Do you really know how candidates are finding you?

Posted March 17th, 2012 in blog_news, For Employers

Asking candidates – or even tracking – how they applied to your position may be giving you a misleading picture.

A couple of weeks ago, CareerXroads released the results of a study showing the sources of external hires:

Now, most recruiters will tell you that they’ve long known that the best source of new hires are referrals, so it’s not surprising to see them at the top of the list.  However, given the long-heralded demise of job boards, and the long-heralded power of social media for recruiting, it’s surprising to see the former coming in second while the latter is a bit of a blip.

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that the sample size here was only 36 respondents – not nearly enough to know how accurate the results are.

However, what may be more important is that recruiting is hardly ever this simple or one-dimensional.

How many touchpoints does it take to generate an applicant? How many to generate a hire?

99.9%, when organizations are tracking where a new hire came from, they’re (a) asking candidates to specify how they came to apply in the first place and (b) looking only at the most proximate cause.

And sometimes it really is that simple:  Candidate A is in the market for a new job, so s/he goes online and looks for opportunities, sends applications to anything that looks promising, and then hopes s/he will get an interview.

But most of the time it’s much more complicated than that.  For example, Recruiter Sally needs to hire a senior manager.  She posts the job on the company website, puts feelers out on LinkedIn, calls a few contacts in the industry, and sends an email to internal employees to ask for referrals.  She includes the link to the company website posting in emails to potential referrers and her LinkedIn status, and tells internal employees to direct their contacts to the company posting but to make a note on their covering note that they’ve been referred by someone.

She eventually makes a hire via a contact on LinkedIn, who has applied via the company website after having been referred by a former employee.

When the new hire is asked “How did you apply for this job?”, s/he says “I applied on the company website…” – when in fact the ‘source’ of this hire was a combination of social media (LinkedIn), referrals (via the LinkedIn contact and employee alumni network), recruiter initiated (getting the buzz going), and the company website (which facilitated processing).

It may be time to stop thinking about ‘single source of hire’ and start thinking about ‘engagement process required to make a great hire’.

 

INFOGRAPHIC: When it comes to social media, size isn’t everything

Posted March 12th, 2012 in blog_news, For Employers

Turns out, smaller networks produce more applications per follower

You know I love a good infographic, especially when it confirms what I think I already know.

According to this infograhic by Bullhorn, having a lot of Twitter followers doesn’t mean you’re getting a whole lot of candidates.

I recognize that there are flaws in this kind of reasoning, but it’s still kind of interesting…the recruiter with 10,000 Twitter followers isn’t necessarily the one who’s going to do the best job.  Maybe because they’re spending too much time on Twitter…

 

The Remarkable Employee: Nature or Nurture?

Posted March 6th, 2012 in blog_news, For Employers, For Job Seekers

As the world prepared for life under Google’s post-apocalyptic privacy policy, I chose not to spend my last free moments writing to loved ones or reconciling my thoughts on the afterlife.  Waiting for our new Orwellian overlords to inform me that, based on my recent search history, my cholesterol was too high and my first child would be a girl named Prudence, an article on Inc.com caught my eye:  8 Qualities of Remarkable Employees.

The general sentiment of the article seemed to be that truly remarkable employees – those that breathe the rarefied air reserved for captains of industry and thought leaders – are driven by something deeper and more personal than anything that could be put in a job description.  Remarkable employees embrace the spirit of the job rather than the letter of the job, defining success in terms of how well they advance the discipline, not how well their performance compares to what’s listed on their job description.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the 8 qualities lend support to the old adage that fortune favours the bold, in that an inquiring mind and healthy irreverence can not only help an employee achieve greatness in a given role, but also have a positive impact on their co-workers and organizational culture.

The idea that a little eccentricity can add flavour to an otherwise vanilla organization has gained popularity in the past few years, but when we appreciate how delicately these 8 factors must be arranged in order to achieve the desired result, one wonders just how often the dish tastes a little…funky.  There’s a gestalt element that needs to be recognized.  Without a balance, you may find a misguided employee squirting ketchup on the company ice cream.

But let us return to the article.  Are the 8 specified qualities meant to help us identify potentially remarkable employees, or are they the sort of things one can cultivate in order to become remarkable?

