Advice for becoming a good interviewer

Prepare well

Unprepared interviewers risk appearing indifferent. And they may not be able to evaluate a candidate correctly or persuade them to accept a job offer.

Before you interview, cross these items off your checklist:

1. Read the candidate’s resume and print out a copy for reference during the interview.
2. Review any work samples that a candidate submitted (this is particularly important if you’re hiring designers or writers.)
3. Check the job description again to make sure you can discuss the role and its requirements.
4. Prepare a list of questions to ask (use interview scorecards to manage questions more easily and take notes.)
5. Refresh your knowledge of your company’s mission and structure, as well as the benefits and perks for the position you’re hiring for.

It’s also a good idea to think about whether there’s anything specific you want to clarify during an interview. Denise Wilton, Workable’s VP Creative, says:

“I think about that candidate specifically: what made them seem like a good fit and how could I check that in their interview? What concerns do I have and how can I address them?”

Be methodical

Unstructured interviews (that feel like free-flowing conversations that lack an agenda) can easily become subjective and non-job-related. Unstructured interviews help candidates feel more comfortable, but they don’t result in the best hiring decisions.

Adding some structure to your interviews will make them more effective. Even if you don’t have time to structure your interviews completely, try to simulate a structured interview as much as possible:

• Choose questions carefully. Generic interview questions (like “what’s your greatest weakness?”) are overused and brain teasers are ineffective. Prepare a short list of questions tailored to the role you’re hiring for. Behavioral and situational questions help you judge a candidate’s soft skills (like problem-solving and critical thinking.) Aim to ask the same questions to all candidates and be aware of illegal questions to avoid.
• Practice note-taking. Use effective note-taking techniques, like the Cornell Method. Be sure to focus on candidates’ answers, instead of your judgements (for example, write “he told us he hasn’t dealt with difficult customers before” instead of “he’s inexperienced.”)
• Rate candidates’ answers with a consistent scale. A ‘poor’ to ‘excellent’ or ‘low’ to ‘high’ scale can work well. To reduce the halo effect, use your notes to rate all candidates’ answers at the same time, after conducting all of your interviews, instead of rating candidates individually right after each interview. Rate every candidate on one question, before moving to the next question.

Show you care

Caring about candidates makes for good candidate experience and boosts your employer brand. Even if a candidate doesn’t get a job offer, they may still feel good about a company that treated them well. When interviewing candidates:

• Open on a positive note. Greet interviewees on time and make them feel welcome: smile, offer them something to drink and maintain eye contact as much as possible.
• Ease them into the process. Introduce yourself and your fellow interviewers, briefly describe your role and why you’re hiring. This helps humanize your hiring process for candidates. Then, ask candidates to introduce themselves or walk you through their portfolio or work samples, if applicable.
• Focus on the conversation. Being distracted by calls or thoughts about future meetings can damage your rapport with interviewees. Instead, focus on what the candidates says.
• Answer their questions. Candidates want to learn about your company and open role. Give them the chance to ask questions and give them honest and direct answers. Answering questions will also give you the chance to pitch your company to candidates.
• Take your time. If possible, don’t schedule anything directly after an interview. Some candidates may have more questions than others and will appreciate more time with you. Rushing candidates out isn’t a pleasant way to close an interview.

Improve your judgement

Unconscious biases can cloud our judgement and lead us to wrong decisions. Combating those biases is key for good interviewers. Here are some ideas to achieve this:

• Take an Implicit Association Test (IAT.) The first step in fighting biases is becoming aware of them. Harvard’s IAT can help you become more aware of your biases.
• Learn how cognitive biases work. Understanding different kinds of bias can help you recognize them when they’re at work.
• Think about your unique prejudices. Personal concerns, preferences and experience may interfere with our judgement. For example, if an interviewer believes that overqualified employees will eventually get bored with their job, they may refuse to hire them. That way, they may miss out on talented people who might still have been valuable team members.
• Slow down. Resist the urge to made a decision about a candidate before their interview ends. It’s best to make your decisions after you’ve met all candidates and have consulted your notes.
• Distrust body language cues. Body language isn’t an exact science; some non verbal cues may indicate many different things and vary across cultures.
• Team up with someone. If possible, ask one of your team members to join you when interviewing candidates. Your team member’s unique perspective paired with your own can help you make more informed and objective hiring decisions.

Learn from your mistakes

A good interviewer views mistakes and failures as opportunities to improve. Here are a few things you can do to learn from your interviewing experience more deliberately:

• Keep records. Recording and filing your notes helps you as an interviewer since you can refer back to them any time. And your company can also use them in court, in the unlikely event that they face a lawsuit.
• Monitor results. Ask your teammates who are responsible for tracking recruiting metrics for information about candidate experience and quality of hire metrics. It’s also a good idea to keep track of your company’s online reviews on Glassdoor. Take constructive feedback to heart and work to improve on feedback you receive.
• Seek advice. Look for resources online (e.g. videos and tutorials) and, if possible, ask more experienced recruiters or interviewers in your company for advice. If you plan to interview often, you could also make a case for attending interview trainings or workshops.

The post How to be a good interviewer appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If only you had the answers to these questions before applying. Wait… maybe you can find them yourself? So where do you look? The careers page, of course. The portal that connects employers with potential employees; that’s the place to look for those answers.

But it’s not as simple as sharing information about the company itself. Company career pages should be more than just a shop window for open roles. They give employers the chance to promote their workplace, share images and videos of their offices and staff and describe any employee benefits they offer.

If you’re in the process of designing your own careers page or if you want to revamp your existing one, we can give you a head start by presenting you with our favorite career sites.

Top 10 careers page examples for different scenarios

When you want to showcase your culture

It’s a challenge to promote your company culture without overselling yourself. Surely, in a careers page, you can’t talk about those less attractive things that could and do happen at work, such as occasional overtime, offices in an unsexy location, or salaries a touch below the industry average.

If you try to sugarcoat everything about your work life, you risk sounding inauthentic. Candidates don’t expect to find negative things about your company in your own site, but big, bold statements of “how happy your employees are” or “how you’ve built the best workplace” are too vague and abstract. It’s best to give candidates something more tangible.

Here are two examples of how you can describe your company culture in a genuine and informative way:

Soho House & Co

As a private member’s club company for creatives, Soho House couldn’t get away with a boring careers page – they needed to include creative content and sources to stand out and attract top talent.

It’s easy to see the company’s international orientation and its remarkable presence in hospitality. They use beautiful images for each department to make the navigation for candidates easier based on their expertise:

Onfido

Most career sites contain some basic information about the company, the current job openings and perhaps a few pictures of the workspace. Onfido, though, digs into recruitment marketing and presents something not that common in careers pages: blog posts written by their employees.

Some of these articles introduce new team members, while in others, employees describe their career path that lead them to Onfido. What’s the most interesting about this section is blog posts that talk about company values or other decisions that impact work life. For example, see this article that talks about Onfido’s stance on Brexit or this one that explains how the company prioritizes mental health.

When you have jobs in multiple locations

If you have offices in different cities or even in different places across the world, you face a challenge. You want candidates to be able to search for job opportunities specifically at their desired location, but you also want to maintain – and communicate – a uniform employer brand.

How can you tackle this challenge? With an easy-to-navigate careers page. Let’s look at an example from the hospitality industry:

Belmond

The popular hotel company has built a careers page that prioritizes the user experience. At the top of the page, a search bar lets job seekers filter open positions based on keyword, location and/or department. This way, they can quickly view only the jobs that matter to them the most in the locations they’re most interested in.

Of course, some candidates want to learn more about the company before deciding whether to apply or not. Belmond’s careers page makes that easy too, describing what’s it like working there:

Candidates can then pick their field of interest to find out more and browse job opportunities that fall under this category.

When you’re not a popular brand (yet)

Surely, for the Googles and Microsofts of the world, it’s easy to find numerous candidates who would apply in the blink of an eye. But what about those companies who aren’t quite at that level of brand recognition?

If you’re new in the market or if you’re a small company, it’s only natural that job seekers may not have heard about you. So, if they see one of your job ads and are interested in it, they’ll probably want to learn more about you before applying. So, you need to capture candidates’ attention and make a stellar first impression with a strong careers page:

Mito

This Hungarian communication agency delivers its powerful message “We love clever things” in its careers page with a tweak:

But they don’t want to be vague about those “clever things”. For each business unit, there’s a dedicated section with case studies, clients and team projects. This way, potential candidates get an idea of the type of projects they’ll work on if hired. Plus, they’ll believe that Mito is more than just all talk and no action. Here are some of the case studies from the Digital unit:

Purple

This WiFi platform’s focus is clear: they want candidates to be able to browse job opportunities by location. But they don’t leave it at that. They stand out among other tech companies by adding a personal touch to their careers blog. Job seekers can read interesting articles, including an interview with the company’s CEO and the sales team’s takeaways from a Salesforce event. There’s also a fun story that cleverly explains why the company’s location is better than it sounds.

When you want to keep it simple

Simple doesn’t mean boring. Or, poor in content. A simple careers page is about minimal design and clear copy. There are many reasons why you might want to go towards this direction when building your careers page. For example, you may not have the budget for a very fancy website, or you want to ensure that job seekers won’t get overwhelmed with information. Or, perhaps, a simple design better matches your company’s overall aesthetics.

Here’s an example of a beautifully designed, yet simple, careers page:

Netguru

This Polish software development company uses its characteristic green neon color to illustrate its careers page and highlight the different categories:

Job seekers can browse those different sections to find exactly the type of information they’re seeking. For example, if they want to learn more about the team at Netguru, by clicking the “Meet us” sub-category, they’ll find articles that describe work life and past projects and they’ll read what kind of perks employees have. Likewise, if they’re already considering to apply, a visit to the Recruitment FAQs section will answer the more specific questions on candidates’ minds.

When you want to describe your work life

A careers page is your way to “speak” to would-be candidates before they’re even candidates. You can hook them by describing attractive benefits, a healthy work-life balance and career development opportunities. But there’s a catch. You don’t want to create a profile of “The Ideal Employer”. You want to be realistic in your recruitment marketing in order to attract like-minded employees, such as in the following examples:

Huckletree

You don’t need much to liven up your careers page – that’s a lesson we get from Huckletree, a company that offers coworking spaces in Dublin, Manchester and London. In less than a minute, the following video shows how the workspaces look like and what the company values are:

MarketFinance

The first thing you’ll see when visiting this careers page is a statement of this UK-based finance platform’s company culture followed by three core values. This shows how much emphasis MarketFinance puts on hiring like-minded people. But, describing your culture in a few words or through eye-catching slogans is usually not enough. That’s why they’re letting their employees do the talking.

In the “Meet the team” section, candidates can read mini-interviews where employees from different departments describe their roles, the challenges they face and their career goals. This way, people considering a job at MarketFinance get a more authentic overview of the position directly from those who work there and learn what skills are necessary in order to succeed.

When you emphasize candidate experience

Ask anyone who’s ever been in the lookout for a job about their biggest frustration and the most common answer you’ll get is “not hearing back from a company where I applied”. Resumes that fall into a black hole, hiring processes that seem to last forever and unexpected tests and assignments. These all turn candidates off.

To build a positive candidate experience, and therefore boost your reputation among job seekers, it’s best to be as transparent as possible about your recruitment process. Here’s an example of how you can do that:

Olive

This AI-powered software, which aims to bridge efficiency gaps in the healthcare industry, is direct and descriptive in their careers page about what candidates can expect before even applying. Olive emphasizes that a TA professional will reach out to ideal applicants to have a conversation. “And we do mean conversation”, they stress in the careers page. There are also details on what the evaluation will look like based on the function and department (i.e. sales, tech, corporate), and a confident statement that written and verbal communication will be maintained every step of the way – even if a candidate doesn’t make it to the next step.

When you want… to be unique

Now, here’s an exercise for you: what is it that you want to tell job seekers through your careers page? What makes your company a desirable place to work? What makes your company special and unlike any other out there?

You don’t have to answer these questions immediately. Check with your colleagues first. Ask them questions such as:

• What do you wish you had known about the company beforehand?
• What do you like the most about your job?
• What makes you happiest at work?
• What keeps you productive?
• How have you developed your skills through your time here?
• How would you describe your work life to a friend?

Make sure to talk with employees from all departments to get different perspectives. Then, it’s time to set up your site. You can use the aforementioned career page examples as an inspiration but don’t forget to add your unique touch. That’s the only way to attract candidates who want to work specifically with you.

Here are some additional resources to help you build an effective career site:

FAQ guide: Everything you want to ask about career pages

How to improve your careers page design

How to attract candidates by improving your careers page

What do the best careers pages have in common?

Common mistakes in career pages

Looking for ways to advertise your job ads outside your careers page? Have a look at these great job ad examples.

The post 10 great careers page examples – and why we love them appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here are eight advantages and disadvantages of internal recruitment and how to ensure that when you are hiring internally, your process works:

Advantages of internal recruitment

Hiring internal candidates can be more efficient than recruiting externally, because it can:

Reduce time to hire

When recruiting externally, hiring teams find candidates (either through sourcing or job posting), evaluate them and, if all goes well, persuade them to join their company. All of which takes time. Conversely, internal candidates are already part of your workplace, so the time you need to find and engage those candidates is much less. It’s also easier to assess internal candidates because:

• They’re prescreened for culture fit.
• Their track record is easily accessible.
• They may not always need full interviews with managers (for example, if they are moving within their department, the department head already knows the candidate.)

All these reduce the time spent on each hiring stage and your overall time to hire.

Shorten onboarding times

Everyone needs some time to adjust to a new role, but internal hires are quicker to onboard than external hires. This is because they:

• Know how your company operates and most of your policies and practices.
• May be familiar with people in their new team, especially in smaller businesses.
• May already know the content and context of their new roles if they move within the same team or to a similar one (for example, a sales associate becoming a category manager).

Cost less

Research has shown that external hiring may cost 1.7 times more than internal hiring. This is because when hiring from within, you usually don’t need to:

• Post ads on job boards. It’s easy to inform internal candidates about job openings through email or your company’s internal newsletter. You could also place printed job ads on a bulletin board, if all your employees work in one place.
• Subscribe to resume databases. Instead of sourcing passive candidates on resume databases, ask managers about their team members or look into your HRIS to find coworkers who might fit in your open roles.
• Pay for backgrounds checks. You may already have conducted background checks on internal candidates when you first hired them. And, you know if they’re in good standing based on their manager’s input or employee records.

Strengthen employee engagement

Promoting from within sends a message that you value your employees and want to invest in them. Giving employees more opportunities to advance their careers, or even letting them move to other same-level positions that may interest them, is good for morale: employees who change roles develop professionally and others know they may have similar opportunities in the future. This helps to build a culture of trust that enhances employee engagement and retention.

Disadvantages of internal recruitment

Despite all the merits of internal recruitment, there are some things to keep in mind. Hiring from within can:

Create resentment among employees and managers

Employees who were considered for a role could feel resentful if a colleague or external candidate is eventually hired. Also, managers are often uncomfortable losing good team members and may even go so far as to hinder the transfer or promotion process.

Leave a gap in your existing workforce

When you promote someone to fill an open position, their old position becomes vacant. This means that a series of moves and promotions may ensue that could disrupt your business’ operations. Ultimately you may need to turn to external recruitment in addition to your internal hire.

Limit your pool of applicants

While your company may have a lot of qualified candidates for specific positions, this isn’t necessarily true for every open role. For example, if a role is fairly new to your business, your employees will have other specialties and may not be able to fill this skills gap. Relying solely on internal hiring means you could miss the chance to hire people with new skills and ideas.

Result in inflexible culture

Doing most of your hiring from inside your business may result in a stagnant culture. This is because employees can get too comfortable with the ‘way things are done’ and struggle to spot inefficiencies and experiment with new ways of working. An inflexible culture will be more problematic in leadership positions where employees may need to advocate for change and improvements instead of relying on established, inefficient practices. External hires are essential in shaking up culture and offering a fresh perspective on existing problems.

What could you do to mitigate the disadvantages of internal recruiting?

To avoid resentment, cultivate trust and ensure you hire effectively, you could:

• Ensure promotions or job moves aren’t the only ways to recognize employees or help them advance their careers. Consider offering opportunities for training, job shadowing and job rotation. Also, lay the foundation of rewarding employees frequently (for example, encourage supervisors to praise their employees or give out performance-related bonuses.)
• Have a transparent process. Ensure internal candidates understand your hiring process and why they weren’t selected. It’d be good to give them interview feedback or pointers on what skills they might need to develop to be successful in the future.
• Train managers to prepare their team members’ career paths. Help managers think of possible career moves for their team members and ask them to take part in formulating your business’ succession plan. That way, if a position opens, you could immediately consult your plan to see which employee may be a good fit.
• Avoid communicating an opening if you already have a candidate in mind. Communicating an open role means that you give employees hope that they might be hired for this role. But if hiring teams already prefer a particular candidate, it’s best to reach out to them directly first, instead of encouraging others to apply.
• Use a balanced mix of internal and external recruiting. Each time you want to fill a position, decide whether to recruit internally, externally or both. Base this decision on the job requirements and the skills your current employees have as well as your company’s needs for a culture add.

At the end of the day though, whether you’re focused on internal vs external recruitment, it’s important to structure your hiring process to ensure fair and effective recruiting. Use screening tests and structured interviews, which help you assess candidates more objectively, and communicate well with all candidates. These practices will help you make good hiring decisions and will also build trust in your hiring process.

The post The advantages and disadvantages of internal recruitment appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Knowing these important qualities to look for in an employee means you have better chances of hiring the best people and avoiding the scary costs of making a bad hire.

So, we narrowed down the list to five critical job candidate qualities:

1. Teamwork
2. Willingness to learn
3. Communication
4. Self-motivation
5. Culture fit

This doesn’t imply that you should evaluate only these skills and nothing else. But these are traits you should evaluate no matter the role you’re hiring for. Here’s why:

1. Teamwork

Most jobs require a degree of collaboration with other people – and sometimes managing others, as well. Even work that’s often seen as lonely, such as accounting or software development, may involve considerable input from other people. So unless you’re hiring for a truck driver or a night guard at a museum (which is an awesome job, by the way), you need people who are able to collaborate well with others.

2. Willingness to learn

Life-long learning is a must nowadays – new technology and knowledge come out all the time, and organizations and systems change. Whoever doesn’t learn risks staying behind, no matter their accumulated knowledge or position. A willingness, and ultimately, an ability to learn are very important qualities of a good employee – not just for learning new hard skills, but also for growing as a professional and as a person. The concept of adaptability is also one of the qualities of a good employee and candidate associated with willingness to learn.

3. Communication

Being skilled in communication doesn’t mean you have to be great with words or even really sophisticated and eloquent (although this helps). You need to be able to clearly get your message across, in verbal or written speech, and be able to grasp other people’s meaning (particularly through asking the right questions). Having issues with this can drastically impact job performance.

4. Self-motivation

This trait is sometimes used by companies as a euphemism for “I won’t ask for a higher salary and will work long hours without complaining”. But that’s not what this skill is about (needless to say, you should always pay people a living wage and avoid overworking them). Self-motivation is about liking what you do enough to want to do a good job regardless of the external reward. Self-motivation can also be called “passion” – though this term might be a bit over the top.

5. Culture fit

The exact meaning of “culture fit” changes with every organization. But it’s not as simple as being about who you want to have lunch or an after-work drink with; it’s much more about who understands and embraces the workplace and mode of work, from the open-space layout to the dress code. Culture fit might even change among different teams. It’s a good idea to sit down with your team members and discuss about what constitutes culture fit for your team and narrow it down to specific traits or values.

How do you evaluate these qualities of a good employee?

Now it’s time to think about the ‘how’, so let’s go through an example together: Think about the role you’re hiring for most often – be it software developer, sales associate, customer support specialist or other. As our example, we choose the generic role of “software developer”.

Let’s say you have three candidates to interview: Sam, Cassandra, and Joe. Let’s meet our hypothetical candidates:

Sam

He’s an experienced developer with a background in machine learning. He’s polite and confident in his knowledge.

Cassandra

She’s a mid-level developer who’s currently working towards an MSc in machine learning and data science. She’s assertive and sharp.

Joe

He’s a mid-level developer who wants to try his hand in machine learning. He’s curious and easy-going.

By these basic descriptions, all of those candidates seem like a good fit for the role. And they might be. Now, we’ll evaluate them against the five critical qualities of a good employee and candidate using a conspicuous but effective tool: interview questions.

Teamwork

Can you tell me more about this project you worked on? Did you encounter any difficulties and how did you solve them?

Sam:

I was the leader of this project and organized the whole workflow from start to finish. My team was slow to grasp requirements but, after a few meetings I organized, everything went well. In the end, I completed the project ahead of time and presented the final solution to the CEO herself – which she liked very much.

Cassandra:

I worked on this project when I first arrived at the company, so it helped me get to know my colleagues better. I liked the frequent stand-ups and the fact we were all free to ask for help from one another. Personally, I believe I did a great job and had no difficulties to speak of.

Joe:

In this project, we were a team of five which was the largest team I’ve ever worked in. We had frequent meetings and worked in pairs with our leader checking in with us every week. We had some organizational issues at the beginning, but after we implemented a structured agenda in our daily standups, we clarified things and got on faster.

In this question, the best answer comes from Joe in terms of teamwork skills. He uses the pronoun “we” instead of “I” and speaks about his “team” instead of his own contribution. Cassandra clearly values collaboration, but she displays less team spirit than Joe. Sam speaks about his own work and doesn’t recognize his team members (he actually hints on having problems with them) – this is a big red flag because he was the leader of the project.

Here’s more information about effective teamwork interview questions and potential red flags.

Willingness to learn

Tell me about a time you received negative feedback on a specific area of your work.

Sam:

One of my managers once told me that my code had a lot of unnecessary lines and was tough to read. I immediately asked him to have a meeting with me and show me how I can do this differently. We spent a lot of time going over my code and I was able to quickly improve my skills.

Cassandra:

My former manager told me that I needed to work faster to meet deadlines. I recognized this as a problem with my organizational skills – at that point, we were working on several projects at once and I had a hard time juggling everything. So, I sat down to sort out everything, created a to-do list that I felt comfortable with and asked for relevant training. I swore to myself that I’d never miss a deadline again.

Joe:

My first manager had given me a list of things I had to do to learn to write better code. I was a junior then, so I worked really hard to do everything he told me, so I could grow to be a developer who didn’t need any feedback.

All three candidates gave satisfying answers in this question, but there were notable differences. Joe gave the least well-thought-out answer because he’s implying that the more senior he gets, the less likely he is to expect feedback, which doesn’t bode well for his willingness to keep learning – it’s possible he lacks one of the qualities of a good employee and candidate. Sam and Cassandra both described the feedback they received with more details, which could mean they took it very seriously. Cassandra displays a slightly stronger drive to improve.

Communication

Your manager asks you to present the plan for a new voice recognition app to a group of prospective customers from different departments (e.g. software development, finance, marketing). How do you structure your presentation?

Sam:

I would try to steer clear of technical lingo in my presentation. I would present the idea for the app first and then go into details about how it works without getting too technical. Probably, I would also gather relevant data that people from finance or marketing would like to see. Another thing I’d do is spend a lot of time preparing to answer questions, as I think this is the best way to connect with the audience.

Cassandra:

First, I’d see if I could learn who exactly will be in the meeting. If I know their exact roles, I can better tailor my presentation. Then, I’d make sure they can grasp the idea behind the app – I’d look for a prototype I could show them or real-life similar apps. Multimedia is a great mechanism to get the message across, so I might add a relevant video or a graphic. In general, I’d keep the presentation short and to the point and I’d make sure to give the audience room for questions.

Joe:

I’d ask my manager what they think this audience wants to hear and what they are interested in. Do they need the technical details or do they need an example? Do we already have an initial version of the app we can show them? And then, I would rehearse the presentation in front of a couple of my colleagues from different departments and incorporate their feedback.

All three answers look good (wouldn’t you like to always have candidates who show the qualities of a good employee so easily?). Cassandra and Joe have thoughtful ideas about presenting to their audience – and they start with the most important question: what does my audience want/need? They also talk about presenting examples, and Joe shows his collaborative spirit again by saying he’d ask for help from an audience that’s similar to the one he’s presenting to. Sam is the only one who may be assuming too much about his audience, which might signal a communication problem.

Here are more communication interview questions.

Self-Motivation

Should you be hired, what do you think you would like and dislike in this role?

Sam:

Based on what you’ve told me, this role is exactly what I want to do at this point in my career. My previous role didn’t allow me to properly experiment with machine learning, but this role will. I can’t wait to learn more about your stack and your natural language processing projects and I also have this idea we can try out as a side project. The only thing that I might not like is that your teams don’t seem to use Scrum, which I’m most familiar with, but I’m sure I will quickly learn your current framework.

Cassandra:

I really like the company and the role. I’ve heard a lot of good things about your development teams as well as your workplace. The new projects you’re working on are very relevant to my Master’s so I’ll be able to apply my knowledge on the job and learn more about the practical aspects of machine learning – and also come up with new projects. I think I could be quite happy here.

Joe:

I like that the job involves machine learning, which is something I always wanted to learn more about. The experience I will get in this role will help me a lot in this way and I think I can do a very good job. I’m also thinking of doing a Master’s in machine learning and I want to be sure that this is what I want.

Sam gave the best answer in this question; thoughtful, enthusiastic and honest. He seems to consciously want this job. Cassandra bases her initial response on external factors (the company and the teams); although, she does connect her studies to the role and says she’d like to offer new ideas, afterward. Joe’s answer was neutral and he also seems to consider this job as a stepping stone in finding what he wants to do (which could be fine, depending on individual hiring manager requirements and the seniority of the role).

Culture fit

What’s one thing you like about your current (or prior) job and you’d want here as well?

Sam:

I liked the fact that we were having lots of fun together with my colleagues – both men and women. Some of us were good friends and still are. This makes it so much more satisfying to come to work each morning.

Cassandra:

In my previous company, we valued both teamwork and independent working. Not a day would go by when we wouldn’t have impromptu meetings to discuss current projects and new ideas, but as soon as anybody had their headphones on or went to a meeting room, we would respect their quiet time.

Joe:

I like an environment that’s structured because I work better this way. If you tell me that I need to come to work at 11 each morning, I’ll be there on time. But if you tell me to come in whenever I want, I’ll spend my nights worrying.

In this question, Sam seems to value the importance of liking the people he works with. He’s probably looking for a workplace where a sense of “community” is important. Cassandra appreciates the variety in modes of work and respecting each person’s choice. Joe likes structure, which would make him more comfortable in less-flexible workplaces.

We probably need a disclaimer here: Culture fit is one of the most subjective qualities of a good job candidate and it’s unique to each team and company. If you’re sure you know what culture fit means for your team, you’ll be able to evaluate it by looking at answers to culture fit questions as well as at each candidate as a whole.

Do you agree with our 5 qualities of a good employee?

We hope these examples gave you an idea about how to evaluate qualities to look for when hiring an employee. Do evaluate other hard and soft skills specific to the role, but these questions provide useful insights into candidates’ fit. I have a preference toward Cassandra who gave good and thoughtful answers without showing any major red flags. But that’s just me. Who would you hire?

The post 5 qualities of a good employee and candidate and how to evaluate them in an interview appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If you had to name one thing as your biggest hiring headache, what would it be? It’s true that your answers might vary depending on the size of the company you work with or the type of roles you’re hiring. But, most recruiters would gravitate to a few common recruiting challenges.

