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The 80/20 Rule

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Author: Karen Antrim – Lean Human Capital  

Years ago, my boss said to me “this place has too much of the 80/20 rule.”  “80/20 rule?” I asked.  “It’s when 80 percent of the work gets done by 20 percent of the people.” he answered.

In my real life, when I’m not sourcing or teaching sourcing, I’m a mom.  I volunteer at my kids school, at our church, and for little league.   I often observe the 80/20 there.  You’ve probably noticed this in your real life too.  80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the parents.

Weekly, I read about a new tool, technique or process that is going to change the way we source.  Or, I get an email for a class on how to improve and write better Boolean strings to find resumes or lists on the net.  I’m all for constant learning and constant improvement.  It’s the mantra our firm is based on.  However, I work for recruiters who have very little time and a mountain of openings to fill.  So my ability to get them accurate prospective candidates in a short time is a priority.  My sourcing techniques must provide the biggest return for the effort.  They must adhere to the “80/20 rule”.

The principle applies to recruiters who do their own sourcing. They have even less time for each activity in the recruitment process without a sourcing staff to assist them.  The “80/20 rule” should become a guiding principle.

Simply put, the 80/20 rule is how to get 80% of your candidates with 20% of the tools and processes of sourcing.

Let’s take some specific examples.  We all know that Linkedin.com has the largest community of profiles of any social professional network.  If you have time constraints on your recruitment process, why use any other network?  Get 80% of your prospects, build 80% of your network, start 80% of your conversations in LinkedIn.

Here is an inverse example.  I understand the appeal of long and sexy Boolean search strings.  As a Boolean geek, I dig‘em.  But as a person who must be pragmatic in her practices, they do not return enough bang for the buck.  They don’t adhere to the 80/20 rule.  For example, the popular string (Intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:CV  OR etc..) generally finds resumes that have been posted on a personal website or perhaps a university faculty bio. There just isn’t a large population of these out there.  One can spend a great deal of time playing with keywords in this string and not get a large return for their time investment.  This is an example of the 20/80 rule.  20% return on 80% of the investment.

Pick your top 3-5 successful sourcing activities, and stick with those.  Mine are:

  1. Site command to harvest linkedin.com
  2. Subscription resume database such as Monster
  3. My ATS
  4. Finding associations and membership lists
  5. Target companies to raid with call campaign

As a recruiter, you may change out #4 for working your own existing network.

Regardless of whether you’re a recruiter doing your own sourcing, or a sourcer supporting recruiters, putting 20% of your time in these activities will produce 80% of your prospect list.  That leaves a whole lot of time for other tasks, such as candidate interaction, building your network, or branding yourself and your organization.

Happy Sourcing!

Mindful Recruiting/5 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Recruiting Stress

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

My wife and I just completed a course on Mindfulness.  Yes like most husbands I didn’t go willingly, as it was her idea!  But, by the end of the class I learned quite a few tips that I thought I would share with all of you.

Now you should know that I am the king of multi-tasking and a type “A” personality.  I’ve tried these techniques myself and many of them have worked for me.  I believe that if applied consistently these techniques will help many of you in your stressed recruiting lives. 

The idea of mindfulness began at U Mass under Jon Kabat-Zinn.  He sums the concept in this way.  “Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives.  It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment.  We gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing.”   

  1. Do one thing at a time.  Single tasking may sound archaic in our multi-tasking world, but it can be quite powerful and can renew your focus.  The concept comes from the Zen proverb “When walking walk, when eating, eat.”  If you’re on the phone with a candidate or hiring manager, focus on the phone call.  Don’t try to juggle your emails, IM, or other distractions.  Just focus on the phone call.  Simple focus on the one task at hand leads to better focus on your objective, and better service to your customer!
  2. Put space between things.  Putting space between calls and meetings throughout the day, even if it’s only 10 minutes, will give you a more relaxed schedule, and leaves space in case one task runs longer than another.  It can also give you a chance to take a mini-break (note the next tip).
  3. Spend at least 5 minutes a day doing nothing.  I know you’re thinking “Oh No!  But what will my boss, or partner, or kids say!” Yet sitting in silence, and simply breathing (yes breathing) can give you renewed focus for the next task, or the remainder of the day!
  4. Stop worrying about the past or the future. Just focus on the present.  We all do it, we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the last call or meeting, or thinking about the one you have next week or in an hour, during the call or meeting you’re currently in!  How many times have you missed an important point from your customer (candidate, hiring manager) or your family member, because you weren’t focused on the here and now?  If you shift your focus to the present, you’ll see your stress drop, and your satisfaction with key relationships improve.
  5. Enjoy the silence.  On your next commute, when you come to a red light, try to just sit back for those 30 seconds and relax.  Don’t pick up the phone and check email or voice mail.  Just sit quietly.  Another technique to try is to not use your commute time for phone calls, but as time for you to reconnect with yourself.

