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The Most Important Service Level Agreement

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Of the 1000 recruiters who have participated in our Elite Recruiter self assessment benchmark study, they rate themselves a 3.29 on the skill:

  • Sets Service Level Agreements with Hiring Managers to define roles/responsibilities and control the hiring process

Having talked to countless hiring managers, I am not surprised at this response. 

One of their biggest frustrations is not knowing what is going on with a particular search. They post a position, talk to their recruiter, and then . . . wait for candidates to come their way.

I thought I would share a post we published that received a ton of positive attention and discussion!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

The Most Important Service Level Agreement

While many recruitment organizations have created Service Level Agreements that define the recruitment/hiring process and each parties’ (hiring manager and recruiter) responsibilities (NOTE- if you want a Best Practice example SLA document – please email us), many do not define and establish a “time to first submittal” SLA. This SLA is (what I believe to be the most important) the one we can control the most.

We call this SLA: Requisition Received to “First Submittal.”…. to read more please follow this link

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

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.com.  In 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

Posted in Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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 effectiveness – The 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!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, Elite Recruiters, Employer Brand, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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!

Posted in Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Are you recruiting ‘Passive’ Candidates as if they were ‘Active’?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I had a recent conversation with a very frustrated hiring executive: The conversation resurfaced some ‘best practices’ around recruiting quality talent.

He was frustrated with the current recruitment efforts on critical to fill positions in his department. While they had gone through great lengths to deploy a sourcing strategy to drive quality, passive talent into the recruitment process, the vast majority of candidates they were interested in were “bailing” out of the process.

Pondering the situation, I asked a few simple questions to try and identify the root cause of the defects (for those that sat in on our 7-Deadly Sins webinar – - you know what I am talking about :o )).

  1. How are you engaging candidates into the process?
  2. How quickly are you engaging candidates into the process?
  3. Who are they meeting with on their first visit?
  4. Where are they meeting?  
  5. Does the candidate fully understand the next steps after their first meeting?

 The answers I received from the recruiter/hiring manager might not surprise you:

  1. “Well we have them go through the normal process.  If they are interested, we ask them to go online to register in our system”.
  2. “Once they hit the system, the recruiter is calling them within 24 hours – - hopefully – - to do a pre-screen with them.”
  3. “We like to have them come into the office and meet with the recruiter first – - then meet with the hiring manager.  Ideally, we like to get a slate of candidates to come in and interview all the same day/afternoon.  It is much more convenient for the hiring managers.”
  4. “Ideally – the office. It makes it easier for us.”
  5. “We let them know that we are interviewing several candidates and will have feedback within 3-5 business days.”

I think you know were I am going with this!

So after listening to his answers, I reflected and responded:

“So your managers are requesting the recruitment team to find the highest quality (often passive) talent possible but . . . you want the passive candidates to engage on your TERMS?

  • Fill out paperwork before I will talk to you
  • Come to my office
  • Sit in lobby with other candidates
  • Wait for a response

I don’t know about you folks, but if the University of Alabama used these technique to ‘recruit’ the most talented football players – - I bet they would not have won the national title last year!

While I don’t want to make light of this situation, I find this dilemma within hundreds of companies throughout the country.  Simply put:

They are trying to recruit quality, ‘Passive’ candidates with their ‘Active’ candidate process.

Organizations that excel in recruiting top talent, take a holistically different approach to the passive candidate recruitment efforts.

Some Best Practices

1.     How are you engaging candidates into the process?

Once the recruiter makes contact with a top prospect and does a preliminary pre-qualification (hopefully on the same call), they immediately seek to set up a “cup of coffee” meeting with a dynamic hiring manager.  No initial paper work. We can take care of that later. No resume? No problem, lets just meet and have an exploratory conversation.

2.     How quickly are you engaging candidates into the process?

Immediately (as outlined above)! I have worked with hiring managers that literally say – - if you get a top notch person on the phone, I will meet anywhere, anytime.

3.     Who are they meeting with on their first visit?

While I am not saying they shouldn’t meet with a recruiter on the first visit, the quicker you get them connected with a dynamic hiring manager the better.  From experience, it is much easier to engage a talented professional to have a “confidential, exploratory discussion over a cup of coffee” if for nothing else – - to network VERSUS – getting them to come for an interview with a recruiter!  

