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Jump Starting Your LinkedIn Network

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

At our Sister Company – - The RIO Group – - they like to have friendly competitions to bring fun/play to the work place (think FISH Philosophy!) and find/hire more quality people! :)

One contest they had recently was around “Growing your LinkedIn network”. Of course the value of growing your network is to gain access to the 120 million + (and growing) community.

During a recent meeting they were discussing how it was progressing and . . . one of RIO’s finest (Nicole) mentioned she had just jumped her network by over 800 contacts!

For most folks, this is a phenomenal ‘net growth’ in LI contacts in a short period of time. This spurred a ‘best practices’ discussion on growing your network.

Mike McLean (http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepmclean), thanks for taking the time to consolidate the ideas you and the team had around this topic (see below)!

I hope everyone has a Perfect Day!

________________________________________

David -

Here are some of the top suggestions that were shared (thanks Nicole, Karen and Yvonne!).

If you have any questions – let me know. Mike

  • If you don’t know what a LinkedIn LION is . . . read the Wikipedia link for LION. This explains what a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION) is.
    • Anytime you see a profile with the following in their title – - LION, EMAIL ADRESS, A NUMBER SUCH AS 14,000+, A LION as a profile picture, etc – - -or on their page I would link with them! They are open networkers!
  • Here are some groups you can join that are loaded with Super Users!! All these folks “are open networkers”…
    • Members (123,300) TopLinked.com – I recommend signing up both within LinkedIn and also on their website. If you go to the website you can gain access for FREE to spreadsheets that have the contact information to close to 2000 Open Networkers. From these spreadsheets you can upload and send requests to link in. You can also pay a nominal fee to be added to the list.
    • Members (60,000+) OpenNetworker.com: part of TopLinked.com.
    • There are other groups that may also be more relevant to your industry so make sure to do a search under the Groups directory section and join.
  • When you have a candidate whether from Monster or LinkedIn or other sources, check to see if they have a Linkedin profile and have them connect with you. This does two things:
    • It keeps the candidate as part of your connections and if they leave their current firm or post they are now looking you know they are open game.
    • It connects you with co-workers of their past and present employers (easy to see the value in that!).
  • On your home page, in the upper right side, you’ll see an area called “people you might know.” Click on the See More. Linkedin provides an endless list of people related to you by keywords in your profile and their profiles. You can request to connect with people right from there.
  • Remember to diversify your group. Look for at least 1 person from every target company you have or link into a special Group that is for that skill set to get a good mix of professionals. The Open networkers group will always help put someone above the mark.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it is a great starting point if you are looking to grow your network quickly with Super Users and/or folks within your industry disciplines.

If you would like to start growing your network feel free to LinkIn with me :) (Mike M).

Posted in David, David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, LinkedIn, Mike McLean, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How Does Your Email Look on a Prospect’s Phone!?

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Given the fact that a majority of people:

  • Don’t pick up the phone unless they recognize the phone # (myself included :( ).
  • Are addicted to their mobile media device (aka – smart phone)!

I would bet a good majority of your candidate prospects are receiving your “first contact” on their smart phone while at their desk, sitting in a meeting, at the coffee shop, etc. 

During a session on Monday, I received a great question from Ryan that honestly . . . I haven’t spent a ton of time researching.

“When sending an “Attention Grabber” email (Crafting and Delivering an “Attention Grabber”), how does it look when it is displayed on your mobile phone?”

My colleague (and our self-proclaimed resident “recruiting geek”), Mike McLean, had some excellent advice that I thought I would share with you all:

That is a great question. Having a uniform email that will display exactly the same on all smart phones would be extremely difficult (due to personal configurations, overrides, system setup/parameters, etc.). But there are a few things you can do to ensure that your emails will look the same to as many folks as possible: 

  1. Write all of your emails in Arial.  Arial is the default font for most applications and most people don’t change their settings off of it.   The 2nd most popular is Tahoma but not as many applications use it as a default.
  2. Compose your emails in Rich Text Format (also known as RTF) or HTML not text. RTF is the most common language used in word processing software so this will cause the least amount of issues.  If you are sending an email as HTML it is being sent just as it would present/look on a Webpage whereas if using RTF your email would look the same whether it was an email, word doc or webpage etc.  This means that an email in RTF is less likely to have its formatting changed when being read on different formats.
  3. Always send a test email to yourself and check it on your phone as well.

If you have any other great advice to share on this topic, please let me know!

Posted in Attention Grabber, David, David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Mike McLean, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Another Approach to Recruitment Resource Planning!

