Bright Recruiter: Articles

With all of the candidates you’ve likely found through your job postings, referrals and proactive sourcing methods, it may be a daunting task to try to communicate with all of them. But effective communication is key to keeping your top talent interested, while not hurting your employer brand by ignoring the unqualified candidates. Anyone that applies for a job at your company, or speaks to you regarding a new opportunity, wants to know what to expect next. And, with all the technology available today, it’s simply unacceptable not to communicate. The good news is, technology has made it really easy to communicate next steps to each and every one of your candidates.

While larger companies generally have an ATS to send automated messages, smaller companies also have some great, free or low cost options, such as SmartRecruiters. These tools are great because they allow you to keep all of your candidates in one place (versus some in CareerBuilder, others on Linkedin, and even more still in your email inbox), and message all of them from one place. From each stage in your recruitment process, you'll need to use these tools to communicate what the candidate should expect next. So quickly take note of each step in your process, figure out how long you spend in each step, and decide what comes next. Most processes look something like this:

Step 1: Post job and collect applications. Proactively source candidates. Ask for employee referrals.

Best practice: Upon resume submission, send an email to let the candidate know that it was received and that you will be reviewing resumes until [date]. This time period should be under 1 week, or you will risk losing your top candidates. Since passive candidates that come from proactive sourcing or referrals likely won't submit a resume, communicate the next steps during your initial phone call. Make sure you follow up with everyone on, or before, that date to let them know whether they are moving on to the next step.

At the very least, make sure the job description says that you will be reviewing resumes until [date] and only candidates that are under consideration will be contacted. However, you should still personally follow up with candidates that were found by you or your employees.

Step 2: Phone Screen(s).

Best practice: As mentioned above, try to pick your shortlist of candidates and get to the next phase of the recruiting process within a week (shorter time period is better). You should call or send an email to your shortlist to schedule a time to speak, while also sending emails to all other candidates to let them know they are no longer under consideration.

At the end of the phone screen, let candidates know the next step (usually an in-person interview, or a second phone screen with the hiring manager) and timing. Make sure to ask the candidate if they are currently considering any other offers, and speed up your process for that candidate, if necessary.

Step 3: In-person interview(s).

Best practice: Move to this step as quickly as possible, you don't want to lose the top candidates you've already worked so hard to attract. At the end of the interview process, let the candidate know when they should expect to hear back from you with a decision. This should be within a few days, tops - which will give you the opportunity to check references and discuss with your team.

Step 4: Offer.

This is perhaps the hardest part of the recruitment process, especially if you've done everything right and have only top candidates to consider. However, this is not the time to slow down. Top candidates may be considering other offers and you want to make sure you get the pick of the litter.

Once you make your decision, every single person you interviewed should be personally followed up with, either via phone or email - you don't want to leave anyone hanging, especially after they've invested so much of their time and energy into interviewing with your company. This is particularly important for your employment brand because anyone that's gotten this far in your recruitment process is likely very interested in working for your company.

By providing a great candidate experience, not only to these people - but also to those didn't get this far - you are able to grow a talent pool from which to recruit for future positions, as well as creating an advocate for your company.

Succeeding in today’s business climate requires companies to find and retain individuals that possess incredible talent, unrivalled passion, fierce commitment and immense brain-power. And with the competitive recruiting environment currently facing many organizations, losing time, money and resources on an inadequate hire isn’t an option.

So, as a human resources professional, what steps should you take to ensure your hiring process results in the most talented individuals?

Optimize your Process

Have you ever considered the number of potential applicants that may have lost interest in your company simply from the user-friendliness of your hiring process? Hour long assessments, faulty communication, too many decision makers and lack of a standardized process can easily push quality candidates far away from your doors.

For companies, this doesn’t mean interview everyone that applies for a position, but implement a process to filter potential hires from those that don’t fit your company goals, objectives and values.

To ensure your hiring process is optimized and that you are spending time with serious candidates, prepare assessments that truly measure value – a resume screening, quick online assessment, screening interview and reference checks before the final interview, while being prepared to make an offer within 48 hours of the final interview.

