7 Innovations to make a big difference with your recruiting

7 Innovations

It’s an age where we have access like never before; reach out on twitter to a professional athlete, speak directly to an actor on a movement you support or talk to the people in an organization at the level you’re interested in. Never before have people and information been more accessible; just last year Elon Musk released Tesla’s patents saying “will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” It’s an open source market and information asymmetry isn’t as prevalent as it once was; doesn’t that mean your recruitment strategy should change too?

The talent acquisition process is something that is critical to every business today. But a lot of what has changed has actually stayed the same; often we’re moving candidates through a pipeline that we see happening in stages:

1. capture
2. assess
3. qualify
4. interview (and let’s not even get started on the job interview questions…)
5. hire

This obviously isn’t applicable to every organization, and I’d be surprised if a lot of you out there don’t have 3 or 4 additional steps between 4 and 5 above so that it looks more like this:

1. capture
2. assess
3. qualify
4. interview
5. interview
6. interview
7. interview
8. hire

The reality is that this process is antiquated and broken. Glassdoor mentioned some inefficiencies in an article 5 years ago; tell me that you can’t identify with at least 2 of these. The fact is that in order to stay competitive, some things need to change. Here are a couple of things you can do to stay ahead.

It’s Time to Get Agile!

We talked about agile in a piece a few weeks ago. What is agile? Agile is process management strategy that focuses on small, iterative steps in order to achieve a larger goal. Used in software development, small teams are made up of subject matter experts from across the organization. They work together to achieve a small piece of the greater whole and are collaborative and communicative the entire time. Scrums happen on a daily or weekly basis to check in on progress and a scrum master acts as a manager, removing any roadblocks the team is experiencing. If you arrive at the scrum and your roadblock is that QA hasn’t gotten back with the last bug reports, your Scrum Master deals with that for you so you can keep focusing on the tasks at hand.

Now take a revolutionary look at recruitment; is the hiring process so different from software development? You (typically) have long recruitment processes up to 3 or 4 months in length, your team has a single function (recruitment) and you have customers in your hiring managers. Some organizations are making radical changes to their processes; Scotiabank has taken the lead on this and is moving recruitment in a different direction, building on brand awareness and collaboration.

Instead of looking at individual jobs, consider job families. When you broaden your scope, other considerations crop up and you become more strategic. Instead of seeing

• Junior programmer
• System Architect
• Programming manager

consider that they are all from the same family, ‘programming,’ or ‘software development.’ Now you’re no longer having candidates apply into silos.

Next, work with your hiring managers and make them part of the strategy. They shouldn’t be screening resumes or handle interviews solo; if they want the best talent you need to make them aware that they need to be involved on this team. Buy will take some lever pulling at a high level…

Have a scrum: each day review 3 primary things:

1. what did I do yesterday?
2. where am I going today?
3. what were my roadblocks?

Your scrum master should take care of #3 and you are accountable for the others. In our case, your recruitment manager represents the scrum master.

This should get your started thinking agile. Remember, if you take small steps,you’ll be able to iterate on the incremental steps and constantly improve. Your recruitment times will shorten and because you’ve gotten your hiring managers involved, they’ll have more buy-in.

If you’re not already using recruitment marketing, here is a piece on some articles to get you started. What is recruitment marketing? Just as the landscape for online marketing has changed, so has that of recruitment. Simply put, recruitment marketing encompasses the strategy and organization uses to find, attract, engage and nurture talent before they apply for a job. That’s right: the fish that are jumping in the boat are not the fish you want. Basically, you takes the rules of inbound marketing and apply them to recruitment. Customers are finding their own paths to products, services and brands through their own research (there’s that information asymmetry again). Why can’t we do the same with recruitment? Well, the answer to that, (as expected) is, we can.

So how can you get started? Very easily.

1. Put together a marketing strategy involving content that is relevant to your audience. Don’t think in terms of recruitment but in terms of what your audience is looking for. Use your social media to cross promote articles that your audience wants to hear about. This increases your authority and credibility with them.
2. Write your own content. This is a pretty big step. Blogging is tough to get started; once you do, though, it becomes easier. Try using Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator to come up with titles that are relevant. It’ll give your creative side a kick-start.
3. Use your network for further exposure. Everyone who is connected to your organization should be sharing and re-sharing the content that you’ve shared.

Recruitment marketing is here to stay; if you want to engage with those passive candidates, you’re going to need to adopt this strategy.

Implement Pre-Hire Assessments

Big data is the key to…well, just about everything. From politics to baseball, sales strategy to consumer analysis, big data is key to understanding where you stand in the market. Recruitment is no different. Understanding what your talent is before making any decisions can greatly shorten your hiring times and furthermore increase the quality of hire. An easy win.

