Posts Tagged ‘Recruitment’
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Resources, Tools and Methodologies for Talent Acquisition, Hiring and Recruitment
Introduction
One needs to have dreams, plans, and strategies to be successful in any venture. This is a basic requirement. If you do not know what you want, where you want to reach and how you want to reach (your mode and plan for success), you certainly cannot reach there. In case you are starting a new venture or you are planning to diversify your existing business, you also need to identify the source for your capital (Financial Backing). You cannot do all these things on your own. You need “extra-ordinarily talented” and Highly Skilled people to help you to reach the goal that you have seen for your organization. For this, you need a jeweler (the talented, matured and exceptionally skilled HR Professional) to identify such DIAMONDS for you. It is one of the key roles of a HR Professional to identify, source, select, HIRE and RETAIN BEST of the talent from the market to work for the organization. If they cannot find talented people from the market then they need to groom the right type of people with the right type of attitude and aptitude. In 21st Century, we are in the era of “war for talent”. It is becoming difficult to get right type of people and retain them. Many companies are losing their businesses because they are not able to hire “right type of people”; because they compromised with the “quality of the talent”. In this article, we will try to explore and understand different sources to get “Best of the Talents”. Any reference of HR Department” in this article, means Team of Talent Acquisition, Hiring and Recruitment.
Different Sources to Get Talented People
As a HR Professional (Chief Talent Acquisition Officer; Hiring Manager or Recruitment Head), one should be aware of all the sources and resources to get best of the talents and they should also be aware of as how to use those resources to the optimum level. You can use either or all of the below mentioned tools to get BEST talents.
1) Existing and “Active” Candidates Data with Company
This is primary, but if properly used, most important source and tool in the hands of HR Department to get right type of people. The HR department gets N number of profiles every day from different sources (including candidates who just drop-in their profiles at the reception. The HR Department needs to maintain and update this data on regular (if possible on daily basis). The details and data should be maintained in such a manner that one should be able to generate a MIS, stating number of profiles in the database, skills of the candidates (including education and experience level) and status of each profile (if short listed or not; if interviewed or not; date of interview; result of the interview; if rejected or selected etc). All these profiles should be considered as “active profiles” for six months from the date they were received in the HR Department of the Company. Any other profile older than six months should be deleted and destroyed. Such profiles are of no use to the company. The HR department should be able to use this data to fill the existing vacant position with a MOST suitable profile.
2) Employee References
In last decade and a-half, all the companies across various industries are facing a BIG challenge to retain the talent in their companies. People are resigning for various reasons. There is another challenge of FAKE profiles (People are faking about their experiences, salaries etc. Many people are just COPYING someone’s profile and presenting it as their own, without even knowing what they have mentioned in it). To handle this, it has become apparent to do reference checks. Getting the reference check done in a proper way is very costly.
Considering the above two scenarios and just to counter it, it is important to hire a person through the reference of your existing employee. No one can present, market and brand your company, market the culture and policies of your company then a happy and highly motivated and engaged employee of your organization. Hence, hiring with the reference of your existing employees is an important source and tool to hire and retain Quality Talent.
3) Internal Advertisement (internal Job Posting)
Learning is a continuous process. Many people keep on learning new skills, updating their skills and acquiring higher degrees by way of distance mode of education. There by you might have “multi-skilled” and “multi-talented” people within your organization. Hence, it becomes crucial and important to post your job-requirement, internally for your existing employees. By doing so, you will be able to RETAIN good and talented people.
4) Jobsites and Job Portals
If the above three sources and methods are used appropriately, efficiently and to the optimum level, hypothetically you do not need to go outside the company to get good people, working for your company. However, that is actually not possible and hence, you also need to look for external sources to get MORE Suitable Talent for your company. There are many Job Sites and Job Portals, available in the market and you need to select the BEST one for your needs. Good Job Portals have huge database of millions and millions of profiles. You can source a “Suitable” Talent from that database. You can also post your job requirements on job-portals just to get more relevant profiles. You should learn how to use all the features of your job-portal for its optimum utilization.
You can also have the HR or Job Site of your company and post your requirements on that site. This will also give appropriate branding and advertisement to your company and will also help you in managing the “Candidate Database”.
5) Campus hiring
In case, you like to hire “knowledgeable, talented and properly groomed” freshers then you should opt for Campus Hiring. This will give you Raw Clay and Material that you can mould as per the need and culture of your organization. You need to plan your “Campus Hiring” in a suitable manner to target right type of people. You need to decide, if you like to hire a plain graduate or a graduate with some specific trainings or Management Graduates or Engineering Graduates etc. If you provide right type of atmosphere, culture and processes, chances are that you will be able to retain these freshers, trainees for a long period of time. There are many Business Magazines which publishes lists of BEST institutes in different categories, locally, nationally and internationally.
6) Recruitment Consultancies
Most of the time, even recruitment consultancies also uses various job-portals to source talent for their clients. Hence, it makes more sense, if you buy one login on any of the relevant job-portal (or more than one job portal) and if you learn how to use it properly. You need the help of Recruitment Consultants if you are planning to hire a talent through head-hunting for senior profiles and from different geographical locations; for example, if you are planning to hire someone from international market. Hence, taking the help of Recruitment Consultants to hire talent for you should not be your first choice or option.
7) External (Newspaper) Advertisement
This is one of the VERY costly source to hire talent. External Job-Advertisement on media (Newspaper, Television, Radio etc), helps you in Branding and Publicizing your company but if not targeted properly and managed properly, this is one of the POOR but COSTLY source to get suitable talent. You need to understand and plan properly, what type of people you are looking for, from where you can get those people, which newspaper do they read, how you want to get and manage these profiles and what you will be doing with that database or else, you will not be able to get suitable talent.
