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Archive for the ‘Changing Role of the Recruiter’ Category

Who Is Blitzing?

Wednesday, 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.   
  4. 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.

Initial Results of our ‘Elite Recruiter’ Competency/Skills — Self Assessment

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

The response to our ‘Elite Recruiter’ Self Assessment has been great!  To date, over 600 folks have participated! 

If you have not participated yet, please do (see below).  Our goal is to have 2500 recruiters participate by July of this year! 

Some initial interesting findings ……

Recruiter Competencies:

High self-assessment rating (4.0 of 5.0):

  • Interpersonal Skills (4.21): Treats others with respect and dignity.  Promotes a productive culture by valuing individuals and their contributions.

We are not surprised; I think most recruiters feel they have good interpersonal skills. :o

Areas for improvement (3.5 or below):

  • Customer/Client Focus (3.49): Maintains unwavering focus on delighting the customer/client.
  • Leveraging Networks (3.44): Draws upon a wide range of professional and/or business relationships for help and support in achieving individual and organizational goals.
  • Staffing Lifecycle Management (3.24): Plans and successfully executes a recruiting, selection and hiring process that results in top talent for the organization.

These numbers are consistent to many of our clients’ Voice of the Customer surveys.  The clients (hiring managers, key stakeholders, etc.) still see these as areas of improvement as well, particularly Customer/Client Focus and Staffing Lifecycle Management.

Recruiter Skills:

High self-assessment rating (4.0 of 5.0):

  • Build relationships with peers, hiring managers and executives (4.09)
  • Remain upbeat, positive and energetic about opportunities with your organization(4.18)

Again, we are not surprised at these results. I think most recruiters believe they can build relationships and are upbeat, positive and energetic.  In a 360 evaluation, do others believe the same? :o )

Areas for improvement (3.5 or below):

  • Posses the ability to create a compelling value proposition statement(s) to engage and recruit passive, top talent for critical-to-fill positions (3.38)
  • Use technology to manage data, candidate relationships, etc. (3.33)
  • Set Service Level Agreements with Hiring Managers to define roles/responsibilities and control the hiring process. (3.29)
  • Provide timely constructive feedback to candidates not selected for hire after interview. (3.29) 

These numbers are again consistent with many of our clients’ Voice of the Customer survey results.  All four of these areas are critical to the success of a recruiter, BUT . . . often not areas that recruiters (or teams) focus on for improvement.  Too often, the focus is on ‘finding the passive candidate’ or lately – social networking and/or SEO – - rather than tactical skills that are critical to customer satisfaction!  I’m not saying these other areas don’t deserve our attention (passive candidates, Social media, etc.) but – - sometimes I believe we lose the forest through the trees and lose sight of what the customer wants! 

 If you are interested in the complete results of the self assessment surveys to date, you must:

  1. Participate in the assessment!
  2. Email us at info@leanhumancapital.comIn the subject line put:  Please send ‘Elite Recruiter’ results!

If you want your team to participate and have us tabulate your team’s results, please email us at info@leanhumancapital.com!

Have a Perfect Day!

 

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Healthcare

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Financial Services

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Retail

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Technology

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Third Party

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Manufacturing/Engineering

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Other

The “Elite” Employer Brand

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I teed up this concept of an employer brand .  Here are some key areas to consider when measuring your employer brand.

First, you must measure it.  You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t improve what you can’t measure.  If an organization wants to maintain and consistently improve on the performance of its employer brand it must have a meaningful analytical philosophy that seeks to apply a quantitative and objective view to its brand.  Without this, there can be no analysis and comparison for improvement. 

Source effectivenessThe lifecycle of your employer brand begins with the first contact, which is typically an organization’s careers web site and subsequent sourcing stage.  At this stage an organization should measure the effectiveness of the methods they have relied upon to attract candidates.  This can allow the organization to view the most effective sources of attraction and consistently return to those sources based on the ROI achieved.  We capture this in our current benchmarking study and what we find is people may be measuring it but they’re not taking action.   If they see overspending in a certain area, they don’t adjust their spend in time and often wait until the year has passed. What should take place is that there should be an immediate shifting of the spend to the most effective sources as quickly as possible.

