Posts Tagged ‘recruiting’

January 3, 2013

Don’t Post a Job, Advertise Respect – Where Does Your Candidate Experience Begin?

Peter Weddle, wrote a compelling newsletter January 3rd, 2013.

Part two of this edition focuses on the nature of the job posting as a communication medium to enhance the Candidate Experience. Peter’s suggestion is just one more example of great practices which contribute to staffing process improvement. With Peter’s permission, the article is provided below.

Peter also mentions the recent focus on the candidate experience. One organization in particular that has raised the visibility on the candidate experience is the Talent Board and their Candidate Experience Award. The list of the 2012 award winners can be found here. A white paper with highlights from the 2012 submission and evaluation process will be released in late January 2013. Look back here for a link to the report.

Candidate Experience Award

Don’t Post a Job, Advertise Respect

Job postings are now routinely used on both job boards and social media sites. These online communications remain the most widespread method of candidate sourcing, yet are disparaged and ignored at almost every recruitment conference. Why? Because recruiters intuitively grasp the cost-benefit advantage of job postings, but all too often don’t grab hold of their power. They use job postings to describe a job, when they would be better served by delivering respect.

There’s been much written and spoken over the past couple of years about the importance of optimizing the candidate experience. In a highly competitive recruiting market, top performers will always gravitate to where they are treated best. As a consequence, the organization which gives candidates a distinctive and memorable experience will have a formidable advantage in the War for Talent.

That experience is typically defined as what happens to a candidate while they are passing through an organization’s recruiting process. For the candidate, however, the experience starts well before that point. It begins when they first encounter an employment opportunity. That interaction sets the tone for everything else that happens between the organization and the candidate.

Thanks to their heritage in print publications, job postings have traditionally been viewed as advertisements or announcements. Indeed, all too often, job postings are simply classified ad copy or position descriptions re-purposed online. They sell or inform, but they do not engage the candidate. They generate applications from active job seekers, but have little or no impact on the passive prospects who make up the majority of the workforce.

What’s the best way for your organization to engage that passive population? Publish job postings that deliver respect. Use word choice and content to signal to candidates that you recognize and value their talent.

A Respectful Job Posting

There are many facets to a “respectful job posting,” but the following four are among the most important.

Number 1. Use vocabulary that corresponds to the reader’s self image. Top performers never think of themselves as a supplicant for work (even when they are in transition) and they seldom have a resume, so engage them by using more respectful terms and phrases. Address them as a “candidate” or “prospect” rather than as a “job seeker” and ask them to submit “an application” rather than “a resume.”

Number 2. Tell the reader how long it will take to complete the application. Top performers are almost always employed and thus consider their time to be quite valuable, so engage them by acknowledging and showing your respect for that point of view. Indicate how much time they will have to invest to apply for your opening and whether they must complete the application in a single sitting or can do so over several periods of time.

Number 3. Give the reader the information that’s important to them. Top performers don’t care about an opening’s requirements and responsibilities, so engage them by respecting their wishes and telling them what’s in it for them. Describe what they will get to do, learn and accomplish in your organization and its opening and with whom they will get to work and how they will be recognized for their contribution.

Number 4. Show the reader that your organization is courteous. Top performers don’t like being left in the dark or ignored when they apply for an opening, so engage them by treating them as politely as you would a guest. State that your organization will acknowledge the receipt of their application and provide the email address from which it will arrive so they can ensure it doesn’t get caught in their spam filter.

A job posting works best when it operates as a talent engagement platform rather than as an advertisement or announcement. And, engagement is best achieved with a posting that uses both vocabulary and content to convey an organization’s respect for the reader.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit Peter at Weddles

Thanks for sharing Peter. Keep up the advocacy for a positive and respectful candidate experience.

May 11, 2012

CSI: Recruiting – Candidate Science Investigation

The popular TV show CSI has created a fascination with the science behind crime scene investigation. It has raised interest and awareness to the science of forensics, or as Webster defines it: the use of science and technology to investigate and establish facts. In law, decisions should be supported with evidence.