Depending on where you fall on the nature/nurture scale, it could be that the unique makeup of The Six Million Dollar Employee cannot be learned – it’s a set of innate traits that’s coded into our DNA.  On the other hand, surely it’s possible to teach employees numbers 4, 5 and 6 (“They publicly praise”, “They privately complain” and “They speak when others won’t”).

The challenge, again, is balance:  It’s funny how ‘eccentrically’ blue hair becomes more palatable when it’s sprouting from the head that just invented your killer app; ‘speaking when others won’t’ isn’t so attractive when the speech is always “It sucks”.

Without all 8 qualities acting in harmony, it’s a short trip from ‘healthy irreverence’ to ‘preening windbag’.  The line between Future CEO and Impatient Malcontent can be easy to cross.

For the record, I’m pretty sure the piece was meant as a field guide, not a how-to guide.  But I’ve always been more interested in minutiae than in general conclusions.  Whether or not it actually delivered sufficient protein, ’8 Qualities of Remarkable Employees’ certainly provided some food for thought.

Guest post by Geoffrey Gilbert, Poly Placements recruiter and aspiring eccentric.

Expect the unexpected: Getting your first (or second) job in IT

Posted February 25th, 2012 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

A friend of mine runs a small (but growing) IT consulting company.  He needs some junior staff members, but with a limited budget and a need to make every team member count, he decided that he’d advertise to college students who were set to graduate from IT-related programs.  He’d take them on for the summer break, and if they worked out, he could hire them in the fall.

He was a bit surprised by the responses he got.  “I thought the job market was supposed to be really tight right now,” he told me.  “But I definitely wasn’t overwhelmed with applications.  I know we’re a smaller company, and not as ‘desirable’ on a resume as an IBM or a big bank – I get it.  But smaller, entrepreneurial companies can offer opportunities that a big company can’t.”

Some applicants had decent skills and even some work experience, but appeared to be underprepared.  “I think most of the people we interviewed were used to very basic questions like ‘Can you do such-and-such in PHP?’  We’re more interested in why they like programming and IT, what they love about different programming languages, and what’s going to keep them passionate about their work in the long-term.  I’m pretty sure most of our applicants had never even considered those questions, let alone been asked them in an interview.”

Tips for getting your dream job in IT

Getting your first, or even second, job in IT is a balancing act:  On the one hand, you want an opportunity which is going to give you the skills and experience you need, look good on a resume, and pay you a living wage; on the other hand, you don’t want to be too choosy miss out on opportunities.  Here are some things to consider:

A big-name company may not be the best choice for your long-term career

Big companies look good on resumes, and it can be tempting to leap at a chance to work for a company whose name all your friends recognize.  But big companies also tend to like to ‘pigeonhole’ developers, which means that if you’re hired as an ‘ASP guy’, you’ll be stuck doing nothing but ASP forever.  That may not be good for your long-term career prospects – and it may not lead you to the management position you know you want eventually.  A smaller company which requires you to work in different languages or on both hardware and software, may give you a better long-term basket of skills.

Know why you’re applying for a particular job

Chances are, you aren’t the only one who’s applied for the position, and it may be that all of you have similar skills and abilities.  Being able to provide an enthusiastic response to “Why do you think you’d like this job?” can make the difference.

It’s okay to have some opinions

When the interviewer asks you for your opinion or insights on particular programming languages, be honest.  It’s okay to say that you think Java is fantastic but Drupal kind of sucks (as long as you can provide reasons for your opinions).  Even if the interviewer doesn’t agree with you, you’re sending a message that (a) you’re passionate and (b) you’ve spent some time thinking about it, rather than just being a code monkey.

Have an idea of your long-term goals – or be honest about your confusion

When you first get out of school, it’s hard to know just what your long-term career will look like, or what you really want out of a career.  But everyone has some idea of what they’d like their life to look like in 5 or 10 years.  So when an interviewer asks you what you’d like to get out of the job or where you see yourself in X number of years, don’t sit there like a deer in the headlights or offer some canned response.  Offer something truthful:  “Well, to be honest, I’m just at the beginning of my career and I don’t know exactly where it will take me.  But I do know that I love working with databases, and I’m really interested in developments in encryption, so I imagine that eventually I’ll concentrate on those.”  You’ve just given the interviewer a clue to what you’re passionate about, and an indication that you have some goals for yourself.  Both are good points in an interview situation!