4.     Where are they meeting?

When you are not looking for a job, the last thing you would want is people to THINK you are looking.  Coming to a competitors office for a visit – - in this day and age of LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. – - is very risky at best.  And to ask them to sit in the lobby with other “candidates” is disrespectful in my book.

5. Does the candidate fully understand the next steps after the first meeting?

If you meet someone and like them, you should recruit that person. What is wrong with showing your excitement for taking the next steps – ask them their availability to meet with a key executive – - BEFORE you leave that first meeting?  I am not implying an offer? I am just showing sincere excitement about moving forward and keeping the positive momentum during our courtship!

These are simple best practices I have seen successfully deployed by organizations that don’t fall into the trap of trying to recruit quality, ‘Passive’ candidates with their ‘Active’ candidate process.

If you find yourself in this dilemma, please share this with your hiring managers :o )

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Candidate types, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

7 Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting: Overproduction/Inventory

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

For those of you that missed our recent webinar – 7 Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting – -one ‘deadly sin’ always seems to drive a lot of feedback/discussion - Overproduction/Inventory!  In the Lean Six Sigma world, the word “Overproduction” is defined as “Production ahead of demand.”  The word, “Inventory” is defined as all components, work in process and finished product not being processed. 

Arguably these are the biggest offenders to creating waste and . . . the time/cost required to eliminate them.   

Examples of these areas of waste in talent management and solutions: 

  • Overproduction/inventory in postings.   Most organizations, as part of their staffing process, post each and every position to their website and a large job board (like Careerbuilder or Monster).  While this seems to be a quick, cost effective sourcing solution, for those positions that do not require additional applicant flow and/or positions that have a very low probability of being filled by this source – - the cost/time associated with managing the unqualified applicant flow far exceeds the benefits.

Solution(s): When you receive a new position, evaluate the historical source of hire.  If 80% of the time this type of position was filled through internal applicants or referrals, why not exhaust those channels before publishing the position to the masses?  If less than 5% of the time a position is filled by large job boards, investigate more effective sourcing solutions (direct sourcing, niche job boards, etc.) before generating a routine posting on a large job board.  Also remember that job aggregators (simplyhired.com, indeed.com, etc.)  are going to “wrap”  any posting you put on your own site anyway.  

  • Routing multiple candidates to the interview stage.  Historically, managers have requested (and we have provided) a ’slate’ of candidates for each and every position.  Minimally, the rule of thumb has been the magical  ‘3′ candidates per position.  In some cases, we find recruiters routing 5, 10 or worse yet – – – all the candidates that applied for the position.  To the definition, every candidate routed to the hiring manager that does not get hired is WASTE. 

Solution:  While psychologically I can understand that a manager wants to review his/her ”options” before making a critical decision like hiring a new employee, if they trust that the recruiter has exhausted all candidate/sourcing options in order to come up with the best, and they understand the concept of waste, then there is no reason that there should ever be more than 3 candidates routed for consideration unless of course those first three don’t meet the requirements. If this happens, it indicates that not enough time was spent up front understanding the requirements of the position and how each candidate would need to demonstrate that they are able to perform the required tasks. The more time spent up front with the hiring manager and those participating in the interviewing process to ensure all are in alignment and to validate how the candidate will be selected; the less time wasted in sourcing. 

For high volume hiring and/or for managers that have experience hiring for a certain position, evaluating each candidate against previous hires (and more importantly – - the competencies/skills necessary to excel in the position) is a much better predictor of success than evaluating one candidate against another. Challenge the old-school mindset of “3+ candidates routed per position!”

  • Developing a slate of candidates for positions that go on hold.   Ok – – how many times have you developed a slate of candidates for a position that . . . goes on hold!  Now in fairness to hiring managers, there are legitimate reasons that this happens that for the most part are out of their control.  But unfortunately, we know that other managers often post positions ahead of approval that have a high probability of never being approved.  Talk about WASTE!  The time spent sourcing/pre-screening candidates for positions that go on hold for some organizations is astronomical! 

Solution: Consider making approval processes mandatory, or holding off on the sourcing process for 48 hours to double check the position approval status.   For those of you that want to be more progressive – gain approval to implement a “charge back” policy!  Charge back to the manager/line of business for openings that are put on hold and waste the valuable time and effort of the staffing function!

While we will never eliminate all of the overproduction/inventory in our hiring process, taking simple steps to incrementally remove waste will exponentially save you time and money!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, David, David Szary, Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Relationship Recruiter, Sourcing, Time Management, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Spend less time searching for resumes and more time searching for people with intelligence!