Friday, August 5th, 2011

For those that follow us, you know we are not fans of the “Requisitions per Recruiter” formula used for recruitment resource planning.

Our reasons include:

  1. It doesn’t take into consideration hiring demand/workforce planning (IE – what types of people do you need? How many? When? ).
  2. It doesn’t factor in the amount of time to source/find candidates to fill difficult/critical/visible positions.
  3. It doesn’t factor in staffing supply chain efficiency (IE – how many applicants must be dispostioned? how many candidates must be routed to the hiring manager to fill a position)? 

Our more advanced resource planning methodology is aligned with Materials Release Planning (MRP) methodology that has been used in JIT production manufacturing environments for years. 

We wrote an article on this subject that you might want to check out .

Ultimately, we believe that you should use this methodology for recruitment resource planning BUT . . . .you must have accurate process efficiency metrics for it to be a useful tool. 

If you have those metrics, we can assist in your planning efforts. Contact us.

If you are working towards developing the systems, ATS status codes and reporting required to use this methodology :) . . . another simple solution is utilizing your Annual Recruiter Productivity Metric. 

This is a simple calculation: 

# of positions filled (internal & external) / # of recruiter FTE

In our Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study, the Mean productivity per recruiter was: 243 positions filled per recruiter (over 100 healthcare systems are participating)!

 

Mean

25th Percentile

50th Percentile

75th Percentile
Total Positions filled /Total # of FTE Recruiters

243

135

208

294

 

So if you know historically that a recruiter can fill 243 positions a year. And FY2012 hiring demand is 2543 positions filled.  You would need 10.46 FTE recruiters to meet hiring demand. 

Now I know this is a fairly simplistic model that doesn’t take many things into consideration (including those outlined above) BUT . . . if you do not have the metrics required to migrate to staffing supply chain model, I would encourage you to consider this method OVER “req’s per recruiter” (which I still don’t understand how it works :) ).

Have a great week

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Recruitment Resource Planning | No Comments »

Overall Average Time to Fill Metric – Does it Really Capture What is Going on?

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

One of the most compelling things we identified from our inaugural Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study was related to time to fill (TTF).  We first reported on this back in November, 2010.

The data clearly demonstrated that average TTF does not represent what is actually going on with respect to staffing performance.  

For most organizations, it showed that roughly 75-80% of the positions were being filled very quickly (20-30 days) while the other 20-25% of the positions were being filled in 90-100+ days! 

Conclusion:

Recruitment organizations are designed (and excel) at filling what we call “business as usual” req’s with internal/referral/active candidates.  However, they struggle to fill “critical/difficult/visible” req’s that typically require a more proactive, aggressive sourcing strategy (targeting passive candidates). 

Based on these findings, we added the following TTF related questions to our study:

  • Number of positions filled in less than 60 days
  • Ave TTF for positions filled in less than 60 days
  • Number of positions filled in 60 or more days
  • Ave TTF for positions filled in 60 or more days

Of our Benchmark Study respondents so far, the data continues to support what we initially found:

  • % of positions filled in less than 60 days:  73%
  • Ave TTF for positions filled in less than 60 days:  23 days
  • % of positions filled in 60 days or more:  27%
  • Ave TTF for positions filled in 60 days or more:  113 days

If you do not currently measure TTF thru this lens, we encourage you to do so!

It will help you:

  • Understand how you’re currently performing with respect to time
  • Provide clarity around staffing/sourcing priorities
  • Provide guidance around developing a staffing model that will help you reduce TTF for critical/difficult/visible positions.

If you’re interested in participating in our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study please contact us.

I hope you’re having a perfect day!

Posted in David, David Szary, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Time to Fill | No Comments »

Just in Time Hiring – Is It a Dream?

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Building candidate pipelines to migrate towards JIT hiring has been talked about for years with little to no progress towards a solution.

From all the benchmark data I have seen (including our recent Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study), most organizations have time-to-fill metrics that hover between 25-90 days+ depending on the type of position they are trying to fill.   While most discussions around this topic focus on the challenges of pulling off this feat, I want to discuss some pragmatic solutions that are realistic and achievable to implement.

  • Develop a hiring forecast in advance of need – I think we are missing the boat on this one.  While everyone is working on very complex workforce planning models (I’m not saying stop doing this – - I still think this is a worthwhile activity), most every organization I know of:
    • Has a budget headcount forecast
    • Tracks employee turnover
    • Can predict (to some degree of certainty) headcount needs related to new business growth 90+ days out.
    • Can identify employees that are flight risks, on the fast track to be promoted, or about to retire

This data will allow you to predict hiring needs with a variance of say 10% +/-.  Is it perfect? No. Will it give you a road map of what you need to recruit for 90 days out. . . Heck ya!

