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Shouldn’t job applicants be treated as valued assets too?

Based on a quick survey of career pages on company websites, management and HR apparently haven’t gotten the message that qualified workers and quality hires are difficult to find despite sustained high unemployment. In an environment where top performers are in demand and have a choice where they work, job applicants shouldn’t be treated as 2nd rate citizens.

Following several recent presentations for CEOs and during conversations with small business owners, I realized that the short-sighted recruitment strategy of treating job applicants different from customers was not intentional. When you see an individual lean back in his chair with the proverbial light bulb glowing above his head, it becomes readily apparent that many very smart people still consider recruitment and marketing two distinct and separate functions.  As a result many managers just don’t know what to do and the advice they are getting (or heeding) from recruiters and HR isn’t effective or compelling enough to get them to say “aha, I get it now.”

As the old adage goes, pictures are a worth a thousand words. So I started out on a journey to find a business that is doing everything right marketing to customers and a horrendous job recruiting employees. The task wasn’t difficult as a friend referred me to a fast-growing sophisticated, upscale clothing retailer who is missing the recruitment boat.

Here are a few screen shots you might see if you found your way to their website after a Google search for the hottest fashion accessories or clothing.  

Company Home Page 

The site has great eye appeal. It’s clean and easy to navigate. They offer multiple calls to action, including the opportunity for customers to leave their name on a mailing list.  They create additional incentives to buy with “free shipping.” And their marketing message invites customers to engage with them using multiple social networking sites.

If I’m interested in making a purchase, I click on “Men” and search their inventory.  When ready to buy, I can “add to cart” and complete the transaction. It’s as simple as 1-2-3. If I’m interested in learning more about what other customers say, I can visit their social networking sites or click on “reviews” at the bottom of the page. 

But let’s say I’d like to apply for a job at this business.  Good luck finding the careers page.  The only tab, button, or image leading me to a career with “endless possibilities” is on the bottom of the page – the 7-letter word “careers” buried in the footer menu. For a company in the market for job applicants with “strong leadership skills,” “excellent communications skills,” and a passion for “delivering a strong product and services” who also fit their unique culture, they don’t make it easy to apply. (By the way, what company doesn’t want those same characteristics? Where’s the hook? More on that later.)

If you are smart and lucky enough to find the careers page, the experience is a complete disruption of the image and branding they display elsewhere. This company bleeds aesthetics and chic except when it comes to their careers page.

Company Career Site

Ugh! Dull! Boring! And that’s just the beginning. If I was still interested in applying, I’d have to fax or email my resume to an anonymous address. That might have created the message of an innovation and forward thinking place to work in the 1990s but it poses serious recruitment challenges today. Top performers don’t apply to anonymous email addresses because they know that their application has a good chance of getting lost in HRs black hole. Top performers know better than to waste their time waiting for recruiters and HR to contact them. Nearly everyone knows that…except apparently management and HR. So qualified applicants just move on and a great company loses out.

And that’s just the beginning why a company using this outdated recruitment strategy will struggle to fill open positions with good job fits quickly.

The descriptions about the open jobs should pop off the page too, just like the clothing does on the rest of the site. This isn’t the place to post the job description verbatim from the employee handbook. The company sells a “sophisticated, unique experience” everywhere else except when it comes to recruiting. It’s fairly obvious that HR wrote these “help wanted ads,” not marketing and PR.  What kind of message does that send to job applicants? Companies must begin to market their careers with the same gusto that they market products and services.

In addition to these job descriptions being dull and boring, they are not optimized for Google and other search engines. How in the world do they expect these open positions to get indexed high in the search engines? Don’t they realize that the demographic audience they are seeking to attract relies on the Internet for job searches using smartphones, not the local print medium?