8 common recruiting challenges, and solutions to overcome them:

1. Attracting the right candidates

If you’ve ever tried to discover the right candidate in a pool full of unqualified talent, you’ll know that your options are limited. You’ll choose the best person you can find at the time—not the best fit for the job. But it’s not always about the number of candidates who apply; the best way to hire the right people is often from a smaller pipeline of more qualified talent.

Tip: Be clear about the requirements in your job ads and give a concise view of the role. Use an application form with ‘knock-out’ questions to directly address your key concerns. For example, need someone with a clean driving license? Include a yes/no question asking candidates if they have one. It’s a fast way to screen out people who aren’t right for the role.

2. Engaging qualified candidates

Good candidates are often contacted regularly by recruiters, making it harder for your own email to stand out. In addition, candidates with hard-to-find skills are often considering several job offers at the same time. You need to put extra effort into persuading passive candidates to choose your company over your competitors.

Tip: Before contacting a passive candidate, research what motivates them and what makes them happy in their job. With this knowledge, personalize your sourcing emails to describe what you can offer them instead of what they can do for your company.

3. Hiring fast

Hiring teams want to hire as fast as possible, because vacant positions cost money and delay operations. Yet, depending on your industry, making a hire can take several months putting pressure on recruiters and frustrating hiring teams. A long time to hire may be a byproduct of a shortage of qualified candidates. The hiring process may be too long or hiring teams might struggle to reach a consensus, resulting in the best candidates finding jobs elsewhere.

Tip 1: Look at your hiring process and ask yourself: are all the hiring stages really required? Are we looking in the right places to fill our candidate pipelines? Do we communicate quickly with candidates and with each other? All these questions can be answered with the help of recruiting metrics from your Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

Tip 2: Sometimes long time to hire is natural when you’re hiring for hard-to-fill roles. Explain that to the hiring teams and set expectations early on. Let them know what a realistic timeline is and highlight the importance of hiring carefully for roles where a bad hire could cost a lot of money.

4. Using data-driven recruitment

Companies can use recruitment data and metrics to constantly improve their recruiting process and make more informed decisions. But collecting and processing data can be a hassle. Spreadsheets are one way to track hiring data but they require manual work, are prone to human error—and they’re not compliant. This makes it hard to track data and trends accurately. Hiring teams need ways to compile and organize data in an efficient and streamlined way.

Tip: You can store data and export helpful reports using systems like an ATS, Google Analytics or recruitment marketing software. You don’t need to track every recruiting metric there is. Have a conversation with senior management to settle on a few metrics that make sense to you and your company.

5. Building a strong employer brand

A good employer brand helps you attract and engage better candidates. Organizations that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire. Yet, it’s a complex process that includes anything from ensuring a positive candidate experience to promoting your culture on social media. It’s a continuous, collective effort that requires you to step out of your usual duties and secure buy-in from your coworkers.

Tip: Always reply (courteously) to online reviews – bad and good. Give your coworkers the means to tell their story about their work and what they like (for example, through blogs and videos). And above all, be a good employer and it’ll show.

6. Ensuring a good candidate experience

Candidate experience isn’t only important for employer branding, but it’s also a factor when your best candidates are evaluating your job offers. The way you treat candidates during the hiring process mirrors the way you’ll treat them after hiring. If they had a bad experience, they’re less likely to accept. Conversely, positive candidate experiences can enhance your employer brand and encourage good candidates to apply and accept your job offers.

Tip 1: Set expectations for communication: tell candidates when they should expect to hear from you and, if you have an ATS, set reminders and use email templates to follow through with that promise. Don’t leave them in the dark throughout the hiring process.

Tip 2: Coordinate well with candidates. If you’re scheduling an in-person interview, give them all necessary information (like who to ask for and what to bring). Explain what they should expect from the interview and what the next steps are. Inform reception they’re coming and don’t let them wait in the lobby.

7. Recruiting fairly

Many companies struggle to attract and hire diverse candidates and unconscious biases are often the reason. Apart from your legal obligations to provide equal opportunities, hiring objectively is good for business because it helps you hire the best person for the job without stereotypes interfering. This will result in an inclusive workplace showing potential candidates that you’re a meritocracy and allowing you to benefit from diversity’s positive effects.

Tip: Implement objective hiring techniques like structured interviews and ‘blind’ hiring software like GapJumpers.

8. Creating an efficient recruiting process

Hiring teams need to communicate fast, evaluate candidates easily and know what’s going on every step of the way. Recruiters are tasked with coordinating all this communication and it’s not always a breeze. Especially if recruiters’ relationship with hiring managers is strained. Also, administrative tasks (like scheduling interviews) often take away valuable time that recruiters could have used in coordinating the hiring process and ensuring good candidate experience.

Tip: Consider investing in an ATS that helps your team coordinate and see the status of the hiring process at a glance. This system will let your team leave evaluations and view each other’s comments. And, it’ll ease some of the administrative tasks via built-in email templates, calendar integrations and more.

The best recruitment methods to overcome common challenges

Build a talent pool

Talent pipelines are groups of candidates you’ve already engaged who can fill future positions in your company. This can help you reduce time to hire and recruiting costs, because you’ll already have qualified, pre-screened candidates in line when a role opens. To build talent pipelines:

• Look into past hiring processes for candidates who advanced to the final stages or source new candidates. Past candidates are obviously qualified, while new ones will help you build a more comprehensive and diverse candidate database. You could also consider candidates who reached out to your company by sending their resumes. When candidates are EU residents, make sure you follow the data protection laws like GDPR.
• Engage past and passive candidates. Your pipelines are stronger if candidates know you’re considering them and if you’re staying in touch. Let them determine how often you’ll communicate with them, either via in-person meetings or by sending them useful content and information.

Train hiring teams

Even experienced hiring managers and interviewers may need to level up their hiring skills. Combating biases is a common reason to train hiring teams, but coaching them on interview questions to ask or how to build rapport with candidates are also important. Here are a few ideas to train hiring teams:

• Instruct interviewers on how to prepare for interviews. Giving them a checklist will be helpful.
• Encourage them to take Harvard’s Implicit Association Test to identify their hidden biases. Educating them on how biases work is also a good idea.
• Arrange mock interviews. This will be especially useful for inexperienced interviewers.
• Disseminate recruiting resources. Ask each hiring team member whether they’d be interested in receiving interesting articles or videos with hiring advice. Set expectations of the amount they’ll need to read, for example, send an article once a month.

Diversify your recruiting strategies

It’s good to advertise on a job board that you know brings good candidates. But leaving it at that is a missed opportunity to create a truly powerful hiring process. Consider:

• Using social media to post your jobs or promote your company.
• Showcasing your culture, benefits and employee stories in your careers site to encourage more applicants.
• Attending job fairs and host recruiting events whenever possible.
• Using tools like People Search to source candidates based on location, skills and other job-related criteria.

Invest in an ATS

An ATS can streamline your hiring process by making it possible for your hiring team to collaborate and keep all candidate data in one place. A good ATS also has:

• Reporting capabilities, which can help you extract useful insight from your past processes to improve the future ones.
• Scheduling tools and calendar integrations, which can help you schedule phone screens and interviews fast and minimize back-and-forth communications.
• Built-in templates, which help you post job ads and send emails to candidates fast, without writing the text from scratch every time.
• Interview scorecards, which can make the shift towards structured interviews smoother.
• Assessment integrations, which help you evaluate candidates more objectively.

All these features (and more) power up your hiring and help you make faster and better hiring decisions.

The post The most common recruiting challenges and how to overcome them appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What constitutes a hostile work environment?

Hostile work environment definition

First, let’s define ‘hostile work environment.’ A hostile work environment is a workplace that makes employees feel “uncomfortable, scared, or intimidated” due to unwelcome conduct. There are a number of questions that arise based on this hostile work environment definition, such as:

• What kind of conduct is ‘unwelcome’?
• What’s the frequency or severity of unwelcome conduct that creates a hostile environment?
• How can a company be sure that employees truly feel scared or intimidated instead of just unsatisfied with their workplace?
• What are the tangible signs of a hostile work environment?

Answers to these questions will help you determine what qualifies as a hostile work environment. Sometimes, you might need to make some improvements to promote a happier and more productive workplace, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you also need to worry about hostility or legal complaints. But, if you determine your company does have a hostile environment, action is imperative.

Hostile work environment: The legal side

Examining hostile work environment laws helps you determine whether there are legal risks in your workplace. For example, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says that a hostile work environment results from harassment:

Harassment that causes a hostile work environment is “unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”

This means that any kind of discriminatory action and harassment on the basis of protected characteristics can bring about a hostile environment which might bring a lawsuit (not to mention the negative impact that would have on the reputation of your company).

But, not every unpleasant work environment is illegal. The EEOC states that “petty slights, annoyances, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious)” aren’t considered illegal. For example, if someone makes inappropriate but non-discriminatory jokes at a colleague, or if someone overworks and belittles their team, their conduct might not qualify as illegal. This means that employees might face difficulties when filling an EEOC complaint for hostile work environment in these cases.

Still, this distinction matters only if your sole purpose is to avoid lawsuits. While this is a valid concern for employers, eliminating smaller issues and workplace bullying should also be top of mind; after all, a fair and respectful work environment can maximize employee productivity, engagement and retention.

What is unwelcome conduct?

Harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, victimization, violence and many other kinds of offensive or inappropriate behavior qualify as unwelcome conduct. All of them will create a hostile work environment if they’re happening consistently or purposefully, or in the case of a single incident, if they’re severe.

For example, if someone makes a sexist comment toward a colleague, they need to face repercussions, but, their off-hand comment will probably not foster hostility in the workplace.

On the other hand, if that person is a supervisor or makes similar comments on a regular basis, their conduct can create a hostile environment. The same applies if the action is severe enough – think of the scene in the comedy film Horrible Bosses where Jennifer Aniston drugs her dental assistant.

Though this may seem too extreme to happen in real life (despite the known horrors that take place on dentists’ chairs), severe actions do occur in workplaces, including sexual assault. And these types of conduct need only happen once to create a hostile environment.

The signs of a hostile work environment

An unhappy workplace has certain characteristics, e.g. people experiencing burnout symptoms, people arguing often, employees complaining they’re underpaid or underappreciated. And there are many more other signs that clearly point to job dissatisfaction, such as absenteeism, lack of resources, job insecurity brought by layoffs, etc.

On the other hand, in a hostile work environment, you’re more likely to see fear, apprehension, and official complaints to HR about bullying or discrimination.

So, what behaviors are considered criteria for a hostile work environment?

Here are some possible examples of hostile work environment:

• Sexual / racial harassment. These are two things that always create a hostile environment for employees. You can’t have people making vulgar comments about gender or sexual orientation, spouting racial slurs or ridiculing someone on the basis of sex or race, and claim you have a healthy workplace. If you’ve received relevant complaints or heard this kind of verbal abuse yourself, you’re probably going to see increased hostility in the workplace.
• Discrimination of any kind. For example, you may hear about or see a hiring manager regularly rejecting applicants who are older than, say, 35 years old. Or those who are female, or foreign-born. This means that they’re biased against these groups of people so it’s possible they don’t behave properly to those already in your company belonging to those groups. Not only can bias foster a hostile workplace, but discrimination against protected characteristics is also illegal in many countries.
• Consistent aggressiveness. Imagine you frequently overhear the VP of sales yelling at their personal assistant or see them shoving their business development executives. This could be a sign that their teams are experiencing a hostile workplace where they’re victimized or afraid. Even when someone is regularly resorting to passive-aggressive behaviors or pushing others to unhealthy competition, that’s a red flag – even though this behavior is likely not illegal.
• Ridiculing or victimization. Some people may play jokes or tease each other – that’s normal between work friends. But if you witness a very serious prank that leaves the person embarrassed and frustrated, or if someone has set up a Facebook group to ridicule a colleague, that’s a sign of a hostile workplace. Targeting people for public humiliation is increasingly unacceptable, as seen in the increased focus on cyberbullying.
• Lots of complaints and threats for punishment. If employees are constantly filing complaints and supervisors talk of disciplining or punishing employees, something is definitely wrong. Even if you don’t see official complaints, keep your ears open when the conversation turns to personal experiences in the workplace.
• That feeling you get. Your gut can probably tell you if you’re working in a good or a bad workplace. If you or your coworkers often feel miserable, afraid or threatened, that’s a clear sign of a hostile work environment. Keep an eye out for people who sabotage or slander others, who are generally disrespectful or offensive, and who disparage other people’s ideas or personalities. They might be fostering a hostile environment as we speak.

These are all signs you can notice whether you’re looking in from the outside or work closely with the people at fault. If you’re a manager, it’s even easier to recognize unwelcome behavior in your team since you (should) interact with them on a regular basis.

How to fix a hostile workplace

There’s no clear answer; each company deals with an abusive work environment on a case-by-case basis.

A hostile workplace that’s created by a single person has an obvious solution – you fire that person, or at least reprimand them so it doesn’t happen again. But even then, there are concerns: what if that person is the CEO or an executive you have no authority over? What if they’re the best performer and the company absolutely needs them? What if there are other issues you hadn’t foreseen or what if their action wasn’t so severe as to warrant termination?

In this case, you can speak to the person creating the hostile environment directly. If they don’t show willingness to change, go to their supervisor and explain the situation. If you are the person’s supervisor, even better: you have the authority to coax them into really listening and getting better.

If the person fostering hostility is the CEO, that’s a more difficult situation to deal with. You can, however, speak to them and make the case for fixing your workplace by appealing to their best interests as a CEO. Try your hand by giving them data on performance and productivity and talk to them about the nature of complaints. It’d also be useful to talk about turnover rates and associated costs. Present a list of changes that should happen or a course of action.

Of course, sometimes, managers and HR need to be bold enough to terminate employees who pose legal and ethical risks with their behavior – even if they’re the brightest stars in their field of expertise. And other times, CEOs who are at fault might be forced to resign if there’s enough pressure.

And if it’s a culture problem?

The most difficult hostile work environment cases are when the entire company, or a great part of it, contributes to hostility. The notorious bro cultures of some companies are good examples of hostile workplaces to women or LGBTQ people. Even “idle banter” can result in a hostile work environment.

The case of Uber is perhaps one of the most well-known because the company has not only allegedly saw cases of sexual harassment in their offices, but has been also accused of not doing enough to protect Uber passengers. Uber isn’t alone in facing serious allegations; recently, former FBI recruits (including current agents) sued the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for gender and racial discrimination.

It’s not a stretch to imagine these two being included in a list of hostile work environment examples due to reported systemic discrimination and culture. If your company has a hostile work environment because of cultural problems, then you have your work cut out for you. But you can start from somewhere:

• Draft a company policy, depending on the problem you have. For example, if the main problem is sexual harassment, and it often is, be sure to have a policy that clearly defines the different forms of harassment (as Uber actually did). Also, state the disciplinary actions that will follow if someone engages in harassment. It’d also be useful to have a policy about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in general, since there’s no universal consensus on what those behaviors are (remember to include conduct on social media!).
• Get buy-in from executives. Some executives (especially senior management) may deliberately participate in or promote the toxic culture, but others may not have noticed that something is wrong, especially if they’re not involved in the day-to-day work. Talk to them openly, and make sure they take the situation seriously (present data on turnover, complaints and information on legal risks). Then, work with them for a plan and encourage them to have honest discussions with their teams.
• Open up paths of communication and act properly. Some statistics show that almost all cases of sexual harassment at work go unreported, according to a recent article. This is because many employers react to complaints by retaliating against the complainant (usually by firing them, as the article states). That should be a no-no for any serious company, and it’s also illegal under EEOC laws, opening the door for more lawsuits. Assure your employees they can report their complaints, investigate properly and be prepared to take action if you find compelling evidence – towards the perpetrator, not the victim. You should also provide good advice to employees facing a hostile environment, such as their ability to file police reports or civil lawsuits when appropriate.

Through all this, be patient. You should be able to immediately stop unwelcome conduct before it goes to the lengths of harassment or violence, but broader changes in culture don’t happen in a day. You may feel hesitant to rock the boat, divide or antagonize your team or lose good employees. But you are obliged and need to pull through.

Your job, after all, is to ensure a safe, open and inclusive environment for your colleagues – all of them – to work in.

This is your opportunity to step up and make changes that will reflect positively in the eyes of management and even the bottom line. Employees will trust you and your company will be on the right path to a happy and productive workplace that’s better for everyone.

The post Horrible workplaces: The signs of a hostile work environment and what to do about it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As Ryan’s company grew, he found people’s hesitation about remote work only grew with the size of the company – effectively, the larger you are, the more you must have an office for everyone to work in.

But Ryan has shushed those naysayers. SmartBug, a marketing agency that’s “headquartered” in California with its entire 80-strong workforce all working remotely, is now certified as a Great Place to Work. It’s also been named to the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies for three straight years, as well as the AdWeek 100 Fastest Growing Agencies List.

With the world rapidly – and for many, uncomfortably – moving towards remote work as a permanent solution, it’s good to learn from the experts who’ve already done it and have been doing it for a long time. So we got in touch with Ryan to find out the method behind the madness.

Back in the beginning

As it happens, Ryan’s life as a remote CEO was personally motivated:

“When I was 17, my dad passed away. He worked so hard. He was in aerospace and in quality assurance, so he traveled a lot. But he was always present at 95% of the things that I did. He coached our sports teams and all of these things.”

Ryan wanted to be that kind of a father for his kids. “I didn’t want to be the dad who never saw his kids grow up because I’m always at the office.”

He also had large aspirations being the CEO of SmartBug. He wanted to be able to invest a fair amount of time and energy into that but without taking it away from his family or vice versa.

“If you’re the CEO of a company and you parachute in once a month to make a decision about which you have no information, you have no camaraderie with your team, you’ve never gone to war with any of them – like, nobody wants to work for that person. That’s not a leader in my opinion.”

So – being caught in that career-vs-family dilemma, Ryan opted to choose both.

“At the time, the only way that I could be there for my kids and be there for my company was to be remote – it was the only solution to our problem.”

It’s a two-way street

Ryan wanted to extend that setup to his employees. He believes that if you show employees that you value what they do outside of work by granting them the power to set a work and life cadence that suits them best, the payoff is huge.

Ryan figured he could make that happen with an all-remote model at his company – this way, he could get better talent faster, and as a result, people at his company would work in an agile way in a challenging environment with very smart colleagues.

“At the same time, [you] give them the flexibility and freedom to have a great career and go create memories in their life, which at the end of the day is what matters to us, and that we could do both.”

A work-life integration

But according to Ryan, that doesn’t mean work-life balance. It’s actually work-life integration.

“I think work-life balance assumes that you turn off things at 5 o’clock and there’s some kind of schedule in which work isn’t a big part of your life. Work-life integration is more that you can do both. Let’s assume I want to run a triathlon, and my triathlon team trains at 3 o’clock on Tuesday. In a work-life balance environment when I’m 9 to 5, I wouldn’t be able to participate in that because the expectation is that the company wants you there til 5. Those are business hours.

“In work-life integration, the employee makes a decision to say, ‘You know what, I’m gonna schedule in 3 to 6 p.m. every Tuesday for my training’. In fact, we encourage people to schedule the things that matter in their life first. I pick up my kids every day from the bus at 3, I train for the triathlon, whatever, and then make life decisions after that, knowing that I can do the non-customer facing things outside of business hours. It’s an empowering decision for people.

“That’s integrating your work in your life in such a way that you can win both.”

This requires a special kind of worker who can thrive in this sort of environment.

“We feel like people who are kind of sharp and driven […] we’ll take advantage of that and design their work schedule in such a way that they do the best work at the right time and that they have time for the things that matter at the right time, and there’s so much time in a week that you should be able to do both.”

The realities of the 9-to-5

Although the death of the 9-to-5 schedule is often proclaimed by leading publications including Financial Review and Inc., with arguments to shorten it to as little as five hours a day, the 9-to-5 grind is still a common reality. Since this work tradition dates way back to the days of Ford and his automobile plants, there’s bound to be skepticism.

That’s evident in the clear gap between those who want greater flexibility in many different forms in their work schedules (a staggering 96% of those surveyed) and those who actually have it (less than half that – just 47%). So, what does Ryan say to those companies that insist on staying with the standard?

That kind of pushback, he says, usually comes from someone who’s either unfamiliar or new to remote work. And that applies not only to employers, but employees too:

“In fact, there was an example of someone here who when you talk to them, they’re like, ‘I’m really stressed out with this remote stuff’, and I ask them why. [Their response is]; ‘Well, I just feel like I need to be at my desk all the time in case a client calls’.”

Ryan says he would ask them what it was like when they worked in-house at an office – the response would be that they would leave a voicemail message. If that call was at 4:30, i.e. later in the day and you weren’t able to return that call, then they’d just call the next day. And so on.

Ryan’s point: “What’s the difference so as long as you’re available for your clients and you’re available for your team? Why does the rest of it matter?”

And not being able to see someone physically at their desk is a sign of distrust, he says. “It’s not really just trust – it’s more like an unfounded fear that something’s not getting done.”

Face the fears, and then overcome them

We’re now in an environment that has really pushed many companies to a fully remote workplace. But that doesn’t mean that when we return to “normal” office life, we’ll also all move back into the office. A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey has found that 49% of companies are prepared to go fully remote with roles that can accommodate that.

That makes it even more important to hire great people who can thrive in that new remote environment, says Ryan. You don’t have to worry that they’ll do their job, because you’ll know pretty quickly if they aren’t, by way of feedback from clients or colleagues.

He emphasizes that when you make a hire, you’re sending a message of trust that your new employee will be a valuable asset to your team – so it doesn’t make sense if you want to be able to see them at their desk or keep them to a fixed schedule after they’ve been hired.

At the root of it is an underlying fear of change for many managers and companies, and this current crisis is a catalyst that makes them face that fear. Ryan explains:

“It forces them to realize that what people can do is just as good […] and they’re just as passionate about their work – they just happen to be on a video or they happen to be in their pajamas or their kid might be running in the background, but you [still] hired a passionate person.”

ID your stars from the start

Not everyone’s cut out for remote work, obviously – a Gallup poll finds that 41% of U.S. workers will want to return to the office once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. But that means 59% do want to work remotely as much as they’re permitted to do so by their employer.

Of that 59%, however, there will be some who just don’t operate that well in a remote fashion. When you’re hiring for a remote position, you’ll want to identify the ones who can indeed shine in that environment. That means you’ll need to adapt the way you assess candidates.

But before doing that, Ryan stresses, you can’t let go of the normal job interview process. Out of all the hires he’s made in the history of his company, he’s only met two in person before hiring them. That’s two, out of an 80-strong employee base. The rest were via video – and previously, phone calls, which he called a huge leap of faith.

But that doesn’t mean the hire is made entirely on a hunch. There are strategies you can follow outside of the normal hiring process with the standard interview questions. Otherwise, you may make some bad choices:

“A candidate could put on their game face and say they love remote, and be this dynamic person, and talk to me about autonomy, and how they plan their schedule, but at the end of the day, if they do it for two weeks, they might be, like, ‘I need some friends’.”

How to screen for remote-first workers

How do you recognize those red flags in a candidate before you’ve hired them? First, Ryan looks to where the candidate’s social energy comes from. For instance, if you find that a candidate likes going to work and goes to lunch and happy hour with the same people regularly, then remote work may be viewed as that being taken away from them.

That’s problematic, Ryan says. There are questions you can ask around that – for instance, ask a candidate: “When’s the best time for you to work?” Ryan says if the answer is that they love coming to work early in the morning or staying late, or shutting their door and having no meetings, because they can really get work done, then you know you’ve got someone who would be a good fit for remote.

”[You know] they’ll appreciate it. They gain something. […] It’s like ‘I lose something’ versus ‘I gain a freedom’. We really try to find the people that aren’t going to lose something when they go remote, but are looking for remote as a way to get rid of all the distraction.”

The second thing Ryan looks for is resiliency – the ability to adapt and pivot quickly in a less-structured environment. You don’t have those normal outlets where you can just go down the hall and vent in someone’s office after every minor hiccup. While there are still avenues through which you can help each other through rough patches – remote doesn’t mean isolated, after all – being resilient is still a powerful skill in a remote environment.

“So, 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,” says Ryan.

“That resiliency of understanding that, ‘Hey, I’ve got a certain amount of time during the day. My plan is X, but it may be that my plan is Y by noon because something more important came up, and I’m OK with that. I made that bargain in my head that I’m exchanging this for that, and it’s no big deal.”

Someone who’s able to do that, operating in unpredictable and less-structured environments, can really step up at a remote-first company like SmartBug.

Go deeper into the background

Ryan suggests taking a good part of the interview to talk to the candidate to assess their resiliency, even asking outright if they think they’re resilient and to share some examples of their being so. Rather than asking, “Give me an example of when you had a challenging project and what you did about it”, which Ryan thinks isn’t deep enough, he suggests that you open it up and explore the candidate’s background and experiences in a more open-ended way.

“It could be that you worked at a company where you were under-resourced constantly and you had to be scrappy, it could be that you had some situation that required you in your personal life to do something outstanding.”

Ryan says that part of the interview can take up 20 minutes or more because it’s worth it.

“I think that if you fish around for adversity and resiliency and stuff, you find people who have mettle, and mettle, I think, goes a long way in a remote workforce.”

The benefits of remote work

There are actually benefits to remote work that aren’t enjoyed in a traditional office environment, Ryan says – especially as it pertains to office culture and politics.

“In any company, there is sometimes animosity between one employee and another for whatever reason. In a remote company you never see that. You know, one person that’s always in the boss’ office at 3 o’clock and you see them through the window and they’re laughing and having a great time, and everyone’s wondering what’s going on. You just don’t have all that at a remote company.”

Remote work also better avoids other problems that can arise in a normal office environment, including clashing political views, harassment, discrimination, and other potential toxicities in the workplace.

But it’s not just about eliminating the potential negatives – Ryan finds a fully remote working culture opens up some new opportunities to foster a much more positive environment.

“There are some things that from an HR perspective you don’t really have to focus on. You can just focus on some of the positivity of culture if you find the right people.”

Teams get stronger, too, he adds.

“People [try] to help each other, and people [create] tribes of different interests. Those are really strong because that’s what keeps the remote team together.”

Deeper connections in physical separation

There’s a certain irony in finding deeper connections with people you’ve never – or rarely – met in real life. But that’s what’s happening at SmartBug.

“We hear it frequently when people come [to SmartBug] from in-house that they have tighter relationships here than they had when they were in-house. I think it’s because you have a lot of people who want to make connections with people, and they’re able to find their groups.”

Ryan says that’s because departments don’t tend to interact solely with each other in a relatively larger company of 100 or more employees. “They all have their little fiefdom.”

But those departmental separations are erased at SmartBug, and the company proactively ensures that.

“If I’m at a remote company, the common intersection between the two is that we all like reality TV or we’re all coffee aficionados or we’re all basketball fans. And so when we do onboarding, we have everyone do a get-to-know-you call which is just a 20-minute call, like, the rule is you can’t talk about work. And they do it with every employee.

“The purpose of that thing is to let people find their tribes and the other people that are interested and have commonalities, so that when they […] get into our Zoom, they have their groups that they are part of. Now they have multiple tribes that have the same interest, and the commonality is that interest.”

Teamwork makes the dream work

Unlike in the old days, we as a society are well-equipped to take much of our company remote – or even all of it. Ryan Malone freely admits that it’s still a challenge and that SmartBug Media is still trying to perfect their practice. So far, with a clear emphasis on recruiting strong performers who are drawn to this way of work, and having an effective vetting process in place to find these performers, it seems to be working.

Now, with the push to move to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and a mounting workforce that values flexibility in schedule, Ryan Malone and SmartBug Media don’t just have a head start – they’re already there.