  • Identify the resources required to develop candidate pipelines to meet hiring needs.  In manufacturing, this is called Materials Release Planning.  Based on your process (and efficiency flows, time/resources required at each step, etc.) – you can identify the resources required to meet hiring demand throughout the ‘Staffing Supply Chain’.  Richard Newsome provides a glimpse of this in his recent article.  I have been using a more complex model with recruitment organizations for years!
  • Get Leadership to hold hiring managers accountable for time to fill.  Over the last 2 months, I have performed value stream mapping exercises with 7 recruitment organizations.  On average, less than 10% of the total time to fill was ‘processing candidates’.  90% of the time was ‘wait/delay’ time between processes.  Of the wait time, over 50% was directly caused by managers (I know you are shocked with these findings) sitting on resumes, not making decisions, ‘waiting’ for a purple squirrel candidate, etc. 

If managers were/are held accountable, you can expect to reduce TTF by 30-50%.  PS – I know this idea is probably the toughest to get implemented.

  • Have dedicated sourcers for Critical/Difficult/Visible (CDV) positions – I know this is not a new concept but . . . it works :) .  Most everyone underestimates how much time (sourcing) it takes to identify and recruit for these positions (no matter how savvy you are).  I would invest in doing a pure time study to understand how much time it takes to ‘source’ a candidate for each of your critical job categories.  Then you can truly identify how many resources you need to support hiring demand (again – check out Richard’s article ).

For many of you, these are not profound ideas and/or thoughts.  For some of you, you’ve probably implemented a few of these ideas with some level of success. 

So why are most organizations struggling to migrate to a JIT hiring solution?

  • We are not managing customer expectations and/or  educating them on what is required to meet their needs JIT (what they ask for when they say I want a req. filled ‘ASAP’ or ‘Yesterday’).  Basic concepts like Production Planning and Materials Release Planning have been used in manufacturing organizations for years.  We need to adopt them.
  • We are not investing the time to work with customers to understand hiring needs.  We are not investing the time to implement Material Release Planning concepts into our Staffing Supply Chain to identify the resources required to meet hiring demand.

I don’t want to make this sound simple. But let’s not make this harder than it needs to be.  If hiring quality (quality is #1) employees in a timely fashion is very important to your organization, it is time to take control!

I would love to hear success stories from organizations that have implemented these concepts to substantially reduce lead time/TTF  without any decrease in quality or increase in cost.

I hope you are having a perfect day!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Managing Your Hiring Manager, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Time to Fill, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Lean, JIT Transformation – Simply Brilliant ideas!

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

If you missed NAHCR’s webinar last week, Miranda Maynard (Employment Supervisor for EMH Healthcare) updated us on their Lean, JIT transformation initiative of 2011. 

It was an excellent ‘case study’ of what a continuous improvement journey is all about.

  • Incremental improvement over time can provide exponential returns.
  • Innovation doesn’t have to be rocket science. The best solutions are often simple which make them brilliant.

Some of the Simply Brilliant solutions EMH is implementing include:  

Capturing accurate Metrics – To migrate to a Management by Fact/Data Culture:

  • Eliminating “Other” and “EMH Career Site” as options for a candidate to choose for source of hire.  This has helped identify where top candidates are coming from to further develop cost effective sourcing strategies.
  • Recognizing that a sharp increase in TTF was a result of closing requisitions that have been open for a long period (a positive thing)!

Eliminating unqualified applicant flow – To spend Quality time with Quality Candidates:

  • Implemented pre-screen “Knock-out” questions prior to candidates applying for a particular position (most organizations implement these questions as part of the application process).
  • Implemented a behavioral-based online assessment (HealthcareSource’s Test source).

Make Time to Fill Service Level Agreements public and hold Managers accountable for achieving them:

  • Holding managers accountable for a 40-day Time to Fill metric ensures they are engaged in process. Currently evaluating  adding this SLA to their performance evaluation in 2011. 

Define/separate processes for ‘Business as Usual’ vs. ‘Critical/Difficult/Visible’ positions:

  • Immediate recognition of CDV positions and elimination of the time and cost associated with the “wait & see”/”post & pray” process.

We are excited to have Miranda participate in our Advanced Metrics pre-conference workshop on Tuesday July 12th at NACHR’s Annual Image conference!  If you would like more information about this workshop, please contact us.