Keep practicing.  When you feel yourself frustrated or stressed with your day try one of these tips.  Or simply close your eyes for 10 seconds and breath.  For home practice there’s a website called www.emindful.com that has online classes.  Also if you’re an iPhone user a good app to try is SimplyBeing! 

Finally I’ll leave you with this brief saying from Saki Santorelli, a mindfulness teacher.  Try repeating this to yourself sometime.

May I be safe and protected from all inner and outer harm.

May I be happy, peaceful, and calm.

May I be as healthy and strong as possible for me.

May I care for myself with joy and ease.

Have a great week!

Monster’s New Power Search Tool

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

As many of you know, I am a passionate Research professional and lead instructor for Lean Human Capital’s Internet/social media sourcing sessions.

Last week I spent several hours reviewing (also did a demo) the new Monster “Power Search” tool and thought I would provide a synopsis of what I learned. 

There is a new way to do search.  It’s called “semantic search”.  The old way most search engines work is by using keywords based on digits in fields and Boolean commands.  The results provided back to the user match the keywords you typed in based on what you are looking for.

Semantic uses an approach based on providing answers that ALSO included synonyms or common correlations to the search word or phrase you typed in. (i.e. if you type “lawyer” you will also get “attorney” “barrister” etc).  (Important: These correlations are only as good as the developers who make them for each site).

Semantic search uses tools developed by a couple different companies, and universities.  It is cutting edge, new technology. With that said, I suspect it is not fully refined or embraced in corporate development… yet.

Monster has taken a bold approach AND a $100 million investment to make their database searchable with the semantic search methodology.

Bottom Line:

I WOULD recommend Power Search to organizations that:

  • Do not have a sourcing team.  
  • To recruiters that have limited Boolean and or search experience.

It does have a terrific interface and it is easy to use and learn. It provides easy returns.

However, I would probably not recommend it to those organizations that have a sourcing team and/or recruiters skilled in Boolean search techniques based on my ROI/Cost analysis. 

I give kudu’s to Monster. They are investing in technology TODAY (and getting a jump on their competition?) that I suspect  will eventually (don’t know time frame) become standard (and classic search option will fade away). 

Some stat’s that Monster provided me are outlined below.

Shoot me an email if you have any success stories/challenges with this new search tool and/or semantic search technology!!!!

___________________________________

Monster conducted detailed return on investment (ROI) studies with 48 recruiters from 15 large enterprise accounts to measure the value of Power Resume Search. In side by side comparisons with competitive products or standard keyword searching, customers found that Power Resume Search produced the following results:

  • 65% average time saved using Power Resume Search compared to keyword-based search engines
  • 150% average increase in the number of qualified candidates found
  • 90% of recruiters prefer using Power Resume Search over other keyword-based search technology
  • 97% of recruiters found qualified candidates faster using Power Resume Search

Karen Antrim
Associate
Research and Sourcing
Lean Human Capital

Planning Your Time – Perfect Week/Perfect Day

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Recently we hosted a poll to see when some of you plan for the next day of work. The results were interesting in that 76% of you do plan ahead either when you’re wrapping up your day or the next day with your cup of coffee.  However 27% of you either don’t have time to plan or only plan a couple of times a week.

When do you plan your day?

I plan for the next day before I leave each day — stress reliever!                    51%
I am a morning planner — with my cup of coffee                                                  22%
Plan? I barely have time to go to the restroom!                                                    20% 
I sometimes plan my day — maybe 2 to 3 days a week                                         7% 

If you’re like me it’s difficult to manage your schedule and complete your “To-do’s” while operating in an environment of constant change, fire drills, etc. One of the techniques we teach to overcome this obstacle and become more productive and efficient is to adopt what we call “A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine. This routine can help you and your team improve time management, planning, and organizational skills, manage multiple projects and tasks, and get more accomplished!

“A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine helps set a strategic course for the week and allows for changes.  The best time to develop “A Perfect Week” is in advance of your week (maybe Friday afternoon or early Monday morning). 

Begin by listing all the activities you want to accomplish into two categories:

  1. Billable. Billable activities directly relate to hiring new employees. Obviously this activity contributes to making money for your organization. Examples of billable recruiting time might include prospecting for candidates, making offers, attending job fairs, setting up interviews with hiring managers, qualifying a requisition, etc.
  2. Non-billable. Non-billable activities are things that you must accomplish and typically support your billable activities. Examples include entering candidates into your ATS, developing postings for the Internet, activity reporting, department meetings, training, paperwork, etc.