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

OK - You have a critical, difficult-to-fill position and you have performed all the ’normal sourcing tactics’ to fill it.

  • Posted on your website and a large job board or two
  • Networked with key employees
  • Surfed the Internet for candidates
  • Checked out LinkedIn

And unfortunately, you still don’t have any interested, qualified candidates.

Does this sound familiar? What do you do next?

For many, the next step is the ‘wait, hope & pray’ tactic.  You wait, hope and pray that some qualified candidates fall in your lap :) . 

For others, that have the time and expertise, you dive into deep Internet mining tactics (Boolean/semantic search) scouring remote databases/information for the elusive, ‘passive’ candidate. 

From my experience, very few recruiters immerse themselves in identifying people that will KNOW the people you are looking to find and talk too!  

This fundamental shift in thinking is so simple but very powerful. If implemented, this technique will transform the way you source candidates forever!   

Instead of asking the questions:  

  • Where can I find qualified professionals?
  • Where should I look for them?
  • What search techniques should I use to find quality talent?

Ask:

  • Who would know the person I am looking for?
  • Who can I talk to within a particular company (that has the talent I am looking for) that would know the person I am looking for?

For many creative sourcers, as part of the search strategy, they try to identify key words to source such as:

  • Competitor companies
  • Similar job titles
  • Key tools/technology the qualified candidate uses to perform their job

Now drive laterally through these questions with: 

  •  Who works with/for the person you are looking for? What is their job title?

And your search becomes more three dimensional.

Now drive straight down the middle with the question:

  • Who has recently left that company that knows the person I am looking for in that company?

And you can strike oil!

Let me explain.

The first question – - Who works with/for the person you are looking for? – - will exponentially increase the # of people you can talk to to locate the person you are looking for (you know – - the whole 7-degrees of separation thing).

The second question – - Who has recently left that company that knows the person I am looking for in that company? – - will connect you with folks that have left an organization and probably do not have a vested interest in withholding sensitive, confidential intelligence. Heck – if they were let go, they are even more willing to assist in providing information that might help you and . . . unfortunately . . . ‘hurt’ their former employer. 

Another important point here is the person’s level.  While first instinct may be to go “to the top” and call the SVP or VP (like in a traditional sales approach), you may have non-compete issues that cause the contact to be reticent to provide the information you need.  Don’t avoid this level, but be mindful of it. You may have greater success with peers and/or individuals that worked for the person you are seeking to identify.    

Some examples to illustrate this concept:

  • Searching for accountants — talk to actively looking controllers
  • Searching for .com developers — talk to actively looking SQL – DBA’s
  • Searching for OR nurses — talk to actively looking anesthesiologist.
  • Searching for Market Research professionals — talk to the Account Manager at the research firm.

Note – I referenced ‘actively looking’ in each of these examples. Probably the best person you can ‘network’ with is an active candidate that has recently left an organization. 

Not only will they know the person you are looking for, but they often will provide un-sanitized information about the people you want to connect with. Add in other thought provoking questions to your conversation like – - Who were the top performers? – - Who worked best under pressure? – - and you might gain valuable insight to pinpoint your search.  

A simple, straight forward approach to contacting them: 

John:

 I wanted to reach out. I saw you online and saw you worked for _________.  I  was hoping I could network with you and see if you could help me - and potentially one of your peers - out.  

I have a great opportunity for the right person…. I am seeking ___________________________. I thought you might know the ________ folks at __________ that might be interested in this opportunity? 

Were there some folks that you thought were really good that I should connect with?

Anyone that was not very happy I should connect with?

Any advice you would give me to help me with this search? It is a great opportunity for someone! 

________________________________________________________________

Then when closing, I would always recommend asking them how you can assist them in their job search: 

I really appreciate all your help. As mentioned, I found your information online.  

 How can I help you? – - what are you looking for?  

What have you done so far to find a new opportunity?: 

Have you tried www.indeed.com and/or http://www.simplyhired.com/   

I will keep my eyes/ears open…, etc . 

 

The key to your success in engaging individuals is your sincere interest in helping connect individuals to excellent opportunities!  

Too often I think we spend too much time searching for resumes versus people with intelligence that can help us with our search.  We wrote a similar post on this subject that you might want to check out – The Indirect Networking Call.

Happy Hunting :)

Posted in Bradley Savoy, 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, Relationship Recruiter, Sourcing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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