 Social and Professional Networks & Local Communities
There are few professional and social networks, such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Orkut etc, that you can use to get right type of talent (of the listed networks, LinkedIn is highly recommended). You can also target few NGO’s, Training Institutes and Local Communities to hire low-level, low-cost workers for factories and your companies.
9) Head Hunting (Also called as “Body Shopping”)
There is this bread or group of talent, which are highly experienced, competent with great leadership skills but very passive in job market. They are very experienced in their domain and industry. Sometimes, they are also the founder member of the organization. Generally these are the people working in the capacity of Senior Managers, General Managers, CFO’s, CTO’s, CEO’s, Vice-Presidents, Directors, and Managing Directors etc in their present roles. They do not post their profiles on jobsites. They do not even read job-sections of newspapers. They do not apply for any jobs opportunity. Only very few of their friends and close associates are in procession of their profiles. They need to be challenged by an opportunity. Such people need to be head-hunted. Generally, recruitment consultancies are EXPECTED to do this job. This is a way to get the talent when you are looking for rare and distinct talent that is when you are looking to fill positions like CFO, CEO etc. Here, numbers are not important but quality is. In a year, you might be able to head-hunt 15-20 people but they will be of high worth and value. Not everyone can be a “Head Hunter”, you need to have “special” type of skills to be a “Head Hunter”. Every type of sourcing is not called as head-hunting. For a sourcing to be called as “Head-hunting”, this should involve “rare profiles”; profiles and skill sets not readily available in the market.
10) Talent-Poaching
This, according to some section in the industry, is considered as unethical mode of sourcing and hiring. For this, you need to understand the business of your company and also should be aware of the competitor companies in your industry. Just target those companies and hire in masses from those companies right from the entry level to senior level. This tactic is usually used to kill the competition. This is like a big fish eating the small fish. People across the globe are discussing and debating to ascertain, if the “Talent Poaching” is ethical or unethical. No doubt, this is one of the easiest ways to source trained and talented people within the industry when you have infrastructure and money.
Distinction between Headhunting and Talent PoachingSome talent acquisition managers as well as hiring and recruitment professionals are confused and are not able to discriminate between the two. Here are few differences between the two:
1) Headhunting is associated with senior and rare profiles. Talent Poaching is just sweeping and running through talent-wealth of your competitor.
2) Headhunting is planned. Talent Poaching is targeted.
3) In headhunting, the intention is to get the BEST person for your organization but in Talent Poaching, the intention is to kill your competitor and the competition.
4) Headhunting is about getting a person with “Leadership” skills with “Global Exposure”. Talent Poaching is about “saving the training cost”.
Conclusion
This article is not about “Recruitment Process” or to describe about “Steps involved in Recruitment Process” but just to share the resources and channels to source and identify talent. I have taken care to list all the possible channels. I am sure all the readers will gain from this article.
Tags: hiring, Human Resources, Recruitment, Talent Acquisition
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Thursday, December 31st, 2009
Recruiting employees online is a whole different ballgame from traditional hiring methods. Instead of a newspaper audience, employers have thousands of Internet-savvy job seekers and passive applicants to choose from. Connecting with the right candidate requires a strategic approach to online recruiting, since it can be difficult to choose the right plan for your company. Here are a few tips to help you best use the Internet to increase your candidate pool.
1. Spruce up your “careers” Web page. Cambria Consulting Inc., a Boston-based firm specializing in HR management, identified seven crucial features for high-impact corporate “careers” Web pages. First, the careers link should be prominent on the corporate home page. Second, the page should be easy to navigate and provide interesting information about the corporate culture. Third, a “job-cart” function should allow candidates to research multiple openings and apply for them. Fourth, résumé builders should be available to help candidates present their backgrounds in ways that HR can analyze. Fifth, the page must have an up-to-date listing of job openings. Sixth, standard, easy-to-read job descriptions on the page should include all tasks and skills required. Lastly, the site should have a link to an HR representative – not just a phone number or mailing address – to give candidates an action item to pursue.
2. Use Google to find candidates on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a career-focused social-networking site. Many people have made their LinkedIn.com profiles public, so they are indexed by search engines such as Google. To find “director of information technology” candidates, for example, enter this search string on Google:
site:www.linkedin.com -intitle:directory -intitle:answers -intitle:directory “director of information technology”
3. Search LinkedIn effectively. The advanced search functions on LinkedIn allow you to search by current and past employers, professional title, name, location and keywords. The results include members of your extended network up to three contact levels away. You will be able to see the names and biographies of potential recruits and their current employer, and can easily contact them.
4. Use Facebook’s “My Company’s Hiring” application. All of your recruiters should have a Facebook page where they can talk about issues important to job candidates in their areas of specialization. The “My Company’s Hiring” application can be added to each page, allowing recruiters to post listings of current job openings.
5. Create a Facebook Workplace group. Facebook Workplaces are closed groups. Only people with a company-hosted email address can join them. These groups can foster community among your employees, but they can also serve as a place to post job listings and ask for employee referrals.
6. Network through LinkedIn endorsements and recommendations. LinkedIn members can endorse others on the site. After a user is endorsed, the recommendation will appear on the user’s profile. Each testimonial will also link to the recommender’s biography. These endorsements are yet another channel through which you can connect to people.
7. Build an online network of candidates and prospects with LinkedIn. Whenever you speak with a good candidate, ask him or her to connect with you on LinkedIn. The recruit’s contacts will then become visible to you through your extended three-level network.