And finally, here’s the biggest recruitment gaffe of all.  I mentioned earlier of all the things this company does right when marketing to customers – eye-catching images, engagement using social media, valuable offers, and calls to action that capture customer email addresses.  None of that exists on the careers page.  Any attempt to engage potential employees stopped as soon as the page loaded. There is no attempt to capture my name or join a mailing list for future job opportunities.  The only mention about connecting with the company using social media is to “visit our Linkedin page.” And a quick visit to their page shows little activity. The menu in the left column also has nothing to do with careers. Why not add testimonials from current employees, a video highlighting what it’s like to work for the company, a message from the CEE, and a few of the most popular benefits?

A lot of lessons can be learned from this case study.  Here are a few of my recommendations:

  1. Companies must begin to recruit job applicants using strategies similar to how they market customers. That includes promoting a job opening just like you announce a new product, service or location. Career pages must be engaging, searchable, optimized, and easy to find.
  2. Companies must learn to use multiple sourcing venues especially when recruiting applicants that span several generations, socio-economic groups, and geo-locations. Limiting sourcing to only one or two media just doesn’t attract enough high quality candidates anymore, not when studies show that you need 1,000 jobseekers to see you job opening to get one quality hire.
  3. Applying for a job must be a friendly yet professional experience if the company has any hopes of attracting and hiring quality workers. Sending resumes to an anonymous email address is clunky and reeks of bad customer service.
  4. When a quality applicant knocks these days, you better answer! Quality candidates don’t like to wait weeks, or even days, for a response. Good customers don’t like waiting for response; neither do qualified applicants.
  5. Build a talent pool. When a jobseeker decides to apply for a job at your company, stop sending them away to online job boards (CareerBuilder, Monster, etc) and social networking sites. Use an applicant processing system that allows you to capture the job applicant’s information. You wouldn’t send customer who is ready to buy now to Amazon to complete the sale. Why send job applicants to a third party site where you competition is hunting too.

I wrote more about this significant management strategy blunder in two recent blog posts:

Why Don’t Companies Recruit Employees Like They Market Customers? 

8 Steps Employers Must Take To Recruit Qualified Workers Quickly

 

Apr 05, 2012 | 0 comments | View Post

Why Every Employer Should Purchase a Jobs Domain Extension

Why are so many companies making it so hard for candidates to apply for jobs when finding qualified workers is one of the top issues keeping CEOs and HR awake at night?

What is Keeping CEOs and HR Awake at Night?

Despite the investment of billions of dollars spent by employers every year on recruitment, the number one complaint of job seekers is that the employer’s career page is inaccurate. It is full of jobs that are already filled and the available information talks little about what it is like to work for the employer and why they should apply.

That’s a lot of money when interested job seekers are directed to the company’s home page, then left to their own devices to find their way to the careers section. That would be like inviting your customers to a sale but dimming the lights so that they couldn’t see where to go. If those candidates persistent enough to apply eventually pull up the careers page, they are often directed back to a third party job board or to simply submit a resume by email. Both tactics are recruitment killers.

An inexpensive and effective solution is purchasing a .jobs domain. A .jobs domain such as www.abccompany.jobs is all about telling job seekers the exact online destination for your employment opportunities.

A .jobs domain has several advantages:

Builds an employment brand.

A .jobs domain also creates a strong employment brand for your business. Your domain for your business creates an identity on the Internet so customers can find you. A .jobs domain does the same thing for job applicants. A .jobs domain helps any organization reach a targeted audience for a targeted purpose.

Optimizes for free search.

Free search has become a critically useful application of the Internet. Search engines index and then rank the website pages. But with literally tens of millions of new pages created daily, a single careers page on your company site just gets lots in the mix. The benefits of Internet marketing has proven elusive to human resources for many years.  Marketing is just not what most human resources professionals had in mind when they choose that career path. 

But unfortunately for those responsible for recruiting, a jobs or careers page embedded somewhere on the company’s website, takes jobseekers on a scavenger hunt without many clues. Worse, it makes it difficult for search engines to find, index, and rank.  To put it another way, you become a best kept secret on the Internet.  

The ability to get found by jobseekers requires that your careers page be search engine optimized and targeted. Directing jobseekers to a .jobs extension is an excellent way to differentiate your careers page from the competition and improve your search engine visibility. Best of all, you can generate more applicants directly from the search engines without paying for them!