I hope you’re having a great week!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Retention Rates, Talent Aquisition, Time to Fill, Uncategorized | No Comments »

‘Two cents’ from the road

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

As I have mentioned in the past, I am one lucky “recruiting guy” because I get to interact with talented recruitment professionals throughout the world on a daily basis. 

With our Solution engagement, I also get to become a ‘teammate’ of many recruitment organizations!  With our Benchmark Study, I have intimate interaction with many, many more!

This unique opportunity always provides me with many thoughts/observations/insights! 

Some  recent “Lean, JIT ‘Elite’ Recruitment Thoughts” from the road:

Discipline, sense of urgency, and self-direction are a few of the most important ELITE recruiter competencies you can possess.

  • The busier you get, the more time you need to plan your perfect day. If you are not planning at least 30 minutes a day . . . I bet you are 10-50% less productive than those that do!
  • You can plan all you want but . . . if you are not “true to your schedule”, if you do not commit to crossing off your TO DOs (ETFs, MTNs), starting/stopping meetings ON TIME, etc., IT IS WORTHLESS!

Trust is also very important.  If your hiring managers don’t TRUST that:

  • You understand their business
  • You have an eye for the talent they want/need
  • You know how to find top talent
  • They will continue to:
    • Ask to see all resumes before setting up interviews
    • Always want to “see more”
    • Not listen to your salary/offer recommendations, etc.
  • To earn trust, you must learn their business by attending staff meetings, learning from employees/candidates AND become an expert at performing intake sessions and setting SLAs

A strong ability to solicit interest is equally important.  With technology, social media, it is much easier to FIND passive candidates . . . but still very difficult to SOLICIT THEIR INTEREST.

While there are many facets to recruiting, if you:

  • Are able to plan for, and execute more Perfect Days (with passion :) )
  • Have earned the trust of your hiring managers via knowledge and engaging/executing flawless intake/SLA sessions.
  • Have mastered the ability to engage and recruit top talent.

You are pretty darn ‘elite’ in my book!

My ‘two cents’ from the road . . . Please share any of your ‘two cents’ from the field!  :)

I hope you have (or had) a good spring break!

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, Recruiting Trends, Time Management, Time to Fill, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Eliminate Waste — Letting Internal Candidates Control Their Future

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

In a recent Value Stream Mapping (VSM) exercise with a client, it became apparent (as it usually does) that a majority of the wait/waste time associated with their staffing process resided in the hands of the hiring manager (I’m sure you are surprised!).

In particular, we found it not uncommon for it to take managers:

  • 7 days to respond to resumes submitted for consideration
  • 7 days to get interviews set up.
  • Another 7 days to get feedback!

A simple, pragmatic idea came from our VSM session that I thought was worthy of sharing for discussion.

Once the manager has decided they want to interview an internal candidate, have the internal candidate take the lead to contact the manager to set up the interview, provide feedback to recruiter on status, etc. Of course a defined process/service level agreement (SLA) would have to be in place.

Possible process/SLA:

  • Internal candidate contacts Hiring Manager to set up interview within 24 hours of receipt that the manager is interested in interviewing them.
  • Once interview is scheduled, notify recruiter (via outlook?) that the interview is set.
  • Provide feedback to recruiter within 12?/24? hours of the interview with the hiring manager.

Think about the benefits:

  • Puts the responsibility on the internal candidate to “manage” their opportunities/career within your organization.
  • Relieves you of the wasted time required to set up interviews (who knows their schedules better than the two parties that need to meet?).
  • If you rely on the managers to set up interviews with internal candidates, it reduces substantial wait time inherent to managers handling that process!

Of course some inherent pitfalls:

  • Manager doesn’t provide timely feedback to internal candidates (causing employee dissatisfaction).
  • Internal candidate doesn’t keep the recruiter “in the loop” with regard to status of interview, feedback, etc. (can’t keep track of candidates for the position – wasting more time hunting down feedback).

I clearly see these two pitfalls as performance management issues versus process control issues. And as I think about this more, I think the pro’s out way the con’s.

I am curious . . . Does anyone manage their internal candidates like this?

David Szary

Posted in David, David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Uncategorized, Value Stream Mapping | No Comments »

Recruiting Passive Talent – Learn from our Children

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

 

I’m very lucky to be exposed to so many great thoughts, ideas and inspirational messages as I travel the country!  I received one such message this week from Recruiter Academy Alumni, Erich Hartnett that I thought I would share!

If you have any great stories to share, please send them. I would love to broadcast to our community of over 17,000 recruitment/HR professionals.

Thanks Erich for the inspiration!

