Recruiting Tips and Advice | NewHire Recruiting Software and Services

6 Ways to Build a Better Candidate Pool

Leora Baumgarten — May 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

Building a solid candidate pool for an open position can be a challenge. Employers need to be aware that they could be their own worst enemy. Employers can create a negative impression when candidates have a poor or unpleasant experience applying for the position. However, when employers consider the candidate perspective it is easy to find a few ways to improve the process. These six actions will improve the candidate experience and also improve and build your candidate pool.

1. No Broken Links

Make sure the “apply” link from the job board to your application is working. Nothing is more frustrating for a candidate than finding a job listing for the perfect job and not being able to apply because the “apply” link is broken.

2. An Easy to Use Application

In recent data released by CareerBuilder, 52% of candidate’s don’t apply because of some issue with the technology of the application! Wow. Don’t lose half your candidate pool because of technical issues.

3. Your Employment Brand Matters

Provide clear information about the job and the company. 87% of candidates applied for jobs where they reported the posting was very effective. However, if they felt that there wasn’t enough information about the job or the company they were much less likely to apply. According to US News, “…employers should provide a clear and honest description of the role.”

4. Improve Candidate Confidence

Candidates are savvy and smart. If your company is not a well known brand, it’s important to include additional information that builds confidence in the job and the company. Include your web address, the salary range you’re offering, and information about key products, industries or customers.

5. Candidates Hate Being in a Black Hole

If you’ve spoken to a candidate on the phone or in a face-to-face interview, let them know what’s going on.

6. Respect Your Candidates’ Time

If you are using screening questions, ask questions that are related to the job. If the job the candidate is interviewing for has changed a lot from what was advertised, let candidates know. Don’t let the final stages of the process drag on into a seemingly unending set of interviews and assessments.

In Recruiting Best Practices, Uncategorized

Use Your Job Ads as a Sales Tool Instead of a Gauntlet.

Chuck Smith — May 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

The best performing job ads sell both the company and the open position to potential candidates, attracting a strong response and a solid pool of qualified candidates. Our experience and data consistently show that the best performing job postings – those which provide the greatest number of qualified candidates – have a clear value proposition for applicants. The employment value proposition is a statement that answers these two questions:

Why is this company a good place to work?
What are the interesting and attractive duties and responsibilities of the open position?

When you include this kind of information about the open position and company, your ad will stand out to job seekers. But one look at the majority of ads on any of the major job boards tells a different story.

Here are two examples of poor advertising strategies that are running on major job boards at this time:

In one ad, the company description consists solely of “a fast-growing, dynamic company seeks a…” and then lists all required qualifications. If all a candidate knows about a company is that it’s fast-growing and dynamic, then they become meaningless adjectives and it can be a turn-off to people looking for a rewarding position at a good company.
Another ad listed 17 “must-have” qualifications immediately followed by this phrase: “A criminal background check (both state and federal) WILL BE PERFORMED before a hiring decision is made!” Emphasis on that many qualifications immediately followed by the threat of a background check conveys distrust in employees and a hostile office environment.

These types of ads conjure images of employers scrambling to develop foolproof gauntlets of “musts and must nots” to deter people from applying. While this may sound familiar, it’s not a best practice for attracting top talent.

If you’re currently using the gauntlet method to prevent unqualified applicants from applying to your job, stop! When you screen and identify qualified candidates using application questions, there is no need to use the classified ad to deter people from applying. In fact, the opposite applies. Use the classified ad as a sales and marketing tool and feature the best aspects of open position. In short, sell your company and your job.

If you’re writing the ad yourself and you’re unsure of where to start, we’ll make it easy for you. We have designed this fill-in-the-blank Job Ad Mad Libs® as a guide to the elements which help set your recruitment advertisements apart from those that use the gauntlet method.

In Recruiting Best Practices Candidate Sourcing, Employee Value Proposition, Job Boards, Recruiting ROI

Are Job Titles Hurting Your Recruiting?