 

Didn’t get the job? Here’s why it shouldn’t get you down.

Posted February 17th, 2012 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Even princesses have to kiss a few frogs before they get a prince.

In many ways, looking for a new job should be a pretty invigorating activity.  After all, you’re exploring new possibilities, thinking of new challenges, anticipating a move up the career ladder…what could be more exciting?

Tragically, all the potential excitement tends to get subsumed under the other side of job hunting:  The (sometimes repeated) rejection.  Maybe you’re sending out lots of resumes and not getting callbacks; maybe you’re getting the interviews but somehow not getting the offers.  Either way, it can take its toll on your self-esteem and your morale.

But you shouldn’t take it too personally, and here’s why:

1.  Maybe it really wasn’t the right job for you

It’s likely that the person (or people) doing the screening and interviewing for the job know the organization and the job better than you do, and have a better handle on the kind of person who’s going to be successful in the role.  Maybe they need someone who is less ambitious than you are and will stay in the job for longer than you will; maybe they can tell that the job isn’t going to be challenging enough for you.  ”I really wished I could have hired so-and-so,” employers have often said to me.  ”I just know they wouldn’t have been happy in the long run.”

2.  Sometimes the person doing the hiring makes a mistake

From time to time, we send a candidate to an interview for a position that we know they’d do well in. But they don’t get hired.  Maybe the interview got off to a bad start and didn’t recover; maybe the interviewer didn’t really understand the role; maybe the hiring manager was simply having a bad day. Stuff happens – you just have to shake it off and keep going.

3.  The job might have changed

Sometimes a company posts an advertisement for a position, gets halfway through the screening and interviewing process, and realizes that the role doesn’t exist, or has changed, or has moved to a different office.  You – the job-seeker – gets stuck in the middle, and no one thinks to explain the situation to you.  It’s not a reflection on your abilities.

4.  You might be spreading yourself too thin

If you’re sending out ‘hundreds’ of resumes but getting very few responses, consider that you might not be focusing on the best opportunities for you.  It’s better to spend an hour or two crafting a very targeted response to a job that really fits with your skills and experience than to fire off applications to every job that looks vaguely suitable.  You’ll get better results, and your morale will take less of a beating.

5.  It’s a risk-averse marketplace

A trend we often see in larger organizations is a job that comes with a very specific checklist:  The successful new hire must have X education, Y experience, and Z skills just to make the shortlist, let alone the final cut.  That checklist may end up excluding some great potential candidates, but in a tough job market, it’s the way hiring managers can protect themselves if a new hire doesn’t work out:  ”But I followed the checklist for this role and didn’t do anything risky like hiring someone without the specified skills and experience…”

Remember, a positive attitude is your best asset when you’re looking for a new job.  It’s okay to feel frustrated and fed up with the process, but don’t let it creep into your communications with recruiters or potential employers.  Go for a run, punch a pillow, or have a glass of wine with a friend – then remember that eventually you will find the right job for you, and it just might be as exciting as you hoped.

 

 

Social media in the workplace: Infographic

Posted February 8th, 2012 in blog_news, For Employers, For Job Seekers

What companies are doing and saying about social media in the workplace.

Companies may not be explicitly telling employees that they can’t use social media in the office, but an awful lot of them are actively blocking social media sites. Hello smartphones…

Recruiting for small business, Part 4: Are you being realistic?

Posted February 6th, 2012 in For Employers

Not getting the people you need? Maybe they don’t exist.

A few days ago I got a call from a small business owner who had a tall order:

“I’m looking for a great salesperson who’s got an established client base to sell my construction materials.  Ideally, they’d be able to work from home, with their own clientele, and have the ability to develop their own sales materials.  We don’t have a training program, so they’d need to be able to work independently.  The position is entirely commission-based – but if they work hard, they can make a lot of money.”