Measures ROI.

The ability to quantify traffic from your recruitment efforts is crucial. Recruitment ads directed to third party job boards or your home page are challenging to track. And if you can’t track and monitor traffic how do you measure success of your ads. A .jobs domain allows you to easily now which ads are generating the most traffic and providing you the highest rate of return on your recruiting budget.

Recruit Smarter, Hire Faster Free Webinar

Apr 03, 2012 | 0 comments | View Post

SPS Introduces Free Webinar Series on Faster, Affordable Applicant Screening

A combination of technology, social media, high unemployment, and low employee engagement has converged to overwhelm recruiters and hiring managers nearly every time a job is posted.

Candidate Sourcing Resu-mess,Applicant ProcessingTo help recruiters and hiring managers in small and medium sized businesses, Success Performance Solutions announced a series of free webinars. The subject of the first webinars is how to automate employee screening and process applicants smarter and faster.

The first webinar is scheduled on March 7, 2012 and will be repeated on March 14.

Success Performance Solutions president and author Ira S Wolfe will lead the webinars and discuss new innovative recruiting and employee screening software and technology that allows even the smallest business to recruit like the pros – accepting resumes from both paid and free job boards, company career sites, social networking sites, employee referrals, and more traditional job sourcing strategies. Using an automated applicant processing system, a recruiter, HR professional, or sales hiring manager can narrow down a large list of applicants to only the top candidates with just a few clicks of a mouse.

What participants will learn:

  • How to reduce administrative time, paperwork, and emails when screening applicants
  • How to recruit from multiple sources (job boards, social networking sites, Craigslist, and more) but collect applications in one place
  • How to screen out high risk and poor fit applicants quickly
  • How to create a company career page and portal that is applicant friendly
  • How to push out jobs to hundreds of job boards (free and paid), career sites, and social media with just a few clicks
  • How to build a talent pool to fill future openings
  • And much, much more….

When:  March 7, 2012 at 2:00 PM EST or March 14, 2012 at 11:00 AM EST

Who should attend: Recruiters, HR, Sales managers, hiring managers, small business owners, management and HR consultants

Register Now! (Webinar instructions will be sent following registration.)

Feb 27, 2012 | 0 comments | View Post

Speaking of jobs: The Coming Jobs War

And speaking of jobs… on the same day that Jobs died, I received an invitation to preview a new book, The Coming Jobs War.  This isn’t a book about the battle to replace Steve Jobs but the struggle to create jobs.  The author is Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup.  Clifton confirmed a fact that many of us know but “apparently few leaders” do – that “small and medium-sized American companies fund the great American way….when small and medium-sized American businesses have no growth, there is no money to send to Washington…”

Clifton describes the coming jobs war as a world war and the single most serious leadership threat for the next 30 years.  He passionately believes that for the next few decades, the world will not be led by U.S. political or military force but by the country that creates the most jobs.and quality GDP growth.  The highest levels of leadership therefore require a mastery of a new skill: job creation.

America’s most pressing current problem, according to Gallup, is a lack of good jobs. America will go broke if jobs can’t be found.  Because without a job, people don’t spend, businesses don’t start or grow, and GDP falls.

Jobs are the heart and soul of a nation. Jobs sustain everyone.   

Most of the attention for job creation features the largest companies.  The problem is that there are only about 1,000 companies with more than 10,000 employees. Despite the attention given to these largest companies, they employ just slightly more than 25 percent of all non-public workers.

In comparison, the Census Bureau reports that as of 2007, there were about 6 million businesses in the United States with at least one employer.  Businesses with 500 or fewer employees represent more than 99% of these 6 million. There are slightly more than 88,000 companies with 100 to 500 employees and about 18,000 with 500 to 10,000 workers. Those businesses with less than 100 employers represent nearly 35 percent of all workers and contribute as much payroll as does the largest employers (approximately 30 percent). When you include businesses with up to 499 employees, the number of employed workers swells to 50 percent who earn over 43 percent of total payroll.