Forensics for Recruiting

The result of this TV series has been an explosion in enrollment in criminal justice and law enforcement related programs at colleges and technical schools across the country. The outcome will be a flood of graduates imbued with knowledge and skills, hopeful about being hired by leading edge crime fighting police departments who want more science in their prosecution. In recruiting, hiring decisions should be based upon evidence supported with sound data collection and analysis too.

A similar science-based approach for establishing decision support evidence is available for recruiters: Industrial/Organizational Psychology (I/O Psych). These professionals are the CSI: Recruiting specialists – Candidate Science Investigators

This professional discipline was established in the early 20^th century, to apply psychological principles and techniques to business and industrial problems, as in the selection of personnel. Before crime investigator forensics hit prime time TV, forensic specialists worked quietly behind the scenes improving the quality of data collected and used to build a case. Industrial/Organizational Psychologists (I/O Psych) are quietly at work around the world, building data collection methods that improve the quality of hire with selection science. These professionals design the data collection methods called assessment.

Every law department has someone trained in forensics because they know better evidence improves the decision in our justice process. Will it take a fast paced TV series before companies sit up and take notice of the work being done by CSI Recruiting?

Doctorate degrees have been offered in I/O Psych for over 80 years. These graduates have been snapped up by leading edge companies who understand the competitive advantage of more science in their recruiting process. The evidence of I/O Psych’s contribution is compelling.

Here are a few simple examples from our work with selection science and HR Analytics that shed a bit of light on to the potential of better candidate data.

A retail operation with thousands of stores had been using a candidate screening criteria of “years of experience in a similar industry.” Intuitively, every one thought it had made sense. However, during a recent study by a team of I/O Psychologists, evidence determined that the longer a candidate had been in the similar industry, the less likely they were to be an above average contributor at this firm.

Similarly, in a capital equipment field sales representative position, the company had established screening criteria of hiring people who had worked for the major competitors. After an investigation by a team of I/O Psychologists, the evidence demonstrated the longer a candidate had worked for the competition, the less likely they were to be an above average performer.

Ironically, “related experience” is often a candidate screening criteria. In both cases, using that factor places positive weight on a evaluation criteria with negative value. The CSI Recuiting teams had been chasing bad leads, intuitive assumptions, proved wrong by evidence.

In both cases, the evidence collection process was dramatically improved across a broad range of factors that contributed to a better quality of hire through CSI.

More examples can be found on our case study page.

Crime scene investigation is typically more like making one high stakes hiring decision. The consequence of the decision can be significant. The approach used to leverage I/O psychology varies depending on the scale of the staffing process. A once every few years hiring decision requires a different solution than staffing processes which make hundreds or even thousands of hiring decisions every year.

If your company has a job or job family with over 100 employees in it, I/O psychology can begin to add measurable impact on performance with each hiring decision. If you have a job with thousands of employees engaged in fundamentally the same work, it could be the basis for a charge of Recruiter Negligence for not engaging an I/O psychologist. In high volume hiring processes, the size of the data set, the frequency of decision making, and the potential for significant performance variation almost mandated Candidate Science Investigation. Click here to review some criteria to consider to determine if CSI is appropriate for your recruiting situation.

The decision to hire will always be an act of personal judgment. However, every executive knows a decision is only as good at the data behind it. There is a great opportunity for staffing process owners to do real CSI: Candidate Science Investigation. Without the use of selection science, data collection and analysis, recruiting could be activity without insight.

Watch our movie to learn more.

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | May 11th, 2012
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, Tags: assessment HR Analytics industrial organizational psychologist recruiting selection science SIOP | Posted in Client Case Studies, HR Analytics, I/O Psychology

May 10, 2011

Are You Measuring Your Candidate Experience?

I have been writing about the candidate experience. As such, I thought it might be good to go back to the first look we took at how companies evaluate or think about the candidate experience.

We conducted a survey of attendees at the Taleo World 2008 User Conference in Boston, MA. The purpose of the survey was to assess the degree to which organizations are evaluating the candidate experience and measuring the economic impact of staffing process waste or early turnover. Given the expanding focus on the Candidate Experience, it seemed fitting to share the results again.

As a sponsor and exhibitor of the conference, we asked recruiting professionals who visited our booth to complete a five-question survey. Three multiple-choice questions explored candidate experience issues and two questions examined 120-day turnover.

