Bright Recruiter: Articles

It's time to hire. So you write a killer job description, post it on the job boards, source additional candidates online, and maybe even work with a staffing agency to get great people in for interviews. It's a long process - about 60 days for most companies - and it keeps you constantly scrambling to find top talent.

Well, I'm going to let you in on the best known secret to hiring great candidates, faster: build a talent pipeline.

I think it's important to note here that this is NOT the same thing as having candidates in your ATS. Let's be honest, your ATS is where resumes go to die. Or at least to never see the light of day again. A talent pipeline, once built, needs to be engaged and nurtured.

How to Build a Talent Pipeline

The easiest way to start is by adding candidates you've recently interviewed, but that have not been selected to fill your position. For this reason, it's important that your candidates have a positive experience with your company throughout all of their interactions. This requires communication, at every step in the process. Without this, your candidates aren't likely to want to hear from you again.

Also include past employees in your talent pipeline. During your exit interview, ask them why they're leaving - this could provide useful data in the event that you ever want to hire them back, so long as their reason for leaving isn't a barrier to coming back on.

You may also receive unsolicited resumes from time to time, either from referral candidates, your company's customers (brand advocates can become great employees), or people that are fans of your employment brand. When you receive an unsolicited resume, make sure you reply to the candidate to let them know you don't currently have an opening, but that you will keep them in mind for future opportunities. You may also want to take the time to have a preliminary conversation about their background and goals.

Keep track of your candidates, their contact information (bonus tip: include social media handles!), and your communications with them in a way that makes sense to you, and makes it easy to reach out and engage.

How to Engage your Talent Pipeline

Once you build a talent pipeline, keep your company top of mind by keeping in touch with your candidates. This can be done on a mass scale, by sending a monthly newsletter or writing a blog, or it can be done on more of a one-on-one basis, through email or phone.

Every candidate will have a preferred method of engagement, so try to offer as many options as you're comfortable managing. You can also ask your employees to contribute - for example, writing blog posts or making phone calls to top talent to touch base.

Here are some ideas to help keep your company top of mind for your talent pipeline:

• Employment blog: Put a blog on your career site to share information about your company, what to expect in an interview, why your employees like working for the company, what the management team is like, etc. A weekly blog post should suffice, although more frequency would allow you to share more information. If you're ever in need of more content, invite a colleague to write a post!
• Email newsletter: You can repurpose your blog content into a monthly newsletter that you send to candidates to update them on anything that's happening that relates to hiring. You may also want to include any open houses or career fairs you're hosting or attending.
• Pinterest: Create one or more boards, showing candidates why they should want to work for your company. Some things to include: employee spotlights, fun perks, office pictures and employee events.
• Twitter: Create a Twitter handle just for your recruiting needs. You can use this to post jobs, interact with candidates, source candidates, share your employer blog articles, etc. One of the best ways to engage with candidates on Twitter is to create a list of candidates (I would break it down by job function, but that's up to you), and check it regularly to chat with your candidates, or at least retweet and favorite their content.
• LinkedIn: A common practice is to connect to your candidates on Linkedin, but be sure to log in to your account to interact with your connections on a regular basis. If you see that they've just celebrated a work anniversary, congratulate them. If you see they've updated their profile with a new skill, comment on why that skill is important. Also make sure you (or your marketing team) are regularly updating your Linkedin company page with relevant information, including articles from your employment blog.

Encourage your talent pipeline to follow you anywhere you share your employment brand, and include links on your career page and in your email signatures to get a better reach, and to have people to engage with.

How to Reach out to Talent from your Pipeline, When the Time Comes

When you do finally need to reach out to people in your talent pipeline, do so with the intent of a friend - don't immediately assume they are interested in your opportunity.

Say hi, remind them how you are connected (either a past interview, a referral, etc), ask where they're at, what they're doing, and what they think of the company. Only once they respond (and if you genuinely think there would be a mutual interest), ask if they would be interested in your position. If it doesn't seem like the opportunity will be a good fit for them, tell them you're hiring, mention you wanted to see if they'd be interested but understand if they're not, and ask if they can refer someone to you.