If small business is the engine of job creation, then the U.S. has a real problem. Because  the drop in the rate of new business creation since 2007 is 23 percent,  resulting in as many as 1.8 million fewer jobs. In addition the number of employees per new business has been falling, from eight in the 1990s to fewer than six in recent years.

Oct 12, 2011 | 1 comment | View Post

What’s more troubling: The loss of jobs or the loss of Jobs?

Depending on your frame of reference, asking the question “can the U.S. survive without Jobs?” will elicit a variety of responses.  Responses will inevitably be influenced by political affiliation but my question is much broader than that. Because jobs refer to both sluggish job creation and the tragic loss of Steve Jobs.

Both circumstances pose an ominous threat to our role as leader of the free world. Solutions to replace the innovative genius of Jobs and jump start sustainable job creation will remain elusive for some time to come.  

Let me start with Steve Jobs.  Jobs changed our lives forever, much like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. Jobs didn’t invent the personal computer, the mouse, or the graphical user interface (GUI). What he did brilliantly, according to a column in the Washington Times, was to bring the inventions of others together in beautifully designed packages, then to show us that we’d wanted them desperately all along.

While Jobs like Edison, Ford, or Disney  can’t claim to be the father or the originator of the industry they are in, they have a claim on how they changed their respective industries forever.

America is now desperately seeking the next American visionary. By definition, it’s someone on the cusp of an entirely new industry with an as-yet unrealized potential to change the culture.  Like Jobs, the next innovative genius will have a  ”disruptive” quality, believing that constant change is the only way to stay out in front. Like Jobs and his predecessors, the next visionary will create a  new market, lead the market, and let companies follow behind. Who is out there among us that we currently see as the idealist or crackpot who will ultimately breakthrough and radically change the way people live.

Regrettably the landscape in which Edison, Ford, Disney, and Jobs turned their vision into reality has turned sour.  All these men started small working against all odds, often alone. Entrepreneurship and small business in their day was not only supported but encouraged. Government – local, state, and federal – provided incentives to start up a business, not a bureaucratic labyrinth that was all but impossible to navigate.  And if a small business entrepreneur was successful, taxes and other regulations didn’t bleed the entrepreneurial spirit dry. Not only is the U.S.climate not conducive to starting a business and taking risk, we now have competition from rising entrepreneurial juggernauts China and India.

Jobs will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas.  Given the current political climate and global economic challenge, we are desperately in need of jobs and Jobs. Unfortunately, you just can’t create a committee and select his replacement and the U.S. landscape is becoming repressive and oppressive for small business, entrepreneurshp and innovation. People like Jobs aren’t looking for a job.  They are not even pursuing a career. What they seek is a world different than nearly all of us can even imagine. And they will go to places where they are free to innovate and transform ideas into reality.

Right now the loss of Jobs and the loss of jobs go hand in hand. Without innovation that sparks new business and entrepreneurship that creates jobs, unemployment will remain high, GDP will languish, and our economy will be sluggish. 

Oct 09, 2011 | 1 comment | View Post

Three Human Resource Trends That Will Change Small Business

I can’t decide if it’s complacency, lack of urgency, or arrogance. But there seems to be a business-as-usual attitude running rampant among small business owners when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees.  As I’ve been forecasting for over a decade, that attitude will eventually cause great harm to the competitiveness and bottom line of formerly great businesses.

A recent report by Deloitte, "Human Capital Trends 2011: Revolution/Evolution" identifies several critical 'game changing' trends that “will sweep through the field at an accelerated pace.”

Three of the trends highlighted in the report articulated with acute clarity the impact that demographics, technology, and globalization will have on even the smallest businesses regardless of the industry or region.