Observations and Assertions

The data suggests that the vast majority of companies (86%) do not ask candidates for feedback about their on-line employ-ment experience. In spite of a lack of candidate feedback, a surprisingly large group, (29%) believe their candidate experience is so positive that it creates referrals and viral marketing. The survey did not explore referral rate issues, so we are left to contemplate why this belief is held.

The survey asked if a multi-media realistic job preview (RJP) was part of their on-line candidate experience. An RJP presents a balanced look at the job, describing both the rewarding and satisfying, as well as the challenging and demanding elements of the job. Ninety-four percent (94%) of respondents said no. This is further evidence of significant room for improving the interactive and informative nature of the candidate experience. Web 2.0 re-cruiting implies a more engaging user experience. Web 2.0 recruiting might include job-specific video, streaming audio, and animated images which engage and educate the candidate.

The 120-day separation rate is one measure of hiring decision effectiveness. A total of 57% of respondents stated that their company tracks and reports this data. This is contrasted with 72% of respondents stating they do not know the cost of on- boarding a new employee into a high-turnover position. Respondents who did offer an on-boarding cost dollar figure, created a range from a difficult to imagine low of $300 to a high-end figure of $29,000 in addition to the often quoted estimate of 1.5 times salary.

As a firm, we are quite interested in the economics of early turnover. We believe that more attention should be given to this staffing process outcome. Reporting turnover as a percentage obscures the economic impact of hiring decisions which result in early separations and further blurs lines of responsibility and ownership of this result. Multiplying the cost of on-boarding times the number of 120-day separations calculates the total dollars lost from this form of staffing waste (Series on Staffing Waste).

Staffing Process Improvement

A core step in any process improvement initiative is the collection of data. The mere act of collecting data begins to change the process, according to W. Edwards Deming. Determining which data to collect, by its nature establishes a sense of significance and a focus. One source of data for staffing process improvement is the candidate’s reaction to your on-line experience. If you want to create a better candidate experience, begin by finding out how candidates view your current experience.

Candidate Experience Factors

Candidates are decision makers too. Your application process should provide candidates with the information they need to make a sound career decision. Questions you might consider asking include:

Did you experience any problems with our on-line process? (Ease of use)
Are you in a better position to decide if this job is right for you? (Educational)
Based upon this experience will you refer others to opportunities here? (Exceptional)
Please provide any comments on your application experience. (Evaluative)

Data can be used to zero in on improvement opportunities, create testimonials within the careers page and support sourcing efforts. Examples of candidate responses may look like this.

Open-Ended Responses

“I think the virtual job tryout is great! I really like that (Company) gives you an example of what you are expected to do before you even step foot into their offices. It is a very good factor in deciding if this is the right job for you!”

“I really enjoyed this way of getting to know the job. It allowed me to see what it will be like to work for your company. Thank you for the opportunity.”

Staffing Economics

Staffing is a business process. As such, the process has inputs or candidates and candidate data. It has value-add procedures such as candidate evaluation, decision-making, and on-boarding. In addition, the output of the staffing process can be measured in terms of separations (voluntary and involuntary), and perform-ance variation of those who remain on the job.

Separations that occur in 120 days or fewer can be labeled as False Starts and can be measured as a form of staffing process waste. For purposes of discussion, one might compare hiring decisions that result in early separations (<120 days) to the manufacturing of defective products. The raw goods are lost and new goods must be put back into the process, causing rework. Staffing waste triggers rework in the form of replacement hires which doubles the cost of talent. Staffing rework is repeating the process elements of sourcing, evaluating, decision making and on-boarding for the False Starts.

Many of our clients have documented the cost of on-boarding. We define this as the investment in time to proficiency. How long and how much does it cost to create a competent performer? The timeline ranges from a few weeks to two years. The methodologies used to arrive at these dollar figures range from an informed esti-mate to the identification and linking of general ledger accounting codes in conjunction with a black belt Six Sigma project. Organizational belief in and acceptance of the figure is an important factor in each of these examples. Calculations and projections based upon these figures become the agreed upon basis for projecting and calculating return on invest from staffing process improvement.

Cost of On-Boarding

Investment to Proficiency

When you know the real costs of on-boarding, it is easy to develop return on investment projections. As an example, reducing 120-day turnover of tellers by 10 people would save $100,000 in on-boarding costs from replacement hires (10 X $10,000 = $100,000). See our interactive Staffing Waste ROI Calculator.