8. Email your LinkedIn network. LinkedIn allows members to export their contacts to an Excel file. Using this feature, you can create personalized mass emails that present new and upcoming job opportunities.
9. Get warm referrals from your candidate’s LinkedIn network. On LinkedIn, you can view your prospects’ second-level contacts. When you talk to your candidates, ask whether you can call or email second-level contacts. If the prospect declines, ask if a specific person can serve as a referral.
10. Try ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo is a business search engine that crawls the Web, scraping names, titles, company affiliation and other contact information from Web pages. While some of this information may be out of date, it’s a good starting point for any search.
Take advantage of HR World’s LinkedIn Group to communicate with a trusted network of peers, colleagues and expert
Tags: Human Resource Management, Recruitment
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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
There’s no need to panic if your company has a new job opening. Follow the procedures outlined below to ensure a successful new hire and a fresh batch of qualified candidates for other positions.
Preparation for Recruiting
The recruiting process starts when supervisors identify an opening. Usually, the line manager will be the first to know. The opening may come about through attrition, termination or the realization that the company needs additional employees. The line manager will then alert the staffing team of the need to recruit employees.
Every company has a procedure for approving such requests. It may involve getting approvals from upper management and the finance department. Once the request has been approved, line managers must consult with hiring managers to ensure a successful recruitment.
In many cases, the company will have a previously used staffing template. This guide will list the qualifications and experience that yielded the last hire for the same position. This is a good starting point for developing a new template for the current opening.
The recruiting manager should consult the hiring manager to refine the staffing template, adding qualifications and deleting those that were found to be irrelevant. Once the new template is approved, a recruiter should take charge of the job opening.
Sourcing Plan
A sourcing plan answers the question, “How are we going to find suitable candidates?” There are many ways to find potential candidates which should be used in the order of cost effectiveness. Some of these resources include:
• Internal candidate database: Who within the organization might fit the job
• Employees referrals: Ask employees who they know that might want to apply
• Networking: Contact suppliers and customers who may know a potential recruit
• Conferences and seminars: Look for candidates at industry events
• Former employees: Some ex-employees may be interested in returning, or know other candidates
• Special recruiting events: Check out open houses or job fairs
• Internet sources: LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and online job boards list numerous candidates
• Advertising: Newspapers, industry publications and Craigslist are valuable resources
• Agencies and search firms
Dealing with Applicants
As résumés and applications arrive, it is important to acknowledge each one. Many companies neglect this step, which can harm their reputation in the job market.
Hiring managers must carefully preserve and track résumés and applications to comply with EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) regulations and reporting requirements.
Selecting candidates for initial screening is the next step. Often, screening is conducted by phone. Its purpose is to get a feel for the candidate’s personality and level of interest, and to verify or amplify qualifications described in the résumé or job application.
After evaluating the screening results, schedule face-to-face interviews. This step should be taken as soon as possible after the initial screening. Don’t leave the candidates waiting for weeks.
Interview packages should be distributed to all managers who will interview a candidate. A package should include the candidate’s résumé or application, the screener’s notes and suggested questions to ask during the interview. It is important that managers come to interviews well prepared.
Managers should complete evaluations immediately after interviews and forward them to the recruiting team. These evaluations are the basis for selecting final candidates.
Reference checks should be conducted for the top candidates. The results should be discussed with the hiring manager before final candidates are chosen.
Keep candidates informed of what is happening at each step in the process. A phone call to a “warm” candidate is a good time to gage ongoing interest in the position. Ask if they would accept an offer based on what they know about the job and company.
Closing the Deal
When managers identify the preferred candidate, they should prepare an offer. Throughout the interview process, the recruiter should have gradually formed an idea of what it will take to get the candidate to accept. There should be no surprises after an offer is made.
Consultation with the final candidate may be necessary to iron out details such as a starting date and benefits. If the recruit accepts the offer, managers should next conduct drug testing and background tests. During this phase, the company must decide to accept or reject a final candidate.
Terminating Recruitment Activity
All rejected applicants should be notified in writing. It is a good idea to send a feedback form to rejected applicants, asking them how they were treated during the recruitment process and how it might be improved.
A recruitment-satisfaction survey should also be sent to hiring managers. It may ask their opinions of how responsive the recruiting team was, whether they were satisfied with the quantity and quality of applicants presented and how they feel about the final selection.
New-Hire Processing
The recruiter should stay in close contact with the new hire until his or her first day to guard against counter offers and buyer’s remorse. A new-hire package should be sent to the recruit, including a formal offer letter; salary and start-date information; and necessary benefit forms.
Managers should welcome the new hire on his or her first day. The should also have an orientation to familiarize the new hire with people and procedures. The new hire should additionally have an employee-policy manual and should give their completed paperwork to the designated department.
A new-employee development plan should then be drawn up and forwarded to HR and the hiring manager. It should describe what training, support and mentoring the new employee is to receive.
Learning from Recruitment Experience
Candidate- and hiring-manager feedback surveys should be reviewed to identify where the recruitment process might be improved. The results obtained from various sources of candidates may be used as guidance in future hires.
Recruiting is a systematic process that begins the moment an opening is identified and does not end until the new hire is well on board. Following a careful recruitment plan is the best assurance of a successful hire.
Tags: Human Resource Management, Recruitment
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Thursday, December 24th, 2009
As devastating as this recession has been for the laid-off and unemployed, it has also been a gut wrenching experience for many small business owners (recruiters) including the author. American entrepreneurs have learned some hard lessons that won’t be forgotten. When I say the entire American business landscape has changed, it’s because small business is not actually small. Just have a look at these numbers:
Small firms:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms
If your job search leads you to one of these small companies, understanding the changes will put you a step ahead. Here’s what happened.