The recruiting process – This is a series of measurements at each stage in the life-cycle of the candidate’s experience during the entire recruiting process.  The recruiting process is one of the most critical aspects in making the decision to join an organization, and often the most overlooked.  An organization should measure the effectiveness of every single step a candidate attains in the recruiting process.  Each touch point the candidate makes with your organization should be considered beginning with the online application, assessment, interviews, the offer, and orientation.  If there is a negative impression that occurs during the initial online application stage of the recruiting process, then there may be a dramatic decrease in the candidate pool.  In the initial discussion with a candidate, another negative impression may cause a candidate to withdraw from the process, and tell others about their negative experiences.  Negative impressions at any stage of the recruiting process can dramatically reduce the candidate pool, and may provide fuel to create a significant gap for an organization that must meet their hiring needs. 

Recruiter Effectiveness – In our elite recruiter benchmarking study  we’re taking a groundbreaking look at the competencies and skills of elite recruiters.  What we’ve found is that effective recruiters engage candidates with the promise of the brand experience (EVP) and continually deliver on the promise.  The elite recruiters even check in with their hires to make sure promises are being kept, and the expectations delivered when someone was hired match the reality of their experience. 

Fit – How a candidate perceives their fit within your organization, the culture, and the position you are offering are critical elements in the messaging of your employer brand.  Organizations should measure the effectiveness of the messaging in all elements of the employment brand through various media channels.  These channels could be print or interactive media marketing and can also extend to the communication with the candidates recruited and interviewed by your company.  Analyze the effectiveness of the messaging communicated about the culture within your company to improve the long term impact that fit can have on the attraction of your needed talent.

So the key takeaways here are that the brand is pervasive, and all encompassing across someone’s life-cycle of experiences with your company.  It must be measured through the sourcing, recruiting process, and fit of a candidate and then through the employee with your company.  Finally, you as the recruiter, play a critical role in the portrayal of the brand promise, and should act as an ambassador to ensure its delivered!

Are you prepared to take ACTION on your great ideas? Insights? Leads?

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

I was excited that over 1,000 people attended our Good to Elite Webinar  last week!  It demonstrates that many professionals in our industry share the same passion for this topic. One of the topics discussed during the webinar was the concept of having an “IDEA” pad on your desk at all times.  This topic received a ton of positive feedback.

All too often during the day, we come up with great ideas, insights…acquire new leads from discussions, etc…. that we do not capture nor take ACTION on.

The first issue (not capturing) drives the second (not taking action)!

A simple, but highly productive way to avoid this trap is to keep a separate “IDEA” pad of paper on your desk that is EXCLUSIVELY for these thoughts.

  1. Capture: When a great idea and/or new lead pops up – have the discipline to write it on this pad of paper (NOTE: make sure this pad of paper does not turn into your “To- Do” list! Your “To-Do’s” should go on your Perfect Day printout.
  2. Action: Schedule 1 hour each week reviewing this pad of paper to take action on these thoughts.

While this seems like a trivial idea, it is another great example of the “little” things ‘Elite’ performers do that separates them from the rest.   From personal experience, when I have this IDEA pad on my desk, I am capturing more great thoughts that I can take action on. When I don’t . . . these great thoughts go into hyperspace and are lost forever!

So what is stopping you?

Come on – - Go get that pad of paper (right now), title it “IDEA PAD” and get back to work!  :o )

PS – Our resources page has many tips/techniques like this one to become more productive and efficient.  Why don’t you schedule 1 hour to review (with your idea pad of course)!   

PSS – We had over 400 recruiters participate in our assessment survey last week. Our goal is 2500! Take a moment and participate!

You know You are an Elite Recruiter if…..

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

For those that attended the ERE webinar – Going from Good to ‘Elite’  – - I hope I inspired you to take action J!

For those that missed it we discussed the competencies/skills of Elite Recruiters.  I have also started work on another fun project related to this subject… 

Shamelessly stealing from Jeff Foxworthy – - “You know you are a redneck if . . . “comedy routine, I am trying to develop a LONG list of “You know you are an Elite Recruiter if . . . “.

This fun exercise has also been inspiring me to reflect on what it is to be an Elite Recruiter and what I need to do to be one!  Performing at an elite level doing anything is very difficult.  Recruiting is no different. 

Documenting these attributes in a fun way helps keep this passion burning and top of mind.

