workflow.

“People weren’t consistent in how they were hiring,” says Lauren. “Not even with posting open roles on our own site. As well as being inefficient, this made a poor impression on applicants and passing talent.”

They had an enthused and engaged culture of referrals. But there was no way of managing these effectively.

“It’s great to have internal referrals,” says Lauren. “And we were lucky in this respect. A lot of people would say ‘Oh, I know this person. They’re great. Let’s get them in.’ So we’d get them in. And, if we hired them, we’d work out the job description afterwards. Which is fine when you’re a very small company. But we’re trying to rapidly scale, so it was never a long term option.”

Even at the end of the funnel—having complete the selection process—there was no guarantee that successful candidates would translate into future employees. A slow, cumbersome offer letter and approvals process risked losing them their preferred hires.

“Our offer letters were flying around all over the place,”says Lauren. “They were PDFs and it was impossible to track them. I was doing intermediary stuff, putting everything in DocuSign. But the problem with that is it’s tricky to amend when details need to be changed. And then there’s the challenge of sharing offers and updates with hiring managers and whoever else needs to approve. Not to mention actually sending and signing the offer!”

The solution: Right product, right features, right price

Bevi knew that automating the hiring process to streamline and speed up recruiting was the answer. But finding the right recruiting platform was crucial.

“We started looking for an applicant tracking system (ATS) and were already 90% down the road of choosing between two platforms we’d pinpointed,” says Lauren. “But, after talking to Workable at a Talent Hackers event, we were so impressed we got on the phone straight after to find out more. We quickly saw the benefits of Workable over the other two platforms. We made our decision, and the rest is history.”

For them, the design and function of Workable’s product was the deciding factor.

“We went with Workable because of the product features. Workable had the type of user interface we’d been looking for. It was so intuitive.

“Our hiring managers wanted to see a sales funnel approach for each of the roles,” says Lauren. “And Workable’s visual hiring pipelines offered a perfect overview of the different stages in the funnel.”