First, during the real estate and technology booms, wages were bid up in a free-for-all which left small businesses struggling to compete. At the same time, health insurance costs were rocketing upwards. Recruiting and hiring became a nightmare. Online job boards have helped by allowing us to recruit from farther away with less effort but there were downsides too. The average candidate walking into an interview today, knows just what to say and how to answer the hardest interview questions. They’ve read enough career advice articles to say exactly what interviewers want to hear.
Struggling to compete against VC backed dot-coms, Fortune 500s, banks and the real estate industry, entrepreneurs hired candidates who oversold themselves and then failed to deliver the goods. We fell for false advertising and paid a high price. Hiring a poor performer always has a dramatic cost on a business, but the recession compounded the effect. The recession forced business owners to let marginal performers go… forced discipline on us.
Tags: Job search, Recruitment
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Thursday, December 24th, 2009
The People Values 5 Hiring Best Practices* 1. “Active” Recruiting Strategy 2. Legal Job Description Development 3. Benchmarks & “Job Success Patterns” for Every Position 4. Lead Behavioral Based Interview Questions 5. Pre-Employment Culture, Team & Psychological Job Match Assessments
*The 5 Best Practices above were compiled after reviewing the recruiting & hiring systems of thousands of successful US Companies (from 2 to 10,000 employees) & most of the Fortune 500. To learn more about a specific best practice, use the links above. Whether you decide to request more information with the links below or view one of our free videos, make sure to incorporate these best practices into your hiring systems to improve your success rate of hiring TOP Performers. Hiring Best Practice # 1 Active Recruiting Strategy Don’t wait for TOP Performers to find you because they wont; unless you are already one of your market’s leaders. Classified ads, general web boards and employment agencies are all “passive” recruiting strategies and will attract “passive” job seekers. To attract the best employees in your industry, you’re going to need to actively recruit.
Hiring Best Practice # 2 Legal Job Description Development
If you haven’t developed job descriptions for every position in your company, you’re setting yourself up for a lawsuit. No, they aren’t required by law, but they are usually your second line of defense in a trial (first is a file on every employee). In hiring, they will also help you present to candidates exactly what is required to get a job in your company.
Hiring Best Practice # 3 Benchmarks & “Job Success Patterns” for Every Position Whereas job descriptions are the basics, “Job Success Patterns” are the specifics. In these you present to candidates what is required to keep their job once hired; or your productivity standards. More specifically, what makes your current TOP Performers so successful in regards to their skills, internal motivators and natural behaviors and then making these the minimum requirements for employment. Benchmarks help you “clone” your best people.
Hiring Best Practice # 4 Lead Behavioral Based Interview Questions If you ask the same questions your competitors are asking, you’ll get the same answers they are getting too. Mainly because most organizations ask the same 10 interview questions that your candidates have learned how to answer in books, courses and through agencies. Lead, behavioral based interview questions start with “Describe a time…,” and “Give an example of…” and end with something job related.
Hiring Best Practice # 5 Pre-Employment Culture, Team & Psychological Job Match Assessments Since “luck” is not one of the five hiring best practices, you need to do all you can to remove instinct and emotion from your hiring decisions. As much as you may hate to admit it, your instincts have been wrong in the past and they will be wrong in the future. Most of the fortune 500 and virtually every market leading organization (no matter the size) uses Job Matching Assessments because studies have shown they can increase your hiring success rate of TOP Performers by up to 500 percent.
Unfortunately, using assessments to Job Match is not an easy process to explain through words. It is best to describe through visuals and examples. We used to introduce the process in hour long meetings or webinars with driven business leaders and two hour long workshops to motivated business owners. Now you have the opportunity to learn how to job match from the comfort of your own office (or home) in just 15-minutes.
This process doesn’t require hiring expensive consultants, headhunters, recruiters or outsourcing. It also does not require learning any confusing software or technology. You don’t even need to invite us to your office to waist your time.
Tags: Hiring Best Practices, Recruitment
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
Although SEO seems to be the new buzz in recruiting web 2.0 strategies, it has actually been used for years as a tactic to increase sales for online businesses.
SEO and how it fits into the recruiting industry is greatly misunderstood.SEO_in_Online_Recruitment
SEO Is just a tool
At the end of the day, SEO is not the end all be all. It is one tool that can be very effective to have in your tool box. No doubt, if done correctly, search engine optimization can work wonders for getting your jobs seen by people using search engines but it goes beyond just a platform or technique that helps to get your jobs visible in Google. In fact, it’s really about optimizing your entire employment brand on the Internet.
SEO may not be for everyone
There’s more than just keywords and a few meta tags that go into a successful SEO strategy, if you’re not willing to look at SEO as a long term investment, it might not be the best fit for you. Maybe something more instant like SEM (PPC) might be more what you’re after.
Go where your candidates are – If the jobs you have available are not what people are searching for within the search engines then maybe you don’t need to do a whole comprehensive strategy. Maybe you just run a basic SEO strategy that strengthens your employment brand.
Note: Keep in mind that 70% of search engine queries are unique, just because a keyword research tool like the Google Adwords tool says that a phrase was not searched does not necessarily mean that it won’t be in the future.
SEO Misconceptions
Can a service provider guarantee a first page ranking? No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. See Google webmaster tools.