When reaching out to past candidates, remind them of their past interview, why you liked them, and why you think they'd be a good fit for this new role. Do the same with past employees, but also address the reason they left so they know what's changed. Be sure to include some information on why they should consider your opportunity - really sell them on your company!

If this communication does not turn into an interview, ask the candidate if you can follow up with future opportunities, and make note of the conversation in whichever tool you're using to manage your talent pipeline (ATS, Excel, etc).

Why it's Important to do This Right

While building and maintaining a talent pipeline seems like a lot of extra work, you will see that all your hard work sourcing candidates will go a lot further. Not only will you have a talent pool ready when you need to fill a position, you will have the upper hand in recruiting top talent. As the war for talent continues, your employment branding and candidate engagement efforts can give you an advantage over your competitors, who may be going after the same talent. If two companies are competing in the same talent pool, the one that has built and maintained candidate relationships will have the upper hand.

Of course, there are also some less well known secrets to finding talent faster, like using Bright Recruiter - simply upload your job description and we'll instantly surface candidates whose resumes match your opening. No more waiting for applications, or sourcing through passive talent databases that don't have a decent response rate. Try it for free!

Twitter is, hands down, my favorite social network. It's a great source of information and learning, and a wonderful way to connect with people who share similar interests. As a recruiter, it's also great for sourcing candidates. Despite the concise nature of the tool, there's a wealth of data to be found - if you know where and how to look.

Twitter's Advanced Search

Start with Twitter's advanced search.

Let's say you're searching for an email marketing manager in San Francisco who specializes in marketing automation - just type what you're looking for into the various fields to search both tweets and people that match those keywords (alternatively, I can just type marketing automation near:"San Francisco, CA" within:15mi into the search bar at the top).

These are the results I came up with:

The first one is a promoted tweet, which has no mention of my keywords - so I just ignore it. But the next three are very interesting indeed.

1. Josh Mack is a marketing professional in San Francisco. Upon further review of his Twitter page, there isn't a whole lot of information about what he does, but it looks like he works for Shutterfly. No problem, he comes up first in my search for him on Linkedin - and I can easily find that he's the CRM Manager at Shutterfly. He is responsible for managing "all lifecycle and automated CRM email marketing campaigns" - cha-ching! Sounds like a great candidate to reach out to.
2. The second tweet belongs to Carly Guarcello. Again - not a ton of information about her professional background, but it's clear that she works for Achievers. A quick Linkedin search later, and we've found that she's the Marketing Automation and Campaign Specialist over there - boo-yah!
3. And the third result could potentially be the best of them all! Mitch Patel is a self-proclaimed "modern marketer" at Eloqua, which happens to be a top of the line marketing automation vendor. His knowledge of marketing automation tools and best practices has got to be astronomical, plus I'd bet he knows a TON of marketing automation professionals. Goldmine!

Now, I do want to include a disclaimer here that I'm searching for marketing people, who are most likely to be on Twitter and Linkedin - which has contributed significantly to how easy this search was. You are not likely to have this kind of luck for every position you're looking to fill - and you should keep mental notes of which positions Twitter works well for, and when you should source elsewhere. OK, back to the article...

You've Found Great Candidates, Now What?

1. Start by responding to the tweet you found from your search - and keep it short (140 characters!) and catchy. Something like, "Your enthusiasm for marketing automation is exactly what we need @BrightJobs! Interested in a chat? We're tons of fun http://goo.gl/Q0lkv".
2. Add each candidate to a Twitter list so you can easily keep track of who you're interested in, and keep up good engagement with them. Get their attention by retweeting, favoriting or replying to some of their other tweets.
3. Follow up later in the week if you haven't heard back. Sometimes, candidates don't contact you back because they were busy and forgot, or your message slipped by them undetected - don't let a great prospective candidate slip away just because you didn't connect on your first try! At this point, it's recommended that you also try a different medium of engagement - perhaps a phone call or email, if you can find it - just make sure you reference your original message on Twitter.