Eddie Cantave — May 14, 2013 — Leave a comment

The simplest piece of advice we can give to customers starting their recruitment process is give your job a common name. Most job seekers are going to search for the most common titles related to the job they want, so you want to make it easy for them to find yours. A good way to test this is to go to a internet job board and search for the title you would like to give your job; if nothing comes up you know you don’t want to use that title. A general title can attract applicants who feel like they have the skills and ability to do the job, even if they’ve never held a position with that same title before. This gives you a larger qualified candidate pool with people who can do the job but may not have had a specific job title.

In a recent report from CareerBuilder & EMSI, they found that hiring mangers who screened for the same job title in a candidate’s work history were 31% more likely to say they were having trouble filling a position than hiring managers who didn’t. Because that latter group of hiring managers was able to look past job titles, they ended up evaluating candidates on the only criterion that actually qualifies someone: skills. And when you set up your recruitment process to identify skills, you’re going to find more qualified candidates, regardless of their past job titles.

A contributing factor to this “job title fallacy” boils down to a trend in businesses over the last couple of generations to eliminate on-the-job job training. On-the-job training used to be a fundamental part of someone’s work experience. Hiring managers of the past would look for aptitude to qualify a candidate and whoever they brought on was expected to learn what they didn’t know. And for the most part it worked. Sadly, job training has gone the way of pensions and gold pocket watches. Employers expect candidates to bring all the skills and knowledge with them, not learn it on the job. A matching job title in a candidate’s past is as “good” a cue as any to hiring managers that whoever they bring on will do just that.

Herb Greenberg, CEO of Caliper Inc., tested the theory that you could fill positions without factoring in past job titles. In fact, he took a step further and threw out a bunch of traditional criteria that hiring managers use, like education and work experience. He used workplace personality assessments to place 4,000 “hardcore unemployed” people in jobs that he matched to their skills. Two years later, less than 3% of those who had been placed had been let go for an inability to do the job. How’s that for skills paying the bills?

The point here isn’t that hiring managers need to do away with traditional screening methods. For the most part, those methods successfully filter out the candidates who would not be qualified for the position. However, methods like screening for job titles is just a shortcut to the real criteria that hiring managers want: skills. You don’t need to pick one or the other because both methods can AND should be part of your recruitment process. While the job title criterion can help you fill the lion’s share of your candidate pool, a skills criterion can catch the qualified candidates that you missed on the first pass.

In Recruiting Best Practices Candidate Sourcing, Recruiting ROI

What To Expect When You’re Expecting (A New Employee)

Kevin Nye — May 10, 2013 — Leave a comment

Hiring a new employee is one of the most difficult parts of running a business. Even if you have a great hiring process, it takes a bit of work, patience and persistence. Sometimes it’s a struggle to find even one good candidate and other times when you think you found the perfect candidate… they don’t pan out.

At NewHire, we’ve seen an awful lot of strange behaviors and actions from candidates – everything from people arriving for an interview wearing shorts to being hung up on during a phone screen. To help you prepare for your next hire, we’ve put together a little list of what you can expect when you’re expecting …a new employee.

Candidates are flaky.

We’ve seen final candidates drop out of the race without notifying anyone, not show up for interviews, and never return calls or emails. On a typical set of phone screens, we’ve found that around 15% of the people we contact will never respond to our calls or emails. Even if it seems like one candidate is a perfect fit, don’t stop looking! We’ve seen some of the most promising candidates slip through the cracks. If they’re a great candidate, they might be getting other offers. Don’t sit back and assume you’ve got someone in the bag – keep looking and make sure you have a hot standby.

Candidates don’t follow directions.

Every NewHire job application includes a space to attach a resume. It also includes instructions on what to do if you’re having problems attaching your resume. In spite of this, roughly 10-15% of applicants still don’t attach their resume.

It varies from job to job, but as a general rule you can expect at least 10% of respondents to neglect to send you their resume on an online application.

Candidates are often unqualified.