Using the .jobs domain extension will ensure search engine visibility. The .jobs domain in itself will not automatically help with your search engine visibility. Those who believe otherwise don’t fully understand the way a search engine treats newly-registered domains. Search engine trust is a very important factor in the visibility of your career site. A newly established domain — .jobs or otherwise — has not had time to build search engine trust.
Search engine trust includes a variety of factors including but not limited to: when was the domain registered, is there quality content on the domain, is content updated frequently, are there quality links pointing to the domain, etc. In reality, the .jobs domain has more of an employment brand benefit than SEO.
Search engines cannot access my content if using an ATS - It is true that most Applicant tracking systems put up technical barriers that prevent the search engines from being able to access their job content. But there is a work around: If you can get an RSS/XML feed of your jobs and upload the feed to search engines as well as place the feed on a page that search engines can access, your job content will be indexed.
This is not an SEO solution but it will allow content that was once hidden to be found. At the end of the day candidates use a variety of sources to look for jobs. Find out where your candidates are and advertise/be visible in those places, simple as that.
Tags: Recruitment, SEO
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
Selecting and retaining great staff is key for business success. Talented people who continue to develop skills and increase their value to your organization and to your customers are your most important resource. Here’s how to select and retain these people and create an environment in which they continue to thrive.
The primary elements of any plan to improve the quality of the staff you employ include improving the quality of new hires, identifying and retaining superior employees, and developing employees (especially those with high potential for growth). A performance development approach to providing job expectations and feedback will assist with this process.
At the same time, you need to take a look at underperforming staff. Ask whether each individual is in the wrong job. Determine whether you have provided specific and clear requirements so the individual knows what you expect from him. Make sure you have provided feedback against goals and objectives so the person knows he is not meeting expectations.
Decide if a performance improvement plan will help the individual contribute within your organization. If you have done your part to create an environment in which an individual can succeed - and the person is not succeeding - let the person go. Your organization will be better off for his absence and the individual will have the opportunity to locate a job in which he can perform.
Tom O’Leary offers more good ideas.
From Tom O’ Leary*
How would you like to increase your pool of candidates for selection, add value to your interview process, heighten employee loyalty, build supportive peer relationships, and improve retention rates simultaneously? By implementing a team recruitment strategy, you will achieve all this and more.
There are four steps in the team recruitment process:
* defining manpower needs,
* finding and enticing quality candidates to respond to those needs,
* interviewing and selecting the best applicants, and
orienting newly selected employees into the business.
The most effective team-recruitment approach will include employees at all four stages of the process.
Involve Current Employees in Recruiting Employees
While there are myriad methods of involving employees in the recruiting process, this article highlights the three most common strategies: employee as agent, employee as contributing evaluator, and employee as sponsor or peer mentor.
Employee as Agent in Recruiting Employees
Establishing a modest recruitment incentive program will encourage positive public relations and improve employees’ perceptions of their relationship with the company. An existing employee adds value to an employee recruiting campaign for several reasons.
* Because employees have an operational understanding of the various roles and responsibilities of the business, they will be more likely to introduce candidates who match position requirements.
* Increasing candidate selection will reduce reliance on external agency services and save time and money.
* Employees will feel valued when a personally recommended candidate is considered.
* Positive public relations will manifest naturally when employees know that they can benefit from attracting others to the business.
* Participation will foster a spirit of contribution to the big picture.
Normally, an employee is offered a modest monetary incentive in comparison to external agency fees. Half of the amount is paid after the contract is signed, and the balance is provided upon successful completion of a probationary period (encouraging peer support even after the initial offer is made.)
Employee as Contributing Evaluator in Recruiting Employees
Inviting employees to participate in the interview process as contributing evaluators augments employee perceptions of value and offers front line insights regarding candidate suitability and fit within an existing team structure. While employees may or may not participate actively during the interview session, their post-interview comments to managers can be very helpful in evaluating first round interviewees. This method of inclusion has a wide range of benefits.
# Gives a voice to the departmental members who will work with the new employee.
# Increases employees’ perception of value through inclusion.
# Fosters positive working relationships between managers and reporting staff.
# Serves as a practical training exercise for interviewing skills.
# Supports a spirit of cooperation across organizational levels.
# Provides key, front-line, operational insights regarding a candidate’s ability to respond to position requirements.
# Supports ownership and empowerment of departmental activity.
There is nothing more unsettling for a new employee than to show up on her first day of work with little knowledge about what she is supposed to do, how she will fit in, or who the key people in her team are. The lack of information and support is a major cause of stress for new employees at every level.
While a good orientation process might help to lessen that stress, employee sponsorship (sometimes referred to as a “buddy system”) will prevent it from occurring. Employee sponsorship is normally associated with very large organizations. The U.S. Air Force uses a sponsorship program to help new recruits adapt to both their new position and community. The same approach can, and should be used, for small and medium sized private companies and organizations. A sponsorship program benefits both sponsor and new employee in many ways.
* Initial perceptions of new employees are improved - taken care of from prior to day one.
* Sponsor feels valued as a contributing member of the organization.
* Sponsor is periodically reminded of company policies, goals, mission and vision.
* Peer relationships based on team support are fostered.
* Communication skills of employees are exercised and improved.
* A sense of community is created and nurtured.
* New employees understand the big picture and how they fit in prior to their first day/
Components in an Employee Sponsorship Process
A basic sponsorship program includes a letter and information packet sent from the sponsor to the new employee’s home address prior to the first work day. The package might include information relating to:
* the history of the company;
* key biographies and roles and organizational chart;
* position descriptions and how they support business goals;
* welcome letters from relevant managers including the president;
* administrative comments and policies;
* social opportunities described;
* benefits summary; and
* area information such as maps, Internet sites, restaurants, clubs, attractions, and so forth.