So OK – - You know you are an ‘Elite Recruiter’ if . . .

  1. You get referrals from candidates you turn down for a position. 
  2. Your hiring managers ask you who they “should hire” . . . And listen to your advice.
  3. Candidates seek your input on preparing for the interview with the hiring manager, making a decision on an offer, etc. 
  4. You keep track of all the people you have hired and have kept up an ongoing relationship with 90% of them. 
  5. You track your performance (quality, efficiency, responsiveness/ delivery) on a quarterly basis. 
  6. You quantify the ROI of your services to your key stakeholders.
  7. You have clearly written quarterly Performance Improvement goals.  
  8. You spend time each week helping those less fortunate find employment, craft a better resume, prepare for an interview, etc.
  9. You invest at least 15 minutes to ½ hour developing a written – hour by hour – daily plan of action that you deploy before each day.
  10. You have received gifts from candidates/hiring managers for “changing their life” for the better.

PLEASE – WE ARE LOOKING FOR MORE ADDITIONS TO THIS LIST!  Can you please email us at info@leanhumancapital.com with your ideas!  

 _______________________________________________________________________________

‘Elite’ Recruiter Benchmark study!

Our goal is to get 2500 recruiters to participate in our free self-assessment benchmark study!  To provide more granularity, we have decided to categorize ‘recruiters’ as outlined below.

To participate, just find the link that best describes you and . . . sign in!  It will take you about 15 minutes to complete.

NOTE: This is for your OWN self-improvement!  With that said, for us to have fair and accurate benchmarks, please take this seriously and respond with honestly. 

We will publish the results at a later date to use as a benchmark!

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Healthcare

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Financial Services

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Retail

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Technology

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Third Party

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Manufacturing/Engineering

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Other

Measuring Your Employer Brand

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I can only go a few days without having an insatiable craving for Starbucks or Caribou Coffee.  Sure I can make coffee at home, but it’s just never seems as good.  In addition, there’s the great atmosphere when I enter the coffee shop. The wonderful, helpful staff that remembers my name when they greet me. 

And to top it all off – - for only four dollars – - I walk away with beautiful drink in a cup with cool logo and colors!  

Okay I may be taking that a little too far, but as a consumer I have that passionate and long standing relationship with these brands.  These consumer brands conjure up indelible images that resonate and remain with me.  These are brands I will consistently use and recommend to others based on my experience and the feelings I get from patronizing their organizations.

So how do you define an employer brand?

Quality candidates – - whether they say so or not – - are looking for the same experience with an organization’s employer brand as a consumer would.  The messages, images, and feelings presented shape the candidate experience they will receive. The “feeling” they get as they move through the recruitment process will not only be pivotal in their employment decision but in their recommendation of your organization to others!

Simply put, an employer brand is a long-standing relationship cycle of experiences between the employee and employer. 

Your employer brand should resonate like a consumer brand with a distinct difference in the messaging.  The messaging should be tailored to the future employee, and should be understood by all stakeholders – both current or future employees, and even customers.  Having an effective employment brand means providing an enticing proposition for one to seek the opportunities at an organization.  It begins at the sourcing stage and carries through the entire life cycle of the recruiting process, and continues throughout an employee’s tenure with the organization.

While most employers understand the value of an effective employer brand, they struggle with how to measure its’ effectiveness to ensure that their branding efforts are achieving the necessary ROI. 

Some brief questions to ponder for next week’s post:

  • How do you measure your Employer Brand?
  • How do you know if you have an effective Employer Brand? 
  • Do you have a gauge on how your sources tie into your employer brand?
  • How are you measuring your customers’ recruiting experience?
  • Do you have a sense of why people join, stay, or leave your company?

In my next post we’ll begin to discuss these questions in more detail.  Also look for us at ERE San Diego where we’ll be talking about this during our session.

Good To Elite

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

For those folks that know us, we are passionate about the pursuit of being “Elite” recruiters.  Over the years, we have written about it on numerous occasions. 

 Some posts that have received chatter include:

Success Attributes of World-Class Recruiters

The Changing Role of the Recruiter

On March 10th, we will be facilitating a webinar with ERE entitled “Going from Good to Elite – Becoming an Elite Recruiter”.  In preparation for this event, I have been collaborating with colleagues in the industry discussing this topic and getting their opinions on: 

  • Skills/competencies of Elite Recruiters
  • What Elite Recruiters do that average recruiters don’t.
  • How to go from average or good to elite.