Reaching out via Twitter works because most in-demand candidates aren't being bombarded on Twitter, like they are on Linkedin, and it's very quick and easy for them to respond. Although you can't include much information to sell your candidate on working for your company, you can easily provide a link with additional information and next steps.

Do you use Twitter for recruitment? Share your experiences and best practices below!

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to cut off employee’s current work from home arrangements. While most of the talk is condemning her action, there are some who agree with it – including Yahoo! employees.

The big issue with this sort of change is that many don’t consider it a luxury to work from home – they accepted the position under the impression that they would be able to work remotely – either because they don’t live near a Yahoo! office, because they are working parents, or any other variety of reasons. Makes sense they’d be peeved.

However, some people were abusing the privilege. Marissa found that remote employees were slacking off by consulting the VPN logs and made the decision based on cold, hard data. She’s under a lot of pressure to turn the company around, and believed that this decision was necessary for the good of the company.

Sure, she could have just fired those found to be abusing the system, but it goes further than that – she wants to take this opportunity to create a more communicative and collaborative culture.

To quote the memo, “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

Marissa didn’t have the luxury of setting these expectations from the beginning, but she is now tasked with making changes that will turn the company around – and she believes this this change in culture is part of the solution. As the CEO, she is responsible for ensuring that Yahoo! attracts and retains the employees that fit in with the culture and expectations to ensure the continued growth and success of the company.

Those that don’t fit in with this culture are encouraged to find one at another company that will be a better fit. In the wrong environment, a person's talents and abilities won't be fully utilized. A person that prefers to work alone cannot, and will not, flourish in a collaborative culture - which brings them, their team, and, potentially, the entire company down.

Marissa knows that the company culture affects the kinds of candidates Yahoo! will attract, and is making the necessary changes now to ensure that she gets the right people into the organization.

Often we see articles about recruiting passive candidates. The perception is that active candidates are not as desirable as their working counterparts.

Allyson Doyle, Contributor for About.com wrote, “Employers often actively seek passive candidates for employment, especially when they are seeking candidates with very specific skills and experience.”

Does that mean that active candidates are no good? Before making a premature judgment, please read on - It VERY important not to discount active candidates.

Manisha Gupta, on her LinkedIn article “Passive Talent – Not as Passive as you Think”, brought up a very important point. “…if you focus only on the passive talent pool (which comprises about 80 percent of the fully-employed workforce), you’ll find those who are truly ‘approachable’ (whether ‘Tiptoers’ or ‘Explorers’) far outnumber the ‘Super-Passives’ who claim they’re not interested in even discussing a move.” Most of these candidates are actually somewhat active.

Active candidates are usually inundated with calls by sourcers and recruiters for the same jobs all day. Because of this, active candidates can be “slippery” and hard to pin down. Honestly, it can take even more time to properly recruit candidates that are on the prowl than their more passive peers. I have always prided myself on having no candidate not accept an offer I presented. (ok maybe 4 in my career) The reason I can claim this, like quite a number of my peers, is because, I have never presented an offer to a candidate that I had not had on lock down.

Let’s look at four of the steps that you must do if you want your candidates to “stick.”

1. Get ALL the Red Flags out of the way during discovery. Most candidates that are actively looking could also be actively interviewing. They say Monday night they can interview on Tuesday. But when you call them on Tuesday, you find out they got a job! (Ouch!) If you are sure this is THE candidate, do a deep DEEP dive when getting to know your candidate. You need to know what they want in their career and whether or not you can provide it!
2. Talk to them every day!! Lead with the question: “Has anything changed since I talked to you yesterday?”
3. Assume that they have interviewed and/or received offers. “Where are you interviewing today?  Turn down any offers? Any pending?”
4. Repeat during each conversation the “specs”: “To follow up, I have submitted your resume to [Company Name or Hiring Manager Name] for the [Job Title]. You can interview at [times and days given to you by candidate] and if everything goes well, you are able to accept the position at [company name] in [city] for an annual (hourly) salary of [$$$$].

It really does need to be everyday by the way. And then 2x a week the first 2 weeks and once a week for the next 2 weeks at a minimum. Sourcers and recruiters remember the candidate is your product. Make sure before every placement you know what you are selling.