The sponsor personalizes the package with a cover letter providing contact information, key dates and times for personnel processing and induction, and general comments.
How to Select a Sponsor for the New Employee
Sponsors are usually selected from the new employee’s peer group. For example, a new graphic artist would be assigned a fellow graphic artist as a sponsor.
A different sponsor should be selected for each new recruit, until everyone in the department has had a chance to sponsor. This should be done at every level of the organization. While most of the information in the sponsorship package is canned, it should be personalized to the greatest extent possible for each new employee.
The introduction of the “buddy,” prior to the new employee starting work, will help the new employee feel welcome. The sponsor provides a focal point for the new employee to get help and information. The sponsor provides an early notification system for potential problems and lost opportunities to integrate the new employee effectively.
Summary of Team Member Roles in Recruiting Employees
By incorporating these three team-approach recruiting methods, retention efforts will be simultaneously strengthened through the improved perceptions of new recruits and the active participation of existing employees. Fostering a sense of community by inclusion will make recruiting and retention efforts more effective.
Tags: Recruitment, Retention Strategy
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
Recruiting the right employees and keeping the right employees matters, especially now.
A recent Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) press release revealed the answer to the question of what people plan to do when the job market rebounds. The majority of the Human Resource (HR) professionals and managers surveyed agreed that turnover will rise significantly once the job market improves. Both groups felt that the job market will improve within the next year, according to the latest Job Recovery Survey.
The survey is produced by SHRM and CareerJournal.com, the free, executive career site of The Wall Street Journal, two of my personal favorite sites. The survey results include responses from 451 HR professionals and 300 managerial or executive employees.
“We’re surprised by the percentage of executive employees who say they plan to jump ship once hiring rebounds,” says Tony Lee, editor in chief/general manager of CareerJournal.com. “And with 56 percent of HR professionals agreeing that turnover will rise, we’re interested to see what types of retention efforts those companies launch to keep their best employees on board.”
Employees cited the following three top reasons they would begin searching for a new job:
* 53 percent seek better compensation and benefits.
* 35 percent cited dissatisfaction with potential career development.
* 32 percent said they were ready for a new experience.
HR professionals were asked which programs or policies they use currently to help retain employees. The following three are the most common programs employers are using to retain employees:
* 62 percent provide tuition reimbursement.
* 60 percent offer competitive vacation and holiday benefits.
* 59 percent offer competitive salaries.
Most HR professionals surveyed (71 percent), in large organizations (those with more than 500 employees), thought it would be extremely likely or somewhat likely to experience an increase in voluntary turnover once the job market improves. Forty-one percent from small organizations (1-99 employees) said it was extremely likely or somewhat likely that turnover would increase. Fifty-three percent of respondents from medium organizations (between 100 and 499) thought the same.
In addition to the three retention tips offered by HR professionals in the SHRM-CareerJournal.com survey, competitive salary, competitive vacation and holidays and tuition reimbursement, these are your key retention strategies. (If you think they read like the Golden Rule, you’re right they do.) And, they’re also common-sense, basic and incredibly hard to find in organizations today.
* Select the right people in the first place through behavior-based testing and competency screening. The right person, in the right seat, on the right bus is the starting point.
* Offer an attractive, competitive, benefits package with components such as life insurance, disability insurance and flexible hours.
* Provide opportunities for people to share their knowledge via training sessions, presentations, mentoring others and team assignments.
* Demonstrate respect for employees at all times. Listen to them deeply; use their ideas; never ridicule or shame them.
* Offer performance feedback and praise good efforts and results.
* People want to enjoy their work. Make work fun. Engage and employ the special talents of each individual.
* Enable employees to balance work and life. Allow flexible starting times, core business hours and flexible ending times. (Yes, his son’s soccer game is important.)
* Involve employees in decisions that affect their jobs and the overall direction of the company whenever possible.
* Recognize excellent performance, and especially, link pay to performance.
* Base the upside of bonus potential on the success of both the employee and the company and make it limitless within company parameters. (As an example, pay ten percent of corporate profits to employees.)
* Recognize and celebrate success. Mark their passage as important goals are achieved.
* Staff adequately so overtime is minimized for those who don’t want it and people don’t wear themselves out.
* Nurture and celebrate organization traditions. Have a costume party every Halloween. Run a food collection drive every November. Pick a mmonthly charity to help. Have an annual company dinner at a fancy hotel.
* Provide opportunities within the company for cross-training and career progression. People like to know that they have room for career movement.
* Provide the opportunity for career and personal growth through training and education, challengine assignments and more.
* Communicate goals, roles and responsibilities so people know what is expected and feel like part of the in-crowd.
* According to research by the Gallup organization, encourage employees to have good, even best, friends, at work.
Now that you have the list, why not work to make your organization one of the few, the best, that truly honor and appreciate employees. If you treat your employees wonderfully, you will never lose them.
Tags: Recruitment, Retention Tips
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
Finding the best possible people who can fit within your culture and contribute within your organization is a challenge and an opportunity. Keeping the best people, once you find them, is easy if you do the right things right. These specific actions will help you with recruiting and retaining all the talent you need. Here are ten tips for better recruiting.
Improve Your Candidate Pool When Recruiting Employees
Companies that select new employees from the candidates who walk in their door or answer an ad in the paper or online are missing the best candidates. They’re usually working for someone else and they may not even be looking for a new position. Here are steps to take to improve your candidate pool.
* Invest time in developing relationships with university placement offices, recruiters and executive search firms.
* Enable current staff members to actively participate in industry professional associations and conferences where they are likely to meet candidates you may successfully woo.