Opportunity

The candidate experience can make a difference in your recruiting process. However, if you don’t ask, there is no data to use for process improvement.

The results of this survey speak more to the great opportunity before us than to the kudos that can be taken for best in class staffing practices. There is room for improvement. Wiser approaches to the business process known as staffing can be adopted.

Start small. Identify one job as the focus for process improvement.
Explore the ability of your applicant tracking system (ATS) to conduct candidate surveys. Decide what information would be valuable and develop a survey process.
Collaborate with the CFO to isolate general ledger codes that can be tied to the cost of on-boarding. Examine the possibilities to create new cost reporting for jobs with high 120-day separation rates.
Partner with your Quality, Process Improvement or Six Sigma teams to examine staffing as a process. Document inputs, value-add methods and outputs or yields. Begin to track, document and report current state and changes over time.

Notes

The results of the survey are a small glimpse into the practices of a recruiting niche: Taleo customers and prospects (Sample size is 35 of about 500+ attendees, or approximately 7%). Given the size of the entire recruiting universe, this data is not presented as a statistically significant look at recruiting practices. However, we do believe the responses are representative of common practices in corporate recruiting today, and the results are similar to other surveys we have conducted with larger sample sizes. (Shaker Consulting Group and The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM); Quality of Hire, N = 585, 2004; Objective Candidate Evaluation Methods, N = 282, 2005; The Turnover Misnomer, N = 645, 2006). Contact us at info@shakercg.com for copies of these additional survey reports.

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | May 10th, 2011
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, Tags: Candidate Experience realistic job preview recruiting staffing process improvement staffing waste | Posted in Candidate Experience, HR Analytics, Surveys

March 9, 2011

Candidate Experience – The Big Seven Process Expectations, Part 2 of 6

This is Part Two of a series connnect to the Candidate Experience Monograph

We believe one of the customers in the business process called staffing is the candidate. And being interested in customer expectations, we asked job seekers what were the most critical bits of information they wanted to know about their application process. Their responses are not real surprising, but they may pose a challenge to recruiters, in particular, recruiters with high applicant-to-hire ratios.

In this second in a series, I will share the job seeker’s top seven expectations of what they want to know about their application, but first, I digress.

Back in the day, before the web, I would hang a sign in the front door of our building – Not taking applications at this time. I did not want to deal with a pile of applications from walk-in candidates that I had no use for at the moment. I did not want to establish expectations that the prospect of a job existed either.

My predecessor had filled part of a file drawer with a number of pre-printed no-thank you letters, organized by job family, to send to those individuals who sent in unsolicited resumes. My assistant would slip one of these thoughtfully crafted letters into the typewriter and quickly drop in a name and address. I’d sign it and the post office would deliver it. In a few days, the candidate knew I had received their resume and that we were not hiring at the time, or that we had no position that met their qualifications. It seemed efficient, respectful and was considered common courtesy. There was an implied social contract: “when I put effort into expressing interest in your firm, please acknowledge me.” Now that whole process can be done not to one, but to large groups with a few mouse clicks.

30 years later the resume spam funnel is wide open, some requisitions are never closed, social media and extravagant sourcing campaigns pour millions of applications into ever increasing cloud-based web farms hosting applicant tracking systems databases. Companies no longer really know who has applied, but candidates still want to know one thing – “Did you get my application?”

The Big Seven

What job seekers want to know about their application

The big seven job seeker expectations were determined from process communication factors rated as critical need to know by 80% or more of the survey respondents.
1. Do you receive my application?
2. When will I hear back from you?
3. Have I been knocked out of the process?
4. What is the time frame for filling the job?
5. What is the next step in the process?
6. Has anyone actually looked at my application?
7. Where am I in the process?

Did you receive my application?
Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. Every Apply Now click carries with it a degree of hope, an edge of anticipation, maybe even desperation. Next month’s mortgage payment may be riding on obtaining a job.