What is involved is pretty simple. A 2-minute evaluation on existing workforce by direct managers gives a solid benchmark to hold the future potential to. Competencies are considered and rated for a sample population; even better, KPI’s can be added to gives us more visibility into the success of the evaluation. Using this benchmark, a 2 minutes questionnaire is aligned with the competencies in your organization and used to evaluate incoming talent. Only candidates that meet or exceed the benchmark (or ‘Fit score’ as we call it at HUCAMA) are considered for positions. Coupled with the previous suggestion of recruitment marketing gives a huge increase in the likelihood of successful recruitment. Here’s an article on how we helped WebHelp Nordics (formerly GoExcellent) improve their average handling time for call centre support.

The good news here is that you don’t even need to do the benchmark. Pre-Hire assessments can be implemented immediately and become more accurate over time. Integrate with ATS’ and HRIS’ to give added analytical capabilities. Talk about strategic!

Use Interactive Interviews

Interview techniques have evolved; no longer are structured interviews the status quo. Try looking at this specific example of an interactive interview: pair programming interviews. This involves bringing candidates in and instead of throwing questions at them and trying to evaluate who the better fit is in 2 hours or less, have them sit with a programmer for 5–6 hours and work alongside them (concerned about privacy? Have them sign an NDA.)

Instead of stock rehearsed answers, candidates are asked to set up their development environment and then are given a problem to work through with their coach or pair partner. They’re allowed to work in an environment that is familiar to them and the company gets much more insight into how they work and play with others. This is a programming example but try and think strategically about how this can apply to other parts of the business. Recruiting a recruiter? Have them work sourcing on a couple of roles; get them involved in the Agile process you’re implementing (see what I did there?) QA or testing? Perfect opportunity to have them partner with the testing team.

Stop Spending on Low-Impact Actions

Ok, let’s be honest: who has heard that you should post jobs because it is “good advertising?” I call BS on this one. While posting a job communicates that you are hiring unless you are effectively working that funnel, you’re wasting your time and only getting candidates angry about not communicating with them.

Stop spending money on ads that don’t do anything for you. A $350 package to post a job on a board probably isn’t going to attract the talent you want. It’s going to let them know that you’re hiring, sure, but it’s not going to revolutionize your candidate pool.

Use your website instead; post jobs (for free) on your site. Share them on your social networks (again, free). Then get going with your recruitment marketing to attract passive candidates into that funnel. Hiring for a game designer? Share articles on smart design, or maybe 10 games that could use a design overhaul. Talk about things that are relevant to them. All of a sudden you’ve saved hundreds (literally) and you’ve got much more qualified candidates in the pipeline.

Leverage Your Internal Network

If you’re not leveraging the subject matter experts at your organization, then you’re operating in a bubble. Or silo. Or whatever analogy you want to draw. The bottom line is that you’re working alone and very separate from the business.

This one takes buy-in, and the payoff is huge. Work with your organization to make them advocates of the business and recruitment partners. Do the members of your organization have social media accounts? Do they share information and events from the company? Are they true brand advocates?

It’s an easy sell, even to a skeptic.: If you want to make your job easier and ensure we have the talent necessary,get out there and leverage what you have. Talk about the organization you’re proud to work for. Why do you like it here? What are some of the perks?

Similar to a Glassdoor strategy, having company advocates gives visibility and, more importantly, access to your organization. Have hiring managers interviewed and post on youtube; if that’s too much then have them leverage their social networks with the information about jobs. Create some excitement that comes from the hiring team, not just recruitment.

Get Mobile

If you’re not using mobile, then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. According to Smart Insights, we’re well past the tipping point of mobile vs desktop usage. Think about it. What do you actually use more, your phone or your desktop? Odds are that if it isn’t equal, then you use your phone more.

Leverage this: mobile apps like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are low hanging fruit. Sure, use these. But the bottom line is to use the communication channels that speak to your audiences. Texting, video, Facebook messaging and Snapchat are all important to today’s users. Try an advocate video from within your organization; leverage this by cross-promoting and sharing within your organization for added exposure.

BONUS: Add a Referral Policy

If you haven’t already, this one is super important and should really be a natural progression from all that we’ve discussed. Successful organizations policies have upwards of a 40% referral rate. Building a successful strategy can take some time,but it doesn’t have to. Put together some incentives, write up policies surrounding it and get going. The bottom line is: good people know good people. They’re not going to refer someone who would not fit/do well because it is their credibility on the line. Encourage this type of behaviour and your organization will pay you back ten-fold with great candidates.

This list is just a short one of some quick changes you can implement; some are bigger than others and will take some time and effort. You can continue working the way you are or introduce one of or a few of these to mix things up and get more strategic. Bottom line: being a consultative part of the business is ultimately up to you.

Topics: recruiting recruitment marketing

Originally published at www.hucama.com.