Learn To Market

Before the application process and even prior to performing due diligence, potential applicants need to know a job exists – which is easier said than done for smaller companies.

An organization needs to attract and retain skilled employees just like a marketing department does customers. Through advertising (pay-per-click, social and traditional), social media interaction, email marketing campaigns, SEO (search engine optimization) and mobile advertising, human resources departments can reach outside their prospective candidate pools and acquire talented individuals that they wouldn’t have otherwise .

Traditionally, marketing tactics like these have only been employed by large organizations that have the budget; however, with technological changes in recent years, almost any company can utilize their brand as a marketing strategy to pull in top prospects that are traditionally outside of their reach while spending little to nothing.

For example, one highly-innovative tactic that Veterans United created to enhance reach is through the use of Virtual Career Fairs. By utilizing the Hangouts feature on Google Plus, interested applicants can now see the inner workings of the company they wish to work for.

What to Look For

Unfortunately, not every applicant results in an exemplary candidate; however, many times you can catch this right away. What about the candidate that has exceptional presentation skills and the ability to flatter a human resources manager into a job they aren’t qualified for?

There are a select few qualities I look for in every job interview. First off, look for passion, personality and creative ability. Many skills can be taught, but these are developed.

Other qualities to consider involve searching out competencies, skills, experiences and education in relation to the job description; compatibility with clients, partners, co-workers, values and company culture; and the applicant’s pleasure for doing their job. 

Cultivate Company Culture

Fostering an extraordinary company culture can attract more talent than you can ever imagine – which has been the experience of Veterans United Home Loans, recently named the 21^st best place to work by Fortune Magazine.

Veterans United has built a culture surrounded by values that focus on their employees, the community and the end user. Staples of the company’s culture include a relaxed atmosphere, weekly massages, an on-staff life-balance coordinator, complimentary gym memberships and an employee supported and sponsored non-profit foundation.

Perks like this, in addition to 42 percent of jobs being filled through internal promotions, make Veterans United a beacon for recruiting and retaining employees.

What any Human Resources executive can take away from this is that a culture that places employees first, provides a bevy of accessible resources, maximizes the potential of current employees and sets expectations with unfaltering values will find a way to attract talented individuals.

This type of workforce lies in the ability of Human Resources professionals to effectively recognize and manage human capital, while enacting procedures that allow organizational teams to become more efficient and productive in the process. Step outside of the box and attract quality applicants that can be true contributors to the success of co-workers, company and the community.

About the author:

August Nielsen is the human resources manager for Veterans United Home Loans, and is responsible for hiring over 1,000 employees in the past five years for a company recently named the #1 job creator nationally in the financial industry by Inc. Magazine as well as making the Great Place to Work top 25. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Google+.

The most challenging positions to recruit for are often the newest hot profession.  It must have been fun to find a silicon semiconductor specialist in 1954 -- who wanted to study sand before the transistor was invented?  An HTML expert in 1996? SGML experts all had cushy government jobs or worked for publishers.  In the last two years, a new creature known as the "data scientist" has emerged as one of the must have hires for many firms.  Here at Bright we have assembled an outstanding Data Science group that built our Bright Score, provides interesting data to the media and general public via Bright Labs, and causes endless grief for the engineering team that needs to scale our ideas to our users.

Let’s take a look at our science team on paper.  The team is an eclectic mix, consisting of one former nuclear physicist, one neuroscientist, one geophysicist, one astrophysicist, and a mechanical engineer.  At a glance, you may think we are trying to invent Warp Drive, and on top of that, not ONE of them had Data Scientist as their last job title.  However, each and every one of them have had years of extensive training from some of the brightest minds in the world, have conducted a countless number of hours researching, experimenting, analyzing, and documenting solutions to real world problems, and have had their work critiqued by their peers and published in academic publications.  As the old adage goes, “sometimes things are not always what they appear to be,” a statement very true when it comes to finding Data Scientists.

How does one go about hunting these camouflaged “purple squirrel” scientists?

To begin, what is a Data Scientist?  It depends who you ask.  Common (incorrect) definitions are:

1. A Hadoop expert.  To those hiring managers that are certain they need a Hadoop expert I submit @DevOps_Borat
2. A Machine Learning expert.  Every construction project does not need a hammer.
3. Kagglers

I define a Data Scientist as someone who knows just enough programming, system administration, and statistics to transform a large, possibly heterogeneous set of unstructured data into actionable intelligence or an actual product.  The Data Scientist must also have sufficient visualization and communication skills to be able to convince someone that they did it correctly.

We’ve found that one of the least effective methods for finding a Data Scientist is to log into LinkedIn and search for "Data Scientist."  There aren't that many, as Data Science is an emergent field.  There are little to no Data Scientists with 5 years experience, because the job simply did not exist (at least not in its current form).

Where, then, does one find the elusive Data Scientist?  As famed bank robber Willie Sutton once said, he robbed banks “because that's where the money is.”  If you want to find a Data Scientist, find yourself a disgruntled postdoc toiling away on brilliant scientific research, but failing to land a professorship because ... all the professor jobs are taken!  (For those of you not familiar with academia, after earning your Ph.D., you typically work for 2-6 years as a postdoctoral research fellow.  You are a semi-autonomous, but typically work under a professor that was fortunate enough to get their Ph.D. in the good old days when there were actually professorships to be had.)

Private companies that are detached from the world of academia sometimes give candidates, such as these postdocs, a hard time – having the perception that they must not be hard workers and won’t be able to keep up in fast-paced environments, because they haven’t had a “real” job.  The opposite is true, in many cases, people in academia often have to work twice as hard.  The grant funding they receive is insufficient to pay for tools that many take for granted ("You don't need that $1000 software license! Write that code yourself!").  Yes, like any other profession, there are a few slackers in academia.  There are some questions you can ask to identify and eliminate them early enough in your selection process:

1. "Tell me about some peer reviewed papers that you published as first author?"  I want people that can finish long, complicated tasks.  Nothing takes longer, or is more complicated than publishing a peer reviewed paper.  To give you an idea of what that entails, imagine all of the backstabbing people competing with you at work and in your profession, put them behind a wall of anonymity where they critique and criticize every little detail of the project you have been slaving over -- that is a peer reviewer.
2. "Tell me about some code you've written that other people use?" Academics tend to be "good enough" programmers.  I don't need it to be elegant, but I do need it to work.  The best test of whether code is "good enough" is whether at least two other people use it.
3. "Explain to me the statistical analysis you used in your thesis" Statistics are like music.  Some people play notes, some people make music.  People that really understand statistical concepts at a fundamental level usually make the best Data Scientists.  Anyone can run an Analysis of Variance in Excel, but is that really the best approach?  Ultimately, the worst thing your Data Scientist can do is get fooled by the data.

LinkedIn can still be helpful, and is particularly useful for finding a Data Scientist you respect.  Once you identify one, find their connections that are still toiling away in academia, look up their emails on the university web site (yes, they make it that easy for you), and send them an email.

What is true in sports is also true in hiring -- it is better to find a superstar in the draft than it is to find them as a free agent.  They are cheaper, and you get them during their most productive years.

David Hardtke, Ph.D., Chief Scientist

Josh Barger, PHR, Director of People Operations

According to a survey conducted by Corporate Responsibility magazine, 75% of Americans wouldn't take a job with a company that had a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed. With the top candidates getting a choice in where they work, your employment brand makes a huge difference in whether top candidates flock to your company, or whether you continue to attract more mediocre and under qualified candidates. Take Google as an example. They have a great employment brand, which helps them receive millions of applications every year, so they have their choice of the best talent in the world. According to a Webrecruit survey, 32% of employers say quality is their biggest recruitment challenge, and Google doesn’t really have that problem. That’s the power of employer branding. So, how do you get started with Employer Branding?

See Where you Stand

The first thing you should do is see where you stand. Start with your employees, and find out what they think about your company. The Saratoga Institute found that 88% of employees leave their organization for reasons other than money – so make sure you know what they like and dislike about working at your company, what keeps them there, and what might make them want to leave. Make sure you know where you stand on employee recognition, opportunities for advancement, training, management, etc. Next, survey candidates to find out about their experience with your company. Find out if they would apply again, and if they would recommend that their friends and family apply. If you made an offer which was rejected, ask why. Finally, check your company reviews on Glassdoor and CareerBliss to see what people are saying. These may be a little more honest because of the anonymity factor, so see if it matches up with what you've already heard from employees and candidates. You should also be monitoring your employment brand online – try setting up some Google Alerts, following your @ mentions on Twitter, and staying on top of articles which mention your company. There are so many opportunities that can either make or break your employment brand, and you need to be aware of them. More important than being reactive, though, is being proactive. So make a plan of action.

Make a Plan of Action

Take what you learned from employees and candidates and make a plan to get from where you are now, to where to want to be. 84% of companies believe a clearly defined strategy is the key to achieving employer branding objectives. Start by taking a look at your Employee Value Proposition – that is, the characteristics and appeal of working for your organization. This goes beyond salaries and benefits - take a look at your culture, career development opportunities, employee recognition and rewards programs, overall work experience, management practices, etc. Take what you see here and combine it with what you've learned from your employees and candidates. Then determine your objectives and come up with strategies to accomplish them. Make sure they’re realistic. Bring in somebody from each department to brainstorm and provide feedback. This shouldn't just be managers, but can be people from all organizational levels. In fact, it’s probably better if managers aren't there so that everyone can speak freely. Once you've come up with an actionable plan, create goals for implementation and continually collect feedback from employees and candidates to make sure you’re measuring progress. It can take years to build a strong brand, but only seconds to destroy it. So this cycle of collecting feedback, implementing changes and collecting more feedback will ensure that you’re improving your employer brand and attracting and retaining the best talent. Read on for a few ways to improve your employee and candidate experience.

Employee Experience

According to a Manpower survey of over 20,000 job quitters, money is only the third most common reason people quit. Ranking before it is limited career opportunities and lack of respect and support from a supervisor. What I find particularly interesting about this is that most people cite their supervisor as the reason they quit: either from lack of respect or support, lack of leadership, bad relations with supervisor, favoritism by supervisor and lack of recognition. These are all things you should ask about during your survey, and address in your strategy. Put this feedback into your culture and vision, and make sure change starts at the top. The senior executives, especially your CEO, must be on board with this effort and your employees need to buy in to it. Not only will this help you retain them, it will help you recruit new top talent into your organization. This brings us to discuss your candidate experience.

Candidate Experience

The candidate experience often has multiple touch points, and many opportunities to make a wrong move. Here are some general guidelines:

1. Be clear in your initial communications about what you’re looking for. This includes responsibilities, location, salary, required skills, desired skills, benefits and hours. They'll find out sooner or later, so just be transparent upfront.
2. Make it easy to apply. Take yourself through your application process to make sure that it's quick and easy to apply, and make sure that passive candidates can apply without a resume.
3. Acknowledge receipt of all applications you receive, and communicate about next steps.
4. Follow up when you say you will, letting each candidate know whether they will go on to the next step of the process, or not.
5. Try to be flexible with interviews – some people will be employed and don’t want to jeopardize their current position. This can help you reach those top candidates, or at least not deter them and allow your competitor to scoop them up. Be open to video interviews, or interviewing after business hours.
6. Be open and honest during interviews, let the candidates know about next steps, and follow up when you say you will (even if just to say that you're still making the decision).

The point is, at each step of the recruitment process, you need to tell every single candidate whether they’re moving on to the next step of the process or not. Technology can really help you here.

Where to share your employment brand

• Career Site
• Career Blog
• Job Postings
• Social Media: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinteret, Google Plus, etc
• Talent Newsletter