If you’d like to see an example of the template we use to document our “Perfect Week” please contact me.  At a high level it would look something like this:

  • Source six hours for BM position. Get three submittals to Kendall – Billable
  • Get requisition from Szary for the SVP of IT – Billable
  • Source four hours for SVP position – submit two candidates – Billable
  • Spend 2 hours in staff meetings – Non-Billable

The next step is to plan your days differently, something we call “Time Based Planning.”  Most people manage their schedule using outlook or some other online scheduling system with a “To-do” list.   Most of these “To-do” action items are not sequenced in order of priority and most people don’t embed their “To-do’s” into their daily schedule.  Time-based planning allocates a specific time during your day to accomplish your “To-do’s” based on their priority.

In the example below I’ve taken the perfect week list above and mapped out one of my days through time based planning:

7:30 – 8:30           Planning, return emails, call Bob about Sue
8:30 – 11:00        Sourcing for SVP position
11:00 – 12:00      Interview with Joe Edwards for SVP of IT
12:00 – 1:00        Lunch – call Mom for birthday!
1:00 – 2:00           Interview Bill Wallace
2:00 – 3:00           Schedule Lisa & Catherine interviews
3:00 – 4:00           Phone screen BM candidate
3:00 – 5:00           Return all emails from net postings

Rather than having my day scheduled and then trying to map my “To-do” list to it, the two are embedded together! 

Of course each week and every day won’t go perfectly!  If activities you’ve documented in your perfect week change during the week then readjust and develop a new plan of action. Plans were meant to be changed!   

Try this routine as a pilot.  We think you’ll find it improves your planning, time management, and organizational skills.   

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

Measuring Quality of Hire

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

We’ve always had requests from our clients and network on how best to measure Quality of Hire.  For years there has been debate throughout  recruiting circles on how to effectively measure it.  I think the common consensus is that it’s one measurable thing. Right?  Some Holy Grail that once found will bring us everlasting happiness.

Our view is that the best way to measure quality is through a 360 degree view across your customer base. Quality of Hire is not simply one metric, but a host of them that when combined will give you an overall indication of the quality of the individuals your organization is hiring.   

Here are some of the categories we consider when measuring Quality of Hire.

New Hire Satisfaction:  After new hires complete the recruiting experience, ask them to rate the experience with your department through surveys or focus groups.  This is even more critical for your internal transfers, which in many organizations represent 30-40% of your annual hires.

External Candidate Satisfaction:  This measures the experience of those individuals that were declined by your organization.  These are the folks that will go back out into the market and speak about their experience with your brand.  Whether it was positive or negative, it will have a ripple effect through their network.  Right now, I’m working with a client who is measuring this across one of their critical job families which also has a high attrition rate.  Hence they’re constantly trying to re-recruit candidates they previously declined, so this metric is critical to them.

Hiring Manager Satisfaction. What is the overall hiring manager satisfaction rating of their overall experience with recruiting? Consider aspects such as:  Recruiters understanding of the business they support, responsiveness to the hiring manager, customer service, candidate quality, and others.  For those of you that have worked with us you know this as part of the Hiring Manager Voice Of the Customer (VOC) work that we do.

Retention rates:  What is the new hire voluntary termination rate for your new hires in their first year by department?  What is it for your critical job families?

New Hire Performance versus Their Peers:  How does the performance of the individuals that were hired in the last six months compare to their peers?.  Are they meeting, or exceeding expectations?

We’re working with a few systems on this now.  If you’d like to discuss how we can partner with you on measuring Quality of Hire please contact us.

We’d also like to know what your thoughts are on this subject.  To see the poll please click here.

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!

Building Talent Communities – A Pragmatic Approach using Dunbar’s Principle

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Because we have so much data/intelligence at our disposal, I think we have a tendency to over complicate and analyze things to the extent that we become overwhelmed with WHAT WE CAN’T DO rather than focused on getting started with WHAT WE CAN DO!

No better example of this dilemma is the concept of recruiters building talent pipelines/communities. 

There is so much being written about using social media to develop communities by leveraging viral marketing strategies using multiple channels  (LI, Twitter, FB, etc.) that . . . . it can make your head spin!

And when we humans get overwhelmed, we usually shut down and do nothing.

I was introduced to the Dunbar principle a few years ago.  For more info check out the article on the Dunbar principle

The short version of his principle is that there is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.  No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number. It lies between 100 and 230, but a commonly used value is 150.