Candidates have to commit time and energy to get into your digital lobby and drop an application in the box. Most ATS or CRM systems have a login and profile creation step. The paste a resume or, recreate a resume functions also require effort. Then there are the minimum qualification questions, the EEO self report questions, the legal right to work questions, the willingness to provide biological samples, the allow us to check out your bill paying history questions and is it OK if we fire you if we found out you lied on any of these questions question. After heading down this one-way information drain and answering all those questions, finally getting to the SUBMIT button, the candidate has one important question for you. “Did you get it?” They want a two-way exhange. Some common courtesy.

Each touch-point with your careers page leaves a brand impression. How you respond to each candidate can be brand positive or brand negative. As a frame of reference on brand impression, sit down with your senior brand executive and review the candidate flow from one requistion. Describe the number of acknowledged and unacknowledged candidates. Then have a dialogue on what system and process the brand executive has in place to communicate with every individual that requests information about your company. There may be a lesson in brand experience management that can have implications on your candidate experience.

When will I hear back from you?
Job seekers have a life. And they may want to make plans, commit to various events, opportunities or alternative options. Bring back the hope or desperation factor and again, put yourself in their shoes. Your door was open and you took my application. What is the timeline here.

Addressing the need to be acknowledged by letting candidates know you have their application allows you to also include a timeline. When I was involved in the staffing process at a Fortune 300 company, our practice was to always use the sundown clause. “We will be contacting the most qualified candidates no later than (DATE). Granted, it is a more subtle version of “If you don’t hear from me by Friday, you are out of the race.” But, it established a degree of understanding in the candidate’s mind.

Your job posting or application process overview can provide timeline expectations. You can use sundown clauses on-line: This position will be filled by DATE. Or Interviews for candidates advancing in our process will be conducted by DATE.

And of course there is always the Select All> Disposition>Send. Use the mass communication features at your disposal. Extend some common courtesy.

Have I been knocked out of the process?
Job seekers, for the most part, are grown-ups. In or out, let them know where they stand. The benefit is better time management for all involved.

When I worked with sales teams, I would implement periodic ‘kill the maybe’ initiatives. Sales reps were invited to contact indecisive prospects and customer in their territory. The objective was to get a YES or NO from every indecisive buyer in the next 30 days. Sales always had a nice upward spike and the time wasted chasing a yet to be heard NO was brought to an end.

Being strung along is a waste of everybody’s time. Candidates do not want a Maybe. Extend some common courtesy, give them the straight story.

What are the steps in your process?
Job seekers want to know the steps in your process. And they want to know where they are in your process.

Process maps are often shared in on-line applications. However, the steps often include only the sequence in the online portion of the process. Consider expanding the amount of information you provide. Let them know if you conduct phone screens, webcam interviews, on-site one on one or group/team interviews. Describe any assessment or pre-employment testing you may use. And commit to telling your candidates where they are in your process. Again, you most likely have mass communication resources in your recruiter’s tool box. Step up your two-way communications and extend the courtesy of a reply to those who answered your call. Remember, you asked them to show up and give you their contact information. So use it.

Has anybody actually looked at my application?
Careers are born from personal connections. Careers begin at the end of that process of discovery that arrives at a mutual conclusion – this job is the right fit.

Today’s application process has stripped away the opportunity to connect on a personal level for the vast majority of candidates. One of our clients can have a 500 to 1 applicant to hire ratio at times. A recruiter looks at 50, calls 10, interviews three and hires one. What about the other 450?

Have we created an uber-sourcing mentality? The staffing process has fallen victim to the more is better mind-set. What is the implied social contract in today’s ‘post and hope’ and ‘spray and pray’ job posting-job seeking exchange? Tongue in cheek I suggest this response to candidates:

“We have attracted far more candidates than we need. We cannot possibly get back to each of you on a personal level. There is a very low probability your will hear from us.”

But without any closure to your applicants, that is you message by default.

Inviting people to apply for a job creates an expectation and hope for some degree of career change intimacy. It may be the beginning of a dialogue with a storybook ending. But contrary to that invitation to career change consideration, our sourcing models create populations that are beyond the scope and scale of achieving any semblance of meaningful interpersonal exchange.

Does that mean our staffing process model is broken? Not necessarily, but it may need some attention. And your candidates definitely want some attention. As is always the case, there is room for staffing process improvement. We can deliver a better candidate experience.