* Watch the online job boards for potential candidates who may have resumes online even if they’re not currently looking.
* Use professional association Web sites and magazines to advertise for professional staff.
The key is to build your candidate pool before you need it.
Hire the Sure Thing When Recruiting Employees
Bruce N. Pfau and Ira T. Kay, authors of The Human Capital Edge( compare prices), are convinced that you should hire a person who has done this “exact job, in this exact industry, in this particular business climate, from a company with a very similar culture.”
They believe that “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior” and suggest that this is the strategy that will enable you to hire winners. They say that you must hire the candidates whom you believe can hit the ground running in your company. You can’t afford the time to train a possibly successful candidate.
Look First at In-house Candidates
Providing promotional and lateral opportunities for current employees positively boosts morale and makes your current staff members feel their talents, capabilities, and accomplishments are appreciated. Always post positions internally first. Give potential candidates an interview. It’s a chance for you to know them better. They learn more about the goals and needs of the organization. Sometimes, a good fit is found between your needs and theirs.
Be Known as a Great Employer
Pfau and Kay make a strong case for not just being a great employer, but letting people know that you are a great employer. Take a look at your employee practices for retention, motivation, accountability, reward, recognition, flexibility in work-life balance, promotion, and involvement. These are your key areas for becoming an employer of choice. You want your employees bragging that your organization is a great place to work. People will believe the employees before they believe the corporate literature.
Involve Your Employees in the Hiring Process
You have three opportunities to involve your employees in the hiring process.
* Your employees can recommend excellent candidates to your firm.
* They can assist you to review resumes and qualifications of potential candidates.
* They can help you interview people to assess their potential “fit” within your company.
Organizations that fail to use employees to assess potential employees are underutilizing one of their most important assets. People who participate in the selection process are committed to helping the new employee succeed. It can’t get any better than that for you and the new employee.
Pay Better Than Your Competition
Yes, you do get what you pay for in the job market. Survey your local job market and take a hard look at the compensation people in your industry attract. You want to pay better than average to attract and keep the best candidates. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?
It’s not. I listen to employers every day who talk about how to get employees cheaply. It’s a bad practice. Did I say, “you do get what you pay for in the job market?” Sure, you can luck out and attract a person who has golden handcuffs because they are following their spouse to a new community or need your benefits.
But, they will resent their pay scale, feel unappreciated, and leave you for their first good job offer. I have seen employee-replacement costs that range from two to three times the person’s annual salary. Did I say that you do get what you are willing to pay for in the job market?
Use Your Benefits to Your Advantage In Recruiting Employees
Keep your benefits above industry standard and add new benefits as you can afford them. You also need to educate employees about the cost and value of their benefits so they appreciate how well you are looking out for their needs.
Treasured currently by employees is flexibility and the opportunity to balance work with other life responsibilities, interests, and issues. You can’t be an employer of choice without a good benefits package that includes standard benefits such as medical insurance, retirement, and dental insurance.
Employees are increasingly looking for cafeteria-style benefit plans in which they can balance their choices with those of a working spouse or partner. Pfau and Kay recommend stock and ownership opportunities for every level of employees in your organization. I like profit sharing plans and bonuses that pay the employee for measurable achievements and contributions.
Hire the Smartest Person You Can Find
In their recent book, First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (compare prices), Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman recommend that great managers hire for talent. They believe that successful managers believe:
“People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough.”
If you’re looking for someone who will work well with people, you need to hire an individual who has the talent of working well with people. You’re unlikely to train missing talents into the person later. You can try, but then, you are not building on the employee’s strengths which 80,000 managers, via Gallup’s research, highly recommend.
The recommendation? Hire for strengths; don’t expect to develop weak areas of performance, habits, and talents. Build on what is great about your new employee in the first place.
Use Your Web Site for Recruiting
Your Web site portrays your vision, mission, values, goals, and products. It is also effective for recruiting employees who experience a resonance with what you state on your site. Do create an employment section which describes your available positions and contains information about you and why an interested person might want to contact your company. A recruiting Web site is your opportunity to shine and a highly effective way to attract candidates today.
Check References When Recruiting Employees
The purpose of this section is to keep you out of trouble with the candidates you are seeking and selecting and the employees you currently employ. You really need to check references carefuly and do background checks.
In the litigious society in which we live (don’t even ask me what percentage of the world’s lawyers reside in the United States of America) you need to pursue every avenue to assure that the people you hire can do the job, contribute to your growth and development, and have no past transgressions which might endanger your current workforce. In fact, you might be liable if you failed to do a background check on a person who then attacked another in your workplace.
Conclusion: Start With These Recommendations
Each organization has to start somewhere to improve recruiting, hiring, and retention of valued employees. In my experience, the tactics and opportunities detailed here are your best bets for recruiting the best employees. These ideas can help your organization succeed and grow, they create a workplace that will meet both your needs and the needs of your potential and current employees.
Tags: hiring, Recruitment
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Friday, December 18th, 2009
Recruiting Leader of the Year, Best Use of Metrics, and Best Recruiting Process:
Dan Hilbert, Valero Energy
What Dan Hilbert and his team at,Valero Energy have accomplished will forever change the strategic options that recruiting directors must consider. They have developed what may be the world’s most strategic staffing approach, one that emphasizes using metrics to refine “talent pipelines” to produce a talent supply chain.
Best practices :
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Predictive Labor Needs System. Algorithms analyze historical data that is combined with data on planned capital projects to predict future talent needs as far as three years’ out.
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Automated Sourcing. Labor needs are automatically communicated to defined sources (both internal and external) based on each individual source’s efficiency (cost, time) and effectiveness (quality of hire, reliability) .
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Candidate Mining. Rather than have recruiters crawling through job boards and posting job advertisements, web spiders are programmed to crawl, retrieve, and upload candidates into the applicant tracking system based on both current and projected needs. Advertisements are automatically broadcast as part of the automated sourcing approach.
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Multi-Dimensional Performance Monitoring. The system relies on metrics at four defined levels to monitor system health and performance, as well as to diagnose problems or issues that arise. Levels include forecasts, macro-level (sourcing channel effectiveness, costs, etc.), micro-level (efficiency, cost, speed, quality, retention, customer service, and dependability per transaction) , and human capital metrics (impacts of staffing best practices on the bottom line).
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Integrated Processes to create a talent supply chain.
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Predictive Modeling functionality enables the effective use of both short/long term sources.
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University Recruiting that leverages teaching assistants as talent scouts on targeted campuses, allowing Valero to secure interns and new grads prior to on-campus career events.
Best Corporate Careers Website:Deloitte
Deloitte has long been a leader in both recruiting and retention, and now it has broken new ground by building a global careers website designed from the ground up to focus on the candidate experience. Unlike most corporate sites, which are dull and serve as nothing more than “front-ends” to applicant tracking systems, the Deloitte solution uses cutting-edge marketing approaches and the latest technology to serve candidates consistently around the world.
Quick facts :
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The site is a living example of “a global strategy executed locally.”
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It leverages both localization and personalization engines to dynamically deliver content relevant to the site visitor.
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It is a single site supporting more than 80 country-specific recruiting strategies.
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Deloitte delivers a consistent brand message around the world in 10 languages.
Best practices :
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Target Audience Research. Deloitte conducted extensive usability research with two external candidate groups — students and experienced professionals — to help create the original design specifications. Ongoing surveys and focus groups with candidates sourced both inside and outside the organization help to guide refinements and changes. (This research led Deloitte not to follow a trend of using extensive flash and graphic-heavy page design, as their target candidates found such elements a barrier to usability.)
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Use of Localization and Customization. The use of these two technologies ensures that candidates are presented with information unique to their specific needs. College students in France, for example, are presented with different information than college students in Australia and both are presented with different information than professional hires. Extensive research is conducted to help determine what type of content each target demographic needs/wants.
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Employment Brand Measurement. The messaging of the site is adapted continuously based on input from candidate surveys and third-party market research which details how Deloitte is perceived in the talent market.
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Localized Content Management. Deloitte custom-built a content management tool to allow local HR professionals — who are not technical experts — to manage local content.
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Robust Analytics. Because the global site is truly one site versus a portal that forwards users on to local sites, all movement throughout the more than 7,000 web pages can be monitored and analyzed.
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Multiple Presentation Formats. Because the site is powered by a robust content management tool, the same type of content can be delivered in multiple ways. For instance, a day “in the life” story maybe be presented as text, short video clip, or in-depth dynamic video.
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Web-Based Screening. Candidates who move from the site into the recruitment management application are screened using questionnaires tailored to each position. Introduces an online network for interns. The employee referral program offers a $30 reward just for the first referral, even if the person is not hired. Deloitte includes corporate alumni in the referral program.
Best College Recruiting Program: Whirlpool
Whirlpool has redesigned its university recruiting program to ensure a consistent pipeline of mid-level management talent through the Whirlpool Leadership Development Program.
Quick facts :
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Global Rotation Programs are developed along functional lines to ensure skill development according to the functions’ pre-defined performance criteria. More than seven separate programs exist, covering everything from brand portfolio leadership to global supply chain management.
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Each Leadership-Program participant receives frequent feedback, a senior-level mentor, a tiered compensation package and a defined career path.
Best practices :
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Identified Employment Brand obstacles that would prevent them from hiring the volume and quality of top graduates that they needed. They then developed a strategy to “call out” negative perceptions, such as those of the appliance industry itself.
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Leveraged the Brand Identity of Ben Stein, a known and trusted celebrity, to reach out directly to the target audience by including him in all recruitment communications.
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Designed Highly Visible Recruiting events at target schools that leverage partnerships with local organizations, entertainment venues and elsewhere.
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Developed a Web-Based Portal specific to campus recruitment that focuses on the candidate experience versus administrative functionality.
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Highly Selective Leadership development mentor program. Managers selected to participate as mentors must go through a rigorous selection process and are then monitored closely to ensure that only managers who consistently produce results remain in the program.
Most Strategic Use of Recruiting Technology: Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard has been a pioneer in the adoption of a truly global HR strategy and in using technology in order to transform HR for more than 20 years. In its latest move, HP has integrated all recruitment technologies via the @HP portal to support a global HR self-service model.
The recruitment elements are just one component of the Global Human Resource Management System, which supports 147,000 employees in 178 countries. It provides content in 11 languages and provides self-service for 36 manager and employee transactions and nine additional standard HR transactions.
Quick facts :
* Global Staffing Practices and technologies were streamlined to support a global strategy and consistent staffing methodology worldwide.
* The approach does provide some degree of flexibility to support variations in staffing approaches and perspectives across geographic regions (Americas, Asia Pacific and Japan, and EMEA).
Best practices :
* Staffing methodology across all four regions is supported by a global workforce planning and staffing leadership team.
* Specific technology plans exist to drive the use of technology in:
- Experienced candidate recruitment
- University recruitment
- Intern recruitment
- Diversity recruitment
Tags: Best Practices in HR, Organizational Culture, Recent Trends in HR, Recruitment, Strategic HR
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