I have often recommended that we use this complex (yet very simple) theory to start developing talent communities.  Instead of getting overwhelmed with all the cool new Web 2.0 things you can do (that you are not getting to!), focus on a simple pragmatic process to get  a talent pipeline going.

  1. Identify the job categories you need or want to develop a pipeline within.
  2. Within those job categories, start to identify prospects (via your ATS, online databases, LinkedIn, etc.) that you want to develop  a relationship with.
  3. Make an initial contact to engage in dialog (remember to develop a compelling message).
  4. Over time, develop  a candidate relationship management program to regularly connect with these individuals to cultivate the relationship.
  5. Focus on developing your Top 150 Network – the top 150 candidates that you would like to continually have a relationship with – these can be active or passive candidates.
  6. As you learn more about individuals in your network, think about replacing folks that are not the ‘quality’ you are seeking with others that are (or you think might be).
  7. Invest 3-5 hours a week to developing and maintaining your Top 150 Network.

The key is to keep it simple and focus on developing your first 150 relationships. Dunbar would be proud! 

Recruitment leaders, imagine how powerful it would be if each of your recruiters had a Top 150 Network! 

Once this is created, think about expanding your network by leveraging social media sites, building online communities, etc.    

Of course one of the keys to your success is being able to develop relationships with these individuals.  Best practices include:

  • Becoming a resource to them.
  • Providing information of value.
  • Providing a compelling value proposition that answers the questions “So What?” and “What’s in it for me?”

Please don’t confuse this message. I do believe that social media tools will transform how we recruit in the future.  I am not proposing that you abandon your social media/talent community initiatives!  But sometimes taking a simple, pragmatic approach to launch an initiative is the right way to go!

A New Year — Perfect Storm to Recruit Top Talent!!!!!

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Well, here we are.  It’s 2011.  The beginning of a new year.  A time to reflect on the past and look into the future.  For many, it’s time for their yearly “mid-life crisis”.  As another year goes by, we most often reflect on:

  • Health – Not getting any younger!
  • Financial situation – Did my 401k go up? Did I pay down debt? Am I getting closer to retirement?
  • Career – Is this where I thought I would be at this time in my life?

This is often a time for dreaming and wishing and planning for a better life!  In this state of mind, many will be open to more adventure/risk in the hopes of achieving a better quality of life!

It sounds to me like a perfect storm for recruiting top ‘passive’ talent! 

As you get back into the groove after the holiday season, it is a perfect time too:

  • Contact top talent from your competition! Somebody might be ready to make a change.
  • Re-contact top performers that have not shown interest in the past.
  • Cast a wide net on those folks that were not open to relocation in the past.  The family might be ready for an adventure and . . . the housing market is a tad better!

As we have written about in past blog posts the key to your ability to recruit top talent includes:

  • Timing (I’m proposing the time is right)
  • Compelling message (In less than 30 seconds, can you convey a compelling value proposition that answers the two questions – “So What?” and “What’s in it for me?”
  • Tonality in both your written and verbal communication – Are you positive?  Do you convey excitement about the opportunity you have to offer? (Sales 101 – 50% of the close is a result of your excitement and passion for the product/service that you sell!)

Sooo – What are you waiting for? There’s no better way to get back into the swing of things than by carving out some time to source top talent for your organization (and maybe a little time for exercise too :) )!

Hope you are having a Perfect Week!

Eating Frogs Will Help You Enjoy the Holidays

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Like most of you, I find that the holiday season can bring intense pressure to meet deadlines and get things done before we take a few days off (hopefully :) ).

And when you are working at maximum capacity, you have little room for error and/or time to waste on non-productive, non-value added tasks!

In efforts to improve our time management/planning skills, we have studied experts in time management, personal achievement and behavior modification which has resulted in the creation of The Perfect Week/Perfect Day planning methodology

I thought I would share a couple of simple, yet powerful, concepts from this methodology to ensure that you finish the year productively!

  1. To maintain focus and sanity in extremely busy times, you must INVEST more time in planning your weekly/daily activities.   Spending ½ hour creating a time-based daily schedule will allow you to be 25-30% more productive during the day.
  2. Make sure you identify and ‘Eat your Frogs’ early in the day.  Embedded into our methodology is Brian Tracy’s (www.briantracy.com) Eat the Frog philosophy.  If you have never watched the Eat the Frog Movie - DO SO NOW!  In one minute, you will grasp the invaluable concept.  ‘Eating Frogs’ early on will build positive momentum and provide energy for the rest of the day!

Some other helpful hints are outlined in our free resources portal under time management/planning.

I hope that your next week is hyper productive so you can enjoy the holidays!