____________________________________________________________________________________

The New Year always brings fundraisers for good causes that our children get involved in.  These fundraising events often involve going door to door to raise money for the particular cause. 

For those of us that have had the opportunity, you would probably agree, there is no harder way to make a living “selling” something (or asking for money) than going door to door!

Well I recently had the opportunity to go door to door fundraising with my daughter Grace and witnessed pure excitement. Grace hounded me every day after school to get out there and knock on doors so she could ask folks to buy her cookie dough. She had no inhibitions, no preconceived “rejection” thoughts, just pure enthusiasm. To her the task was simple and fun. She skipped up to the door, rang the doorbell, introduced herself and began showing the cookie pictures on her sheet, then showed folks where to sign their names (the close). If folks said “no thanks”, she would skip to the next door and repeat the process.  She had no idea why anyone wouldn’t want cookies and shared that excitement with everyone that answered their door. It was pure innocent enthusiasm for cookies, and nothing more. Grace showed me there is no such thing as rejection.  There is just another door to knock on!

While there are many keys to being successful selling door to door, probably none is more important than a positive attitude about what you are selling and who you are selling to. If you BELIEVE you have something of value and . . . there are people out there that need/want your product or service, you will continue to walk door to door (through rejection after rejection) in pursuit of the next sale!

How does this relate to recruiting passive talent?

When recruiting top talent, we must:

  • Believe you have an awesome opportunity for the right individual.  If the person you contact is not that person, they might know who is!
  • Believe that you will change the person’s life (for the better :) ) that you find and hire into this role! 

If you (I) attacked each sourcing session like my daughter Grace attacked door to door fundraising, ‘passive candidate recruiting’ would be a heck of a lot easier and a lot more fun!

Something we call can learn from!

Erich Hartnett

Posted in David, David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Passive Talent, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Engaging Quality, Active Candidates – All About Timing & Your Message!

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Question: Ever wonder how many recruiters are logged into Monster/CareerBuilder at any given time?
Answer : Hundreds of thousands!

Question: Ever wonder how many “hits” a quality candidate gets (in the first 48 hours)  from recruiters after posting their resume online
Answer: 20-100 + +

Synopsis:  While there are talented, active job seekers out there (contrary to what some “experts” might say), the competition for them can be as fierce as it is for those elusive “passive” candidates!

The minute a talented professional posts their resume, you can bet there are hundreds of recruiters, sourcers, competition, etc. ready to pounce on them!  So what can you do to ensure you are making contact with the top job seekers?

Some practical advice on Harvesting Quality, Active Candidates:

Timing:

Since quality talent will get 20-100+ hits from recruiters within 48 hours, it is critical to be identifying talent as they ‘hit the boards’.

Some tips:

  • Set up automated search agents to drive candidates to you (NOTE: A key to this is ensuring you have the right key words set up to harvest talent effectively.  If you don’t have the right key words, you will miss talent).
  • Don’t rely on your search agent (NOTE: comment on keywords above).  Each morning before 8 am (when your competition is getting in), review all resumes posted during the last 24 hours.  Again, your ability to develop key word search strings that will identify all the potential candidates will be your key to success. If you want more info on this subject, contact me.
  • Lastly, MAKE CONTACT WITH THEM. I know many recruiters who have search agents to drive candidate flow to them but. . . only get to them on a weekly basis.   

These tactics will probably ensure that you are one of the top 5, 10 recruiters that are contacting them which is very important. 

Think about it. If you just posted your resume online, what would you be feeling when you started getting responses? Probably pretty excited eh? How about the 83rd response from a recruiter? Maybe annoyed?

IT IS CRITICAL TO BE ONE OF THE FIRST TO CONTACT AN ACTIVE SEEKER!

Your Message:

Regardless whether a candidate is active/passive/unemployed . . . TOP TALENT IS IN DEMAND! 

So what is your value proposition? Why would they want to talk to you? How is your message different from all the others?

As many of you know, the Art & Science of Engaging Top Talent has been a passion of mine for years.  I spend a lot of time working with recruitment teams on perfecting this skill.

Some simple advice:

  • Make sure your message is short, compelling and to the point (100 words or less).
  • Make sure it answers the questions roaming through the candidates mind: “So What?” and “What’s in it for me?”

For more insight, check out this blog post I wrote on the subject.

Remember there are definitely talented active job seekers out there.  But . . . you are not the only one trying to recruit them!

Ensuring you are one of the first recruiters to contact them with a compelling message and . . . the probability of engaging them will go up exponentially!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Sourcing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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