If you have thoughts/opinions on this topic, I would love your input. Just drop me a note (email)! 

Over the last year we have been working on a competency/skill model for recruiters.

If you are interested in taking a self-assessment, just click on the links below!

Recruiter Skills Assessment

Staffing Competency Assessment

I hope you all can join us for the webinar on the 10th

Just as important, I would love your input on this topic!

Candidate Care in a Down Economy

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Last year we hosted a webinar on the “Changing Role of the Recruiter”.  We posted some of the highlights of the discussion on our site.  

Looking back, many of the “predictions” we shared have proven to be true! Unfortunately, one in particular doesn’t seem to be losing momentum and continues to affect millions of people and thousands of organizations.

Prediction:  “With requisition loads down, recruiters will be asked to do “more with less” while the number of applicants per position will increase dramatically.”

In the midst of collecting data from numerous organizations for our benchmark study, it is still not uncommon to find applicant-to-hire ratios of 40, 50, and even 100 to 1! With economists predicting a slow “job recovery”, we probably won’t see this trend decrease over the next 12-18 months.

We usually equate high applicant-to-hire ratios with “wasted time” spent weeding through and screening out unqualified candidates.  After all, one of the “Seven Deadly Sins of waste in Recruiting” is Overproduction.

Unfortunately, the flip side to this coin presents another challenging dilemma – developing and deploying an excellent Candidate Experience. 

A few weeks ago I spoke to an audience of unemployed executives in Charlotte.  Their number one gripe about us as recruiters?

“They never follow up. I don’t know where I stand in the process, or how long it will take.”

Of course this isn’t the first time I have heard this and I am sure it’s not the first time you have either. 

The obvious reasons we should provide an excellent candidate experience have been well documented:

  • The negative impact a poor candidate experience has on your organization’s brand can be harmful. Every candidate who does not receive feedback or a “red carpet” experience can create a viral impact of a negative perception of your organization.  With social media and the advent of sites like JobVent, Glassdoor and Vault, candidates have a greater lens of choice in their employers.  
  • For B-to-C organizations, these companies can choose where they shop, where they do their banking, what healthcare facility or restaurant they visit, etc.  The revenue loss associated with a poor candidate experience can be catastrophic.

If those two reasons are not compelling enough to stress the importance of an excellent candidate experience, let’s look at a few others:

  • Every “unqualified candidate” is someone’s brother, mother, close friend or relative.  I am sure we all know of loved ones close to us that are out of work (heck, it might be you).  You know the stress and anxiety it can bring.  If you think of each and every candidate as your brother, mother, close friend or relative, I think it provides a different perspective to the importance of an excellent experience.
  • These “unqualified” candidates for this position might be “qualified candidates” for future positions.  A bad experience today will impact their interest later.
  • “Unqualified, active candidates” talk to “highly qualified passive candidates”.  If you believe the old adage – “Poor customer experience is shared with 8 people, a positive one with 2” – - a poor candidate experience might ruin your chance to engage top talent for your critical to fill positions in the future!

I know that developing strategies to provide an excellent candidate experience is easier said than done, especially with limited time, budgets, etc.

Some easy, quick, cost effective ideas to improve the candidate experience even just 10% are as follows:

  • Have a “follow up” policy.  Whether it’s automated through your ATS or a generic email, thank candidates for applying and tell them the next steps in the process.
  • Post a guideline of your staffing process on your career site.  This can be general in nature and give the approximate timing of each step in the process, but it will at least give candidates an idea of what the steps are and what will happen next.
  • Audit your candidate experience.  They are your primary customers, so allow them to have a voice in shaping the experience of others.  You will thank them for it! 

If you’d like to see some examples of The Candidate Audit or other examples, contact me at bsavoy@leanhumancapital.com

Ensuring Staffing Process Excellence

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

By Bradley Savoy

This week I had the pleasure of presenting to our local SHRM chapter on Staffing Process Excellence. Here are some of the highlights:

I know what you’re thinking, “We’re hiring fewer people this year”, or “Our hiring’s flat, so why bother with a Staffing Process Excellence exercise?”