Especially in this job market, candidates are trying to get any job they can and often apply for jobs they are not qualified for. For example, if 100 people apply for your open position, you’ll find that 10-20% are “qualified,” meaning they meet the experience level, degree and skills required for the job. However, a significantly smaller number will actually be “right” for the job. When an employer pares down for what they’re really looking for, the typical rate of people worth interviewing can drop to less than five out of that 100 person candidate pool. Again, this varies quite a bit between jobs, but go into the hiring process with the understanding that a small number of candidates are interview-worthy.

Candidates are unpredictable.

It’s no surprise that candidates get nervous during interviews – it happens to the best of us – but sometimes they do strange things because of it. We’ve had candidates get sick, start talking about family secrets and history, reveal too much information about their personal life, and even toss around four-letter-words as if they were at a bar with their friends. Make sure you’re well prepared for candidate interviews. Always have a strong list of questions prepared in advance that you can lean on in case things get weird.

Expect the unexpected.

You never know what you’ll come across when you start the search for a new employee. But one thing is for sure… expect the unexpected!

Do you have any crazy candidate stories? We’d love to hear about them!

In Recruiting Best Practices Candidate Sourcing

Do your Employment and Hiring Practices meet Non-Discriminatory Standards?

Leora Baumgarten — May 8, 2013 — Leave a comment

The City of Chicago recently emailed me a Business Newsletter. Hidden among the articles announcing a chamber of commerce survey, community based business expos, and construction on a heavily used bridge in downtown Chicago, there was an article about hiring policies that caught my eye. The big red headline shouted: “Make Sure Policies Apply Equally to Applicants, Employees.”

Since applicants and employees are not the same, how can policies be applied equally to those two groups?

The Chicago Human Rights Ordinance prohibits discrimination against employees and job applicants based on their type of family membership. Do you know if your municipally has a similar ordinance?

Here are a few examples of discriminatory conduct that were provided:

A policy or practice which limits job opportunity because of pregnancy, childbirth, or related conditions
Refusing to hire because the applicant lives with dependent minor or disabled children.
Giving preference to married candidates for jobs or promotions over those who are unmarried.

Regarding the pre-employment process (recruiting), “A prospective employer may not ask a job candidate for information which directly or indirectly expresses intent to discriminate based on pregnancy, parental status, or marital status.”

Be on the safe side and avoid all questions about a candidate’s current family status or future plans! Don’t ask about the health or babysitting arrangements for dependent children, especially during a job interview.

The law requires equal treatment under similar circumstances, regardless of one’s pregnancy, parental status, or marital status.

Another way to protect yourself from violating these laws is to use a reproducible recruiting process. That means that you use the same steps and use objective hiring criteria for each job you hire for. Your recruiting process should include a job application that asks every single candidate to respond to the same set of questions. Additionally, when screening candidates, be sure that the hiring criteria is based on the key accountabilities of the position and not by a recruiter’s or hiring manager’s arbitrary decision making. Check out these documents for more interviewing tips:

Interviewing guidelines

Interviewing Tips

Do you have tips or guidelines on interviewing best practices that you’d like to share?

In Employees, Recruiting Best Practices EOE Compliance, Interviewing

Why Employee Perks Will Attract Great Talent

Kevin Nye — May 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

Imagine the following scenario: Job #1 offers $60,000/year + insurance, two weeks vacation, and sick days. Job #2 offers $55,000/year + insurance, two weeks vacation, sick pay, an onsite gym with free membership, and a masseuse who comes in every other week offering free 20 minute massages to the staff.

When dealing with top talent, companies need to separate themselves from the competition to entice prospective employees. Oftentimes the salary is similar between two jobs and it takes something extra to sweeten the deal; this is where perks and benefits come into play.

By accepting job #1, the employee will make enough money to pay for all of the perks offered in job #2 – probably with a few thousand dollars left over. However, just by reading the offers, job #2 sounds more interesting. Whether or not the employee ends up using these perks or not, the fact that they’re offered says something about the culture of the company, which can sway a potential employee.