Except…a strong, entrepreneurially-minded salesperson who’s got an established clientele and the ability to work independently is (probably) already making a lot of money in their current job.  They’ve probably got a base salary, ongoing commissions from repeat business, job security and a certain level of seniority.  Why would they leave that to come to your small business?

It’s important to see your opportunity objectively.

If you’re like most small business owners, you are unreservedly positive about your business, and that’s good.  But when it comes time to recruit key people for your organization – particularly if you’re looking to build a team that can take you to the next level – you have to take a step back.  Top-tier candidates, the ones who can really make a difference to a small business, have choices, even in a tough economy.  Are you really offering them a better opportunity than they could get elsewhere?

Ask yourself:

  • What does the ideal candidate really look like, in terms of lifestage, lifestyle, salary/commissions/bonus and day-to-day activities?
  • How does your opportunity compare with what they are doing now?  If you’re asking them to take a reduced salary/compensation, what are you offering in return?  How long will it take for them to recoup that loss, realistically?
  • Can you offer them a meaningful lifestyle change that will compensate for what they’re giving up?
  • Will what you’re offering really attract the best and brightest in your field, or just a B- or C-list person?
  • If you were offered this position, would you jump at the chance?  (Be honest!)

I know it’s tough, when you’re a small business owner, to commit to making an investment in a new person, whether it’s salary, training, recruiting or even just the time required while a new hire gets up to speed and becomes maximally productive.  But it’s like any other wisely-considered  investment:  You tend to get out what you’re willing to put in.

 

Recruiting for small business, Part 3: Finding great candidates

Posted January 31st, 2012 in blog_news, For Employers

What you can do to find better candidates for your small business

PART 1:  The real cost of bad hires

PART 2:  Getting closer to the ideal candidate

In our first two blogs about recruiting for small business, we talked about the true cost of bad hires and how better screening and interviewing can help you get closer to the ideal candidate.

But for many small business owners, ‘recruiting’ is a whole new world.  If your business is just starting to take off, it’s likely that your first employees came from people you already knew, referrals from friends and family, and hiring ‘accidents’ that just happened to work out well.

Now that you’re growing, you have to get more strategic with your hires, and that often means going outside your comfort zone:  Hiring people with skillsets outside your own, spending money on more senior people who can take on a leadership role, or investing in staff not because you’re overloaded with work but because you know you need to grow in the longer term.

This can be scary – but there are ways to find great candidates

5 tips for finding the best candidates for your organization

1.  Don’t be afraid to call a recruiting company

Many small businesses are reluctant to engage a recruiting company because they think it’ll cost them a lot of money. That’s not always the case.  Try calling a smaller recruiting company and asking if they have an alternative to the standard 20% contingency fee model.  Many recruiting companies will agree to provide you with recruiting help on a per-hour basis (you pay for the recruiter’s time, rather than a contingency fee) or to provide you with a list of potential candidates from which you can recruit directly, for a reduced fee.

2.  Engage your current employees to drive referrals

Recruitment managers will tell you that the best way to find great employees is by tapping into the networks of current employees.  So when you’re looking for a new hire, don’t keep it a secret from your current team – let them know the kind of candidate you’re looking for, and ask them to spread the word via their LinkedIn, Facebook or other social media channels.  (Offering a referral fee if they refer the winning candidate – $250 should do it – can help to motivate them.)

3.  Don’t depend on job boards

If you’re looking to hire 25 new call centre employees, posting on a job board like Monster might be a good way to attract candidates, but when you’re looking to fill a more senior role or need an unusual mix of skills, job boards aren’t going to reach the people you really want.

4.  LinkedIn can be a powerful resource

More than 95% of Canadian recruiters say that LinkedIn is their first stop when they’re looking for great candidates.  If you’ve been keeping up your LinkedIn profile and connections, it can be a great place for you, as a small business owner, to start as well.  Post the opportunity as your LinkedIn status, search your connections for potential matches, and check out industry groups in your area.  Just because someone isn’t actively looking for a job doesn’t mean that they’re not open to a new opportunity.