For additional information on this topic visit the Candidate Experienc emonograph at CareerXroads

In the next installation of this series, I will share some insights on how candidates want to hear from you.

Part One, Part Three , Part Four, Part Five, Part Six

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | March 9th, 2011
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, Tags: Candidate Experience recruiting staffing process improvement | Posted in Candidate Experience, Surveys

March 4, 2011

Candidate Experience – Voice of the Job Seeker, Part 1 of 6

This is Part One in a series connected to the Candidate Experience Monograph

We conducted a candidate expectations survey in 2010. There is a lot of dialogue about the candidate experience from the recruiter’s perspective. However due to high applicant to hire ratios at most organizations, fewer than 10% of candidates ever speak with a recruiter. The survey we conducted deals predominantly with job seeker expectations for the online portions of the candidate experience.

A few years ago I conducted a rather small survey, more of an anecdotal look at the practice of asking job applicants about their candidate experience. At that time, the vast majority of companies I spoke with did not seek feedback from candidates. New hires, yes. But new hires are the ones who ‘won’. I bet this group thinks the candidate experience is pretty darn good! It seemed only fitting that the entire candidate population have a voice in the dialogue too. So we asked the job seeker for their point of view.

We targeted college seniors, unemployed and active job seekers with the assistance of Rob Minjock, an intern from Saint Vincent College. Over 300 individuals responded between July and October of 2010. I will share the results over a series of articles. Read on to learn what job seekers stated they want in their candidate experience.

Who Responded?

N= 305 – 316

Age

59% – 18 to 23 years old
33% – over 40

Gender

47% male
53% female

Ethnic origin

89% Caucasian
3.5% African American
2.5% Hispanic
2.5% Asian

Education

41% some college
31% bachelors degree
11% masters degree
2% doctorate degree

Employment Status

41% Student
20% unemployed
34% employed full-time
21% employed part-time

The group includes a diverse mix of gender, age, education and employment status. However, the ethnic mix includes a predominantly Caucasian sample.

Career Site Basics

What Do You Expect to Find on the Careers Page

Candidates have pretty basic expectations for the Careers page. They want to find details about jobs, and most companies are pretty good about that. However, 64% of candidates want recruiter names and contact information. And most companies are rather stingy with that information.

Gerry Crispin along with a group of collaborator has written a monograph on the Candidate Experience. It provides examples of companies that are working hard to address an improved candidate experience.

I just reviewed a client’s candidate flow data. They attracted over 12,000 candidates and made 151 hires for one call center position. There are 4 recruiters in the company. It is easy to see their reluctance of offer 12,000 candidates the e-mail and phone number of four recruiters. Hiring just over one percent of your candidates can make for communication challenges. Tools scaled and automated to this scope must be used effectively to leave candidates with a brand positive experience. As I wrote in an earlier blog, in some respects, recruiting is the business of rejection. How you handle that rejection process can make a big difference in the candidate experience you deliver, and the impression you leave with the 90+% who do not land a job.

Dispositioning candidates and using the mass communication features of candidate management system are essential best practices. That topic will be covered in more detail in the next issue of this series: Critical Process Information

Our question regarding FAQ, admittedly was vague, but the interest in having FAQs on the careers site is pretty high. Fifty-five percent of respondents have questions about your recruiting process and they want answers. You may want to use FAQ to establish expectations: Will a recruiter contact me personally? Will you let me know you have reviewed my application? Will you let me know if I have been eliminated? and so on.

About half of the respondents stated that training and development (51%) and career path insights (47%) are important. This may demonstrate an underlying interest in growth and progression. It’s not just about the job, but more about what will I learn and where the job will lead. People want to have some line of sight to their future. In each job description you might provide a few details to where people in this job have naturally progressed within the company.

The big surprise to me was how low the expectations are for testimonials from current employees, both written and video. Over the last 5 years or so, there has been an explosion of testimonial and realistic job preview activity on corporate career pages. My take on this is the down side of marketing spin in the message.

Testimonials are a form of realistic job preview. I have written about realistic job preview and the balanced (or lack of balance) in the message about the job and the company. When marketing overrides realism, the message goes from Help to Hype. Candidates are pretty savvy. They see through the hype and react with a bit of skepticism.