Based on the set of perks and benefits, the employee can begin to make inferences about the hiring company. From this example, job #2 seems like a company that is looser, freer, and more concerned with your all-around well-being than the company in job #1. By offering what are essentially wellness benefits, the applicant gets a sense of the company culture and what kind of people they hope to bring in.

Job #1 comes off as standard. There are fewer bells and whistles, no fancy decorations, and no surprises. There is clearly nothing wrong with the job, and it even offers more money than job #2. But that standard offer is less exciting. People like bells and whistles – it’s the reason that the word “upgrade” exists.

While these assumptions may not be 100% reliable, they’re a start. For all we know, job #1 may even offer all of these benefits as well, but they’ll miss out on candidates by not advertising these things.

Candidates want to feel special. An employee wants to know that they’re appreciated and taken care of before they sign on to anything. The relationship is a two-way street: The candidate wants to know that they’ll be treated well and that their interests are being considered. In turn, this breeds a stronger bond with the company, inspiring the employee to stay invested in their work.

When looking to make a great hire, it’s all about finding the best candidates. By making a strong offer, you increase the number of people who will apply for a job, which increases the number of qualified candidates. Because of that strong offer – and perks certainly enhance the strength of the offer – you’re setting up your company to find better applicants.

What are some interesting perks you’ve heard about and/or offered?

In Employee Relations, Recruiting Best Practices Employee Value Proposition

The Hot Standby

Chuck Smith — April 29, 2013 — 2 Comments

Have you ever been caught in a situation where events out of your control left you with few options? An important supplier fails to deliver on time. A business partner’s promise is broken and you’re left picking up the pieces. A key employee suddenly quits. At one time or another, it has happened to us all.

That’s why a piece of advice I heard recently from Jim Dolan, CEO of The Dolan Company, struck such a nerve. He said, “Do the extra work to have a Hot Standby.” Dolan’s example was about an investor who made promises to him and then at the last minute changed the terms of the deal. Since Jim’s investment banker insisted on “hot standbys,” they were able to close the deal with a back-up investor on the same day.

At NewHire, the examples we see of this overlooked necessity fall into two broad categories:

Business owners who run into trouble when a key employee leaves with no one trained and ready to take that person’s place, and;
Hiring managers who slow down or stop the recruiting process because a single well-matched candidate is identified.

In today’s business world few small and mid-sized companies (SMBs) have the resources to maintain a team of reserves. The GE model of management (where backups are constantly groomed for each position) is nice to talk about but not a realistic option for most SMBs.

Here are some suggestions more suited to most mid-sized businesses:

Cross train wherever possible. Make sure that your employees are able to do more than one job, paying special attention to the most critical job functions.
Maintain a pipeline of candidates, even when you are not hiring. You may not have the resources or the need to hire anyone today, but keep your eye out as if you do. Always be on the look-out for talent and create a method for keeping track of who you might like to have on your team in the future.
When you ARE actively hiring, schedule a second set of first interviews, even when you have identified a well-matched candidate in the first round. This second round of first interviews is an important way to have a hot standby for both short and longer term hiring needs.

When you are in the midst of recruiting for a job, don’t stop the process until your new person is on board. Too often we see employers say things like, “I like Terry, let’s see how the interview process goes before we meet anyone else.”

If we apply the concept of the Hot Standby, Terry is still the number one candidate. We just keep talking to candidates two, three, and four, until we know Terry is on board. What if Terry gets a better offer or a counter offer, or has a terrible 2nd interview or a no-go reference? If the recruiting process is put on hold waiting on Terry, it can add weeks, even months, to reach your desired outcome.

Jim Dolan’s Hot Standby concept is so powerful in recruiting and hiring. Our best-practice recommendation: keep the top candidates engaged all along the way and continue to develop and screen the candidate pool for other top talent. Having options takes additional work, but it’s often worth the effort!

Dolan was part of a nine-member panel put together by Bob Jordan to celebrate entrepreneurial success in the Midwest and the publication of his book: How They Did It.

In Recruiting Best Practices Candidate Sourcing, Interviewing

Top Job Boards in 2013: The Best Job Sites to Post Your Job Ad

Devan Perine — April 24, 2013 — 5 Comments

“What’s the best job board to publish my job ad?”

We get this question often at NewHire so we keep track of which job boards are referring the most job seekers and how they stack up against one another.

Over the past 15 months, we’ve published over 1100 online job applications for small and mid-sized companies around the US. We took a sample of those 1100 jobs and examined 169 that were advertised on each of the following job boards simultaneously: CareerBuilder, Craigslist, Indeed, SimplyHired and LinkedIn.

We then looked at how the job boards performed relative to one another. This graph shows how many job seekers viewed each job ad from each of these major job boards.

Jobseekers Per Posting

As you can see, Indeed is by far the winner. This data included both organic and sponsored ads on Indeed.We saw Indeed’s popularity take off in 2011 and it’s been growing ever since. Because of Indeed’s growing popularity, we recommend publishing all job ads on Indeed, and offer additional sponsored advertising for added exposure. Indeed is beating all the other job boards for bringing in the most candidates.

In fact, Indeed doubles the number of candidate referrals attracted by LinkedIn, SimplyHired, Craigslist and CareerBuilder COMBINED. Take a look:

Job Seekers

It’s obvious that Indeed is killing it in the job board world. But there’s a few important things you need to know:

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Just like you should have a diversified investment portfolio, you should also have a diversified recruitment advertising plan. We saw Monster.com, previously a staple in the job board industry decline in popularity so much that the cost for the job ad was no longer justifiable. (Subsequently, we stopped providing their ads.) If you post your job ad on only one job board, you’re limiting your candidate pool, and missing out on a lot of great potential talent.

Quantity doesn’t always mean Quality. Yes, Indeed brings in the most candidates, but they might not all be equally well qualified. Don’t neglect industry job boards or referrals from current employees or other people in your network.

The good die young. Even though Indeed is the most popular job board right now, I can almost guarantee it won’t be forever. MySpace was also the most popular social network for a while… and we saw what happened there, and that didn’t take too long. The same goes for Monster.com.

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In Hiring Trends, Recruiting Best Practices Candidate Sourcing, Recruiting ROI, Recruitment Advertising

Want to Hire a Veteran?

Devan Perine — April 16, 2013 — 1 Comment

This article was written by Max Smith and Devan Perine and was originally published in a past NewHire newsletter.

Who wouldn’t want to hire a veteran? Disciplined, team oriented, loyal, well trained, and patriotic all come to mind when considering a veteran. But be aware that there are specific and complex laws relating to preferential (or discriminatory) hiring of veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces. It gets pretty complicated, so we’ve tried to summarize it in the clearest way possible.¹

It’s illegal to discriminate AGAINST veterans when hiring.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA)² prohibits discrimination against veterans, just as the Civil Rights act prohibits discrimination against minorities.

It’s also illegal (in most states) to give veterans preferential treatment.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found that preferential hiring of veterans discriminates against women. Companies have actually been sued for breaking this law. However there are some exceptions – Washington & Oregon are the only states we found that completely allow all private sector companies to preferentially hire vets.³

The exception to the rule:

The EEOC does allow private companies to preferentially hire disabled veterans. You can ask about disabled veteran status on pre-employment applications, but here’s the catch:

You have to make the question voluntary
You must include language specifying that the information is being requested for affirmative action purposes
Refusal to answer must not negatively affect the applicant in any way

Does your company work with the government?

If your company works with any level of government, you need to read this carefully:

Preferential hiring of veterans is required for any company with a federal contract of over $100,000.⁴
State requirements vary, but almost every state requires some sort of preferential veteran hiring for any company doing business with the state.

The federal government and many state governments also require EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) reporting about veterans, but regulations vary depending on company size and by state. Check with the EEOC to make sure your company is in line with the laws. Here are our recommendations:

If your company has government contracts AND reports EEO data, you need to ask about veteran status of job applicants. You can include a question about veteran status on your pre-employment application or later in the hiring process.
Firms who do not work with the government may want to ask about veteran status, but should do so in a “blind” manner to protect themselves from violating EEOC regulation.
All employers may ask if candidates are disabled veterans as long as they abide by the rules⁵

Basically – play it safe, and contact the EEOC or your labor attorney to make sure your company is in line with laws and regulations when it comes to hiring veterans.

¹ Check with EEOC regulations before pursuing. This is not official data.
² http://www.dol.gov/elaws/userra.htm
³ Before hiring, double check with the EEOC to verify your state‘s regulations
⁴ http://www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-vevraa.htm
⁵See section on: You can preferentially hire disable veterans
⁶Picture provided by NYC Marines : http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycmarines/

In Recruiting Best Practices Candidate Sourcing, EOE Compliance

Hiring Paralysis and What You Can Do to Avoid It

Alicia Hall — April 12, 2013 — Leave a comment

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.-Voltaire

A recent article from the New York Times states that even though companies have open positions, many hiring authorities are delaying their hiring process due to the fear of economic instability, as well as the fear that they have not located the “perfect” candidate. The millions of applicants available, coupled with unrealistic candidate expectations have led to a hiring paralysis. This leads HR Professionals to chase what the article refers to as the “Purple Squirrel”, and what we refer to in our office as the “Flying Mermaid.”

A comprehensive search for the best fit for an open position is imperative, but the quest becomes troublesome when an interview process that stretches for months and is rife with piles of assessments still does not yield a hire. It is easy to blame the candidate pool, or to reason that even if a candidate is a star, there surely must be a brighter star out there. In reality that logic may be as futile as blaming a restaurant for having too many enticing options on their menu, or as a single person railing against a dating world for having all of the wrong people. You have a need, and at some point you have to look at yourself and make a decision. If you don’t, the consequences for hiring inaction reach far beyond the empty desk: Many recruiting dollars have been ill spent, your current employees become stretched too thin, and the lines of people you have interviewed that were once full of hope are now possibly demoralized and angry. In addition, they could take their frustrations to Twitter.

As a current recruiter, I have heard in depth from both employers and candidates about the perils of the hiring process. I feel as though the hiring process is an exciting journey, that may be full of twists and turns, and one in which successful completion is unique in that it is a win-win for both the candidate and employer. Here are some suggestions that will help employers move through the process more swiftly and with unwavering confidence.

1. Trust your process.

Most likely your company has recruiting processes and procedures in place to locate the right candidate for your open position. At best, you have first hand experience that it works since you have been through it or you have a current favorite employee. At worst, if you feel your hiring strategies need work, there are a variety of experts that can assist you in creating a new method. It is best to invest your time up front, so when you are in the midst of the hiring process the right candidate will naturally be revealed.

2. Make a commitment to hire.

Hiring is no different that any other challenging goal you set for yourself. You have to ask yourself the hard questions at the start, so you can remain motivated to keep up with the endeavor no matter what comes along. Do you really have the budget for this person? When do you want them to start? What tangible things do you need to see and hear in order to know that you met the right person, instead of going with your gut? Hiring takes careful planning, support, and most importantly action. If these things are not worked out in the beginning your open opportunity will remain just that- open.

3. Move the best available candidates quickly through the process.

If you see a glowing resume or meet a qualified person you like right away, move them through the whole process immediately. They are not too good to be true, and most likely they are the right fit! Be sure to know that others will feel the same way that you do, and this person may not be available tomorrow.

4. Accept the risk, and take the chance

No matter what you do, and how secure you feel with your hiring strategies,there is always a risk involved. There is never a guarantee that your choice will work out. But that is inherent in the process. The most you can do is know that you did your best. There are many variables in the recruiting process, but that must not lead to a hiring paralysis. If you have a genuine open position, and you have a genuine candidate, take a leap! Just make sure you do it with your eyes open.

If you have any tips regarding moving through the hiring process, please share below!