5.  Know what you have to offer

As a small business, you may not be able to offer big salaries or huge benefit plans to potential employees.  But small businesses often have all kinds of other ‘perqs’ to offer:  Accelerated promotion opportunities, a cool office space, a more varied workday, the ability to work at home, a more entrepreneurial environment – many people, after spending 15 years in a big company with established rules, simply yearn for the ‘every day is a new adventure’ atmosphere of a small business environment where they can stretch their skills.  So when you’re writing the job description or talking about it, put the emphasis on these elements – you never know when you’ll capture the imagination of an A-list candidate.

 

Recruiting for small business, Part 2: Getting closer to the ideal candidate

Posted January 25th, 2012 in For Employers

Effective screening and interviewing makes all the difference.

Last time, we talked about how, even for small businesses, doing your own recruiting can be a false economy in terms of hard costs, especially when it comes to sourcing top candidates.

But once you’ve got 25 resumes from potential hires in front of you, how do you choose the ones who are most likely to be a success in your organization?

Screening and interviewing are 2 of the most important steps in selecting the right person to hire, but they’re often discounted by small businesses.  Small business owners often think:  ”I know my business better than anyone else, and I wouldn’t have been this successful already if I didn’t understand people.”

It’s true that most successful entrepreneurs are good at reading people, and building successful relationships with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.  But assessing whether a person will be a great employee requires a different skillset, and asking questions designed to elicit specific responses which will predict on-the-job behaviour.

Professional recruiters – whose reputations hinge on being able to assess the right candidates for a job – can make a big difference by screening out the B- and C-listers, and ensuring you only see the potential A-listers for a job.

But if you aren’t using a recruiter, or it’s up to you to select the final hire from the top 3 a recruiter is sending you, here’s how you can improve your chances of getting a top performer:

  • Make a list of the traits of your current top performers.  Are they high-energy, entrepreneurial types, or more methodical, detail-oriented workers?
  • Envision the ‘ideal candidate’ for the role, including education, experience, work/management style, skillsets and personality.  Write it down!
  • Make a list of the day-to-day skillsets required for the position.  Remember that whether someone has an MBA may ultimately be less important than whether they are comfortable preparing and delivering presentations to senior management
  • Learn more about Behavioural Based Interviewing.  BBI is all about asking interview questions which are designed to get the candidate to provide specific examples of what they’ve done in work situations in the past, and are better predictors of future success than general questions like “So, tell me about yourself…”
  • Prepare a list of interview questions before you enter the interview room.  It’s easy for small business owners to allow interviews to veer off into ‘social interactions’ rather than conversations designed to elicit specific information

PART 3:  Finding great candidates

Recruiting for small business, Part 1: The real cost of bad hires

Posted January 20th, 2012 in For Employers

Sometimes, doing it yourself costs a lot more than you think.

Last week I got a call from the president of a local healthcare technology company.  He had about 25 employees, and was looking for a new salesperson to expand his territory.  But he was frustrated.

“Look, I know what I need here.  I’ve tried 3 people and they haven’t worked out, so I know I need someone who is willing to work harder than the people I’ve already tried. I keep advertising, but I’m not getting good people.  But I can’t spend a lot of money, especially when no one seems to work out.”

The thing is, bad hires cost a lot of money:  Companies say that bad hires can cost as much as $25,000-$50,000 – per bad hire.  And this Bad Hire Calculator shows you that even for junior or commission-based positions, the costs of bad hires are much more than you think.

As a small business ourselves, we know that recruiting costs (especially the traditional contingency-fee-based model) can seem expensive.  It can be tempting to think that if you just put a low-cost ad on Craigslist or even Monster, the right person will land in your lap.

Unfortunately, using job ads only exposes you to active job seekers, who comprise only a very small portion of the available talent pool.  If you’re like most small businesses, and need someone with a wide variety of skills or a unique skillset, you need to be able to cast your net much wider.

A recent survey by recruiting expert Lou Adler found that as many as 83% of currently employed people are ‘passive candidates’.  These are people who are currently working, aren’t looking at job boards, but who would be receptive to a new opportunity if it came along.

This is where engaging a recruiter can make a big difference.  Recruiters make it their business to develop long-term relationships with passive candidates, so when they get a request from a client, they’re working from a much larger potential pool of talent.

PART 2: Recruiters can get you closer to the ideal candidate, faster.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »