September 8th, 2010
As most of you know, we have just concluded a Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study highlighting key metrics relevant to a Lean, Just-in-Time recruitment strategy. As expected, since many of the key data points relied on humans to enter and validate the data, most of the participants struggled to reconcile and validate that their data was accurate. Those challenged by data integrity (or lack thereof), spent countless hours auditing the data to ensure it was accurate.
Of course the only way to ‘nip this issue in the bud’ is to ensure that the data is accurate at the transactional level, hence the often used IT cliché – - Garbage in, Garbage out!
While I know this is not a profound revelation, why do most organizations still struggle to capture accurate recruitment metrics?
From my experience, the root of the issue is three-fold:
- Educational – Key staff members must understand the importance of capturing accurate data and what POSITIVE things result from ensuring the data is accurate. It is only when you answer the question – What is in it for me? – that you typically start to see improvements in data integrity. Some of the POSITIVE results of capturing clean data:
- Enables the organization to develop performance improvement initiatives to save their organization time, money, and allow the teams to get more done in LESS TIME.
- Allows the team to be able to quantify the ROI of their services to the organization. Makes us look good!
- Quantifies the amount of work they actually perform!
- Accountability – While I like to point out the POSITIVE reasons of capturing clean data, at the end of the day the recruiters need to be held accountable and measured on their ability to perform this task. I recommend that recruiters do a quarterly ‘self-analysis’ by reviewing their own data/metrics. Holding them accountable to this activity is a great way to clean up your data at the source! Some of the best in class organizations we work with instill an “audit” at the requisition close stage – before a req is closed, the recruiter goes back to ensure that all data is entered accurately in the system.
- Visibility – I am a big believer in making your metrics “public”. All your customers should see your overall team metrics (have trend charts posted in a visible area in your office). All recruiter metrics should be public to the recruitment team. Typically the only folks that do not like to make their metrics public are . . . the ones that are not producing or don’t have clean data!
If you are struggling to capture clean data, I would make sure your team understands why it’s important and put a system in place to ensure accuracy. From experience working with our clients, you will see immediate improvements in data during the first 90 days!
I hope you have a good “back to school” week!
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition | No Comments »
September 1st, 2010
In a recent blogcast , we talked about injecting some fun into sourcing for top talent. Well, our team took it to heart and . . . over the last 4 weeks committed to having some fun while getting in dedicated sourcing time.
As outlined in the blog, folks could ‘opt’ into 3 daily sourcing sessions (7:30 to 8:30, 11-12 and 4-5). These times were selected based on thier experience of catching people live during those times.
During the first week, to check out who was going to attend a session, someone would send out an email – Who’s Blitzing!? (as in call blitz). The folks who were doing to participate would quickly shoot back an email confirming participation.
Over the course of the month, it was amazing to see these sessions ‘take off’ three times a day. Most importantly, it was great to see how this ‘fun’ challenge drove some very positive behaviors including:
- Folks scheduling in sourcing time BEFORE other activities like interviews, meetings, etc. which is a key principle of our Perfect Week, Perfect Day Time Management methodology.
- Folks being prepared for each call session with enough names for the blitz. This usually meant 2-3 hours of sourcing ‘research’ time to set up these call sessions. Again, another positive outcome of the challenge.
- Motivation – Everyone that has participated clearly agreed it increased the quality of sourcing time! The 7:30 to 8:30 and 4-5 time slots were very productive and before this event . . . those call times were a hit or miss for the team. Some would get hit and some would be missed. Moving forward – - it will now become part of their routine.
- Folks are seeing the benefits from this hard work!
Most importantly, everyone has seen increased candidate flow to some very difficult to fill positions during the month that often brings luke warm ‘effort’ as folks seek to enjoy the end of the summer!
I encourage you all to consider injecting some fun into your sourcing routine as we head into the last “official” week of the summer!
Have a great holiday weekend.
Posted in Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »
August 25th, 2010
Just over half of large, recently downsized U.S. companies plan to boost staffing and reach pre-recession levels by 2012, according to Accenture’s recent High Performance Workforce Study. The survey included 674 senior executives worldwide from companies with revenue of more than $250 million.
Investment in hiring for the U.S. based companies is expected to increase from 24 percent today to 37 percent within the next 12 months. The study also found that only 13 percent of executives said that they plan to reduce their employee base over the next 12 months.
Yet as we all know, the planned growth won’t come easily. If a hiring ‘boom’ is imminent, highly skilled workers will come at a premium again as companies seek to grow.
The focus would soon shift from cost reduction to proactive staffing resource planning required to address spikes in hiring needs.
Questions you might ask to decipher if you are in for a hiring boom:
- Does your company have a strong balance sheet with cash to invest in a growth strategy?
- Is your workforce already stretched thin?
- Are you using contractors to supplement fulltime staff to get the work done today?
- If there was a hiring “spike”, do you have the resources to get the job done?
If you answered YES to the first three questions and NO to the last, then it probably is time to start to develop a contingency plan in the event it DOES happen!
Be realistic but THINK POSITIVE about the future! Most important, be prepared.
I hope you enjoy the last few weeks of the summer.
Posted in Bradley Savoy, Elite Recruiters, Employer Brand, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »
August 18th, 2010
We are proud to announce that we have had over 1500 recruiters participate in our ‘Elite’ Recruiter Competency/Skills Self-Assessment Study! If you haven’t participated, we encourage you to do so! It is free!
It is interesting to see that outside of normal areas that recruiters always seem to rate themselves “low” (areas for improvement ):
- Use social networking tools to source qualified, passive candidates (rating of 2.94 of 5)
- Engage and recruit passively-looking top talent candidates (3.20 of 5)
The next two lowest scores were related to managing the search process:
- Sets Service Level Agreements with hiring managers: 3.22 of 5.00
- Manage and control the staffing lifecycle efficiently: 3.39 of 5.00
We have written articles/posts on this subject that have received positive reviews I thought I would share:
The Most Important Service Level Agreement
When are you available versus what do you think about this candidate?
Do you have credibility with your hiring managers?
We have also helped many organizations implement an “easy to use” one page Service Level Agreement document to be used when qualifying a new position (especially when it is a new hiring manager). If you would like a copy – please email us!
The scores above point to a skills gap with respect to a consultative approach to managing the search process. If you think this is an area where you need/want to “sharpen your ax”, I hope some of the information provided will be of value!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Relationship Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »
August 11th, 2010
In my 17 years as a recruitment coach/mentor, I have found that the beginning of August usually brings with it a common case of “Recruiter’s Rut.” Many of us drag ourselves into work on Monday after a long weekend of fun in the sun wishing we were still outside playing! We wake up realizing that the summer is almost over after it just began! We start to wonder “Where has it gone?”
In addition, the reality starts to set in that the year is 60% complete and . . . there is still a lot to accomplish!
It is at this point you can wallow in self pity or . . . inject some fun and passion back into your recruitment day!
I first wrote about “Recruiter’s Rut” back in 2002! I have personally seen this infectious ‘disease’ rip through entire recruitment departments with ease. The best cure is to gather your peers and develop a strategy to fight it.
Some ideas?
Well, since at the end of the day, each and every recruiter is measured on their ability to identify and recruit top talent for their organization . . . fun contests centered around generating quality candidate flow is always a great cure!
Recently, our sister organization implemented a contest for August that might help you to steer clear of ‘Recruiter’s Rut’.
- They are holding three sourcing call blitz sessions each day (from 7:30 to 8:30, 11-12, and 4-5). These times were carefully selected as times that they had the best opportunity of getting someone live on the phone.
- These are ‘optional’ sessions for all recruiters recognizing there are other activities that might prohibit you from attending all of them.
- For each session, they are tracking:
- Number of dials
- Number of appointments set
- Number of “live” conversations
- Points are awarded as follows:
- 10 points: For attending a call blitz session
- 25 points: For a candidate submitted to hiring manager from the call blitz
- 50 points: For a Hiring Manager Interview
- 75 points: For an offer
- 100 pints: For a hire
In just the first week, we have seen more productivity, a spike in activity and . . . a little mojo back into the day.
Another fun contest you might deploy is the Recruiter Decathlon .
Even the most motivated, passionate recruiters I know (including me) sometimes need some assistance getting through the dog days of summer. If you feel Recruiter’s Rut settling in with you and/or your team . . . inject some fun back into the day!
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Sourcing, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
August 4th, 2010
We have recently published our first annual Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark study. A core piece of the study was measuring/benchmarking key process efficiency metrics of the staffing supply chain.
Through this initiative, we found the average Route to Hire Efficiency Metric to be 6.7 to 1.
That is, it takes 6.7 candidates routed to the hiring manager to achieve 1 hire. While this actually is pretty darn efficient compared to studies we have done in other industries, Best in Class organizations (representing the average of the top 25%) Route to Hire Efficiency was 2.48 to 1!
Basically, the Elite, efficient organizations required half as many candidates (routed) to get 1 hire!
Or course there are/were many things they did differently to develop a Lean, efficient staffing process, but something all systems had in common was this concept of Time, Tenure and Trust.
- Time – All Elite organizations spend a considerable amount of time on:
- The intake session with the hiring manager. They made sure they clearly understood the need, how to market the opportunity; define clear service levels for service, etc.
- The pre-screen process. Whether they used an automated assessment tool and/or some combination of phone interview, they spent enough time with the candidate to ensure they were someone that was worthy of consideration and should be interviewed by the hiring manager.
- Discussing candidates with managers and proactively setting interviews.
While all these steps might seem obvious to some experienced recruiters, many recruiters/organizations still struggle to INVEST the time required in these three steps. The usual results include routing too many candidates to managers that they in return reject to be interviewed/considered. This is clearly evident in that the average Route to Hiring Manager efficiency was 43% while the Elite organizations efficiency was 80%!
- Tenure – Most Elite firms agreed that they had many ‘tenured’ recruiters on staff that had built rapport with their hiring managers, taken the time to understand the business unit they supported, etc. All firms agreed that you can overcome short tenure by investing the time in the three steps above.
- Trust – Elite recruiters have the trust of the hiring managers and they respect them as staffing consultants.
- They interview the candidates the recruiters send rather than scrutinize!
- They ask for their opinion when deciding on making an offer (or not).
- They respect their input on compensation discussions.
While I don’t want to over simplify how the Elite organizations have become hyper efficient, I don’t want to lose the forest through the trees either! Time invested up front can quickly turn a non-tenured recruiter into a staffing consultant that garners a ton of TRUST FROM their hiring managers.
Some food for thought on a Wednesday!
PS – If you are a healthcare organization that wants more information on our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study, please contact us!
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »
July 21st, 2010
I had a great discussion with our team of recruiters regarding contacting potential candidates and/or networking using LinkedIn (LI). I thought I would share some ideas/tips I found very interesting!
The spirit of the conversation centered around the best ways to connect with folks you find within LinkedIn.
This led to the three most common ways to directly contact folks in LinkedIn and the “pro’s & con’s” of each method:
- Send Inmail – While Inmail is great, it is a paid for service and can become expensive. So if you want to use it, it will cost some extra $ during the year.
- Sending an Invitation to “link in” – LI only wants you to send an invitation to someone that you have a relationship with (past/present) and/or through an introduction with someone in your network. Of course while this can still work, it limits the number of people you could directly link in with outside of your network and without an intro. In addition, most of the recruiters on our team found introductions to be less effective and . . . less timely. While it might be a LI “no-no”, most of the recruiters said that they regularly send invitations as – “someone that they have done business with” – with great success and WITHOUT getting sent to the LinkedIn police
- Join a group and send a group member a message – Joining a group is great and will allow you to directly contact folks within that group. Of course best practices say that if you join the group solely to post jobs you are recruiting for (asking for something) WITHOUT providing information of value (making a deposit if you will) . . . you might get banned from the group or at a minimum, find that folks tune you out.
The fourth method that many subscribed to is finding someone in LI and then looking them up on other sites (Jigsaw, White Pages, etc.) and contacting them directly (via phone/email). The logic behind this tactic is two-fold:
- Many people don’t check LI all the time and/or don’t have LI emails sent to their personal email address so response time can be slow.
- So many recruiters are becoming LI recruiters that people are getting saturated with Inmail, Invitations and group messages. So to “separate” themselves from the other recruiters, they are going back to traditional means of connection.
- Linkedin can be very helpful; however, if the person you’re trying to find has left their company and you’re not able to find a home phone number.
Some other great points made during our conversation that I thought I would share:
- If someone is a power networker in LI (300+++) connections, you can almost guarantee they will respond. Those that have only a few connections probably don’t check as much and . . . they use traditional means to connect.
- LI provides such a wonderful amount of information to “personalize” your message so take advantage of it. Use the information on the potential candidate’s profile to make a connection, and quantify why connecting with you will benefit them and others in their network. If you send the canned LI message or a watered down version – - don’t expect great response rates or worse – - some unhappy peeps!
LinkedIn did not exist 5 years ago. It quickly has become an excellent recruitment tool. But as things change, you need to constantly be watching how others are using this tool and make sure you’re contributing to the conversation.
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Social Media, Sourcing, Uncategorized | No Comments »
July 14th, 2010
We are excited that we had over 50 participants in our inaugural Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study . We had the pleasure of presenting our initial findings at the National Association of Healthcare Recruiters Annual Image Conference in Las Vegas last week. The conference, as always, was Five Star! And we were overwhelmed (and humbled) with the interest in our Lean, JIT recruitment principles and our actual study.
One metrics that surprised us (especially in our flat economy) was the percentage of positions that had been open over 60 days.
While the overall average Time to Fill (TTF) was trending around 46 days (which is good compared to years past and benchmark data from sources like Saratoga.org), 38% of the participants current open positions were trending over 60 days.
Further analysis provided some conclusions:
- Recruitment teams are pretty good at filling what we call Business as Usual Req’s (BAUs) with internal or active candidates that apply to postings, especially since most are rewarded (and measured) on how many positions they fill. While we didn’t track this particular data element/segment in the study, our qualitative analysis indicates that the average TTF for these positions is 20-30 days.
- Most organizations continue to struggle with filling difficult/critical to fill positions (CTF). These positions are still trending at 60, 90 days + TTF.
So while on the surface, most organizations feel pretty good about their overall TTF metric, under the surface managers are still concerned about their recruitment teams’ ability to fill CTF positions. Even more important, the inability to fill these positions JIT is often costing organizations millions of dollars (Cost of Vacancy).
We believe the three primary reasons that 38% of the positions are trending over 60 days are as follows:
- Not managing/monitoring your over sixty days report: It is very easy for a recruiter carrying 25, 30, 50 req’s to forget what their top priorities are, which positions have been open over 60 days, etc. It you do not stay on top of your openings (and if managers aren’t pounding down your door, positions can creep past this milestone very fast.
- Recruiters either don’t have the time to source for quality candidates or . . . are NOT carving out time.
- Recruiters don’t have the skills/competencies (or both) to find high quality talent for their CTF positions.
Some solutions to reducing the percentage of positions trending over 60 days old:
- On a weekly basis, have a team meeting to specifically discuss positions trending over 60 days. Position on hold? Close it. Candidates to disposition and get over to manager? Do it. One of our clients has recently implemented a Monday morning “huddle” to specifically discuss positions trending over 60 days. By making it a priority, they have cut these down from 25% to 13%!
- The “time” issue is a little more problematic. It takes relatively no time to “source/pre-qualify” an active, internal or referral candidate. Literally, this process is a few minutes. On the other hand, it might take hours to source and pre-qualify one passive/top talent candidate. Most organizations do not factor this when developing recruitment resource plans! They don’t dissect which positions are BAU’s, which are CTF and . . . how much sourcing time needs to be dedicated to filling these positions. With our staffing optimization model, we take that into consideration when identifying the number of resources needed to manage the corresponding hiring needs. You should investigate this when developing your resource plans.
- The 3rd reason is probably the easiest to fix. Assuming the recruiter has the competencies of an ‘Elite’ recruiter , they probably can be taught the skills to source top talent. At the very least, you could assign sourcing activities to those in your organization that enjoy and are good at sourcing or outsource part of the sourcing activities, such as name generation to allow your recruiters more time to cultivate relationships (and ultimately recruit) passive candidates.
If your organization measures you on TTF, I would ensure that you are deploying best practices to manage it!
Any questions, please contact me!
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Relationship Recruiter | No Comments »
June 25th, 2010
A recent article from McKinsey Quarterly discusses how most health systems lack a rigorous approach for matching clinician supply to the demand for various health services. As a result, patient care and clinician morale suffer—and costs cannot be controlled effectively. Essentially they discuss the need for better workforce planning:
“Few health care systems forecast their workforce demands accurately. Predicting the number of doctors who will be needed in ten years’ time isn’t enough; it’s also necessary to figure out how many general practitioners, specialists, nurses, and allied health professionals will be required. The length of clinical training only compounds the problem.” – McKinsey, Managing The Clinical Workforce
We concur with McKinsey’s recommendations and have added a few of our own from the work we do with our clients.
Our collective suggestions on creating proper workforce planning and staffing optimization structures include:
- Forecasting: Begin with accurate forecasting focused on demand of services by job clusters. What types of jobs does the system need– now, next year, and the year after? What types of jobs will need to be refilled or created based on market needs and system growth plans? Work with finance to get accurate budget projections – this should be something you do every year at the beginning of your fiscal cycle and at least once during the fiscal year to track changes.
- Determine Baseline Demand: For each job category, determine your baseline demand. This would be a charting of hiring needs for at least the past year, ideally two years, by job family. Again this would involve working with finance to map the potential needs over time. You can also look at actual hires made month to month for the last year or two to get a sense of the fluctuations.
- Forecast Changes in Demand: Map potential changes in hiring demand based on various factors, including demographic changes, retiring workers, consumer expectations, medical innovations, policy shifts, or productivity improvements. Career progression and job movement internally are also factors.
- Scenario Analyses: Project various areas of impact to your model based on the aforementioned factors. Here you get to play with the “what if” scenarios – a spike in hiring in Q2, a dramatic slowdown in August, etc. The Scenario analysis will prepare you for these fluctuations and changes so you can be more proactive.
These are simple outlines of concepts, which of course have much more depth. In a future post or whitepaper we’ll delve into workforce planning in more detail.
If you’d like to learn more about how we approach workforce planning and staffing optimization, and the benefits they could provide to your system contact me.
Posted in Bradley Savoy, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Time Management, Workforce Planning | No Comments »
June 18th, 2010
My colleague (Kristine) recently received an executive level, ‘niche skill-set’ search opportunity from one of her clients/hiring managers. As many savvy recruiters do these days, she developed a targeted sourcing strategy and:
- Identified all competitor companies and companies that employed people with the skill set she was looking for.
- Then defined all the different titles that this person would/could be called within these target companies.
- She then started to seek potential candidates and individuals she could network with in this market (the client didn’t want to relo if possible) via LinkedIn.
Armed with this intel (and a compelling Value Proposition Statement/Attention Grabber) about this opportunity, she made contact (via Inmail or directly via business/personal email) with all the potential applicants/networking professionals.
While this is a very common practice among thousands of recruiters, her subsequent actions are often not.
- She sent two to three electronic messages out to each and every candidate. While her response rate was good, she didn’t receive feedback from many and most importantly . . . she did not connect with the A+ talent her client demanded and deserves.
- She didn’t give up. While most recruiters would give up on these “prospects” in search of others, she identified phone contact information (this is part of her normal process) for all candidates that had not yet responded to her Inmails/emails and started an out bound telemarketing campaign.
Covering all bases and having resilience:
She caught one individual around 7:30 am (knowing she was a manager, she called before meetings started – - usually around 8). Her brief discussion that morning led to a subsequent discussion that led to . . . . an interview, offer and hire for a critical to fill position with interface with the COO, CMO and CEO of a Fortune 500 company!
One day after the candidate (now new hire) accepted the offer, she sent the most wonderful email to Kristine.
“Kristine, I can’t thank you enough for being persistent and making contact with me. Honestly, while I was intrigued by your emails, I probably wouldn’t have called you back simply because I get so busy during the day with work, life events, etc.. Your persistence has allowed me to find an unbelievable opportunity for me and my family. I am grateful for your efforts!”
WOW!
Morale of Story:
- Don’t assume that no response means they don’t want to talk, won’t help you network, etc. Remember they are as busy as you! (Are there calls or emails that you have NOT responded to because they are not urgent or of top priority?)
- Emails, texting, social media tools, etc are awesome and a quick way to reach out to a targeted group of people quickly. But don’t fall into the trap of ONLY communicating via this method! A targeted sourcing strategy including emails, texts, and PHONE CALLS is the key to successfully recruiting passive candidates.
- Your compelling message, your tonality when calling, and the time you actually call are . . . all key ingredients to successfully engaging top talent.
- Don’t stop until they say – “No, not interested and . . . can’t help with networking” (objection handling on this topic is for another day!)
While I am sure all of you have heard this before and/or follow a similar strategy as a matter of practice . . . I thought this was a wonderful story to share to ensure you are practicing it NOW!
In this age of electronic communication, I think it is easy for even the savviest recruiters to fall into the trap of “email & pray” on occasion!
Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Relationship Recruiter, Sourcing | No Comments »