The post Remote work trailblazer: Insights from SmartBug Media’s founder appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

First things first, let us take a moment to elaborate on what employer branding actually is. Employer branding is all about how people see a company’s values and work environment. It includes everything the company does, whether on purpose or not, to promote its unique identity as an employer to current and potential employees.

Employer branding has become a critical factor in attracting and retaining top talent. According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 77% of candidates say that the reputation of a company is important while 80% of HR leaders think that an employer brand has an impact on their recruiting.

However, the evolving nature of work and the increasing expectations of candidates and employees pose unique challenges to effective branding.

This is where the power of AI tools in HR comes into play.

By harnessing the capabilities of generative AI algorithms, you can transform your company’s branding efforts and create a lasting impact to your employees and to the world.

But how does it happen? Let’s go further to understand better the value that AI automations put in your company.

AI in the HR environment

As an HR professional, you already know the magical benefits that AI can offer. AI tools have shortened the time to ramp, alleviating concerns about the screening process, candidate communication, and tracking. This allows you to focus on more creative tasks while leaving automation to handle the mundane tasks.

At the same time, AI can push forward your efforts for better company branding.

Generative AI can be leveraged to enhance various aspects of branding, from employer branding to internal communication. By tapping into the potential of generative AI, you can elevate your company’s brand identity and establish a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience.

Therefore, the result is that effective branding has a positive impact on potential candidates, as well as on the external world and the power of word-of-mouth. Does this sound like marketing to you?

Marketing obviously has a huge payoff – for example, Avatar: The Way of Water was able to make until now $2.320 billion at the box office on an estimated $200M marketing budget. Of course, you don’t have that much money in your recruitment budget, which means you will need to utilize tools like AI to boost your brand.

Allow us to elaborate.

How AI can be used to boost employer branding

Good branding reflects positively on others. The image a company projects to the public can be reshaped using AI tools. A company that uses automation and keeps up with the latest technological developments to handle repetitive processes, while leaving room to utilize people in more creative processes, appears larger in the eyes of others. This creates a positive perception of your business in the public opinion.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that 88% of companies worldwide were already using AI in their HR practices, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. This technology is particularly helpful for talent recruitment and selection, and can also enhance employer branding to attract new talent.

Are you still wondering how these concepts could be applied to your company? Let’s take a look at an example.

AI cheat sheet for better employer branding

Imagine a three-year-old company in a crowded startup market which had sought to revamp its branding and establish a strong reputation after the latest developments in AI. They begin experimenting with these tools to transform their approach.

By leveraging generative AI algorithms, this company has developed personalized and captivating employer branding messages. These messages communicate the organization’s mission, vision, and values, express a commitment to employee growth and development, highlight the culture and work environment, share success stories and employee testimonials, and indicate the company’s impact more clearly in the community.

The company utilized AI to create engaging and informative internal communications that fostered a sense of unity among employees.

At the same time, the organization utilized generative AI to create personalized job postings that would catch the attention of potential candidates. By analyzing large amounts of data, generative AI algorithms produced compelling narratives that would resonate with their intended talent pools. This approach enabled them to customize their employer branding messages for various demographics and increased the chances of attracting suitable candidates.

Moreover, the HR department introduced a new referral system to attract more talent with the help of satisfied employees within the company.

As a result, this company witnessed a surge in qualified applicants, an enhanced candidate experience, and improved employee engagement.

Their innovative use of AI tools propelled their brand reputation, positioning them as a forward-thinking and desirable employer in the industry.

Adopting such tools can help your business in two ways. Firstly, it positions your company as one that people want to work for. Secondly, it establishes a reputation as a company with the very best people working for it.

Intensify candidate attraction with AI

In today’s candidate-driven market, providing an exceptional candidate experience is paramount. Research shows that candidates who have a positive experience are more likely to accept job offers, refer others, and even become customers.

More specifically, in a recent survey, 49% of job seekers confirmed that they have rejected a job offer due to an unfavorable experience with the prospective employer. The way that HR professionals handle communications between candidates can boost or harm your brand reputation.

AI tools can transform the whole process of hiring by paying attention to creating a good rapport with those who apply for a vacancy in your organization. The outcome of achieving that can be very beneficial to your company.

Jacob Rios, Co-Founder and CEO of JobSage said: “You don’t have to spend much time on the internet to learn that most online reviews tend to skew negative, so it’s great to see such a high percentage of candidates also sharing their positive experiences.”

“You don’t have to spend much time on the internet to learn that most online reviews tend to skew negative, so it’s great to see such a high percentage of candidates also sharing their positive experiences.”

“It is so helpful and empowering to future candidates,” Jacob continues. “We’ve spoken to many jobseekers in our line of work and most simply want to learn the truth, both the good and the bad.”

Through generative AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, candidates can receive personalized responses to their inquiries, obtain relevant information about the company and position, and even receive guidance throughout the application process.

This level of personalized engagement not only enhances the candidate experience but also showcases your company’s commitment to providing a seamless and tailored journey.

AI algorithms can analyze your company’s values, mission, and culture to generate internal communications that resonate with employees. From employee newsletters to internal social media posts, generative AI can help you craft compelling content that captures attention and drives engagement.

The 30-60-90 day onboarding framework and AI copilot by Workable are all examples of how AI tools can increase brand reputation and retention rates.

Employer branding equals reputation

As an HR expert, you should consider brand reputation and employer branding as one. Their parameters overlap, and together they create a whole that affects both the internal and external environment of the company. AI tools can assist you throughout this process, but human intervention will always be decisive when it comes to branding.

A business is driven to progress through its people. Therefore, welcome your people, help them become a part of your culture, provide feedback to those who were declined, and keep your eyes on the positive outcome.

The post Boost your employer branding & retention using AI appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

However, we can get a sense of where job markets are heading by considering how algorithms are being wielded to reshape the workplace.

Tech-supported remoteness

One of the most striking changes is the shift towards remote work. This was inspired initially by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the jury is still out about the extent to which the migration to home offices will become permanent.

But automation technologies and AI have played a key role in enabling individuals to work remotely, a trend that will likely continue.

The growing use of telecommunications, the internet, Internet of Things (IoT) sensing, and cloud services provide a robust infrastructure for heavily decentralized yet effectively coordinated human activity.

As a result, even the diversity of languages becomes less of a barrier to working together through automated language translation.

Technologies like these support almost all facets of remote work. For example:

• IoT sensors provide remote monitoring visibility
• Cloud apps provide remote access to data and functionality
• Robots offer remote control of physical systems
• Employee performance-monitoring systems ensure remote workers are working
• AR/VR systems could provide better telepresence regardless of where workers are physically located

Individuals adept at using these technologies are well-suited to remote environments and hence better able to compete for these jobs.

Digital natives seem very comfortable with online interactions and prefer texting over face-to-face meetings and telephone calls (although they say personal interactions are essential). They tend to be comfortable and productive in virtual digital environments like the Metaverse.

This enables and even improves the serendipity of chance encounters – the utility of which has been one of the main complaints against remote work – because the constraints the physical workspace places on interactions are significantly reduced in cyberspace. Such encounters can be programmed to be random.

Firms face a trade-off between hiring only from the limited population within the physical commuting distance of the physical workplace versus hiring the best talent from the vastly larger pool of people anywhere in the world and dealing with them primarily online.

Brick-and-mortar outcomes

But remote work will only account for a portion of the jobs available in an AI-driven world, so how will AI be used to rethink the traditional workplace?

Experts differ in their forecasts about the future of jobs. The Future of Jobs Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum identifies 10 positions with the sharpest decreases in demand.

Many involve simple, routine administrative or physical tasks that AI and robotics can automate. Examples are data entry clerks, assembly and factory workers, and customer service workers.

Despite expected job losses through automation, many people might remain in these categories of jobs for several reasons.

For example, some people will be retained to handle complex work that cannot be easily automated or to manage exceptional situations such as events that fall outside the range of an AI’s training data (the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on businesses being a standout example).

The people most likely to retain these jobs will be the most skilled employees. An example is individuals with the experience to spot when a machine’s output does not make sense and what should be done if it is making a mistake or cannot handle a particular situation.

Also, as noted above, AI will create new types of jobs, and a proportion of these could be low-skill positions because the technology will de-skill the more challenging parts of some job types rather than taking them over.

Also, as noted above, AI will create new types of jobs, and a proportion of these could be low-skill positions because the technology will de-skill the more challenging parts of some job types rather than taking them over.

The aforementioned Future of Jobs Report 2020 lists the top 10 jobs with the sharpest expected increase in demand. Examples are data analysts and scientists, digital market and strategy specialists, and IoT specialists.

Most positions arose from the recent development and adoption of internet technology; many are jobs that barely existed 20 years ago. Each job category represents more than just a new type of job title and new sub-industries and ecosystems of software, services, and consultants.

Thus, these technology-intensive jobs are only the tip of the future employment iceberg.

But such lists gloss over the many changes that will affect jobs. Most jobs will likely make more use of data, online communications, and technology to provide visibility, enable coordination, and track outcomes.

Many office workers will use AI-based services such as ChatGPT and Grammarly to augment their communication skills by allowing them to auto-adjust their emails and work-related writing for clarity, tone, and professionalism.

And many workers will interact more with technological platforms such as portals for suppliers, business customers, human resources, and other departments.

Related: Lead a team through AI: an inclusive approach to change

These changes will improve productivity and increase the value that workers help provide to customers.

It follows that individuals with the foresight to gain and update relevant skills will be the ones who can compete effectively for the new jobs on offer.

The human face of AI

As these examples show, when trying to discern the future shape of the employment landscape, it is helpful to focus on how individuals – whether senior managers or subordinates – will use algorithms to improve their capabilities and productivity.

The most significant utility of AI will be in augmenting and enhancing these human capabilities. One of the outcomes will, naturally, be a change in the way people perform their jobs.

Dr. Yossi Sheffi is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (MIT CTL). His recent book is The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, A.I., and the Future of Work.

The post AI-human fusion: steering the job market renaissance appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The typical employee lifecycle in a company often involves transitions, restructurings, developments, new product releases, changes in strategy, and many other aspects that impact one’s day-to-day work processes.

All of these require an ‘onboarding’ if they want to continue to succeed.

Let’s look at the various situations that can benefit from onboarding plans. Keep in mind that all of them can have the same goal at the end: to prepare an employee for something new.

1. New hires

This is the most common type of onboarding plan. It’s designed to introduce new employees to the company’s culture, policies, procedures, org charts, and ultimately their own role in the organization.

Typically, this plan includes orientation sessions, one-on-one meetings, job-specific training, training on tools and softwares, introductory lunches, and so on.

The objective is to help new employees feel welcome and integrated into the team, and shorten the ramp to full productivity.

2. New project launches

Often, a company will launch a new feature, product or service that will involve new campaigns, processes, strategies and so on to get that out into the marketplace, introduce it to existing/new customers, and bring in new revenue.

This involves onboarding the various teams and employees who will be a part of that launch – and this includes details such as project goals, timelines, roles and responsibilities, and even learning the new product or service itself.

3. New sales strategies

Whether it’s due to the launch of something new, a restructuring of the sales function, a new market penetration or a sales kickoff, sales teams will need to be updated on new strategies so they can be set for success.

This can involve trainings on new sales techniques, product/service knowledge, customer research and market trends – all of which can be conducted through classroom or virtual sessions, role-playing, or one-on-one coaching.

4. Training and development

Learning & development is fast becoming a staple of any human resource strategy. L&D can be focused on new hires and existing employees alike – with a focus on both intangible and tangible skills growth.

Examples include trainings on diversity, equity and inclusion, effective communications, compliance assurance, and any other form of employee growth and development that can be carried through with an effective onboarding plan.

5. Acquisitions and mergers

Often in business, you’ll see acquisitions of other companies or technologies, or mergers with the same. When two divergent groups of employees or technologies come together, this necessitates an onboarding plan to ensure that they work together without losing traction.

This can include training on how to use and integrate new technologies, how to work with others, what the “other” company’s focal product or service is, familiarization with new policies and procedures, and understanding new systems, processes and tools.

Keep the eye on the prize

Let’s tie all this back to the core concept of “onboarding”. It is, ultimately, familiarizing an employee with an area with the goal of setting them for success.

Whether that’s getting a hire acquainted with their new job and company or building up an existing employee’s repertoire of skills, the end result is the same: they are getting the knowledge and resources they need to do their job better.

And, of course, if your employees are better at their work, your bottom line benefits.

The post 5 types of onboarding plans: it’s not just for your new hires appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We then talked aplenty about AI affecting the job landscape and how there didn’t seem to be as much talk about a recession as there was at the start of this year (which feels like a long, long time ago now).

Now, we’re nearly at the midway mark of 2023, and we’re going to explore our SMB hiring data and see if we can pull up some fresh insights.

Let’s get to work!

How we’re looking at data

We’ve adopted two methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.
Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings (JO) 
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Time to Fill is showing signs of stabilization, but remains at its lowest point in our dataset history
• Job activity is particularly robust for small businesses with fewer than 50 full-time employees
• Candidates Per Hire has come down significantly from last month’s surge – but remains at a high point

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of May are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Quick clarification, because people are asking: the data in this chart shows the trendline against the 2019 average as an index of 100, not the actual number of days in TTF.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend through to the end of May against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled:

The second quarter of 2023 continues to see relative stabilization in the Time to Fill trend compared with the first quarter, with May’s 80.8 just a small drop from April’s 83.1, which comes on the heels of March’s 81.8.

What’s really worth noting here is how low the TTF trend is in general. These past three months have seen what’s ultimately the fastest Time to Fill trend in our dataset dating back to 2019. What does this ultimately signify? It can be any of the following:

1. A glut of candidates makes it easier to find the right hire in short order
2. A shortage of candidates means hiring teams work faster to land the right hire before the competition snatches them up
3. Hiring teams are getting faster at hiring because layoffs have reduced the number of touchpoints to a hire
4. Hiring teams are becoming more efficient at hiring because they’ve digitally transformed their hiring process (hint, hint Workable and AI)
5. Hiring teams are becoming more efficient at hiring in general

There are many other potential explanations, but the above is worth thinking about.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers up to the end of May.

Once again, job activity sees a little bump: from 6.6 new job postings per company on average in April to a flat 7 in May. It’s not a lot to write home about, especially since historically a jump from April to May is relatively normal (with 2022 being an exception).

What’s more interesting than month-over-month change here is the relative busy-ness of job activity throughout 2023 compared with previous years. It’s busier this year for SMBs (<200 FTEs), but for enterprise-level companies with more than 200 FTEs, job activity is actually slower now than it was at this time last year.

We surmise it’s because larger companies tend to be slower in turnaround and response. Remember all that talk about a worldwide recession at the start of the year, followed by large-scale layoffs? And now, we see slower job posting activity as we approach the end of Q2 compared with the same time last year. That’s all part of the overall business plan.

Another way to look at it is that employees at larger companies may have greater job security in those companies. That, coupled with layoffs, will mean lower employee turnover – and therefore, fewer job postings.

Meanwhile, those smaller, nimbler companies that are more susceptible to turbulent rises and falls in the bottom line will also see greater turnover – we’re seeing that especially in the 1-50 FTE bucket where March’s 5.5 job postings per company, April’s 4.6, and May’s 4.9 are significantly higher than last year at this time (3.5, 3.3, and 3.3 respectively).

Let’s do a little bit of math to put that in perspective – let’s say the average company in the 1-50 FTE bucket has 30 full-time employees. An average of 4.9 job postings is 16% of that entire company’s workforce right there. That’s compared with last year’s 3.3 job postings being 11% of a company’s workforce.

That’s the difference between a turnover of one in seven employees this past May and one in nine employees in May 2022.

Pretty significant.

Now, let’s look at the candidate population for those jobs.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Again, remember, this is a trendline using the 2019 CPH average as a baseline of 100, not the actual number of candidates per hire.

Now that Let’s look at what’s going on here through May:

After many months – more than a year, even – of a Candidates Per Hire trend growing faster than a bamboo tree, we’re finally seeing that number take a plunge from one month to the next. Whether that’s due to April being so high that a drop-off was inevitable or whether that’s due to an actual depletion of the candidate pool, that’s for you to decide.

One thing we’re viscerally cognizant of, however, is that this drop in May could be related to the higher job postings in the previous chart – meaning, when there’s more job postings out there, naturally, candidates will get snatched up as well.

Another scenario worth thinking about: there are three major scenarios in which one might be looking for a job: first, they’re entering the job market because they’re entry-level, coming out of school, moved to a new location, or something similar.

Second, they’re transitioning jobs; simply put, they’re still employed but they’re looking for other jobs out there because it’s time for a change. Third, they’ve lost their job and they’re actively looking for a new one.

So, the increase in candidates per hire in general isn’t simply about a growing candidate pool. It’s also the result of those mass layoffs across the board, leading to candidates more aggressively and actively looking for a new job so they aren’t unemployed for a long period of time. Rather than selectively applying for job opportunities out there, they’re taking the spray-and-pray approach until someone hires them.

This, of course, will drive the CPH up – and it can also be challenging for employers because they need to suss out the real motive of a candidate in applying for their open role. Be careful thinking like this, however. Don’t jump to conclusions. A smartly built evaluation process will identify the real stars for your job.

What’s going on here?

Notice we didn’t touch on AI much at all this time around? While that’s still a hot topic, let’s not get too deep into this month since we’ve covered it so comprehensively in much of our other content. Plus, it remains a very nascent environment.

OK, fine. Let’s talk about AI.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, and the rest of them are investing heavily in AI and machine learning. Out of the 38 new unicorns (startups that break the $1B company value barrier), eight of them are in AI technologies.

If you’re in AI, that’s great, but if you’re in anything else, it’s a tough ocean to navigate. That same report states that overall funding of startups has dropped 44% from May 2022 to May 2023.

We’ll just keep a finger on that AI pulse for the forthcoming months, particularly on how typical skill sets will change going forward. For example, ChatGPT is considered even more valuable than a post-secondary degree by 86% of hiring managers according to an Intellgent.com survey.

And for entry-level candidates, a full 98% of hiring managers would like to see ChatGPT experience for positions where the AI tool is applicable.

These are interesting times. Catch up next month!

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in May!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

The post Your Hiring Pulse report for June 2023 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And the destabilization could be even greater than COVID-19 in 2020. ChatGPT and all its AI cousins across the board are leading to unprecedented trends in our hiring data.

What’s possible is that this may only be the beginning. Remember March 2020 when those first few COVID-19 numbers started trickling in? That’s the feeling these days.

Let’s have a look at what that means, and stay on for the ride because we have a lot to say at the end.

How we’re looking at data

We’ve adopted two methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.
Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings (JO) 
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Candidates per Hire is at an all-time high for Workable’s hiring data
• Time to Fill is stabilizing – barely
• Job activity is dropping across the board

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of April are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Quick clarification, because people are asking: the data in this chart shows the trendline against the 2019 average as an index of 100, not the actual number of days in TTF.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend through to the end of April against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled:

After a pretty significant drop in the Time to Fill trend for the first three months of 2023, we’re finally seeing that metric relatively stabilizing to start the second quarter of the year.

In fact, the number has jumped upwards ever so slightly, with the trend jumping 1.1 points from 81.6 in March to 82.7 in April.

It’s still well below the general trend going back to 2020, an indicator of factors such as technology speeding up the evaluation process, more candidates in the talent bloodstream (more on that below), and – perhaps – a desperate rush to fill roles as a stopgap measure in times of high turnover.

On that latter point – there is plenty of labor instability right now. There are reorgs, layoffs, and restructuring all happening on the heels of the Great Resignation (which, while still high, is starting to level off and come down in terms of raw numbers). And a lot is happening in the age of AI as well.

What this means is, in other words, bottlenecks and breakdowns are happening, forcing businesses to move quickly to plug gaps in their workflows.

It’s one explanation, at least. Let’s look at total job openings and see for ourselves if there’s increased job activity across the board.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers up to the end of April.

After a nice levitation in job openings to start the first quarter of this year, we’re finally seeing things tapering off across all three business size buckets. In fact, job activity is down from 7.6 job postings per company in March to 6.6 per company in April.

Overall, what we see is a full point drop from March to April in the average number of jobs posted per company. That’s significant, in no small part due to it being the biggest month-to-month drop in the history of our network data.

We’ve seen nice jumps in the data from one month to the next (especially from the typically slow December to a supercharged January), but we’ve never seen anything quite so dramatic the opposite way.

We would go into depth into each of the three size buckets, but they all see the very same trend for March to April – so we’ll skip that for this month. Instead, we’ll simply point out that the impressively dynamic small business category (1-50 full-time employees) was the usual anomaly in terms of job activity, with five straight month-to-month increases in the trend.

But now, small businesses also took a dip in April. So it can no longer hold itself up as an agile upstart. Last month, we promised to keep an eye on this area – now we’re going to continue watching and see what May brings us.

Now, on to the candidates.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Again, remember, this is a trendline using the 2019 CPH average as a baseline of 100, not the actual number of candidates per hire.

Now that Let’s look at what’s going on here through April:

Um. That chart says it all.

After a momentary stabilization in the CPH trend from February to March, April stands out like a very, very sore thumb, hitting a new milestone of 158.2 for Apil – a huge 21-point jump from March.

To put that in perspective, the biggest jump in the CPH trend in our entire history of data was 18.9 points from February to March back in 2020. The year where the world seemingly changed and the sheer volume of job loss felt unprecedented (for this generation, at least).

And the highest CPH trend with the exception of February’s 138.8 and March’s 137.2 was in the high 120s and very low 130s from mid-2020 to early 2021.

And now? 158.2. To put it in visual perspective, look at the chart from January 2020 onwards:

Let’s go back to a quick quote from last month’s Hiring Pulse:

“We discussed the Great Resurgence in [February]’s Hiring Pulse – that’s still happening, of course, but the candidate pool is not a bottomless one. Are we finally reaching the crux of this data point? Or is this just a hiccup and more are on the way? We shall see.”

Well, we are seeing now that the bottom of the candidate pool isn’t yet discovered. It may be at a murky depth not unlike Lake Baikal in Siberia, known as the world’s deepest lake with a bottom that’s ​​5,315 feet (1,620 meters) deep.

We don’t really want to talk about Mariana Trench at 36,201 feet (11,034 meters) because that’s uncomfortable to think about and we can’t predict whether or not we’ve hit a certain limit in terms of depth and breadth of the candidate pool.

Instead, should we just try and understand what’s going on here?

What’s going on here?

We talked a lot about AI last month. It’s still very relevant now and will continue to be so going forward. And it is absolutely impacting the working world in myriad ways. Our day-to-day is affected, and our hiring processes are changing, and above all – jobs are ultimately changing.

Consider this – according to Goldman Sachs, 300 million jobs worldwide could be affected by this new tsunami of generative AI that started with ChatGPT in December.

Many other companies are actively encouraging the use of generative AI technologies in their working environment – including one CEO who has purchased ChatGPT licenses for his entire staff base to the tune of $2,400 a month. For the record, that CEO says productivity has gone through the roof.

Others, like IBM, are phasing out some jobs altogether – to the potential tune of 30% of non-customer-facing roles – as a result of increasing AI capabilities.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration called together the CEOs of Alphabet, Microsoft, OpenAI and other AI-driven companies to discuss the potential risks and opportunities of the new technology.

There is a lot more going on, of course, but at the core of all of this is jobs. When we started 2023, people weren’t really talking about artificial intelligence beyond how cool ChatGPT seemed to be. Some early adopters were taking on ChatGPT to help in their work, but overall, generative AI wasn’t really in the everyday lexicon. Instead, talk of a recession was.

Now, we don’t see a lot of talk about an impending recession. Is there even one happening? Who knows? What we do know now is the tremendous rise of AI and jobs in everything we’re talking about:

Our hiring data is starting to show it. Time to Fill is getting shorter – potentially because of the use of generative AI tech in the hiring process. Job openings are dropping – not because of a recession, but because some jobs are becoming redundant and companies are figuring out how to get more done with fewer people.

And finally, candidates per hire is surging – perhaps due to the double whammy of layoffs ahead of a (possible / speculated / who knows) recession and the rise of AI technologies in workflows.

Does this mean AI is coming for your job as well? Not necessarily. One saying that’s making its rounds is this one: “AI will not take your job. People who use AI will.” But humans are still at the center of it all – AI is a great enhancer to your work, not a great replacer. And the human touch is still paramount in hiring.

If humans weren’t important, then why do we still see lineups in banks for that more personable service and in supermarkets with checkout cashiers? Why do we grumble about pressing ‘1’ to do this and ‘2’ to do that when trying to get service on the phone?

And so on.

Things may change if (or when) AI gets to a point where it becomes general intelligence, but right now – we are still the drivers.

For how long, though? Let’s keep watching this space – the data is still telling us a lot.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in May!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

The post Your Hiring Pulse report for May 2023 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Predictions are being made left and right as to what the workplace will look like going forward. Some of these look like wild science fiction, but many companies are already pioneering radical new concepts that push the boundaries of technology and humanity at work.

What are those new developments? We’re not looking at next year – we’re going to go to the future of HR in 2030 … and beyond.

Let’s look at a few of them right now and how HR plays a role:

1. AI-augmented talent

We’re already entering this brave new world of AI co-pilots – that much is known. This is where AI assistants (or co-pilots) work alongside human employees to enhance their skills and productivity. At present, ChatGPT, Google Bard, Anthropic’s Claude and other generative AI tools are being introduced in new workplace policies and training to ensure that employees stay meaningfully engaged in their work while partnered with bots.

Imagine the head of HR helping a team of engineers and researchers join forces with AI assistants to speed up programming and testing cycles – not just in coding and other dev work, but physical design and testing. Policies, processes, and oversights will be implemented to facilitate that collaboration.

2. Micro-learning via brain uploads

Remember the scene in The Matrix where knowledge and skills are uploaded directly into Keanu Reeves’ brain? And he opens his eyes and says in his unmistakable tone: “I know kung fu!”.

This is sort of like that. Skills development may involve implanting knowledge and training directly into your memory for rapid reskilling.

Let’s say the chief learning officer at a manufacturing firm needs to upskill 200 technicians across the country for an urgent project. This CLO would analyze existing skills data, gaps, and needs across the team and deploy the most useful ‘brain upload pods’ for individuals and work teams to optimize productivity. Presto, the team comes in Monday ready to tackle that big new job.

3. 3-D printed workspaces

The rapid restructuring of the working world in recent years has its physical impact as well – those huge skyscrapers in the city center may still exist, but office vacancy rates are at an all-time high. And that’s closely correlated with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of the hybrid workplace. Evidently, the traditional workplace just doesn’t work anymore.

Instead of frantically trying to find an existing ideal workplace and locking in a five-year lease, wouldn’t it be great if you could just redesign your office using 3-D printing for increased flexibility, collaboration and even employee satisfaction?

HR can use telepresence robots and AR that engage remote workers with the space, and do it all in modular fashion to make for more robust design flexibility.

4. Supersized virtual workforces

In tandem with the surge in remote and distributed teams, imagine entire networks of remote workers across continents – let’s say Asia or Africa – all accessible within a single platform to scale customized teams for short-term projects.

A head of HR would be able to assemble and manage a team of 50 remote workers for two months – and upload specific knowledge into their brains to speed up onboarding – to tackle a machine learning initiative.

We do have this sort-of ‘talent access’ ecosystem already available in the form of the shared economy (as recruitment expert Hung Lee explains in the following video). We also have agencies that hire out temp workers. Think of it like this, but in bigger, loftier concepts.

5. Exoskeleton suits

Again, we’ve seen this in the movies. Avatar is a good example where exoskeleton technology was utilized to boost performance. Of course real life isn’t a James Cameron movie, but we’re also seeing exosuits in real life in many different forms:

Wearable exoskeletons can prevent injury, increase productivity, and extend longevity especially in physically demanding jobs – boosting retention and ROI in one fell swoop. Procuring office supplies and the like are often a responsibility in human resources – think of exoskeletons as a more advanced form of this, especially when it means greater workplace safety.

6. Workplace biometric monitoring

You likely have a smartwatch and/or a fitness tracker with you at all times – this falls into that bucket. Non-invasive technology can monitor employee health, mood, and performance within the workplace through a combination of biomarkers, wearables and environment sensors. HR would set that up to build real-time big data models (with your express permission, of course) to identify patterns and implement preemptive interventions.

Some of these interventions would be proactive wellbeing initiatives, productivity recommendations, and even workplace changes (which you’d, of course, spearhead using 3-D printed office designs!). That’ll be a huge plus for employee experience – a major focus of HR.

7. ‘Swarm AI’ decision making

Synergy (sorry, we know that word isn’t popular) can be a real pain when you have too many cooks in the kitchen or too many meetings without a single stream of information. That makes for problems when making complex strategic decisions.

You can overcome that by enabling employees across all levels in the company to input anonymous perspectives and votes within an AI system – which then aggregates and synthesizes the ‘swarm’ knowledge into optimized proposals and recommendations.

HR can facilitate this collaborative and democratic decision-making process of tapping into the collective wisdom of the company beehive. This allows the higher-ups to curate divergent perspectives into a few optimized options for discussion – minimizing individual biases.

8. Supersized skill sets

One of the technological shortcomings that’s surfacing in this emerging age of automation and AI is that of human skills such as creativity, empathy, and complex problem solving. These will become ‘supersized’ skill sets that are not easily replicable by AI and therefore become even more crucial.

And it’s HR’s opportunity to capitalize and grow this skill set across the employee base through regular coaching and training sessions that are specifically designed to meet those crucial needs in a company that’s increasingly using tech in its everyday workflows.

And now… to the future

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies can no longer be constrained by traditional paradigms of space, time, and human capabilities. The future is ripe with tech-volution, and we’re seeing it happen in real time.

And it’s driven by the biggest budgets outside of government – trillion-dollar organizations dedicated to optimization, productivity, innovation, and growth.

Add to that a vast range of pioneering startups, and the reimagination of work is at a pace where the workplace in 2030 may be unrecognizable to us today. The future of work is closer than we may realize and more human than we ever imagined.

The post The wild future of HR: 8 radical concepts made relatable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Picture yourself as a job hunter. Maybe you’re even job hunting as you read this. Job hunters will always research a company, whether it’s about its history, culture, or the industry it’s in. Jobseekers will also get curious – we, after all, are naturally curious creatures, and curiosity just happens to spill over into job hunting.

Jobseekers also want to make sure they are interviewing with and potentially joining a company that may be a good fit for them whether it is aligning with their personal values, career goals, and a culture where they picture themselves thriving in.

And apart from being curious about facts about a company, jobseekers get curious about the people.

It takes just seconds to look up a company and click on that tab that says ‘people’ on LinkedIn. Naturally, a jobseeker will take a look to see if anyone in a company is similar to them.

They’re drawn in to see if there are different groups of people, people that identify from the same group as them, and to see if the company they are interested in includes people like them.

But why do they do this? Let’s add a bit of psychology 101 into this. Naturally, humans have what is called an unconscious bias. Unconscious bias refers to the attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes that affect our judgments and decisions without us even realizing it. These biases are often subconscious and are formed based on personal experiences, cultural background, and social context.

Unconscious bias can also creep in for the jobseeker. Candidates are drawn to similarities. If they do not see someone that is similar to themselves, this sends a message to that jobseeker that diversity, equity, and inclusion is low or nowhere to be found – or even conveys that they may not be welcomed in that organization.

This can be problematic for both jobseekers and employers.

Unconscious bias: a two-way street

This works both ways. Recruiters have unconscious bias too, where it influences the impression of a candidate.

You, as an HR professional, must be careful with that unconscious bias. You must try to block out these unconscious biases within yourself and try not to let them cloud your judgment.

Otherwise, that clouding could result in you missing out on high-quality candidates because biases can affect your judgment of that individual’s candidacy for the position. When it comes to your day-to-day work in your job – for example, when you’re screening candidates – try to put yourself in the shoes of the jobseeker above.

Ask yourself: would you rather see more people like you or more diversification? Wouldn’t you like to be at a company that promotes the sense of welcoming, the promotion of diversity enriching the culture – and see that the sense of diversity, equity, and inclusion has a permanent strategy there?

Often, diversity, equity, and inclusion is dismissed or just refined to being a training or another difficult conversation. In recruiting, it’s confined to being just another metric. In fact, just 30% of companies have DEI as part of their permanent strategy, according to our survey on DEI in the workplace.

On the contrary, it’s more than just a training. It’s more than just an ‘HR thing’, and certainly more than a metric recruiters have to pay attention to.

DEI is beyond all of this. It’s about bringing new perspectives to the table. It’s about diversity having the power to spark creativity, innovation, and problem-solving skills that may not have been possible or achievable with a homogeneous workforce.

The sense of belonging in the workplace trumps many things for people. Recruiters should leave bias hiring behind and think about this particular view of DEI.

The value of culture add

As recruiters, we must think about not just ‘culture fit’, but rather ‘culture add’.

Culture fit focuses on the harmony between an individual and the company culture. The individual shares similar values, behaviors, and attitudes as the company where they can blend seamlessly into the company culture.

On the other hand, culture add takes a different shift in focus. With culture add, there is an embrace of fresh and new perspectives, uniqueness, and differences that the individual can bring forward to enhance the company culture.

Looking at these differences, culture add can increase value to an organization. Culture fit confines a person to fit particular characteristics, while culture add embraces and allows the individual to break that confinement and to redefine what it means to ‘fit in’. This uniqueness, fresh perspectives, all stems from diversity.

This is important to keep in mind as a recruiter when scouting for talent. We want to plant culture add in our organizational garden because, remember, a diverse garden can open many opportunities.

Growing the DEI garden

True gardeners or those interested in gardening know that gardens should have a diverse species of plants to flourish. For the reason being that underneath the surface, diverse planting can create a promotion of sustainability, success, and life for the beautiful garden that most gardeners aim to have.

Now think of the company being the soil, candidates being the seeds, DEI being the water and sunlight. Imagine what beauty could grow out of this, and what could blossom. This is the beauty of DEI, how it collectively brings wonderful minds together to blossom into something bigger. This is the promotion of bringing a more sustainable, successful, alive culture to the surface.

And then think about your part in all of this. It all starts with the recruiter. Besides the company, the recruiter holds the power to bring forth those wonderful minds and enrichen the company’s diversity. This could then inspire others to do the same, to plant more of the importance of DEI.

Imagine the garden that can be grown. A garden of fresh ideas, talent, innovation, and most importantly, belonging. It is important to recognize and address unconscious biases to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.

Think about the difference that can be made in hiring and how to couple diversity, equity, and inclusion with recruiting. Start that garden, give it the water and sunlight it needs to be healthy and to blossom. Contribute to the nature of the curious garden of DEI.

Iliana Ramos is Workable’s Talent Acquisition Specialist. In her own words: “My passion for talent acquisition first stemmed from an internship I did in college. Since then, I am doing what I love where I get to meet tons of new people everyday and staying on top of trends in the industry. When I am not recruiting, I am an avid gym-goer and a huge lover of music. My favorite artist of all time is Tiësto and have been listening to him since I was 12 years old. I almost fainted when I saw him live in person for the first time.”

The post Embrace diversity: cultivate a thriving workplace garden appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

It should come as no surprise that most people make choices and live according to biases that have been instilled in them since childhood. These biases can lead to poor hiring decisions in the recruitment process.

It is no secret that emphasis can sometimes be placed on non-relevant factors such as gender, age, weight, color, and beauty, rather than focusing on the candidate’s actual knowledge and skills. According to a survey, approximately 63% of hiring managers admit to forming judgments about applicants within the first 15 minutes of an interview.

The latest developments in recruitment, along with the increasing use of AI tools, can provide a helping hand in eliminating biases from the screening process. Particularly in today’s society, where more companies are striving to reshape their culture and become more inclusive, AI tools can be a tangible solution to creating a more unbiased hiring landscape.

The rise of AI in recruitment

Over the last few years, AI has become an integral part of our hiring toolkit. It’s not hard to see why. AI promises efficiency, scalability, and the ability to sift through mountains of data in seconds.

According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Global Talent Trends Report, nearly 68% of hirers feel very optimistic about the impact of Generative AI in their work. They tend to use AI tools to automate repetitive tasks, to effectively source candidates and to engage better with them.

But what do we know until now about the unconscious bias deriving from AI? Let’s elaborate more on that.

Understanding unconscious bias in hiring

Before we delve into the AI-bias relationship, it’s crucial to get a clear picture of unconscious bias. These are the subtle, often unnoticed prejudices that influence our decisions. They can sneak into job postings, resume screenings, and interviews, creating a skewed playing field.

Researchers agree that unconscious bias can lead to a lack of diversity, which affects team performance, innovation, and revenue. According to a McKinsey study, companies that are ethnically diverse are 35% more likely to earn above-average revenue, while gender-diverse companies have a 15% higher chance of achieving the same outcome.

Unconscious biases had already been applied in the hiring process in many cases prior to the emergence of AI tools.

Let’s say an HR professional, named Mary, is screening resumes for a tech role. Unconsciously, she gravitates towards candidates from her alma mater and those with big-name tech companies on their resumes. This ‘affinity bias’ and ‘prestige bias’ subtly creep in, skewing the process. As a result, equally or even more qualified candidates from lesser-known schools or firms may be overlooked, limiting the diversity and talent range considered for the position.

Imagine now that a few disqualified candidates are sending an email accusing the company of prejudice in their hiring process or even suing the company for discrimination!

This example highlights how biases can significantly impact the recruitment process and the branding of a company. With this in mind, it is possible that biases may obscure important details in candidates’ resumes.

While experienced HR professionals have managed to overcome these prejudices when hiring, we can now move on to how AI can be educated in a manner that prevents undermining candidates when matching them with specific job opportunities.

AI and unconscious bias

AI tools, designed to standardize recruitment, appear to be a promising solution. They can conduct ‘blind’ screenings, removing data related to gender, ethnicity, or age. They can standardize interview questions and evaluate candidates solely based on their responses.

On the other hand, there are growing voices claiming that algorithms are prone to discrimination. These concerns are raised due to some real events that happened in the recent past.

The truth is that AI offers plenty of flexibility in our hands, but the potential for fallacy which lies behind this notion of AI opens up a whole new discussion. Faulty and biased design allegations have been raised against prominent companies in the recent past like Amazon, Apple, and the UK’s passport photo checker.

Amazon, for instance, discontinued a recruitment algorithm that had inadvertently learned to favor male candidates. Apple faced scrutiny from US regulators due to allegations that its credit card provided different credit limits based on gender. Furthermore, women with darker skin were found to be twice as likely as lighter-skinned men to receive notifications of failed UK passport photo compliance.

Remember the racist soap dispenser? Watch the video below:

A recent study by two researchers of Technical University of Munich dived into the ethical side of using AI in recruitment. They make a case that we shouldn’t just label AI recruiting as completely unethical when it comes to human rights. They come up with some ethical implications for AI recruiting, like the importance of validity, autonomy, non-discrimination, privacy, and transparency. Their research sheds light on the complicated relationship between AI and human rights in hiring practices.

As the driver of the hiring process, you have the power to leverage AI to enhance various aspects of recruitment. With AI’s support, you can optimize candidate selection, minimize biases, and improve overall hiring outcomes.

By harnessing the capabilities of AI-driven tools and technologies, you can drive a more effective and inclusive recruitment process. Remember, more inclusive hiring practices mean more productive and innovative working environments.

The picture isn’t entirely rosy, though. AI tools learn from data – and often, that data reflects our biased world.

Related: AI, ChatGPT and the human touch in hiring

Overcoming unconscious bias with AI

Now, let’s talk about how you might overcome this challenge and make the difference.

Behind the algorithms are teams of skilled developers who train and set parameters in the production process of these LLMs. We also know that AI follows its own unique learning journey and can in the process fatally create its own biases.

Kate Crawford, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft, stated in an interview on Business Insider that: “When AI systems are revealed to be producing discriminatory results along the categories of race, gender, or disability, then some companies commit to reforming their tools or diversifying their data.”

“When AI systems are revealed to be producing discriminatory results along the categories of race, gender, or disability, then some companies commit to reforming their tools or diversifying their data.”

In the same interview she concludes that “what is most needed is regulatory action”.

Indeed, by working closely with the developers who specialize in AI and following the state regulations, you can shape the conditions that will allow this technology to override any unconscious biases and bring about an outcome that will encourage collaboration with people who have the skills for the job.

For example, Workable is always working on AI tools that actively help HR managers and business owners seeking candidates based exclusively on their skills and knowledge, leveling up your hiring game with latest onboard & manage and up-to-date AI features!

The doubtless role of human oversight

AI isn’t a silver bullet for unconscious bias. It’s a tool – a potentially powerful one – but it requires human oversight. As HR professionals, we must ensure that our AI tools are trained on diverse, unbiased data sets. Regular audits are crucial to detect and rectify any bias.

The human factor will always be crucial when hiring new candidates. Although the automation of procedures, including the onboarding process, is expected to increase, certain aspects of the hiring process are difficult to replace.

These include the interview stage, establishing rapport, and gaining a deep understanding of a candidate’s personality.

As Glen Cathey, SVP of Workforce Advisory & Digital Strategy at Randstad, states: “For the foreseeable future of recruiting, humans will still play an essential role. Humanness still matters, especially for hard-to-fill jobs, and the core of that is empathy. A good recruiter brings the opportunity and company to life, beyond what a person can see on a website or job description.”

Balance humans and AI in hiring – and get results

The rise of AI in hiring offers you numerous opportunities, one of which is addressing the critical issue of unconscious bias. While overcoming bias still requires the essential human element, strategic utilization of AI alongside human involvement in the hiring process can lead to a highly effective and diverse team that drives impactful outcomes for your company.

The post Can AI help beat unconscious bias in hiring? Yes, it can appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. You’re understaffed

Word on the street (and on places like Glassdoor) is that you’re understaffed, and in some cases, this is intentional. You expect employees to give you their heart and soul and to be at your beck and call 24/7. In return, you’re willing to issue them a paycheck for 40 hours of work.

This approach may have worked during the last recession but won’t pass muster in a highly competitive labor market. Today, employees have choices and are choosing to work for companies where work/life balance is obtainable.

Look at the culture you’ve built with an eye towards becoming a more people-friendly company. Train your managers to set boundaries for accessing employees and establishing reasonable work expectations.

2. Your pay isn’t competitive

The people who say money doesn’t matter are the people with money. For the rest of us, money matters.

When was the last time you moved your salary ranges? If it’s been longer than a year, get moving! Have you benchmarked your pay? Do this now.

Salaries have skyrocketed over the past several years and are continuing to rise. If you want to stand a chance of hiring the best, you must be willing and able to pay for talent.

3. You’re taking way too long to hire

Your current hiring process may be why you can’t fill jobs. By the time you get a candidate through your process, this person is already off the market. Today, more than ever, speed matters.

Try this. Make a list of everyone currently involved in hiring for a particular position, with the key decision-makers at the top. Draw a line through the middle of this list.

Thank those below the line for their willingness to participate and inform them their services for evaluating candidates will no longer be needed.

4. Your job requirements are inflated

You’ve loaded up the job requirements for a particular job with the hopes that your boss will approve a great compensation package. Now, try finding someone who meets all these requirements! If this feels like an impossible task, that’s because it probably is.

Does a receptionist really need a college degree to greet clients? Must a production manager with 13 years of experience genuinely need the 15 years of experience you’ve listed in your posting to succeed in your organization?

Take a closer look at your job requirements and ask yourself if everything listed is a “must have” or if some items are “nice to have.” Then adjust your job descriptions and postings accordingly.

5. You’ve got lousy managers

People don’t work for companies. They work for people. All the money in the world won’t help you attract and keep talent if your managers chase these people away.

More than 4 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in each of the past 18 months. Meanwhile, employers, especially in low-wage sectors, are still struggling to fill open positions.

A recent report from employment and background screening services company GoodHire points to managers as a critical factor. In the survey of 3,000 workers, 82% told GoodHire they would consider quitting their job because of a bad manager.

Be careful whom you let into management; only some are cut out for this job. Provide managers with the coaching they need to be talent magnets – the type of managers that easily attract and retain talent, and you won’t have to worry about constantly having to fill jobs. People will gladly remain in your employ for years to come.

The post The real reasons your employees don’t want to work for you appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In the wake of 2020’s global lockdown, studies showed that 56% of global companies allowed hybrid remote schedules, and 16% allowed their workforce to be entirely remote. Furthermore, this trend did not lose ground when the lockdown lifted. In 2020, 48% of remote workers employed video conferences for meetings. By 2022, the number had risen to 77%.

As executives for a company with an over 99% virtual workforce, we have become accustomed to the convenience of video conferencing and are quick to promote the flexibility and freedom of remote work. Still, as time goes on, we can see room for improvement.

Remote work retains much of its initial allure for employees, but many are finding that it comes at a cost. We have developed efficient lines of communication, but even after three years, the remote workplace culture still presents challenges when it comes to team-building and fostering connections.

The benefit of face-to-face interaction

A survey from PromoLeaf reveals that more than 70% of participants prefer in-person events over virtual conferences. They say that face-to-face events offer networking opportunities and social interaction that video conferences cannot replicate.

One of the most in-depth studies in this area comes from MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab, in which researchers used electronic badges to track performance drivers by collecting data on body language and tone of voice over hundreds of hours. The study’s results demonstrate that communication is most effective in person. In fact, findings suggest that up to 35% of a team’s performance variation can be explained by how many times that team speaks face-to-face.

When companies give up in-person meetings altogether, there are bound to be some caveats. A recent study from Nature Human Behavior, for example, demonstrates that companies without in-person meetings see at least 25% of employees spending less time collaborating with co-workers and less time engaging in knowledge transfer with colleagues outside their immediate network.

The study also finds that these remote workers take longer to engage with new employees. As such, the researchers conclude that the shift to remote work reduces networking and connectivity across the organization as a whole.

Planning in-person events

At Cyberbacker, we specialize in virtual assistance, so naturally, our Cyberbackers and clients are located all around the world.

However, when we hosted our first annual franchise meeting, we invited franchise owners from the US and Canada to join us at the company headquarters, and we flew in 10 Cyberbackers from the Philippines. For this event, our goal was to brainstorm with franchise owners and executive team members to formulate a growth plan for the next five years.

When Cyberbacker floated the idea of an in-person event to promote collaboration, brainstorming, and team building, several questioned whether the travel, time, and on-site expenses would be worth the trouble. Gathering our global team to one central location required massive effort, but during that week of in-person interaction, networking, and bonding, we rediscovered the value of meeting face-to-face.

As remote Cyberbackers met, some of us shaking hands for the first time ever, we learned that crossing state lines – or even an ocean – to connect in person is well worth the cost.

During that one week, our team established a new level of connection. We experienced team-building activities and one-on-one conversations on a whole new level. We made eye contact, built rapport through body language, and shared intimacy through high-fives and fist bumps.

This in-person conference was undoubtedly a hassle to plan and expensive to host. Still, in hindsight, we absolutely believe the investment was a sound one. The benefits of face-to-face connections we experienced will have a profound impact on our work for months – one that far outweighed the cost.

Related: The power of a corporate retreat: 5 reasons why you should do it

This opinion was not ours alone. As we waited on our rides to the airport, a franchisee told us, “We came here as individual business owners, but we leave knowing and feeling we are part of a family. To have everyone on the same page as we move forward with our vision and change lives around the world is priceless.”

The bottom line is that remote work and in-person connection both offer unique benefits to employees and employers alike. The responsibility of leaders in today’s evolving workplace culture is to strike a balance and take advantage of each.

Offering opportunities for valuable in-person interaction and flexibility are equally essential in attracting top talent, boosting employee engagement, increasing retention, and decreasing burnout.

Thanks to meaningful annual or semi-annual in-person events like the one we enjoyed together, it is possible to pair the convenience of remote work with the connectivity of face-to-face interaction.

The post Balance remote with in-person for a more productive workforce appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Cue my digital partners in crime, ChatGPT and Bard, charging to the rescue and banishing the spectre of a creative block. I think of it as having my own AI sidekicks, my very own C-3PO and R2D2, helping me in my L&D work.

Let’s take a look at how Learning & Development at Workable partners with GPT and Bard on a daily basis to improve efficiency and productivity:

Multi-tools for the L&D arena

Think of AI tools as an ‘ideas machine’. They not only help in creating suggestions for content, scenarios and case studies, but also create informative summaries or head-scratching questions from any content I’ve concocted. I think of it as having another L&D expert on tap, always ready to bounce ideas off.

Yet, my AI assistant’s prowess isn’t merely confined to content ideation. They are my personal compass in the ever-changing world of modern L&D, keeping me in sync with the latest trends. I can assess content or ideas against these latest trends, using the analytical capabilities of GPT or Bard.

[AI tools] are my personal compass in the ever-changing world of modern L&D, keeping me in sync with the latest trends. I can assess content or ideas against these latest trends, using the analytical capabilities of GPT or Bard.

I can then put this into practice. For example, have you got a block of content gathering cyber dust? Feed it to AI. In a heartbeat, it can repurpose it into a crisp, on-trend microlearning session. They say two heads are better than one – well, I argue that your head, plus AI, equals innovation nirvana!

However, I urge caution. GPT and Bard can only provide information publicly available (in other words, from the web) and are prone to bias. For example, GPT’s knowledge currently ends in September 2021, so if you are looking for something very shiny and new, GPT will not know about it.

Bard, on the other hand, is still in development and has access to more recent data, but cannot always provide complete or accurate information.

Master decoder of data

Data, data, everywhere, and not a moment to think! Sound familiar?

In the age of a data explosion in L&D, poring over the plethora to gain an insight can feel like finding a proverbial needle in a haystack. Here, GPT and Bard really come to my rescue. They delve into survey results, feedback and LMS data to unearth trends, learning needs and countless insights quicker than you can say ‘hyper-personalised content’.

Armed with these insights, we can pivot quickly and provide relevant and personalised learning content at speed.

The beauty of AI assistants is their learning appetite – the more data I offer, the better its recommendations become. I’m currently experimenting with feeding in data from meetings and workshops to see if GPT or Bard can assess them and provide learning recommendations. Eventually, they may be able to make predictions about a learner’s response to learning and future behaviour.

Related: Data-driven hiring with ChatGPT: Create an ideal candidate profile

This, of course, will have privacy implications. Using huge amounts of data to track learners’ progress, identify their learning needs, or even make predictions about their future behaviour raises concerns about the privacy of learners’ personal information. Ensuring that learners’ personal data is protected and used ethically is an imperative as we push the boundaries of AI integration.

Around-the-clock partner in content creation

When it comes to sculpting content, AI assistants shine brightly. Offer it a pile of information, (and align it with a trend or theory) give it a nudge, and it’ll concoct an informative and engaging narrative. It’s like a digital sous-chef, capable of creating course structures, scenarios, summaries, and more.

You can then further refine these outputs to carefully craft the content that you need for your learning interventions. Be iterative!

Yes, the AI tools have a few shortcomings – and they are not as funny as C-3PO’s or R2D2’s. They may provide inaccurate or incomplete information, or be biassed towards the most popular trends and theories – but don’t we all have our off days?

A great example of the inherent bias is if you ask GPT to provide anything in a ‘British voice’ – you will get analogies and content relating to tea aplenty. (Cue eye rolls.)

On a more serious note: the potential for AI to harbour bias is a real concern and one that we must continually address. Regular validation of the data and analysis provided by AI tools is crucial to ensure we provide fair and balanced learning opportunities.

The ready-and-raring subject matter expert

Our teams are busy, with competing deadlines and priorities. Experts can’t always dedicate large amounts of time to learning and development initiatives – but that’s OK. Why? Because I have my ever-ready knowledge vault to lean on. My AI assistants are a hugely knowledgeable source for an array of topics. They can supplement our internal experts, making the interactions between L&D and SME’s more efficient, effective and productive.

Think of it another way: in “The Phantom Menace”, C-3PO is able to access and process a vast amount of information about the planet Naboo, including its history, culture, and geography. With AI assistants, you can harness this knowledge and computing power to your advantage.

By using AI in partnership with internal experts, you have a formidable knowledge base at your disposal. Although it’s wise to cross-check your AI’s wisdom. It’s a smart Large Language Model, not a certified genius!

The future is hyper-personalised: ready, set, L&D!

The contemporary workplace demands super-specialised skill sets, many of which were inconceivable just a few years ago. With AI tools capable of recording meetings, analysing keystrokes, scrutinising calls and assessing learning records – the creation of vast amounts of useful data means that complex analysis can take place.

In other words, AI assistants can assess all of this information, in real-time, to provide highly individualised learning experiences. Truly personal learning journeys are within our reach!

I truly believe that the real excitement in the AI-L&D union lies in this large-scale data generation and analysis. More specifically, the ability to feed vast amounts of user data into AI and get out penetrating and relevant individual recommendations for learning. Picture truly personalised learning journeys, bespoke content recommendations and experiences – the holy grail of modern Learning & Development!

True, AI will never fully replace the human touch, and it might not yet fully grasp the nuances of context (for instance, it may hastily suggest somebody needs a DEI course after a few gruelling meetings), yet it undoubtedly brings cost-effectiveness, efficiency and scalability to the process.

The challenge, though, lies in harnessing AI to produce the hyper-personalised content needed for these super-specialised skill sets required now and in the future of work. This is something I am electrified to be working on at the moment, so watch this space!

The post AI unleashed: a new hope for learning & development? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Since diversity in the workplace continues to be held back due to recruitment biases, positive discrimination is even more important to further the cause. Let’s get to it then, shall we? #DEI 101!

What is positive discrimination?

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the term “positive discrimination” is the lack of awareness around this subject. What does it mean, where does it stem from, why is it needed, and is it even OK to add this to your company’s DEI policies?

By definition, positive discrimination refers to preferential treatment demonstrated with the intent of bringing an underrepresented group (who possess one or more protected characteristics) to a level of equity in the workplace.

Whether positive or negative, it still is discrimination of some kind. Why should we do it then?

To understand why positive discrimination is required, we need to educate ourselves about equity, equality, and how they differ from each other. Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities, which takes into account an ideal situation where all people are equal.

Addressing the imbalance of marginalized groups in our workplaces is only possible through equity. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the necessary resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

For a better understanding of these terms, let’s look at two examples:

1. A community meeting, where all members of the community are invited, about a local environmental health concern is held in English although 30% of the residents do not speak English.
2. At another community meeting, the community leaders hire translators to attend the meeting or offer an additional meeting held in another language.

The first case treats everyone the same (equally), which does not guarantee a positive outcome for all the members. The second instance recognizes the individual needs of the members and takes proactive steps to meet those needs equitably.

My first-hand experience with the above:

Over a period of time, I’ve personally experienced situations at work where I’ve had to learn, and then unlearn to strongly move away from the word ‘equality’ and associate the word ‘equity’ with inclusion and diversity instead. Coming from this place, I believe in positively discriminating for ‘equity’.

More about protected characteristics

Positive discrimination can apply to any person who has at least one of the protected characteristics. The policy was put into place in the 1960s to level the playing field for historically discriminated/overlooked groups. There are nine protected characteristics that fall under this policy:

1. Age
2. Disability
3. Gender reassignment
4. Marriage or civil partnership
5. Pregnancy and maternity
6. Race
7. Sex
8. Religion or belief
9. Sexual orientation

Examples of positive discrimination in the workplace

Positively discriminating for equity can lead to dramatically good outcomes for marginalized communities. The practices a company implements to foster inclusion in the workplace directly help in fostering positive discrimination in the workplace. Examples of positive discrimination that I’ve personally seen are:

• Hiring drive specifically for women candidates to increase the pool of candidates at the source and further gender (women) diversity
• Specific career development program for women, to increase the pipeline and gender ratio of women senior leaders at the top

Such practices help you understand the gaps in your workforce and improve workforce equity so you will be better equipped to make strategic hiring decisions.

What we do at HackerEarth

At HackerEarth, our intent and approach focus on inclusion with the end goal of achieving equity in the workplace. Keeping this at the heart of whatever we do, here are some policies we enforce at work:

• Under our leave policy, we include period leaves for women and paternity leaves for one month
• Employee insurance coverage offers same-sex partner inclusion as part of the policy

We hold awareness sessions specifically to talk about how to use the correct gender pronouns, spread awareness about gender stereotypes and the need to accept non-binary employees into the workforce, and touch upon inclusive behaviors in the workplace, among other topics

My first-hand experience with the above:

Ironically enough, when we first started discussing including period leave in our leave policy, I was hesitant. There were two reasons for this – one was that periods don’t give me acute pain/cramps or discomfort so I can handle it pretty well. The other was we would be showing preference to one gender by giving time off so should we also do something for men, just to keep it even?

I had to think, assess, and justly accept that we have our differences and similarities, despite being of the same gender. While all women have periods, not all react in the same way, which is exactly why we need to provide individual resources based on need. And the same can be said for men. As genders, we are biologically different and will require a separate set of resources to attain the end goal of equality and foster an inclusive workplace.

This was my first brush with the equity vs. equality conflict and needless to say, I’ve been on the side of equitable policies ever since.

Ways to positively discriminate

1. Do your DEI research

Before you blindly start on your DEI journey, you should do your research. Companies must educate themselves on where they currently stand in their diversity hiring, the industry research of past and present companies, and sociological studies. This helps identify gaps in the existing workforce and a better understanding of the strategy you should devise. Go back to the basics of what diversity and inclusion mean for your company and take it from there.

2. Implement a shared vocabulary

Creating a shared lexicon around the correct pronouns to use, and important DEI concepts they should know in your organization – and explaining meanings – is the first way to establish equity. By incorporating shared vocabulary into the workplace, both employees and employers are more likely to identify what is acceptable and what is not.

3. Select leaders who believe in the cause for equity

Identify champions for DEI and positive discrimination at senior leadership and top management levels. They are the ones that can communicate policies and values top-down, ensure that it is a priority, and be role models for the employees to emulate in their behaviors. Also, the higher levels of a company should reflect the diversity of their employees to be a truly inclusive workplace. The data is clear: DEI leadership is crucial for success.

4. Integrate positive discrimination into your strategy

At HackerEarth, inclusion is at the heart of whatever we do. We believe attaining equity in the workplace does not happen overnight. It has to be woven into the threads of the entire organization to successfully build an inclusive culture. Use a combination of leadership training, behavioral coaching, and planning to integrate positive discrimination for equity into your strategy. Give people the correct language to use, ask them to call out behaviors that are not accepted, and sensitize others towards these behaviors. Don’t restrict spreading awareness to only on the marginalized groups – include concepts like ‘allyship’ and positive discrimination.

5. Keep an ongoing dialogue on positive discrimination

Use research and learnings from other companies to start the conversation with your employees who are invested in this cause. Creating an inclusive workplace is creating an organizational culture of belonging that invites and values the contribution and participation of all their people.

At HackerEarth, this is one of the reasons why I decided to keep an open dialogue going to exchange thoughts, opinions, and ideas from different perspectives on my LinkedIn channel.

A word of caution

Practicing positive discrimination to simply fill a company quota is as harmful as taking up diversity hiring just to meet some numbers. It inadvertently perpetuates bias and affects the morale of a company.

Personally, the trick here is to keep equity at front of mind and not lose sight of that. And then use positive discrimination to create better opportunities and visibility for underrepresented groups.

The main word to place the spotlight on here would be “to be given equal opportunity / visibility.” Use the lens of merit, accordingly for all the candidates in consideration. Practice with intent and not just for the sake of it.

Swetha’s bio in her own words: As an HR professional, I’m fiercely passionate about the value I add to the individuals and teams that I associate myself with. Absolutely enjoy working on organizational development, change and transformation management. ‘Cultural transformation’ and ‘Inclusion’ are a few of my favorite topics to talk about. My personal style and approach come from the interest and passion that I share for art and various forms of mind-body expression. I strongly believe in challenging the status quo, whether it is by standing on my head once every day (read yoga), or by standing up and voicing my opinion on diversity and inclusion in our workplaces.

The post Positive discrimination: What it is and how you can implement it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s, of course, the emergence of ChatGPT, generative AI and LLM AI (large language model AI) and all their many offshoots.

How this will change our landscape is really a huge amount of fodder for another large-scale discussion, but let’s keep it in mind as we dive into the latest data because it will change how we hire.

Let’s get started!

How we’re looking at data

We’ve adopted two methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.
Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings (JO) 
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Job activity continues to be high for small businesses
• TTF is continuing to decline sharply – but at what cost?
• CPH is finally ‘stabilizing’ – sort of

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of March are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Quick clarification, because people are asking: the data in this chart shows the trendline against the 2019 average as an index of 100, not the actual number of days in TTF.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend throughout 2022 against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled:

Again, we see a decrease in the TTF trend. This is the third consecutive month of decline – and it now stands at 81 for March 2023, down from 87.1 in February and 90.6 in January.

This shortening TTF may initially seem a good thing for both employers and jobseekers. For hiring teams, of course it means you’re finding candidates to fill your much-needed positions quicker than before. For jobseekers, it means you’re getting jobs quicker than before.

There are downsides, too. It may be a sign of a need to fill urgent roles ahead of a looming recession, either for that hire to provide the stopgap that’s needed to carry a company through the downturn. It could also signal a rush to get ahead of potential budget cuts and hiring freezes before they happen. Not inherently a problem, but rather, signals of problems.

But we’re already in April and we’ve been talking about that downturn for a long time now (and in multiple Hiring Pulses). It’s highly likely that the shorter TTF is due to a larger candidate pool – when a job is opened, applications start flooding in and it’s easier to lock in on someone who fits the bill.

All the same, there are caveats to this shorter TTF. Companies may not be taking the opportunity to properly evaluate candidates which means a higher risk of bad hires. That can be expensive down the line and you don’t want that.

So, consider slowing down, even in the face of increased urgency to fill roles.

Or – more apropos – consider better, more optimized ways to evaluate candidates so you can vet them more thoroughly, and quickly too. Like, for instance, incorporating (ahem) AI tech in your hiring process.

Now, let’s move on to job openings.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers up to the end of March.

Well, look at that. Steady growth across the board. Those lines at the bottom of the chart look like a group of airplanes taking off together from November 2022 at different speeds and cadences, and then ultimately falling into line with one another into March.

We’ll get into the specific details in a second, but first, the main takeaway is that the overall average jobs opened per company in March in our dataset is 7.6, up from 6.7 in February and 6.6 in January. At this time last year, we didn’t see such a consistent increase in job openings.

We’ve talked about this in previous Hiring Pulses: a downturn doesn’t necessarily mean hiring freezes for new jobs. It can also mean a recalibration – for instance, let’s look at the restructuring of teams with the objective of producing with 10 FTEs where 15 were able to do so previously.

In such a reworking, job requirements change as a result and new skill sets are discovered to be needed. Some team members can learn and grow, some get promoted, some are disgruntled and leave for other opportunities, some are let go, and finally, entire new jobs are created to fill important gaps in these new team structures.

In times of affluence, these things do happen and they are an opportunity to scale. But in times of fiscal stress, they come up as necessities as businesses clamor to find more efficient ways to carry out processes.

Anyway, interesting discussion and we’ll come back to it. Now let’s look at the company size buckets.

Larger companies still anomalous

Job activity for companies of 200 or more employees saw a roughly 10% increase from February to March. This is interesting compared with previous years, where larger companies saw averages of 15.2/15.9/19.5 for the first three months of 2021 and 21.3/21.3/23.8 for the first three months of 2022.

Yet, this year, instead of a spike in March after a roughly stable Jan-Feb trend, we’re seeing a dip from January to February and then an almost identical recovery from February to March.

Perhaps we’re splitting hairs by looking at the data like this, and perhaps it’s just one of those anomalies, but it’s still interesting to look at.

Medium is steady as she goes

For companies with 51-200 employees, we see a jump in the average job postings for March to 6.2 after a relatively stable January (5.7) and February (5.6).

We noted it last month and the insight remains the same – this is not wholly anomalous. Job activity trends for the first three months of the year is again pretty normal this year for medium-sized businesses.

Small and vibrant

Now, here’s where the interesting stuff is. Small-sized businesses with 50 or fewer employees are continuing to rise in terms of job activity. Last month, we saw a jump from 4.1 to 4.7 jobs per company from January to February, and that growth has accelerated to 5.5 in March.

We’ve talked extensively about agility in small businesses rapidly adapting to evolving economies and shifts in market trends. We’re definitely keeping an eye on this one.

Now, on to the candidates.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Again, remember, this is a trendline using the 2019 CPH average as a baseline of 100, not the actual number of candidates per hire.

Now that Let’s look at what’s going on here through March:

We’ve talked for months about a prominent spike in the number of applicants per job dating back to July 2022. Ultimately, a 56% increase in CPH from July 2022 to February 2023.

But now, apart from a moderate slowdown from November to December (understandable given that December is slow all around), we finally see the CPH trend coming in lower than the previous month.

Not really by a lot, but it’s there: March’s 136.6 is a drop from February’s 141.5.

We discussed the Great Resurgence in last month’s Hiring Pulse – that’s still happening, of course, but the candidate pool is not a bottomless one. Are we finally reaching the crux of this data point? Or is this just a hiccup and more are on the way? We shall see.

What’s going on here?

As the hiring landscape continues to shift and adapt to the ever-changing job market, one thing we know for sure: the use of AI in the hiring process is growing exponentially. While generative AI tools like ChatGPT can provide significant benefits to hiring teams in terms of time and efficiency, they also come with potential risks and drawbacks.

OK, full disclosure: ChatGPT was used to help write that paragraph above with some minor tweaks. However, it’s on point. We’re in a time where we’re now dealing with yet another earth-shattering development on the heels of previous ones – that being the rise of artificial intelligence in the everyday zeitgeist and lexicon. Sure, we’ve been talking about AI for years but until ChatGPT, we hadn’t really thought collectively about how AI fits into our everyday lives at work and at play.

Now, we’re exploring all the ways in which ChatGPT can be used in human resources, and all the ways in which technology can boost hiring processes. At the core of these conversations is optimization of workflow.

So, let’s go back to this month’s data analysis. We’re seeing a shorter time to fill. We’re seeing more job activity. And we’re (still) seeing a lot of candidates for each of those jobs. Combine all three, and understaffed and underfunded hiring teams are just scrambling to get it all done.

ChatGPT is a real boon for those teams, obviously. You no longer have to write those job descriptions (not from scratch, at least). You no longer need to craft lists of interview questions designed to get what you need to know from the candidate. Yes, we have templates for both and more, but that can only go so far. In these rapidly evolving times, we need something that can keep with the times and meet our current needs immediately. Generative AI tech can do that for us.

But (and of course there’s always a but) as teams grapple with these surging trends and developments in the hiring process, it’s crucial to strike that balance between speed and quality. You know the saying, “He/she who hesitates is lost”? And the other, pretty much opposite saying: “Slow and steady wins the race.”

It’s about finding a balance between both. Speed serves a purpose, and so does quality.

Now, we asked ChatGPT what actionable tips it has based on all of the above. It presented the following (without any edits):

Focus on targeted outreach: Instead of simply casting a wide net with job postings, consider a more targeted approach that identifies and reaches out to qualified candidates directly. This can help ensure a higher quality of candidates and reduce the need for rushed hiring decisions.

Implement AI tools thoughtfully: While AI tools like ChatGPT can provide significant benefits, it is important to implement them thoughtfully and carefully, with an eye toward potential risks and biases. Consider involving human oversight in the AI hiring process to ensure that the best possible candidates are being selected.

Prioritize candidate experience: In a competitive hiring landscape, it is important to prioritize the candidate experience, from the application process to the interview and beyond. By providing a positive experience, you can attract and retain top talent, even in uncertain times.

Good work, bot. And ChatGPT even has the insight to recommend caution on using itself. Ultimately, it’s a great tool to help you in your work, but only if you steer it properly and that you maintain that all-important human touch at the end.

As for how AI will change the working world – it will, in absolute, countless spades. It’s not a coincidence or an accident that everyone is talking about it right now. Jobs will change. Workflows will change. The overall interaction of society will probably change.

And will it impact the economy and in turn our three trends of time to fill, job openings and candidates per hire? Yes, it probably will. Let’s watch and find out.

Until next month…

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in February!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

The post Your Hiring Pulse report for April 2023 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As an HR practitioner or SMB employer, you’re probably trying to figure out the potential of AI in enhancing human skills and collaboration – especially since this is crucial for staying competitive in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.

Let’s look at how quickly AI adoption is growing in business. According to a 2022 report by McKinsey & Company, roughly half to three-fifths of all businesses reported that they adopted at least one AI technology in at least one function in annual studies dating back to 2017.

This is probably obvious: this percentage will likely increase dramatically in 2023.

This widespread adoption underscores the growing recognition of AI’s transformative potential and its ability to increase efficiency, productivity and innovation.

But here’s the thing – AI in the workplace isn’t about mere automation of processes. It’s not always about plug-and-play so you can go to the beach.

Rather, when implemented effectively, AI can empower employees to develop new skills, foster effective collaboration and make better-informed decisions. A 2020 report by PwC found that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with much of this value stemming from its potential to enhance human capabilities.

So, it’s worth a deep dive into how AI can enhance human skills and collaboration at work.

AI improving human skills

Again, AI isn’t about mere automation and optimization. It’s also going to enhance human skills – including personalized learning and personal development, plus improved decision-making. Your business can leverage AI’s capabilities to empower your colleagues to grow, innovate and shine in their roles.

Personalized L&D

AI-powered learning platforms, such as LinkedIn Learning and Coursera, enable employees to access customized learning experiences tailored to their unique needs and goals. AI can now analyze existing skillsets, job roles and performance data to recommend relevant courses and resources to help employees grow professionally.

This is huge in terms of employee engagement and retention. A 2018 LinkedIn survey found that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their professional development. And a TalentLMS survey in late 2021 found that 62% of US tech workers are motivated by training and learning. The payoff is clear.

More so, upskilling to meet new tech developments at work is crucial for success – a 2020 World Economic Forum (WEF) report predicted that by 2025, 50% of all employees will require reskilling due to the adoption of new technologies like AI. Soft skills such as agility, adaptation and autonomous work are becoming even more important.

Decision-making with data-driven insights

Decision-making is another area where AI can enhance human skills. Business decisions are increasingly data-driven. AI analytics tools, such as IBM Watson and Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning, can process vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, helping employees more quickly make informed decisions based on lightning-quick AI-driven insights.

The benefits of AI-enhanced decision-making are significant. First, AI-driven operations improves accuracy according to a 2022 McKinsey study, leading to better business outcomes and a more competitive edge. This can have far-reaching effects from optimizing supply chain management to improving customer satisfaction and driving revenue growth.

AI may have some limitations in terms of replicated human bias – more on that below – but when used wisely, it can also promote more unbiased decision-making. It can reduce and even eliminate cognitive biases that cloud human judgment, making for more objective, data-driven decisions including in HR.

For example, AI-powered recruitment tools like Workable ensure unbiased hiring processes. For example, its Video Interviews functionality creates interview questions that autopopulate across all interviews for a uniform experience, and its AI Recruiter surfaces candidates based on qualifications and experience. Its AI-created job descriptions are also free of bias.

AI fostering workplace collaboration

As the modern workplace continues to evolve, effective collaboration has become more important than ever. AI tech can also facilitate communication, as well as streamline project management and workflows.

Let’s look at each in depth:

Communication

AI-powered communication tools are revolutionizing how teams collaborate. AI-enhanced tools like SuperNormal’s AI-driven notetaking functionality can significantly improve communication and collaboration among team members.

For example, SuperNormal features automatically transcribes and analyzes meeting content, making it easy for participants to review, share and reference key points discussed. This capability not only enhances communication but also helps to ensure that remote and distributed workers remain engaged and informed, even if they’re unable to attend a meeting in real time.

Chief CX Innovation Officer Jonathan Shroyer at Arise Virtual Solutions is a huge proponent of AI tools in communications, citing emerging tools include AI support chatbots, repeat process automation, AI agents and big data bots in this Forbes article.

Project management and workflow

Project management is another area where AI-enhanced tools such as Asana, Trello and Jira can streamline workflows and improve team collaboration through the automation of tasks, identification of bottlenecks and future-proofing against project risks.

For example, Asana’s workload feature uses AI to analyze team members’ capacity and automatically allocate tasks, ensuring that work is distributed evenly and preventing burnout. Similarly, Trello’s AI-powered ‘Butler’ automates routine tasks, enabling team members to focus on higher-value activities and collaborate more effectively. Atlassian has incorporated predictive machine learning tools into its Jira and Confluence softwares.

The impact of AI on project management is significant. Harvard Business Review writes extensively about how AI will transform project management. In their article, they say that about $48 trillion are invested in projects annually, but only 35% of projects are considered to be successful according to Standish Group. And according to a Gartner report, 80% of project management tasks will be run by AI by the year 2030.

That’s a lot of money at stake. If AI-driven project management can make processes more efficient and productive, shortening project durations and reducing errors, it’s a no-brainer to incorporate AI and machine learning capabilities to foster team collaboration.

Overcoming challenges of AI implementation

It’s not all roses, though. There are challenges that you need to bear in mind when implementing AI to support human skills and collaboration at work. Concerns about job displacement and ethical considerations are pressing issues that you must address as you bring AI into your everyday operations.

Job displacement

One of the most significant concerns surrounding AI implementation is the potential for job displacement. While AI can automate repetitive tasks and improve efficiency, this automation has raised fears of job losses and workforce disruption. For instance, a new World Economic Forum report finds that a quarter of all jobs will be impacted over the next five years with AI at the forefront of those changes.

Here’s a spin on it, however – that same WEF report notes a net positive in jobs over the next five years due to these new developments. It’ll be tumultuous, but in the end, it’s a shift in jobs rather than a reduction in job opportunities.

However, to overcome redundancy, companies will need to adopt the right strategies and invest in workforce development to ensure they stay competitive in the business landscape. Rather than simply seeing AI as replacing humans in work processes, AI can be viewed as a complementary tool that enhances human skills. By focusing on the opportunities that AI creates, organizations can unlock the technology’s full potential and ensure a smooth transition for their workforce.

MIT’s Paul McDonagh-Smith is a supporter of this mentality, highlighting the merger of technological prowess with human drivers to boost your organizational ‘creativity quotient’. In a recent webinar, he discussed how human and machine capabilities can work in a mutually complementary fashion rather than compete with each other.

So what does that mean? Change does not need to be scary. It can be seen as an opportunity. Employees can be reskilled and upskilled so they’re equipped with the resources and talents they need to adapt quickly to their evolving roles and the technologies that come with them. Those who are agile, prepared and continually learning will get ahead.

Data backs this up. The WEF reports that 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025 as adoption of workplace technologies grows – with the bulk of those skills focused around problem-solving and critical thinking.

If you proactively address those needs in your business, you can mitigate those job displacement concerns in your teams. Encourage them to grow and develop, and support them to do so, so your business can be set for success in the age of AI.

Ethical use of AI in the workplace

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into the workplace, ensuring its ethical use is paramount. You’ll want to address potential issues related to employee privacy and algorithmic bias to ensure a responsible and equitable AI-driven work environment.

To protect employee privacy, you should establish clear policies and guidelines regarding the collection, storage and use of personal data. By being transparent about how AI technologies process employee data and implementing robust security measures, businesses can build trust and mitigate privacy concerns.

Addressing algorithmic bias is another essential element of ethical AI use. AI systems can inadvertently perpetuate existing biases if they are trained on biased data or designed without considering potential biases. Amazon’s gender-biased hiring using AI is one of the more prominent examples, as well as the infamous “racist soap dispenser” that made waves online some years back.

To counteract these issues, SMBs should invest in diverse AI development teams and implement bias-detection and mitigation strategies in their AI systems. By doing so, they can promote fairness, inclusivity and diversity in the workplace.

Finally, maintaining human oversight is crucial for the ethical use of AI. While AI can augment human decision-making and enhance productivity, it is essential to ensure that humans remain in control and responsible for critical decisions.

AI is the great empowerer

AI in the workplace will revolutionize how we work, collaborate and innovate. It won’t replace humans – it’ll simply enhance human skills. That is, if we empower employees to grow professionally and adapt accordingly to the changing demands of the modern work environment.

Organizations can also incorporate AI tools to foster workplace collaboration, facilitate communication, streamline project management and optimize workflows. At the core of all this? The human aspect.

There’s a powerful saying that’s making the rounds right now: AI will not take your job, but people who use AI will. Keep that in your mind as you move forward – AI isn’t a threat. It’s a great empowerer.

Humans now get from point A to point B faster using machines rather than horses, and can build more quickly with nail guns and electric saws rather than hammers and hacksaws. You’ll find that with a balanced approach and a well-developed human development strategy that incorporates AI, you can continue to thrive as people and as businesses.

The post How AI can enhance human skills and collaboration at work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And, of course, your hiring team is leaning on you to ensure the onboarding and orientation process goes absolutely perfectly.

But, there’s a but: Miriam is one of two dozen new hires starting that week because you’re scaling operations as a company. That puts you in a bit of a pickle. You just don’t have the bandwidth to ensure a smooth onboarding for Miriam and all her new colleagues – so you’re looking at potential problems in the future: Miriam gets thrown to the wolves in her first week on the job, gets disgruntled and frazzled, and starts tuning out pretty quickly afterwards.

Next? She turns to Glassdoor and starts looking again – and even gripes anonymously about the poor experience she had when she was initially pumped about her new job. And that goes for many of the other new hires as well.

Cue frustrated hiring managers, understaffed teams, and an overall stressful working environment for your existing employees who then hit burnout at a time when it could have been avoided.

How do you avoid all that? As an HR professional, you’re always searching for innovative ways to improve the onboarding process. With all the new technology out there, have you considered adding virtual reality to the mix?

Virtual onboarding

VR is no longer the stuff of science fiction and it hasn’t been for a long time. Also referred to as “immersion technology”, VR can be a real boon to your onboarding process. Think about it – rather than plunk Miriam in front of a laptop and telling her she needs to watch a series of videos, you’re putting her in a virtual working environment to get her familiarized with the job before she’s actually doing it.

Those interactive experiences help new hires like Miriam feel welcomed and better informed about the work they’re going to do for you.

The power of information retention

Those first few weeks for a new hire can be overwhelming. As a new hire, you can be bombarded with all kinds of information – you’re meeting new people, learning new systems and entering a new culture. You’ve having meetings one after the next, training with different teams, and reading up on numerous policies and best practices.

This can lead to information overload at a crucial time where you want to ensure new employees retain all that information if they’re going to succeed. That’s where VR can be useful. Immersive learning has been found to be more efficient in terms of memory retention – a University of Maryland study found that VR learners demonstrated an 8.8% higher recall accuracy compared to those using a two-dimensional platform.

Improved retention also means better job performance. A PwC study revealed that employees trained with VR were up to 275% more confident in applying learned skills, and were four times faster in completing training than those in the traditional classroom setting.

A holodeck for training purposes

Star Trek’s holodeck is a perfect example of how immersive technology can be used to train new hires – in Star Trek, it’s used as a safe environment for combat training and scientific simulation. The same thinking applies to VR’s capabilities to create realistic job simulations for your new employees.

And while Star Trek is science fiction, there are real-life examples of this. For instance, retail giant Walmart has embraced VR to train over one million employees across its stores.

Andy Trainor, Walmart’s Senior Director of Walmart U.S. Academies, is a fan of virtual onboarding. “The great thing about VR,” he says, “is its ability to make learning experiential. When you watch a module through the headset, your brain feels like you actually experienced a situation.”

You’ve probably heard about Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. It’s an intense time for customer support representatives, especially newer, inexperienced ones. To counter the challenge, Walmart has a VR training scenario simulating that environment to prep new and existing employees ahead of time.

That controlled and risk-free environment helps employees practice customer service, problem-solving and safety procedures without fear of consequence, ultimately making them better at the job when the time comes.

Likewise, Farmers Insurance developed a VR training program for their claims adjusters. The program immerses trainees in a virtual environment simulating real-world situations, such as inspecting damaged properties.

This approach to training has enabled Farmers Insurance to accelerate the learning process, improve knowledge retention, and better prepare their claims adjusters for the challenges they’ll face on the job. By leveraging the capabilities of immersive learning solutions, your organization can also unlock the full potential of VR technology in onboarding and orientation.

Being the ‘new kid’ isn’t easy

Working is often collaborative. Consequently, it’s a priority for many hiring teams to build strong working relationships from the get-go.

But for the new hire like Miriam, being introduced to all those unfamiliar names and faces (and roles) can become overwhelming during an already stressful first few weeks on the job. Couple that with the drive to make a strong impression, and it can be a highly anxious time.

VR can address that even before the first day on the job. Immersing the new hire in a virtual working environment which includes ‘introductions’ to their new colleagues helps a new hire familiarize themselves ahead of time. Ice is broken, new connections are built, and new relationships start forming even before they physically arrive for work on the first day.

It’s a virtual solution

As an HR professional, incorporating VR tech into your onboarding and orientation processes can boost the new employee experience.

By offering immersive learning, realistic job simulators and connectivity boosters, you’re priming your new hires such as Miriam to hit the ground running more quickly. That’s more valuable especially in sectors where you’re onboarding in large batches or hiring for higher-stress working environments.

There’s just one caveat – don’t let VR do all the work. There are two balances to bear in mind: first, as with all technologies, you still should maintain the all-important human touch as you scale your tech stack. Second, keep your tech evolution in tandem with your organization’s specific needs and objectives. Don’t let one get ahead of the other.

With the right approach, virtual reality can transform the way you welcome and integrate new employees into your team, creating a more engaged, connected and confident workforce. Newly hired prodigies like Miriam will realize their full potential quicker than before – and your company will reap the benefits.

The post Use VR in onboarding and set your new hires for success appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Tech buy-in and adoption in hiring teams is a challenge for 22.8% of businesses
• The percentage of businesses citing insufficient in-house capacity to hire as one of their major challenges has increased 84.5% since 2020
• And finally – nearly one in five employers (17.5%) say their existing tech stack isn’t enough to meet their hiring needs

This was all before ChatGPT hopped into the ring with great aplomb. Surely, if we carried out the same survey today, all the above numbers would be higher. And as businesses increasingly incorporate more AI tools into their fold, many will find their existing tech stack is no longer enough to meet their needs. Likewise, employees worry that they’ll become redundant.

Plus, many businesses are exercising financial restraint. Technologies that don’t have a clear tie-back to revenue are being dropped like hot potatoes. Employees are being let go. That double-whammy means teams are limited in their capacity to stay on top of work – including in hiring.

That’s not supposed to bring you down, however. Stay with us here, and let’s go a little deeper:

Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst, Sandy Shen, said this about surviving the pandemic as a business:

“Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.”

“Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital platforms will … keep their companies running smoothly now, and over the long term.”

In other words, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. That same sentiment rings even more true now – businesses that move quickly to AI-driven tech capabilities will stay ahead of the curve especially during these recession-prone times.

We’re seeing rapid adoption already, with a ResumeBuilder survey finding half of all companies are already using ChatGPT and 93% of current users say they plan to expand their use of this savvy AI tool.

Take on that optimistic spirit of early adoption of the tech – not just ChatGPT, but all the AI and digital developments happening in the hiring space – and you’ll see a vastly improved hiring process at a time when your business most needs it.

The evolution of AI in hiring

But what exactly is changing in hiring? A lot, as it happens. ChatGPT is already being used extensively to auto-write job descriptions, interview questions, and many other elements of the hiring process that at one time required a human to create. You’re still the driver, however, and there are many elements of hiring that you can drive with the support of AI.

With that in mind, let’s look at some fundamental aspects of recruitment and the ways in which they’re being digitally transformed.

1. Sourcing and outreach

The rise of advanced search tools, AI-driven algorithms, and automation has expanded the ability to identify and target top candidates. To stay ahead, learn to leverage these technologies effectively, engage with emerging niche platforms, and build meaningful connections with candidates through online communities.

Some of the tech advances in sourcing include:

AI-based candidate matching

Platforms are utilizing artificial intelligence to analyze job descriptions and match them with the most suitable candidates from a large database. Workable’s AI Recruiter, for example, can build a list of top passive candidates for your job openings utilizing our data intelligence gathered from hosting 160 million candidates in 1.5 million jobs.

Programmatic job advertising

AI-powered programmatic job advertising platforms help you target and attract the right candidates by distributing job ads across various online channels. These platforms analyze real-time data to make intelligent decisions on where and when to post job ads, optimizing budget and reach.

Recruitment chatbots

Chatbots help automate initial candidate interactions, answering questions, and pre-screening candidates. These chatbots can engage candidates 24/7, collect necessary information, and schedule interviews, freeing up time for more high-touch interactions.

Talent pooling and candidate rediscovery

AI-powered platforms allow you to tap into existing talent pools by rediscovering candidates who have applied for previous positions. By analyzing candidates’ profiles, these platforms can identify potential matches for new job openings, reducing the time and resources spent on sourcing. A good example is Workable’s Resurface Candidates tool, which does exactly this.

2. Screening and assessments

Technology can revolutionize the way you assess candidates’ skills, experiences, and cultural fit. AI-powered tools and gamified assessments offer more efficient and engaging methods of evaluation. Hiring team members must stay up to date with these tools and ensure they comply with privacy regulations to maintain candidate trust.

Some of those tech advances include:

Pre-employment assessments

Hiring teams are increasingly utilizing pre-employment assessment tools, such as Criteria Corp and Workable Assessments, to measure candidates’ cognitive abilities, personality traits, and job-specific skills.

These assessments help to streamline the screening process and identify candidates who are more likely to be a good fit for the role and company culture.

Gamified assessments

Gamification has been incorporated into the assessment process to create a more engaging experience for candidates. Tools like Pymetrics and Arctic Shores utilize game-based assessments to evaluate cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills, and personality traits.

These provide a fun and interactive way to measure candidates’ fit for a role, while also collecting valuable data to support hiring decisions.

Skill tests and coding challenges

Companies use platforms such as HackerRank and Codility to administer skill tests and coding challenges, allowing candidates to demonstrate their technical abilities in real-world scenarios. These tools enable you to objectively assess candidates’ skills and compare them against established benchmarks.

Virtual reality assessments

Virtual reality (VR) technology is being utilized in the hiring process to assess candidates’ skills and aptitudes in immersive, simulated environments. Talespin and Immerse, among others, are VR-based assessment tools that test candidates’ decision-making, teamwork and communication abilities in realistic scenarios.

Automated reference checking

Automated reference checking platforms such as SkillSurvey and Checkster streamline the reference checking process by collecting feedback from a candidate’s professional contacts. These tools use AI algorithms to analyze the feedback and generate detailed reports, supporting hiring decisions.

3. Virtual Interviewing

Virtual interviewing tools have become increasingly popular, providing valuable insights through AI-powered analysis. Through these technologies, whether carried out synchronously or asynchronously, hiring team members can make more informed decisions about candidates.

Asynchronous video interviews

Asynchronous video interviews enable candidates to record their responses to pre-set interview questions at their convenience. Platforms like Workable’s Video Interviews allow you to review and assess these recorded responses on their own time, streamlining the interview process and eliminating scheduling challenges.

Then, AI-driven analysis of these interviews can help you identify key soft skills and communication abilities – more on that below.

Synchronous video interviews

Real-time video interviews conducted through platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams became increasingly standard during the pandemic. These virtual meetings provide a cost- and time-effective alternative to in-person interviews while still allowing for real-time interaction between the interviewer and the candidate.

AI-driven video interview analysis

AI-based platforms can analyze recorded video interviews to assess candidates’ soft skills, communication abilities, and other attributes. These platforms use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to evaluate candidates’ responses, providing you with valuable insights and data-driven recommendations.

Likewise, AI-powered transcription services such as Supernormal can then be used to transcribe, analyze and summarize these interviews, providing you with valuable insights and data points for further evaluation.

AI-based sentiment analysis

AI-driven sentiment analysis tools can evaluate the tone, emotions, and sentiment expressed by candidates during video interviews. These insights help you to better understand candidates’ communication styles, emotional intelligence, and cultural fit.

Platforms like RingCentral and IBM Watson can integrate with video interviewing tools to provide real-time sentiment analysis during virtual interviews.

Facial and voice recognition

Advanced facial and voice recognition technologies are being utilized to analyze non-verbal cues and vocal characteristics during video interviews. Realeyes and VoiceVibes are two such tools that can help you identify key traits and behaviors that may not be evident through traditional interviewing methods, offering a more comprehensive assessment of the candidate.

Virtual interview coaching and feedback

AI-driven coaching tools provide candidates with feedback on their interview performance, identifying areas for improvement and offering personalized guidance. This helps candidates to refine their skills and better prepare for future interviews, while also providing you with a slicker pool of applicants. InterviewStream and MyInterview are two such examples of this technology.

4. Onboarding and beyond

The onboarding process is also evolving rapidly, with virtual onboarding tools and personalized experiences driven by data analytics and AI.

Digital onboarding platforms

Cloud-based platforms like BambooHR and Talmundo enable companies to centralize and streamline the onboarding process. New hires can access essential documents, complete paperwork, watch training videos, and connect with team members—all from a single platform.

These tools allow HR and managers to track progress, ensuring that new employees complete required tasks and receive necessary support during their initial weeks.

Virtual onboarding events

As remote work and distributed teams continue to gain traction as a standard in the workplace, companies are increasingly hosting virtual onboarding events to welcome new hires. Organizations use video conferencing tools to conduct virtual meet-and-greets, team-building exercises, and training sessions to help new employees feel connected and engaged from the start.

Personalized learning paths

AI-driven learning management systems (LMS) like Docebo and Cornerstone can create personalized learning paths for new hires based on their roles, responsibilities and skill sets.

By leveraging AI and data analytics, these systems can track progress and adapt training content to suit individual needs, ensuring that new employees are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills for their roles.

Employee onboarding chatbots

AI-powered chatbots like Talla can assist new hires during the onboarding process by answering common questions, providing relevant information, and guiding them through required tasks.

These chatbots can be integrated into workplace communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, offering real-time support and minimizing the need for new employees to contact HR or managers for help.

Social and collaborative learning

Digital tools like 360Learning and Degreed foster social and collaborative learning experiences for new hires. These platforms allow employees to share knowledge, ask questions, and collaborate on projects, enabling new team members to learn from their peers and build relationships within the organization.

The future of hiring tech

That’s a lot of tech already. But there’s more on the horizon – and ChatGPT and its cousins are really only at the cusp of it. Let’s look at the various other ways in which digital transformation of recruitment is continuing to grow:

Advanced AI-driven candidate matching

AI algorithms are growing to the point where they can predict the success of a candidate within a company based on data analysis of past employees’ performances. This could significantly improve the quality of hires and streamline the recruitment process, allowing you to focus on the human aspects of your role.

Virtual reality interviewing and onboarding

Virtual reality (VR) technology is already revolutionizing the hiring process. Candidates can be immersed in a virtual work environment, interacting with potential colleagues, and participating in real-life work scenarios before they even get the job. This provides you with valuable insights into a candidate’s ability to adapt and perform in their new role.

Augmented reality (AR) enhanced job previews

Likewise, augmented reality can be utilized to give candidates a more immersive preview of their potential work environment, from their desks to the company’s facilities. Candidates can use their smartphones or AR devices to explore their future workplace, interacting with digital information about company culture, benefits, and team structures.

This would allow candidates to make more informed decisions about accepting job offers and help you identify candidates who are genuinely excited about joining the company.

Blockchain-based credential verification

Blockchain technology can play a significant role in recruitment by streamlining the verification of candidates’ credentials, such as education, certifications and work experience. By using a decentralized, secure and tamper-proof system, you can quickly and accurately validate the qualifications of candidates.

This reduces hours spent on background checks and minimizes the risk of fraudulent claims.

Remote workforce management through IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) could play a vital role in managing remote workforces, as companies increasingly adopt flexible and remote work models. IoT devices and wearables could be used to monitor employee health, productivity, and engagement in real-time, providing valuable insights. This data could be used to create personalized support plans for employees, addressing their unique needs and preferences.

There’s plenty more, of course, but that’s just a taste of what’s happening now and in the near future.

Lessons from Michelangelo, Borg and Ford

Let’s step out of that tech rabbit hole for a moment, and consider some real-life lessons to help assuage fears that jobs will be taken over by artificial intelligence including in hiring teams. The reality is, AI can be your friend if you embrace it.

Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel

First, let’s look at one of history’s great painters and one of history’s equally great paintworks. While Michelangelo is famous for his work on the Sistine Chapel, he did not complete the masterpiece alone. He had a team of assistants to help him bring his vision to life. He consulted with them, worked with them to prepare the “canvas”, and so on. He still led the project and directed his teams to set the foundation for what ultimately became his masterpiece.

Likewise, for you, AI can be your assistant. It’ll take care of the other work and help you focus on the human aspects of your role, including fostering a positive candidate experience and ensuring that your teams are highly engaged.

Bjorn Borg and the wooden racket

When tennis legend Bjorn Borg made a comeback in 1991 after years in retirement, he chose to stick with his wooden racket rather than adopting the modern graphite rackets that had become the standard in the sport. His insistence on staying with outdated technology led to disappointing (and even embarrassing) results.

This is a reminder to stay up-to-date with – and ahead of – the latest technologies and trends in your area of work. If you don’t stay on top of your game, you’ll fall behind and miss out on top talent.

Henry Ford and the assembly line

Car titan Henry Ford revolutionized the manufacturing industry with his innovative assembly line, which dramatically increased efficiency and reduced production costs. Ford took inspiration from meat-packing plants and a grain mill conveyor belt to divide the labor into clear steps and to bring the work to the workers, thereby reducing time wasted in moving around and leading to mass production and cheaper cars.

Likewise, you can explore and adopt new technologies that can optimize your workflow and save you an incredible amount of time and hassle – and money.

AI isn’t a threat – it’s your ally

SWOT analysis is a common element of business strategy. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats – hence, SWOT. Think about what you’re doing at work, and what your company’s doing. What are your strengths right now? What are your weaknesses? And what are the opportunities you can capitalize on to overcome those weaknesses?

The fourth one – the threat – is probably overplayed when it comes to AI. The infusion of AI in hiring need not be seen as a threat to the profession, but rather as an opportunity for growth and enhancement.

Don’t forget that the human touch continues to be a vital aspect of the hiring process, and AI technology is the tool to support and streamline your efforts.

It’s an exciting time. Embrace this age of digital transformation, including in hiring. Learn from the successes of Michelangelo and Henry Ford, and the failure of Bjorn Borg, and navigate this new road. The future of hiring sits squarely in the harmonious blend of technology and human skill. Master that balance, and you’ll do very well.

The post AI, ChatGPT and the human touch in hiring appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But one thing we do know: recent layoffs are concentrated in the SaaS world, and CPH is rising meteorically as a result.

This month’s Hiring Pulse is going to be a short one. Of course, February only has 28 days and that’s the latest month in our dataset. Nevertheless, this report still packs a punch. Let’s get started!

How we’re looking at data

We’ve adopted two methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.
Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings (JO) 
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Candidates per Hire climbed for the eighth straight month – but this time, the jump from the previous month is higher than we’ve seen in a long, long time
• The CPH trend has come full circle and is now higher than its previous peak two years ago
• Small businesses (with <50 full-time employees) are continuing to hire at a brisk pace

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of February are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Quick clarification, because people are asking: the data in this chart shows the trendline against the 2019 average as an index of 100, not the actual number of days in TTF.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend throughout 2022 against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled:

In January, the TTF trend spiked after a steady decline throughout most of 2022. But a January spike in TTF is completely and totally normal.

And in February, the TTF score dropped from 90.8 in January to 86.8 in February. Again, totally normal.

For every year dating back to 2020, there’s always a drop from January to February in terms of TTF. Here’s what that looked like for each of the three previous years:

• 2020: 102 in January and 97.3 in February
• 2021: 95.6 in January and 88.6 in February
• 2022: 97.4 in January and 90.9 in February

This is not a lot to write home about, honestly. Things are ‘normal’ here. So, let’s move on to the job opening data.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers up to the end of February.

Again, we have a relatively robust month for job activity with 6.7 jobs per company on average in the network, up just a notch from January’s 6.6.

To put that in perspective, job posting activity remained steady in the latter part of last year, alternating between a low of 6.1 and a high of 6.3 from June through to November before the predicted holiday-season drop to 5.2 for December.

That of course differs based on company size. So let’s break the data down into those buckets.

Larger companies running against the norm

The big jump in job openings for companies with 200 or more full-time employees kind of continues. But while it remains high, February shows a drop to 17 jobs per company on average, down from 18.5 in January.

In past years dating back to the beginning of our dataset, job postings in February were always higher than January for those larger companies. This year, it’s the opposite.

Medium is closer to the median

Last month, we highlighted a modest bump in average job postings for medium-sized businesses (51-200 FTEs) from December to January. It’s now stabilized through February with 5.6 job postings per mid-sized company, down a smidgen from 5.7 in January.

That’s about as stable as can be, considering that over the six months ending February, the busiest month for job postings was 5.8 in September and the quietest month was 5.3 in December.

In past years, the change from January to February differs from one year to the next – but not by much. So, for mid-sized companies, 2023 isn’t anomalous so far.

Small but lively

Last month, we marveled at how those businesses in the 1-50 FTE bracket were posting jobs at an unprecedented rate – in short, higher in January than at any other time in our dataset.

And now? Small businesses are even more active in the hiring space in February, with 4.7 job postings on average compared with January’s 4.2. That’s a 12% jump.

For context: in 2020, February’s job posting average was nearly 5% lower than in January. In 2021 and 2022, February was relatively unchanged from January.

Let’s keep an eye on this interesting trendline going forward. Now, let’s look at who’s applying for these jobs.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Again, remember, this is a trendline using the 2019 CPH average as a baseline of 100, not the actual number of candidates per hire.

Now that Let’s look at what’s going on here through February:

We’re going to look at two full years of data here dating back to January 2021, because the CPH trend is probably the most compelling trendline right now. It starts at a high point in February 2021 at 128 and declines sharply to 84.2 a year later in January 2022.

The trend stays relatively stable for the next six months after January 2022, and then skyrockets from 91 in July 2022 to a staggering 142.3 this last February.

That means a 56% increase in the CPH trend in an eight-month span. And that increase seems to be accelerating.

For instance, the highest MoM increase before 2023 in this chart was 16.8 points from July to August last year.

And now, we see an 18.1-point increase from January to February.

We know all about the Great Resignation. We’ve written plenty about the Great Discontent (and we have a new survey report coming in that area – stay tuned!).

Now? We’re looking at the Great Resurgence when it comes to sheer number of candidates.

What’s going on here?

In last month’s Pulse, we took a deep dive into five select industries in our dataset, each of them with different numbers.

We found that Software as a Service led in terms of the CPH trend, along with Diversified Financials and Media & Entertainment as significant industries experiencing (enjoying? enduring?) a deluge of talent.

Meanwhile, companies in the Hospitals & Healthcare industry sat near the bottom of the CPH spectrum, seeing fewer candidates for their jobs than most other industries. Other industries near the bottom include Retail, Banks, and Consumer Services.

And, on the topic of growing CPH, we saw this interesting insight from LinkedIn, courtesy of Dominic Joyce, Head of Talent Acquisition at Travelex:

In short, next to layoffs and turnover, maybe the one-click apply option is a reason you’re seeing more candidates in your inbox.

To Dominic’s point, some of those may be “lazy” applications. Not all of them, of course – but some of them at least.

This doesn’t mean you should not have easy-apply options – those are appreciated at large by candidates and they have a very valuable purpose. Rather, having more candidates highlights the importance of having a good filtering system in place – one that brings those ideal candidates to the forefront of your application pile.

And, of course, a reliable selection process free of breakdowns even when candidate volume grows exponentially.

That’s especially important right now with a shorter Time to Fill (which means more competitive hiring). That’s also important if you’re hiring in an industry that’s seeing a lot of change and turnover – like in SaaS, for instance.

Just food for thought. See you next month…

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in February!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

Want more? Check out our previous Hiring Pulses:

Your Hiring Pulse report for January 2023

In December’s Hiring Pulse, we drew some fresh conclusions from the data – speci...

Your Hiring Pulse report for December 2022

In November’s Hiring Pulse, we went into detail about ongoing layoffs – especial...

Your Hiring Pulse report for November 2022

In October’s Hiring Pulse, we took a different approach to the dataset, but what...

Your Hiring Pulse report for October 2022

In September’s Hiring Pulse, the data started to show that there were more candi...

Your Hiring Pulse report for September 2022

In August’s Hiring Pulse, we talked about how the hiring market has responded to...

Your Hiring Pulse report for August 2022

In July’s Hiring Pulse, we talked at length about recession jitters, interest ra...

The data this time around is more than convincing. We’re seeing 35% more candidates per hire in December than six months earlier – that’s an astronomical increase unseen since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plus, with the full data of 2022 on our hands, we’re able to look at how 2022 sizes up against previous years.

Let’s dive in!

How we’re looking at data

We’ve adopted two methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.
Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings (JO) 
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Candidates per Hire is surging at a rate unseen in nearly three years
• Job openings for small businesses only start dipping in December, compared with dips in both November and December for their larger counterparts
• Time to Fill normally grows in December – but not this time around

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of December are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend throughout 2022 against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled:

The main insight here is that Time to Fill once again hit a new low for the calendar year. It’s been three straight months of “lowest in 2022”, or for every month in Q4.

And looking at that chart above, it looks like it’s a total decline from the start to the end of 2022. But that’s not necessarily true if you look a little deeper. Take out the January metric of 98.9 – which is a full 5.9 points higher than the second-highest month in May – and take out Q4 altogether, and honestly, TTF holds steady for February all the way through to September.

We’ll talk more about it in our deep dive below, but suffice to say that the very high January number is normal, whereas the very low Q4 numbers are not normal.

But, in between those two extremes, TTF looks more stabilized compared with the previous two years. More on that below in our year-over-year comparison.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers up to the end of December.

As you can see, we’re making it a standard to look at the Job Openings data across the three company size buckets of 1-50, 51-200, and 200+ full-time employees (FTEs).

First, before we start looking at each of the buckets, note that the overall average jobs per company in the network plunges in December to 5.2. That’s after very little change for the six months before that, ranging from 6.1 to 6.3 jobs per account throughout that period.

A huge drop for enterprises

Now, which of the size buckets is at fault here? At first glance, it’s the enterprise-level companies (200+ FTEs) who slowed down their hiring activity throughout the month, dropping a full 3.8 points from 17.3 in November to 13.5 in December. Of course, because the big kids will normally have more job activity in either direction, this will skew that overall average

Medium, not nearly as much

But we’re also seeing a drop in medium-sized business (51-200 FTEs) job activity from 5.1 in November to 4.7 in December, albeit not as dramatic of a drop. Nevertheless, like at the enterprise level, this is a continuation of the slow and steady decline in job activity in the Q4 months of 2022.

Jobs be nimble, jobs be quick for small businesses

What stands out as different for this month’s Hiring Pulse is in the job activity for small-sized businesses (1-50 FTEs). While their enterprise- and middle-sized businesses showed decline in Q4, small-sized businesses were actually increasing up to the end of November, with 3.1 job postings on average in August, 3.6 in September, 3.8 in October, and 4.2 in November.

And here’s the interesting bit: December’s 3.5 average for small business job postings is not even the lowest for 2022 – that honor goes to June and August with 3.1 for each. That stands in stark contrast to the other two company-size buckets, which both hit convincing 2022 lows in December.

There are many different conclusions to draw from all this – the one we’ll make here is that smaller businesses tend to be more agile and their senior management are more likely to be operating around the clock because they kind of have to. They wear many different hats and may also be financially invested in their business, rather than simply being employees who can take time off in December for the holidays.

There’s sometimes a personal cost, especially when one has family, but at a strictly business level, this speaks to the strength of smaller organizations – they can be nimble and that’s crucial during recession-prone times when it’s often difficult to plan beyond the next quarter. It’s a potential generalization, but it’s a point worth considering.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Let’s look at what’s going on here through December:

Last month, we pointed to four straight months of higher-than-normal CPH data points, each higher than the previous one.

You can now make it five. Five straight months of astronomical month-over-month increases to close out 2022. To put it in perspective, back in November’s Hiring Pulse, we showed that the average candidates per hire for October was 24% higher than in July. It’s now 34.9% higher.

Let’s put it into perspective: if you were getting, say, 100 applicants for a job in July, this means that last month, you’re getting 135 applicants for your open roles on average. That’s 35 more applications you need to sift through. And as you move your applicants through the recruitment funnel, you’re screening more candidates per job, and likely interviewing more of them in the first part of the funnel.

That’s maybe a good thing for companies who were struggling to find worthy candidates for their open jobs during the height of the Great Resignation, but not a good thing for resource-strapped companies who are barely staying ahead of all the additional work on their plate.

In fact, our New World of Work survey in 2022 showed that reduced capacity to recruit is more of a challenge today than in 2020, with 27.5% saying so now compared with 14.9% two years ago.

Note: that survey was conducted in early summer 2022, well before this surge in CPH. We’re now seeing cutbacks and layoffs especially in the tech sector, and consequently a huge rise in CPH – but bet your bottom dollar (or pound or euro or what have you) that companies are not adding to payroll to support their hiring teams.

So… a growing CPH necessitates optimization in the recruitment process (insert shameless plug for Workable which actually does help in terms of doing more with less).

Deep dive – how ‘normal’ was 2022?

We’ve already covered to some extent what 2022 looks like for each of the three metrics. Now, with a complete 2022 dataset, we’re taking a deep dive and comparing the most recent year with the previous three calendar years (2019, 2020, and 2021).

And for visual impression, we’re overlaying each of the years into a single chart for each of the metrics so you can really compare.

Quick note before we really dive in: the data for Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire is based on an index, that being the average of 2019 as a whole, which is set as 100. We’ve included 2019 in these year-over-year comparisons for extended analysis – yes, we’re even comparing the months of 2019 against its own annual average.

What we’re doing a little differently just for this deep dive is the job opening data. Since it’s normally based on hard averages (i.e. job postings per company) and not on a 2019 index, it becomes more awkward to do a year-over-year analysis because our network has grown substantially over the years and, with it, the job postings.

So, instead of looking at just raw averages or even lining things up against the 2019 index, we’re using the first month of the year (January) as an index of 100 for each year, and sizing each month of that year against January.

Hope that makes sense! Let’s get into what was ‘normal’ about 2022 and how ‘normal’ it actually was compared with previous years.

Time to Fill

First, of course, Time to Fill:

So, the first and most obvious commonality across all years is that TTF is naturally higher in January than any other month, takes a bit of a drop in February, and kind of fluctuates from there.

2019, being the last ‘normal’ year – and we stand by that statement – shows only minimal fluctuation. 2020, which of course was a rather cataclysmic year for anyone personally and professionally, shows a rather stable TTF right up to April as the other three years continue to drop. But then, 2020 plummeted resoundingly from roughly 100 in March and April down to 84.2, 83, and 83.8 in the Q3 months before recovering slightly in the last quarter.

The other thing that stands out is something we alluded to above: 2022 showed consecutive month-over-month declines in the TTF metric from September all the way to December. This differs from the other three years, which all show relatively stable TTFs with even an increase in TTF for December for 2019 and 2021.

So, if we’re going to talk about what even is ‘normal’, it’s kind of hard to suss that out even with the last four years on full display.

Job Openings

Now, on to job openings. Remember, instead of looking at it as raw average job openings per company, we’re simply using January of each year as the index for that year. That way, every year starts at 100, and goes up or down from there.

Also, we have four different graphs here, because we’re looking at each of the FTE size buckets:

JO trendline for all businesses

Let’s look at the overall trendline for starters:

Yeah, yeah. That dip in April 2020 needs no explanation. We all know what happened. So let’s just scrub that from memory (and we do apologize for reminding you about it).

On to the comparables: what seems to be relatively normal across all four years is how the job opening trend remains relatively steady in mid-year and in some cases even grows a little bit in the Q3 months.

Another trend that looks to be consistent regardless of year is the drop in job openings in the last month of the year – understandable because of holidays and it being a relatively slow month for business all around.

Keep that one in mind – more on that below.

JO trendline for small businesses

Now, let’s look at the small-business job opening trendline:

What’s interesting about this is how 2021 and 2022 show a very healthy jump in small-business job openings for November which stands in contrast to 2019 and 2020.

What also stands out is how the job openings for small businesses climb significantly for September, October and November in 2022, while remaining relatively stable in the other three years.

One part that intrigued us is that the 1-50 FTE bucket is the only one that showed a drop in job openings for just December and not for both November and December as in the other two size buckets (and in the overall average).

Again, numerous reasons for this – one explanation to think about is, again, that small businesses are more nimble and perhaps work on much more of a month-to-month basis than their larger counterparts. Execs may not be thinking as far into the future when they’re running a smaller kayak of 15 employees as when they’re operating a larger ocean liner of 250 employees. Again, a potential generalization, but worth thinking about.

JO trendline for medium-sized businesses

Now, let’s look at the medium-sized business job activity:

What’s markedly different here for businesses with 51-200 FTEs is how much healthier the market looked for 2021 going out from January – it rises far above the others.

This is a sign of economic recovery from 2020, of course, likely in tandem with Great Resignation fallout – this all leads to more jobs added to payroll as companies grow (or recover, rather) and also, more backfill as quit rates run through the roof towards the end of 2021.

JO trendline for enterprises

Now keep that in mind while looking at enterprise-level businesses:

See, companies with more than 200 FTEs also showed plenty of job activity in 2021, higher vs. the January index than the other three years – but not standing out nearly as much as 2021 was for companies with 51-200 employees. Again, this is likely a combination of economic recovery and the Great Resignation.

What’s a little concerning about all of these job opening graphs is how the trend looks to be lower than other years for 2022 and going sharply downhill. We’ve heard talk about a recession since the early days of Q2 2022 – and companies cutting back in preparation.

This is continuing to happen at the start of 2023, and frustratingly for the talent market, means fewer jobs on the horizon.

Which leads us to:

Candidates per Hire

Are you ready?

We will keep this succinct: the CPH metric is now trending at the same level as at the end of the catastrophic year of 2020. What’s different this time is that the CPH trend is on a consistently uphill climb since mid-2022 and hitting new highs every month since September.

In 2020, CPH was at astronomical highs and coming down pretty drastically for November and December. And with the Great Resignation, the CPH trend continued to drop throughout 2021 and then held steady throughout the first half of 2022.

And now, in complete contrast to any of the other years, CPH is climbing at a rate unseen since those early months in 2020. People talked about how 2020 showed a recession unlike any other – the difference is that at the time, the volatility hit us like a truck on a dark country road thanks to an unanticipated pandemic.

This time, we’ve been anticipating a change in the economy for many months now.

What’s the difference? Well, the huge drop in the economy in early 2020 was in direct response to a single development, and because it was so swift and severe, the rebound was also swift.

This time, it’s much more complex – it’s not just about a pandemic. It’s about supply chains, a war in Ukraine, rising food and gas prices, consumer hesitancy, and other things in what’s being called a permacrisis.

Wait, a permacrisis? What’s that? Read on:

What’s going on here?

The opening lines to a recent Economist article read as follows:

“The editors of the Collins English Dictionary have declared ‘permacrisis’ to be their word of the year for 2022. Defined as an ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’, it is an ugly portmanteau that accurately encapsulates today’s world as 2023 dawns.”

That’s scary stuff, indeed. That’s the tone we’re also setting for 2023 – if it isn’t already, it’s going to be tough times for businesses and employers.

But there’s a kind-of glimmer for you: you may still be needing to backfill vacated roles and fill new roles opened up due to restructurings. But for many of those job openings, a flood of candidates will come crashing through.

This will add stress to your hiring pipeline every step of the way. You, of course, may be reluctant to add to your payroll that’s responsible for hiring – which is understandable,. Instead, you’ll want to optimize your existing process.

We talked last month about automation using recruitment technology – you can screen far more candidates using one-way video interviews, keep them regularly informed with automated messaging, and relieve your recruiters of scheduling hassles using interview self-scheduling.

There are flexible solutions that can rise and fall with your hiring tide. Plus, you will show your value as a hiring team member that makes you even more indispensable to a company that’s trying to survive this permacrisis.

Stay strong, and see you next month.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in February!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

Want more? Check out our previous Hiring Pulses:

Your Hiring Pulse report for December 2022

In November’s Hiring Pulse, we went into detail about ongoing layoffs – especial...

Your Hiring Pulse report for November 2022

In October’s Hiring Pulse, we took a different approach to the dataset, but what...

Your Hiring Pulse report for October 2022

In September’s Hiring Pulse, the data started to show that there were more candi...

Your Hiring Pulse report for September 2022

In August’s Hiring Pulse, we talked about how the hiring market has responded to...

Your Hiring Pulse report for August 2022

In July’s Hiring Pulse, we talked at length about recession jitters, interest ra...

Your Hiring Pulse report for July 2022

In June’s Hiring Pulse, we talked about increased layoffs especially in startups...

Let’s take a look:

How we’re looking at data

We’ve adopted two methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.

Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

1. Time to Fill (TTF)
2. Total Job Openings
3. Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Table of Contents:

• Time to Fill
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire
• What’s going on here?
• The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Small businesses are hiring more, whereas enterprise-level businesses are hiring less
• Candidates are flooding the job market at a rate unseen in a year and a half
• Huge numbers in Silicon Valley tech layoffs could lead to cross-border mobility not only for those laid off, but for employers as well

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of November are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled from the start of 2020 through to the end of November 2022:

Last month, we marked a new low for Time to Fill for 2022 when TTF hit 88.7 (reported as 88.4 last month – since updated with more complete data). Well, we’ve again hit another new low in November, with the TTF trend dropping to 88.2.

That’s the lowest it’s been since May 2021 when TTF was 87.8. And this is the second consecutive month that it’s been below 90.

Let’s compare to the Ghosts of Hiring Past. Note the three pretty significant spikes in that nearly three-year span in the chart above. No, those aren’t anomalies – they are all in January. This can be explained by saying that work processes slow down in December as we go through the motions of holiday season, and that adds days – weeks, even – to the normal time spent on filling open roles. So, TTF takes a leap in the post-holiday period.

But what’s curious this time around is in the months preceding January. In previous years, the Q4 months show an incline in the TTF trend and climaxing in the first month of the new year. But this time in 2022, there’s a marked decline month over month.

We’ll have to wait until February 2023 to see what January looks like this time – but if you wanted to put down a wager, it might not be outrageous to predict that the “post-holiday TTF spike” may not be as prominent as in the past.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers.

As we did in a Hiring Pulse a couple of months ago, we’re again looking at total job postings per business across three separate size buckets – companies with 1-50 full-time employees (FTEs), 51-200 FTEs, and 200 or more employees. And for a baseline, we’ve also included a line for all businesses put together.

What stands out here is how the smallest bucket – the one with 1-50 FTEs – is growing significantly, with four straight months of increasing job activity starting with 3.1 job postings per business in August up to 4.2 job postings per business in November. That’s more than one extra job posting per business on average.

And while medium-sized businesses (51-200 FTEs) hold steady across time, enterprise-level businesses (200+) are dropping dramatically over the past three months. In September, enterprises posted an average of 19.4 jobs, but that goes down to 17.4 in November. That’s two full job postings less on average.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or on the moon, and especially if you’re in the tech space, you’re well aware of the mounting layoffs grabbing headlines every week. As it happens, according to Visual Capitalist, November saw more than twice as many layoffs in the month (59,710 cuts) compared with the previous 2022 monthly high set in June (29,299).

But what’s noteworthy about that Visual Capitalist chart is that a good half of the layoffs are attributed to just 11 companies – all of which we’re very familiar with. Meta, Amazon and Twitter are the most prominent, followed by Carvana, Doordash, Stripe, and a handful of other tech behemoths.

What are we saying here? Yes, smaller companies lay off fewer employees, which makes a layoff event less prominent in their case. However, the flip side of the coin is that smaller businesses – those in the 1-50 FTE bucket – can be more nimble. They’re like hundreds of thousands of kayaks among a few ocean liners, adapting as they go. The ebbs and flows of the currents affect them too, but they can roll with the changes more quickly.

So, jumping from three to four job postings on average isn’t necessarily a sign of economic health, but rather, a sign of increased agility in times of turbulence.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Let’s look at what’s going on here through November:

This is resounding. Four straight months of higher-than-normal CPH data points – and each month higher than the previous one. In November, we’re seeing the highest CPH trend since the beginning of last year.

And for perspective – the beginning of last year marked the end of astronomical highs in the CPH trend; you can see that in the updated chart. The start of that data mountain there can be correlated with – and directly linked to – the advent of the pandemic. Layoffs hit unprecedented highs in Q2 2020 – leading to the market being flooded with candidates.

But as things slowly reached a new normal, we saw Anthony Klotz’ Great Resignation prediction come true, with job quits going through the roof. And correlating with that – again, not purely coincidentally – was a sharp drop in candidates per job to below the 2019 average starting in August 2021 when the trend hit 97.5. In short: when people quit, they weren’t looking for new jobs. They were checking out in a big eff you to the system altogether.

The CPH metric stayed underwater all the way to August of this year, when a staggering 15.5-point jump from July brought it back up to 105.7. And from there on, as you can see, it’s hitting new recent highs, culminating in 116.2 for November.

Candidates are flooding the market again – and while many may be a result of layoffs, we’ll wager that many others are realizing that checking out of the system isn’t a sustainable option and they’re reentering the workforce.

What’s going on here?

First, let’s look at a different consequence of increased layoffs in the tech sector. It means that tens of thousands of foreign workers are having to leave the United States because they’re in the country on sponsored H1-B work visas.

According to the article, this may mean the US will fall behind in tech competitiveness. It also means a potential upside for tech companies headquartered outside of the country, such as in Canada and the European Union – because those tech workers will be looking for jobs in places with more permissive work visa policies.

We’ve kind of seen this happen in the recent past, but in very different circumstances, when the Trump administration made it more difficult to get an H1-B visa. This led to a Silicon Valley brain drain, with a good portion of talent – and companies, too – moving north to Canada to take advantage of more friendly work visa policies.

Now, on to candidates per hire – the significant growth in that metric isn’t unprecedented by a long shot – but it’s indicative of things to come. For a long time now, the major challenge that recruiters and hiring managers had faced was in candidate sourcing and attraction.

In short, they haven’t been able to pull in an adequate number of applicants when they open up a new job.

Either they aren’t sourcing those candidates in the right places, or their value proposition just isn’t up to snuff and it’s been a candidate’s market all this time.

This meant that hiring teams worked diligently on their recruitment marketing tactics, promoting their companies as great places to work. They’ve also dug deeper into the market to find – and even proactively contact – those ideal candidates, in hopes of luring them to their open roles.

But all that is changing. Let’s call COVID an anomaly and say that for the first time in actual years, the scales are tipping in the other direction. We’re seeing a situation where all someone has to do is post a job, and they get slammed with a hefty number of quality applicants within minutes.

This is no longer one-click-apply territory – these are legit jobseekers sent out to pasture by their most recent employer, and they’re actively and aggressively looking for a new job.

What does that mean for hiring teams? It means the hiring pipeline is about to get clogged. This means there’ll be more time and resources spent on screening and evaluating candidates, so as to not let good ones fall through the cracks. It also means evaluating them differently such that you try to get a sense of their motivation to work for you – is the candidate simply trying to get a job in general, or do they really want to work in your company?

Even if it’s honest to say that candidates do need jobs so they can pay rent, buy food, support families, and the like, it’s still important to the employer to hire someone who’s really keen to work at that specific job and to do a good job of it, too. And for those new hires to stick around as well, as opposed to seeing your opportunity as a stepping stone to a more permanent solution.

Not only does that change the evaluation game, it also means your hiring teams – already strapped for time and resources after cutbacks and streamlinings – will be even more stress-tested going forward. You want your hiring process to be free of breakdowns. This is where automation becomes a boon for you, the SMB employer.

Automation using recruitment technology – for example, one-way video interviews, automated messaging and interview self-scheduling features – will be incredibly useful going forward.

Have a great holiday and see you in 2023!

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in January 2023!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

Let’s get right to it:

How we’re looking at data

If you missed last month’s update, we’ve established two new methodologies in how we look at the Hiring Pulse dataset. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.

Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

1. Time to Fill (TTF)
2. Total Job Openings
3. Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Table of Contents:

• Time to Fill
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire
• What’s going on here?
• The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• Time to Fill has hit a significant new low for 2022, and is also the biggest month-to-month drop since January to February
• Candidates Per Hire keeps climbing and climbing
• The last time we saw such a dramatic jump in CPH in consecutive months was in early-mid 2020

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of October are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled from the start of 2022 through to the end of October 2022:

We are now at a new low for Time to Fill for the 2022 calendar year, with the average TTF for October just 88.4. It’s not just a new low – it’s significantly lower, a 5-point drop.

That’s the biggest month-to-month change in either direction since January’s 101.0 dropped 7.3 points to 93.7 for February.

The narrative we’ve carried over the last couple of months is that recession jitters are pushing the data all over the place. We’ve also said that those currently hiring were rushing to fill jobs throughout July and August as the Great Resignation opened up gaps in organizational workflows that urgently need to be filled.

After a jump in September to 93.4, the new and sudden drop can be explained as upcoming recession concerns leading to organizational (or departmental) restructurings leading to new gaps being opened up.

That’s a little different from gaps as a result of people quitting – in this case, it’s more as a result of optimization. Department leaders may be identifying ways to combine two roles into one or three roles into two as a cost-cutting measure – and these are new roles that need to be filled.

That’s one reason we may see new job openings in companies that have just laid people off. Which brings us to the second potential explanation: the layoffs themselves. Twitter wasn’t the first – just the most prominent to date. We’ve been learning about layoffs for some time now – and this leads to the market being flooded with high-quality candidates actively looking for new jobs right away.

This isn’t great for those who lost their jobs, but there’s an upside for those actively hiring. Candidate pools are now deeper than in the past. Employers don’t have to compete nearly as much or even work as much to source that newly available talent. So, it’s logistically quicker to fill those roles.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers – and they’re a great indicator of the health of the economy.

This is a very simple graph and speaks for itself. Ultimately, what stands out is that the top two most active months for job postings via the Workable network are March with 6.5 jobs posted per company on average, and most recently October, with 6.4 jobs per company on average.

Regardless of the weird economic climate that we’re in, this chart rings as relatively normal according to our metrics history. The end of Q1 and the start of Q4 are busy hiring seasons and we’re seeing that in 2022 as well. In the past, we’ve seen that October jumps a bit, takes a dip in November, and then jumps again in December.

Let’s watch this space closely and see what it looks like as we round up 2022.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Let’s look at what’s going on here through October:

Last month, we pointed out what we thought was a “pretty huge jump” in the CPH metric, somersaulting over the baseline index from 91.1 in July to 106.6 in August and 106.8 in September.

And now? It’s gone even higher – to 112.8 in October.

That’s the highest that it’s been since the metric hit 115.2 in March 2021. And the CPH metric was below the baseline from August 2021 all the way to this past July. It’s only in the last three months that we’ve seen such a dramatic reversal in CPH.

For context: in January and February 2020, the metric stood at 93.9 and 88.7 respectively. It then jumped to 102.6 in March 2020 and stayed above the baseline for 14 consecutive months to April 2021. In the midst of that was five straight 120-and-higher months from June to October 2020. July 2020 was 137.0 and October 2020 was 136.5.

This is all pandemic-related, of course. March 2020 saw many workers moved to remote work or furloughed, as a stopgap measure. When it became clear that COVID-19 wasn’t going away anytime soon, companies resorted to the painful process of layoffs en masse. This jump in CPH is the result.

Why are we talking about this two years later? Because we’re seeing similarities in how the CPH is changing now. Recession fears started a few months ago – and layoffs then started happening after that. Combine that with fewer jobs being posted, and the CPH starts to grow again. Just like it did in 2020.

What’s going on here?

Honestly, Twitter is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s going on here. Agree or disagree with Elon Musk if you will, but what’s happening in the e-hallways of that social media monolith is just a microcosm of what’s happening out there.

Layoffs are happening left, right, and center – including reports of Facebook parent Meta also turning to layoffs for the first time in its history. Lyft and Stripe are also laying off people, and Apple and Amazon are freezing their hiring processes. There is, of course, a trickle-down effect.

And, as mentioned above, those layoffs mean tens – likely hundreds – of thousands of new candidates flooding the market. This isn’t Big Quit material – these are people who are involuntarily severed from their income lifeline, and after a frustrated sob in the bathtub for an evening, are rolling up their sleeves and jumping right back into the job fray the next day.

The result is what we’re seeing here.

However, we have some kind-of good news for you. Much of the recession talk is still anticipatory, and different experts are saying different things. While more execs are bringing up the recession in their quarterly earnings conference calls, stock speculators at sites such as Yahoo! Finance are saying the talk of a recession may be greatly exaggerated and fiscal pundits at Goldman Sachs suggest we’re not necessarily doomed to a recession.

Ultimately, there isn’t clear agreement on what’s going to happen. While we know businesses don’t appreciate uncertainty, this uncertainty is good if anything. And organizations seem to be responding aggressively ahead of what *might* happen.

Let’s think of it this way: if you see your kid approaching a stove and yell at them not to touch it, and then you realize the stove wasn’t actually hot, then is that a good thing? Yes, it is. It’s good that you took the precautionary measure even if you weren’t entirely sure of the stove’s setting at that time, because the end result is the same: your kid doesn’t get burned.

In that spirit, all this anticipation and action ahead of what may be a recession could be seen as a good thing.

Let’s keep one eye on the overall conversation around recessions and the other eye on upcoming Hiring Pulse data trends, and keep all this in mind.

There’s always something in all this that can help us move forward with confidence even if we’re not sure of the danger of the hot stove.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in November!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

How we’re looking at data

In past Hiring Pulses from the very beginning, we had a dilemma: how do you look at data when the economic – and therefore hiring – landscape is so tumultuous from one month to the next? The big concern was that it’s hard to establish solid benchmarks when the goalposts keep moving all the time.

So, in the beginning, instead of simply establishing historical benchmarks from years of data, we chose to look at data based on a trailing three-month average. For instance, we would compare August’s Time to Fill against the rolling average of the three previous months – in this case, May, June, and July.

Now, we’ve established two new methodologies. For Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire, we’re measuring each month using the average of 2019, the last “normal” year, as a baseline index of 100.

For job openings, we’re taking a different route – simply, the average number of job postings per company. This gives us the opportunity to gauge overall recruitment activity and whether that’s going up or down.

Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

1. Time to Fill (TTF)
2. Total Job Openings
3. Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Table of Contents:

• Time to Fill
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire
• What’s going on here?
• The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• TTF is coming down (again) after a jump in TTF for May, June and July
• Job openings are very busy for companies with 200+ FTEs – but not so much for mid-sized businesses (51-200 FTEs)
• Candidates per Hire numbers are going through the roof in the last two months

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of September are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at the monthly TTF trend against the average of 2019, based on jobs that have been filled from the start of 2019 through to the end of September 2022:

In the most recent Hiring Pulses, we noted that the Time to Fill trend has been dropping over time. This isn’t different with the new approach to the dataset. For instance, the average Time to Fill for August is just 91.5% of the 2019 average.

It’s worth noting the small uptick in TTF for September – but that’s an increase of just .9 of a point. Also worth noting is how May, June and July saw a slight bump upwards in TTF, and there’s of course January with an above-average time to fill a role.

We speculated last month about how recession jitters, greater bandwidth in hiring teams due to business slowdowns in August, and the “rush to fill” urgent gaps in the workforce are all potential factors contributing to the drop in the Time to Fill metric in August.

However, our recently published survey report on the New World of Work for 2022 finds that depleted resources in hiring teams is a growing challenge in hiring – with nearly double the respondents citing this as a challenge compared with two years ago (27.5% vs. 14.9%).

So, that might cancel out the “greater bandwidth in hiring teams” theory. It’s gotta be recession jitters and the rush to fill jobs. And it may not even be those issues, with TTF coming up a bit in September.

What else might be going on?

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

As stated above, we’re displaying this as an average of job postings per company in the network. And because this is not contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire, we can simply look at the raw job open numbers – and they’re a great indicator of the health of the economy.

You’ll notice right off the bat that we’re breaking the data down into three separate buckets – companies with 1-50 full-time employees (small businesses), companies with 51-200 FTEs (mid-sized businesses), and companies with 200 or more FTEs. And for comparison’s sake, we’ve also added a line showing the average across all businesses regardless of size.

Naturally, the larger businesses hire more frequently – there’s more occurrences of turnover, backfill, stopgaps, and business growth/adjustments, meaning more job postings in general.

So don’t compare sizes – that’s never a good result.

Instead, look at how the wavelengths for each FTE bucket differs. Let’s look at earlier in the year first where two notable trends stand out:

• The 200+ category shows a dramatic jump in job postings at the start of the year, from 13.8 job postings in January to 14.5 in February, a .8 jump compared with a negative .5 for the 51-200 group (8.3 to 7.8) and a milder, even inconsequential -.1 for the 1-50 club (3.7 to 3.6)
• Meanwhile, April to May shows a more dramatic drop for the 51-200 group (-.3) compared with just -.1 for 200+ and a flatline for 1-50

And now, some dramatic fluctuations between the company sizes reveal themselves in the three most recent months of the dataset:

• The two larger buckets both saw a -.4 change in the average job postings per company from May to June, compared with the exact opposite for the 1-50 category
• After that drop, the largest companies in the dataset (200+ FTEs) saw a significant rebound of .9 more job postings on average in July compared with June, while the smallest companies (1-50 FTEs) saw a -.4 shift in their own job posting average
• And then, finally, while the largest and smallest companies saw more job posting activity in September compared with August, mid-sized companies (51-200 FTEs) saw the opposite trend, dropping .4 points

Speculation about the mid-sized companies is that many of them are in tech, and we know how hard SaaS companies are being hit by recession fears right now. This may be what we’re seeing here – and we know you’re likely an SMB that’s come here for insights.

So, let’s take an optimistic approach to this if we can: fewer job openings for your company size means there’s less competition with other employers when you’re opening a new job during this time. Does that mean we’ll also see more candidates now with a less diluted talent pool? Well, let’s find out.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Let’s look at what’s going on here through September:

Just as we expected. The last two months see a pretty huge jump in the Candidate per Hire metric, ricocheting from a below-baseline 91.1 up to 106.6 in August and 106.8 in September.

That’s a staggering uptick – a swing of 15.5 and 15.7 percentage points. If you were getting 91 candidates in a job a couple of months ago, you’d be seeing 106 or 107 candidates just last month. And that’s just the average.

We talked last month about jobseekers becoming a surplus – this trend is continuing to happen, and that, again, may be a good sign for SMBs looking to hire right now.

What’s going on here?

It’s a bit of a no-brainer. The job market is slowing down a little bit – and consequently, candidates are becoming more available. We’re seeing this happening in our data, and in the data out there.

But what’s important is that the job market isn’t slowing down for everyone – it’s the opposite for enterprise-level companies. It’s worth noting that recessions have a disproportionate impact on smaller companies due to their lack of scalability and relatively inconsistent revenue stream, and that’s reflected in our dataset.

However, in the hiring landscape, we’ve noted that SMBs such as yourselves can take a cautiously optimistic approach to this – this developing climate actually may make it easier for healthy SMBs, in the short-term at least.

Then-CFO of Expedia Eric Hart would agree, telling investors in an August earnings call: “Not that I wish ill on any people out there from a layoff perspective or whatever else, but I think there could be an opportunity for us to ramp some of that hiring over the coming months.”

We also talked last month about how a recession would impact certain sectors, and not all of them at once. But we also talked about why we’re not really seeing a recession coming yet. We’re going to be a bit of a wet blanket and tell you that there may (will?) be a considerable setback in the global economy in 2023 according to many internationally recognized economists (including the head of the World Trade Organization) – and that the US Federal Reserve’s aggressive hikes in the inflation rate may be at the very core of it. Here’s an article outlining what’s going on.

And that’s not just in the US. That’s worldwide. Plan accordingly, including in your hiring.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in November!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Because one of the three metrics (Job Openings) is different from the other two metrics (Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire), we’re adopting two very distinct methodologies.

To bring the best insights to small and medium (and enterprise-level) businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with the Job Openings metric: we’re taking the number of job openings in a given month and dividing that by the number of active companies in our dataset, and posting that as an average. For example, if July 2022 shows the average Job Openings per company as 7.7, that simply means each company posted an average of 7.7 jobs that month.

For the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire metrics, we’re comparing a specific month’s trend against the full average of 2019, and we show the result using that 2019 average as a baseline index of 100. For example, if July 2022 shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for all of 2019 is 28, we present the result for July 2022 as 107.1 – in other words, 7.1% higher than the average of 2019.

And we chose 2019 as the baseline because, frankly, that’s the last normal year before the pandemic started to present challenges to data analysis among other things.

The majority of the data is sourced from businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

Let’s take the plunge!

How we’re looking at data

First, looking at SMB hiring data allows us to see benchmarks in the hiring landscape. But when the benchmark changes regularly during these last two tumultuous years, it’s not the best measuring stick.

So, instead of looking at data YoY or even MoM, we’re looking at rolling trends. What we’re doing in the Hiring Pulse is looking at that month’s percentage increase or decrease compared with the average of the three trailing months. Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

1. Time to Fill (TTF)
2. Total Job Openings
3. Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Table of Contents:

• Time to Fill
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire
• Deep Dive: UK and Ireland
  • Time to Fill – UK&I
  • Total Job Openings – UK&I
  • Candidates per Hire – UK&I
• What’s going on here?
• The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• TTF has significantly dropped in August – unlike in previous Augusts
• Job openings are normalizing more “normally” than either Candidates Per Hire or TTF
• Recession worries are still very real – but jobs themselves may not be hit as hard as feared

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that are still open as of the end of August are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled are included here.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at TTF based on jobs that have been filled from the start of 2020 through to the end of August 2022:

One thing that stands out: Time to Fill dropped dramatically in August, with a -3.4% change from the average of the previous three months. Last year, August’s TTF trend was nearly the opposite: 5.1%.

What accounts for this? In the northern hemisphere, where most of this dataset lives, it’s summertime – which means a slowdown in overall business and consequently a slowdown in hiring. And a slowdown in jobseeking as well, of course. Fewer candidates makes it harder to find candidates, and there are fewer people working in hiring teams throughout. Put all that together, and that explains the uptick in TTF – in other words, longer TTF – in August 2021.

This especially should be the case in 2022 with the world opening up again (to a degree), and many workers catching up on their pent-up vacation time. But, instead, TTF dropped in August. TTF is shorter this time around than in previous months.

Why?

Perhaps, the seemingly non-stop predictions of a recession made for a business slowdown, which coupled with the normal downturn in processes during the traditional vacation months, led to less work for a company’s active employees for these few months. This frees up bandwidth for employees to focus on some other important things at work.

Then, more time is spent on sourcing, attracting, and evaluating candidates – which speeds the process along.

And of course, when people quit en masse – as we’re still seeing in the US at the very least – there’s a tinge of desperation as employers rush to fill ongoing gaps in their workforce.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

So, let’s look at the raw job open numbers – which aren’t contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire. These are just jobs opened in a given month – in other words, a single event – and are a great indicator of the health of the economy.

This one’s interesting. We’ve been writing a fair bit in previous Hiring Pulses about this thing called a recession and how that may impact our hiring metrics. We pointed to how July saw a change of -6% (now adjusted to -5.5% with data updates) in job openings compared with the three previous months’ average – and that this is unusual considering that previous Julys all saw a relatively opposite trend.

For example, as we showed last month, the job open trend for past Julys is as follows:

• July 2019: 7.2%
• July 2020: 49.5% (major caveat here, it being 2020)
• July 2021: 5.7%

And now, August’s job opening trend has sped up just a wee bit to -2.2%. It’s not something to scream at the rooftops about, but when we compare to previous Augusts:

• August 2019: 5%
• August 2020: 23% (again, remember, this is 2020)
• August 2021: 1.5%

Yes, all three previous Augusts were positive trends while this August is negative – however, the change isn’t nearly as significant.

The difference between July 2021’s 5.7% and July 2022’s -5.5% is 11.2 total percentage points, while for August last year and this year, it’s just 3.7 percentage points.

Last month, we said, and we quote:

“Do we want to be nervous? Should we be nervous? Well… recessions are normal. They do happen. And businesses will respond to that with more conservative projections and austere practices. Let’s watch this space and see what August brings us.”

Well, now that we can see what August brings us, maybe there’s cause to be not as nervous as previously.

Still… the doomsayers in us like to persist. Recessions don’t just happen in a month and go away. It’s a long game and businesses need to be mindful of that.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. Let’s look at what’s going on here through August:

Now, this is interesting. After all that fluctuation that we pointed out in the August Hiring Pulse, we now see a considerable spike in the Candidates Per Hire trend of 13.3% for the month of August.

If you overlook the “recovery” of hiring metrics in the wake of March 2020 – basically, when the big COVID truck hit many of us – this 13.3% marks the biggest positive trend in our data for any month in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 to date.

Surely, this must be somewhat normal for this time of year, you suggest.

News flash: no, it actually isn’t, not according to the data.

Check out what the CPH trend for June, July, and August looks like over the past four years:

Last month, we saw how the data for the three previous months of May, June and July made it pretty clear that 2022 was in a state of relative normalization, with the trend somewhat comparable to the last year before COVID – that being 2019.

But now, this isn’t the case at all. There are more candidates per job in August than previous. And the last time we saw such a monumental spike in the CPH trend was in the exceptional months after March 2020.

While we’ll write off those early COVID months as anomalous, it’s worth mentioning that those months were also months of desperation; there were many candidates out there in the wake of mass layoffs, and they were scrambling to find new work.

This time isn’t so different. Under the lingering shadow of a “maybe” recession, layoffs also surged. Couple that with just-quit workers from the Great Resignation feeling nervous about the road ahead and thinking it might be smart to get back into full-time work before the well runs dry, and we have a situation where jobseekers are no longer at a premium but now potentially becoming a surplus.

Deep dive – UK & Ireland

In the last few months, we’ve received a few inquiries: “All this Hiring Pulse stuff is great and stuff, but do you have any data specifically for those of us in the UK?” Well, we heard you and we’re taking action right now.

So, in this month’s Deep Dive, we look at these three hiring metrics specifically for the UK and Ireland (UK&I).

While we know that you’re interested specifically in UK&I metrics – it helps to see how that looks against the overall data. So, we’re adding an extra line for the overall data in each of the three charts.

Let’s dive in:

1. Time to Fill – UK&I

Let’s first look at the Time to Fill trend:

When we look at the Time to Fill trendline for UK&I, it runs along a similar trajectory as the world trendline – unsurprising, to be fair, considering that the UK is home to the world’s fifth-biggest GDP (the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany being one through four) and thus, wherever the world’s economy rolls, the UK shall roll with it.

Ireland’s own economy is smaller as a whole, of course, but its GDP per capita is more than twice as much as that of the UK, and the fifth largest worldwide – so it has a presence in this data as well.

Now, if you really want to get geeky when comparing the area-specific data against the whole, let us help by pointing out two major areas where the trends differ: March through October 2020 and, yes, the last three months.

First, for UK&I’s data, we see considerable fluctuation for March through October of 2020 with a 4% uptick in April 2020 compared with a relative flatline of 0.01% for the overall CPH trend. Then, UK&I plummets considerably more so than the overall, falling to -9%, -14.7%, and -18.6% in TTF for May, June, and July 2020 compared with -6.2%, -8%, and -9.7% overall.

But then, UK&I recovers just as dramatically, rising to 3.2% and 5% for August and September 2020 with a minor -1.4% hiccup for October before falling back in line with the overall TTF metric, which saw steady recovery of -3.5%, -1% and 4.7% for those three months.

The difference in the last three months isn’t nearly so dramatic, but still worth noting because it’s just happening now: the divergence starts happening again in June 2022 with a -2.6% drop in the trend for UK&I compared with 1.5% overall.

Then, for July, we see a 3.3% uptick for UK&I compared with 0.4% overall, followed by August’s -0.7% for UK&I and -3.4% overall.

2. Total Job Openings – UK&I

Now, let’s look at job openings themselves:

For the most part, the trend for both the UK&I segment and the overall data more or less follow the same path upwards and downwards every month – but the fluctuation of the last couple of months is eye-catching.

June saw a -15.5% change in job openings in the UK and Ireland, compared with -9.6% worldwide, followed by 3.4% versus -5.5% for July, and finally, -9.5% for UK&I in August compared with -2.2% overall. Job openings are down quite a bit in UK&I compared with the rest of the world.

Pretty big differences, honestly. Does it mean anything? Not necessarily if it’s just happening for a few months as fluctuations do occur, but it’s worth watching.

3. Candidates per Hire – UK&I

Now, let’s look at the Candidates per Hire trend for the UK and Ireland:

One thing that the UK has been dealing with on top of COVID-19 is, of course, Brexit. As it happens, Brexit became official to a degree on January 31, 2020. At that time, the virus was certainly on the horizon but hadn’t hit the UK’s shores yet.

But now, the double whammy of the pandemic’s onset with the reduced options for working abroad for many Britons after Brexit is readily visible here, with the CPH metric spiking massively in Q2 of 2020 – the most obvious one being the stunning 54.5% jump in the trend for June 2020 compared with just 14.6% overall.

We don’t intend to ignore Ireland’s numbers – but in this case, with the UK’s much larger population, it’s almost certainly Brexit that contributed to this discrepancy.

Workable’s CEO, Nikos Moraitakis, told us in an email in the early days of the pandemic that books would be written about this time for years going forward. In that spirit, there will be – and already are – books written about the UK’s own unique economic experience in 2020.

What’s going on here?

Let’s wrap this up with a quick overview of the UK job market and then the US job market. First, according to latest data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), July is showing full recovery and then some for payrolled employees, with an all-time high of 29.7 million employees making some level of income.

Now, the US Department of Labor reported last week that there was a gain of 315,000 jobs in US payrolls to an all-time high of 152.7 million employees – just a touch higher than the pre-pandemic high seen in February 2020.

Does this mean full recovery to pre-pandemic levels? Well, yes, kind of. And does this mean no worries about recessions?

No, absolutely not.

Sorry to break your balloon, but the worries of a recession are still very real. A good portion of those worries revolve around the housing market, with Goldman Sachs predicting a considerable crash in real estate to the end of 2022 and more so in 2023, bigger than Russia’s overall GDP crash since their invasion of Ukraine.

Likewise, analyst Ivy Zelman, otherwise known as “Poison Ivy” after predicting the 2008 market crash, is predicting another drop in housing over the next couple of years. We all know what that meant in 2008 and 2009 – a tidal wave leading to catastrophe in other economies.

But Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, had this to say about the surge in jobs and the worries around recession:

“This is a unique period of time, where we have, still, a relatively tight labor market, where there is still job growth, but companies have started to announce hiring freezes, some companies have announced layoffs,” she said.

“This could very likely be a recession where you don’t see the kind of carnage in the labor market that you see in most recessions.”

At no other time has there been such a surplus of jobs (two job openings for every one active candidate, according to DOL data). Couple that with inflation and higher salaries, and candidates have a very powerful deck to play with.

So, the job market remains active. Many employers are desperate to hire, and this trend may not quieten down anytime soon, even with layoffs and recessions. If there’s a downturn, it’s going to happen in economic pockets – not across the whole spectrum.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in October!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

To bring the best insights to small and medium businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with our data: when looking at a specific month’s trend, we’re taking the numbers from that month and comparing it to the average of the three previous months – and showing as a percentage how that month looks in comparison.

For example, if July shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for the three preceding months (April, May, June) is 25 days, we present the result for July as a 20% increase.

The majority of the data is sourced from small and medium businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

But first, we want to tell you something important: we’re making a slight alteration in the way we look at data, specifically for the Time to Fill (TTF) and Candidates Per Hire (CPH) metrics. In past Hiring Pulses, we had measured trends based on jobs being opened.

For example, previously, if a job is opened in June, we would include that job’s data in TTF and CPH – meaning, the more recent jobs opened would naturally skew the data downwards in the latest months of the dataset because they haven’t had the time to build to normal TTF and CPH levels.

So, at Workable, we talked about this internally as a team, and decided on an adjustment – we would start looking at jobs based on the date the job was filled. So again, for example, if a job is filled in June, we would include that job’s data in TTF and CPH.

But since there’s an end date to all those jobs, we don’t have to worry about job data being skewed in recent months.

To be transparent, there’s a small catch that we do want to share – the dataset for jobs filled will be smaller than the dataset for jobs currently open, especially in more recent months. But there’s still a lot in this dataset to draw compelling conclusions from.

You saw a preview of this in the deep dive of last month’s Hiring Pulse. And this month is fully focused on jobs based on their hire date.

Let’s take the plunge!

How we’re looking at data

First, looking at SMB hiring data gives us an opportunity to look at benchmarks in the hiring landscape. But when the benchmark changes at unprecedented levels during these last two very weird years, it becomes an unreliable gauge.

So, it’s no longer helpful to look at the data YoY or even MoM. It makes more sense to look at rolling trends. Consequently, for the Hiring Pulse, we are looking at percentage increase or decrease compared with the average of the three trailing months. Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Table of Contents:

• Time to Fill
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire
• What’s going on here?
• The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• We’re returning to before times – in other words, we seem to be stabilizing
• The job opening trend continues to trend downwards
• A surprisingly robust job market for July

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: jobs that remain open are not included in this graph as they don’t yet have an “end date”. Only the jobs that are filled will be included here.

Got that? Good. Let’s have a look at TTF based on jobs that have been filled from the start of 2020 through to the end of July 2022:

We’ll just keep beating the dead horse here: the last two and a half years are unprecedented times for society. That’s reflected in the wild ups and downs throughout, starting with the incredible drop in the TTF trend right when COVID hit. That’s a sign of SaaS companies rushing to hire en masse as they capitalized on the digital transformation boom early on.

But, when we look at the TTF trend in the early part of these last two years (i.e. February/March/April), TTF drops noticeably (-3.9%, -8.1%, -3.6% in 2021 and -3.4%, -3.1%, -3.9% this year).

This, after particularly positive trends in January 2021 (8.5%) and January 2022 (8%).

Rough conclusion from all this? Because we’re now looking at job data based on the date the job was filled, a job filled in January will have likely been opened a couple of months earlier. There’s a lot of activity involving numerous members of the hiring team – the recruiter themselves, maybe another HR representative, a departmental team member, an executive, and of course, the hiring manager.

And December is holiday time for many – which means delays in business processes including in recruitment. All of those job openings get pushed back to January the following year when everyone is back in the grind – therefore prolonging TTF. Mid-November to mid-January is roughly 60 days – much higher than the average TTF of 42, according to Industry Today (industrial/segmential fluctuations aside).

Another observation: the six most recent months (February through July) suggest a much more stable TTF trend than we’ve seen since the start of 2020. The times they are a-normalizing? We shall see.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

So, let’s look at the raw job open numbers – which aren’t contingent on job opened/filled dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire.

These are just jobs opened in a given month and are a great indicator of the health of the economy. So, we can include July 2022 in this chart:

In July’s Hiring Pulse, we emphasized the anomaly that was the job opening trend for June – last month, it was -10.2% which is slightly updated to -10.1% in this chart. We suggested that economic jitters and business austerity measures were a factor in that drop in job openings compared with previous months.

That’s especially noticeable since June normally shows a positive uptick in job openings based on years past (2020 excluded, of course).

We’d hoped for the sakes of businesses everywhere that June would prove to be an anomaly. Well, July has entered the chat, and again, it’s a negative trend of -6% – slightly up from June, but still attention-grabbing.

Let’s look at what July looked like in previous years:

• July 2019: 7.2%
• July 2020: 49.5% (Like we said – we exclude 2020 due to the economic and social cataclysms of that year)
• July 2021: 5.7%

See there – generally positive trends. Except for this year. Same as what happened for June – where June normally looked robust in terms of job openings, only to see a negative trend in this year’s June.

Do we want to be nervous? Should we be nervous? Well… recessions are normal. They do happen. And businesses will respond to that with more conservative projections and austere practices. Let’s watch this space and see what August brings us.

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled. And now that we’re looking at jobs that are already filled up to the end of July rather than jobs opened, we’ll no longer see a skew downwards in the CPH trend in recent months.

Let’s look at what’s going on here through July:

What stands out with this one is the fluctuating CPH trend through the first seven months of 2022 with three positive-trending (February 0.5%, March 4.1%, and May 7.2%) and four negative-trending months (January -5.2%, April -1.8%, June -1.7%, and July -3.5%).

January is an easy one to explain away – as described in the TTF section, December will be a slower month for hiring, and that’s the same for candidate activity. When January rolls around, hiring teams will not have the same luxury of candidates to choose from, but because they really need to fill that job, they’ll just hire one and roll with it.

What about the negative trends seen in June (-1.7%) and July (-3.5%) of this year? We can add some perspective on those by looking back at May (7.2%). Pretty big drop from there forward.

Now, let’s look at what happened over the same period in the three years prior, with 2022 included for comparative purposes:

As stated above, 2020 is an anomalous year, with the spike in CPH very much attributable to the numerous jobs lost in the early part of that year after COVID set on the land.

But then, 2021 shows a huge drop in the CPH trend for May, and slowly rises for June and July.

Now let’s look back to pre-pandemic times: 2019 shows a positive May trend followed by a drop in CPH for June and July – and that’s the most comparable statistic to what happened this year. Is it worth noting that 2019 might be the most recent “normal” year for society and business overall? The lines for 2019 and 2022 in the chart above are visually similar.

Perhaps it is. And if that’s the case, then the fluctuations in the CPH trend for the last three months this year can be considered relatively normal if we’re comparing to 2019.

There’s a lot more data science to be conducted here, of course – but it’s worth thinking about as we move deeper into Q3.

What’s going on here?

Well, guess what? Despite widespread predictions to the contrary, the US job market is sizzling red hot. July saw 528,000 new jobs added – more than twice the forecasts of Wall Street. It’s worth looking at real job changes month-over-month in the chart below:

(If you’re wondering, April 2020 saw a negative change of 20.5 million jobs. Such a huge change that if we adjusted the chart to show it, the changes month over month in the rest of the chart would be not be nearly as discernible. So… we let it fall off the chart to where it belongs.)

In the US, we’re also seeing the highest-ever total employees ever, with a total of 152.54 million working in the country right now. Second-highest total in a given month? February 2020, at 152.5 million total employed. Third highest? January 2020, at 152.13 million.

Fourth highest all time? Um, it’s June 2022, at 152.01 million.

See what we wrote up there about things looking like 2019 and that 2019 was the last “normal” year? Plus, unemployment in the United States dropped to 3.5% – matching a 50-year low that was set just before the pandemic.

We’ll let Charles Schwab’s chief investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders take this one:

“There’s no way to take the other side of this. There’s not a lot of, ‘Yeah, but,’ other than it’s not positive from a market or Fed perspective,” she said. “For the economy, this is good news.”

But – sorry, Ms. Sonders, but we still like buts – 57.7% of the job gains for July are concentrated in four sectors: leisure & hospitality, professional & business services, health care, and government. What’s more – leisure & hospitality is still 1.2 million workers short of pre-pandemic levels.

As we know from experience (looking at you: dot-com bubble, 9/11, subprime mortgage crisis, and most recently 2020) – a good economy always has a half life. We’ve been predicting something bad in the future for a few months now – but the markets indicate otherwise. So far.

Ultimately, it’s good to be prudent. Have a contingency plan in place for whatever potential scenario may play out. After all, highs in total jobs were set just before the great COVID fall, and those highs are now being surpassed in the last two months. What goes up must come down? Maybe, maybe not.

We’ve quoted a former Workable executive in a past Hiring Pulse:

“First of all, make sure that you’ve got a number of contingency plans in place. Work out a lot of different scenarios which you are ready to deploy as the situation evolves. Secondly, don’t lose track of the more short-term or tactical objectives. Essentially, make sure that you also have a weekly plan on how you want to manage this.”

We’ll paraphrase with this: it’s always smart to be smart when managing a business, including in hiring.

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in September!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

To bring the best insights to small and medium businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with our data: when looking at a specific month’s trend, we’re taking the numbers from that month and comparing it to the average of the three previous months – and showing as a percentage how that month looks in comparison.

For example, if July shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for the three preceding months (April, May, June) is 25 days, we present the result for July as a 20% increase.

The majority of the data is sourced from small and medium businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.

Also worth noting is that layoffs and discharges according to U.S. Department of Labor data is not spiking across the spectrum – in fact, it’s remained at a stable pace month over month:

Plus, when you compare layoffs and discharges with previous years – and yes, “before times” – in the United States, you’ll find that the number is actually lower than the norm. Of course we’re still in highly unusual times. That crazy spike in March/April 2020 led to a pendulum swing in the opposite direction with a high number of hires soon afterwards.

And now, while layoffs are indeed happening in startups, those more established SMBs may have already optimized their worker base enough from the 2020 tempest that sudden changes aren’t as necessarily required two years later.

Meanwhile, the Great Resignation continues, especially in the United States, which has just seen its 12th consecutive month of upwards of four million job quits. Many of those quits have traditionally been at lower-level positions, but we’re now seeing the trend starting to happen at the managerial and directorial levels.

Anyway, let’s set layoffs and Big Quits aside for a moment and look at other potential fallouts from the gloomy projections of a recession ahead. Here’s this month’s Hiring Pulse, with a special and different look at SMB hiring trends in our deep dive.

How we’re looking at data

First, looking at SMB hiring data gives us an opportunity to look at benchmarks in the hiring landscape. But when the benchmark changes at unprecedented levels during these last two very weird years, it becomes an unreliable gauge.

So, it’s no longer helpful to look at the data YoY or even MoM. It makes more sense to look at rolling trends. Consequently, for the Hiring Pulse, we are looking at percentage increase or decrease compared with the average of the three trailing months. Want a more detailed methodology? Jump to the end and check it out.

As always, we look at the worldwide trends for three common SMB hiring metrics:

• Time to Fill (TTF)
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire (CPH)

Let’s start analyzing!

Table of Contents:

• Time to Fill
• Total Job Openings
• Candidates per Hire
• Deep dive – jobs filled data
  • Time to Fill
  • Total Job Fills
  • Candidates per Hire
• What’s going on here?
• The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

Main highlights

The three main highlights for this month’s Hiring Pulse are:

• New job postings are down
• Jobs being filled are also down – way down
• Candidates per hire is going up for jobs filled in May and June

1. Time to Fill

For this report, Workable defines “Time to Fill” as the number of days from when a new job is opened to when that job opening is filled. It’s important to understand that definition: if a job is opened in January this year or even as early as August last year, but isn’t filled until June 2022, it won’t count in this graph. If another job is opened on the same day last January or August but is filled on May 31, it does count in this graph.

So, we’re looking at the TTF trends only up to the end of May. Got that? Good. Let’s have a look:

Rather than simply call out the sharp drop in TTF in the most recent months, let’s do what we’ve done in previous months – compare this graph to the one in May, and to the one in April, and so on. In this graph, we see five consecutive months of significantly shorter TTF metrics, down to -18.2% in April and -25.3% in May.

In June’s Hiring Pulse, we saw only four consecutive months of significantly shorter TTFs – ending in -18.5% in March and -26% in April.

In May’s Hiring Pulse, it was – wait for it – just three (four, if you really want to count the miniscule -0.8% change at the start of the drop), ending with -19.2% and -27.4% in the two latest months.

Ditto for April’s Hiring Pulse, ending with -22.8% and -29.2%.

What does this tell us? Even with the clear variable of this data being measured forward from the time a job is opened, TTF is still dropping. If you want to see what the data looks like for jobs filled and going backwards from there instead, we now have that data and we’re going into it in the deep dive below.

2. Total Job Openings

Total job openings represent the total number of job openings activated across the entire Workable network.

So, let’s look at the raw job open numbers – which aren’t contingent on job open/close dates like TTF and Candidates per Hire.

These are just jobs opened in a given month. So, we can include June 2022 in this chart:

You know that old trope where a news editor comes running into the room and says, “Stop the printing press! Rip out the front page! We’ve got a story here!”

Well, we may have a story here in that strikingly negative -10.2% drop in the job opening trend for June.

To add context: a drop in new job openings is pretty normal – for the end of the year:

• -9.5% and -23.5% in Nov-Dec 2019
• -3.0% and -8.3% in Nov-Dec 2020
• -0.3% and -11.9% in Nov-Dec 2021

And of course, there’s the COVID-quake that hit us in the spring of 2020 where the job opening trend was a staggering -22.9% in March, an incomprehensible -51.6% in April, and -23.2% in May of 2020.

But this is June. It bears noting that we don’t see this kind of data in previous Junes:

• -8.1% in June 2019 (this being the only one closest to June 2022)
• 20.3% in June 2020 (an anomaly in the opposite direction, since businesses were very much rebounding from the COVID-quake)
• 6.8% in June 2021 (not much of a change from May 2021’s 6.9% or to July 2021’s 5.7%)

We’ve talked about fragile economic nerves and end-of-Q2 planning – maybe that’s what’s happening here as well. While layoffs and terminations aren’t hugely different from previous months, companies are definitely opening fewer jobs.

That’s interesting considering that the job quit numbers in the US remain at ruthlessly high levels. Normally, when someone leaves, that position will be backfilled. But maybe companies are seeing turnover as a blessing in disguise – rather than backfill, they see this as an opportunity to wait and see what the waters look like ahead without needing to resort to layoffs. Convenient business austerity at work, perhaps?

3. Candidates per Hire

Workable defines the number of candidates per hire (CPH) as, succinctly, the number of applicants for a job up to the point of that job being filled.

Let’s look at what’s going on here through May:

(NOTE: Again, as in the TTF chart, you’re probably wondering why we stopped the numbers in May. Again, as stated above, that’s because these data are based on the time the job was opened, not when it was filled. Moreover, even jobs that remain unfilled are included here.)

Again, interesting numbers here in this SMB hiring trend. In last month’s Pulse, we noted that the average candidates per hire for April, the most recent month of data last month, was -4.4% less than the monthly average in Q1.

This time, the most recent month of data, May, shows a much more dramatic -14.4% change from the previous three-month average. And April has changed from -4.4% in last month’s Pulse to 1.9% in this month’s report.

A clear takeaway from this is that applications to jobs opened in April grew significantly throughout June. With fewer jobs being posted in June, this suggests that there’s a spillover to older but unfilled job postings for today’s candidates.

In other words – the list of recent jobs is shorter now, so in scrolling through jobs in reverse chronological order, candidates will encounter those older job postings more frequently than in the past, driving up CPH for those earlier postings.

Maybe there’s an opportunity for SMB employers who are still trying to fill those older jobs: take a look at them, tinker with them so they’re more relevant to today, and resurface them so they’re at the top of the pile once again. Don’t make the candidate have to look backwards to find you. Be the first company they see at the top of the pile.

Deep dive – jobs filled data

The challenge with dissecting these data points is that the dataset involves all jobs that have been opened – not just the ones that have been filled.

Plus, we include jobs opened in May in this dataset – even with the luxury of one full month of extra data after that. Consider that the Time to Fill and Candidates per Hire will be much lower for a job opened just before midnight on May 31 than it would be for a job opened in March. This can create a weird variation in the data because all this falls into the same dataset regardless.

So, as we’ve mentioned umpteen times, the drop in CPH and TTF in recent months makes sense to a degree. We’ve attempted to circumnavigate that by comparing the most recent months between different reports which does lead to interesting insights.

One major reason we’ve done it this way up to now is because we get to analyze a much larger dataset – giving us the opportunity to segment the data based on industry, function, and location.

But you know what? We now have data based solely on jobs that have been filled. This gives us an opportunity to look at SMB hiring trends right up to the end of June. Let’s dive in!

1. Time to Fill

Let’s first look at the Time to Fill trend for jobs based on the date when they were filled:

What’s especially intriguing is that the TTF trend for jobs filled in January 2022 is a significantly higher 7.5% jump from the monthly average of Q4 2021. For “all” jobs whether filled or not, it’s -8%.

Other than that, the TTF trend still drops quite a bit in the months after that – coming up for air in May at 1.1% and June also at 1.1%. We’d like to sit and watch what the trend looks like for this going forward with stabilizing TTF in the two recent months – yes, that means this isn’t going to be the only time we look at jobs based on the fill date.

2. Total Job Fills

Now, let’s look at jobs themselves. This one’s a bit different from the Job Opening trend, because we’re now looking at the trend of jobs being filled in a given month:

Good news or bad news first? Let’s start with the good: Q1 2022 saw a lot of activity in job openings, with 17% in January, 14.2% in February, and 20.4% in March. For jobs filled, the trend is -1.1%, 8.9% and an eye-catching 30.8% for the same three months.

Since a job won’t usually be filled for some time after it’s opened, it makes sense that a higher trend of job openings in January and February would mean a spike in jobs filled for March. And that’s clear here.

Now, the bad: we pointed out the -10.2% for June in the Job Opening trend above – for data based on jobs filled, we see a more moderate -4.4% change in June compared with the trailing three-month average. While that doesn’t necessarily call for alarm, it’s something we should keep an eye on, because for the last two Junes, there’s a positive shift in jobs being filled:

• 17.7% for June 2020 (take that with a grain of salt – it was -12.4%, -55% and -36.9% for March, April and May 2020 respectively)
• 11.7% for June 2021 (very significant considering consistently positive trends of 17.2%, 52.5%, 22.2%, and 9.5% for February through May 2021 respectively)

Yet, this June sees a drop, on the heels of an insignificantly positive 0.2% trend for April and 3.2% for May this year. While we can explain away some of this as entrails of these crazy times, we still need to watch this space.

3. Candidates per Hire

Now, let’s look at the Candidates per Hire trend for jobs that are filled in a given month:

The CPH trend in the dataset based on the job-open date shows relatively steady decline in recent months – again, as in the TTF data, it’s because more recent job postings will not have had the time to collect candidates as older job postings.

But this time, we now get to see what the CPH landscape looks like for jobs that are already filled in a given month – and the difference is that jobs filled in May have collected more candidates than previous months, at 6.7% higher than the February-March-April average. But it goes back underwater with a 0.9% shift in June. Still, this is after negative trends in most months dating back to the start of 2021.

So, while the numbers look a little different here, it’s still true that employers hadn’t been seeing as many candidates per job as they had in the past – but the upturn in CPH for jobs filled in May combined with with the evidently unseasonable drop in jobs being filled in June is something to take note of.

What’s going on here?

Honestly, the changes in the most recent months all point to recession jitters. Companies see what’s going on in the market – the plummet of the stock market, the hike of the interest rate, the rise of inflation, etc. – and they will naturally turn to contingency measures to stay afloat and keep their bottom line out of the red zone.

We’re seeing this in the lower number of jobs being posted. This, in spite of the ongoing Great Resignation (which amounts to more than 51 million job quits in the United States over the last 12 months). You’d think more quits would equal more jobs posted as a result of backfills – but that’s not happening in recent months.

And on the candidate side, the throngs of people who have left their jobs for other pastures may be seeing the recession on the horizon and realizing that it may be a smart idea to lock in a more secure job and ride out the storm before pursuing their passion project any further. No, we haven’t grounded this in science – it’s just one potential explanation for the rise in candidates per hire along with more concentrated candidate pools across fewer job openings.

But, then, we have a new report from the US Department of Labor showing once-again strong job gains for June to the tune of 372,000 payroll additions, and those additions at higher wages to boot.

According to Reuters, Indeed economist Nick Bunker said: “If you’re looking at this report for signs we’re already in a recession, you’re likely to come up blank.”

These SMB hiring trends are not numerical soothsayers – they are merely indicators of what the road ahead may look like: first, fewer jobs are being posted; second, more candidates are applying for jobs; and third, there’s a huge drop in jobs being filled in June.

Like the holiday season, the summer months (for those in the northern hemisphere, at least) can be a relatively slow time for hiring. June is potentially just the start of that. Let’s see next month whether these changes are due to recession jitters, seasonal hiring habits, or a mixture of both (or neither).

Thoughts, comments, disagreements? Send them to content@workable.com, with “Hiring Pulse” in the subject heading. We’ll share the best feedback in an upcoming report. Watch for our next Hiring Pulse in August!

The Hiring Pulse: Methodology

To bring the best insights to small and medium businesses worldwide, here’s what we’re doing with our data: when looking at a specific month’s trend, we’re taking the numbers from that month and comparing it to the average of the three previous months – and showing as a percentage how that month looks in comparison.

For example, if July shows an average Time to Fill of 30 days for all jobs, and the monthly average for the three preceding months (April, May, June) is 25 days, we present the result for July as a 20% increase.

The majority of the data is sourced from small and medium businesses across the Workable network, making it a powerful resource for SMBs when planning their own hiring strategy.