The automation of the application process has dehumanized career pursuit. The strongly held desire to have contact information for recruiters is evidence that a personal connection is highly valued. Given the volume of candidates, it is important to look at your candidate experience and explore ways to build a connection, and provide information. Ask your candidates what would be of value to them.

In the next part of this series we will examine: Critical Process Information. Candidates tell us what they want to know about their application.

Part II, Part Three, Part Four. Part Five, Part Six

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | March 4th, 2011
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, Tags: Candidate Experience realistic job preview recruiting staffing process improvement | Posted in Candidate Experience, Surveys

January 30, 2011

Do We Need Internal Recruiting? Ask the CFO.

Kevin Wheeler posted an article on ERE that got the recruiting community fired up. He asked, “Do we need Internal Recruting at all?” His premise seems to rest with effectiveness, accountability and differentiation that a recruiting function may or may not deliver.

With 32 comments as of this post, it ranks near the top of the charts for getting folks riled up.

Here are my two cents, with a few more details than what I posted on ERE.

The dialogue is all good. It may be like the question about cars, is it better to buy or lease? And the answer is: It depends.

Kevin’s main point may really be rooted in economics. When an internal team has the same mandate to measure, track and report economic impact that an external provider does, there is most likely performance parity.

Unfortunately, the issue lies with the fact that many CFOs and CEOs do not hold internal recruiting teams accountable to document contribution and deliver continuous staffing process improvement. And without a mandate for economic accountability, the accounting infrastructure to document contribution is often lacking. A vice president of sales or manufacturing would never be allowed to operate with the poor economic reporting and accounting infrastructure that is deployed for the business process of recruiting. As such, it is common for internal recruiting teams to use ATS based reporting, thus relying on activity based measures instead of economic measures.

Henry David Thoreau gives us words to ponder for this situation: “It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”

One gauge we use to explore the economic accountability of a recruiting team is how literate they are about job-specific performance metrics and how quickly they can access data sets of performance metrics. Ask a staffing professional, internal or external, if they measure and report on the cost of time to proficiency (total investment from sourcing to self-sufficient performance) for the position with the highest hiring volume. Ask who owns the budget for staffing waste. The answers to those questions reveal a great deal about the accountability expectations set by the CFO and CEO for recruiting.

Reporting on days to fill, requisitions open, requisitions per recruiter, and opinion-based quality of hire while good to know are a bit like busy ant metrics. Recruiters with economic accountability use HR analytics to document and report reductions in staffing waste and rework, increased yield in new hire productivity, reduced time to proficiency, increases in job family average performance metrics and the like.

From my experience, corporate resources flow to those who build a good business case and then document return on investment. Outside providers have to do this to earn repeat business. The best internal providers do so as well. Here is an example of how Key Bank documented high ROI from using pre-employment testing as a form of measurement rigor to reduce staffing waste.

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | January 30th, 2011
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, Tags: HR Analytics pre-employment testing Quality of Hire recruiting ROI staffing process improvement | Posted in General, HR Analytics, Recruiter Experience

May 17, 2010

Eskenazi on Improving the Candidate Experience

Jeremy Eskenazi of Riviera Advisors has over 20 years of experience in staffing process improvement. As the former leader of staffing for Idealab, Amazon and Unversal Studios, Jeremy has learned a few things about creating powerful candidate experiences. He suggests you tell the candidate that you will solicit their feedback, and then make good on your promise.

I caught up with Jeremy at the Staffing Management Conference in Orlando. He offers a few thoughtful points on what can be done to improve the candidate experience.

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | May 17th, 2010
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, Tags: Candidate Experience recruiting | Posted in Candidate Experience, Conferences, Videos

April 21, 2010

Crispin on Improving the Candidate Experience

We are interested in staffing process improvement. One element of the staffing process is the candidate experience. I have been asking a number of people for one or two suggestions on what can be done to improve the candidate experience.

Gerry Crispin suggests we begin with defining the candidate experience.

This is our first installment in a series called Thoughtful People Speak Out. Come back to hear what others have to say. Share your thoughts and reactions, or contact me to Speak Out.

Posted by: Joseph P. Murphy | April 21st, 2010
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, Tags: Candidate Experience recruiting | Posted in Candidate Experience, General, Videos

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