Whether you’re hiring 5 people or 10,000 (yes – there are still companies that are hiring that many people), it’s the beginning of someone’s tenure with your company, and it acts as an extension of your brand.

A Staffing Process that’s excellent will enable you to utilize Voice Of the Customer (VOC) data to define and deliver an error-free fulfillment process that will deliver world-class customer satisfaction, improved retention, and even quality of hire.

The simple steps in Staffing Process Excellence are:

  1. Gain Executive Buy-In.  With every process improvement initiative you need the executives’ buy-in.  Typically the best way to do this is to align the project to a business initiative.  Are you trying to trim costs, improve customer satisfaction, or reduce attrition.  All of these can be addressed with an improved staffing process.
  2. Gather the Voice Of the Customer data.   Begin by using surveys, focus groups, or other channels to tap into the perspective of those that work through your process each day.  Hiring managers, candidates, recruiters, and others that are involved, should be consulted on how the process should look.  Find out what opportunities exist to streamline the process from their perspectives.
  3. Gather Process CTQ’s (Critical to Quality).   These are aspects that are critical to meeting and exceeding customer expectations.  These will also typically come as part of your exercise to gather the VOC information from your stakeholders.
  4. Align the process.  By now you have the needs of the customer (VOC) and you’ve gathered those aspects of the process that are critical to them (CTQ).  Now you have to align the two, making sure the wants of the customer and the critical needs can be met.  Exec or Org.  Initiatives??
  5. Define the staffing process.    At some companies this is a detailed chart of the staffing life cycle; for others it’s a simple list of bullet points.  While best-in-class is a clearly articulated and defined process, even bullet points on a Word document are a start.  The end goal is that with the input from customers you can now define the world-class process – and the best part is no one can say “Hey you didn’t ask me!” because each of the customer segments gave their input.
  6. Educate, Implement, and Continuously Measure the new process.  You’ve put all of this effort into your new process; now make sure it “sticks!”  Don’t just email the new process out to everyone; instead, leverage executive buy in to have a big kickoff.  Executive announcements, internal staff meetings, and even e-mails can have more power jointly coming from line execs and HR/recruiting.

You’re also going to need to educate each of the stakeholders on the new process, and then of course continually measure the results.  Consistent surveys, focus groups, etc with the “customers” of the process will ensure long-term adherence.

If you have questions on staffing process excellence, or you’d like to discuss an audit of your staffing process, contact me

Seven Deadly Sins of Waste: #2 – Waiting

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

By Bradley Savoy

So I’ve just screened an exceptional applicant, and the next step in my process is to forward information to the hiring manager for approval to schedule an interview.  I send the information along….and now I’m in the middle of the next sin of waste – waiting…..

If you think about your current staffing process, and you had analytics on it, you’d find that in many cases an inordinate amount of time is spent waiting.  There are multiple reasons for this: delays based on decisions needed, peoples’ schedules (vacations, meetings, etc.), and various other factors that come into play.

Back when candidates held the power and the war for talent was in full swing; waiting on a decision for the next phase of the hiring process was a death knell.  Back in my management consulting days I remember losing candidates to competitors if we couldn’t make a hiring decision in 24 hours because by the time we got to them they already had offers from our competitors in hand.  Those days may be long gone in most cases, but they still exist for critical talent.  For many healthcare organizations RN’s and PT’s are still critical positions to fill, and recruiting departments don’t want to wait days for approval from a hiring manager to move forward with the hiring process.

In our Proof of Concept we look at our clients’ staffing process flow, as well as the efficiency and time spent during the various stages of the process.  We often find that a simple lean solution in reducing waste is to reduce the amount of time spent waiting on decisions from the various stakeholders of the process.  A hiring manager may expect candidates faster than you can deliver them, and you may expect to receive feedback on candidates faster than the hiring manager can respond. 

One way we address this is through establishing better relationships with hiring managers, as well as managing expectations on both sides.  See our previous posts on being a Strategic Business Partner and establishing a Service Level Agreement.  These will give you some simple tips and techniques to address this area of waste in your staffing process.  And of course you can register to attend our webinar next week where we’ll discuss this, as well as other facets of the 7 Sins of Waste in Recruiting.