  1. The corporate ladder is folding: Today's workplace isn't what it used to be. (How many times have you heard me say that?) Work will be more virtual, collaborative and project-based. The workforce isn't what it used to be either. Workers' needs, expectations and definitions of success now vary widely, rendering obsolete a one-size-fits-all approach to talent management. The Corporate Lattice is emerging.
  2. Next generation leadership: Meeting emerging business challenges requires new skills and different qualities – and fresh models for finding, developing and engaging the next generation leaders. Given the demands of convergence, globalization, technology and the pace of change, organizations must rethink their approaches to developing next generation leaders.
  3. Talent in the upturn: Companies are struggling to move beyond recession based talent approaches and turn their attention to retention and develop. High unemployment will likely continue to coexist with critical shortages in specific talent areas. The challenge will be even greater when rates of voluntary turnover return to normal post-recession levels.

While the report admittedly speaks to large, global organizations, small businesses can benefit a great deal about hiring and retaining employees by acknowledging and understanding these trends and observing how they approach solving them.

The report identified twelve trends: six revolution and six evolution categories. Five additional trends that I believe will have the greatest impact on small business are listed below. Or you can read the complete report on Human Capital Trends here.

Revolution

  • Workforce analytics: It’s about time but HR is finally being held accountable for what it does. Moving forward, HR will be asked to justify, not rationalize, important decisions.  It will be required to produce more data, more information, and fresh thinking.
  • HR in the cloud: Software-as-a-Service can and will improve service levels and new ways of controlling costs. For small companies, SasS services will include applicant processing systems, online performance reviews, and pre-employment tests.

Read about the other human capital revolution trends here.

Evolution

  • Chief Operating Officers for HR: The creation of a chief operating officer (COO) role for HR is an emerging approach given the scale and complexity of HR operations and programs. The HR COO is the leader who focuses on how HR services are delivered, as well as the design, development and implementation of those HR services globally.
  • Contingent workforce: Companies that understand the issues associated with contractors and manage them well, can benefit from improved operational performance, lower labor costs, smarter staffing decisions and stronger HR alignment with business objectives.
  • Employer health care reform: With its far-reaching effects, health reform continues to compel employers to treat health benefits as a strategic and workforce planning issue.

Read about the more human capital evolution trends here.

May 31, 2011 | 3 comments | View Post

Virtual Office Opens Door To Qualified Workers

Despite continued high unemployment, local businesses are still struggling to find qualified workers. Fortunately, thanks to technology, hiring employees to work from a remote location may solve the troubling skills gap. 

Even when the right candidate applies, relocation can be an impassable roadblock between candidacy and employment.

 

Obviously there are some jobs too, especially in healthcare, hospitality and construction, that just can’t be done “long-distance.”  But many jobs can be performed completely or to a significant degree from an offsite or remote location.

Most interoffice communications are already handled via phone, email, and text messaging.  Meetings, trainings or seminars can be conducted remotely via the internet using meeting software as long as attendees have an internet connection and a phone.  With the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets, attending a web-based meeting has also never been easier. For those companies with deeper pockets and more complex requirements, video conferencing is also an option.

Documents and data can all be stored and accessed “in the cloud” – a workspace accessible via the internet, which allows for project collaboration by co-workers and a centralized repository for frequently accessed information including documents and schedules.  Google Apps and Microsoft Sharepoint are just too efficient but inexpensive solutions for small business.

There are also a number of advantages to the employer and the employee.   

  • The employer might avoid leasing a larger workspace to accommodate a growing workforce. Some businesses might even be able downsize.  (Success Performance Solutions is a perfect example of how a small business can go virtual.)
  • Utility and other overhead costs may also be reduced.  In addition to eliminating our lease costs, our phone costs were cut by one-third. Electric and heating costs went to zero.
  • Storing and sending documents and memos in electronic versions only can reduce office supply costs.   
  • If the employer provides paid parking or reimburses for using public transportation, they may be able to cut back on the number of spaces they supply. 
  • Time previously lost in long commutes to and from the office, traffic, or bad weather can be used for work increasing efficiency, or for employees to enjoy a little more balance in their lives.

Going virtual however isn’t without its problems. There are a few logistical items to consider:

  • Will the employer need to provide equipment to the remote employees or reimburse them for phone, utility, and internet services?
  • Will the employer provide insurance to cover that equipment since it is not located at the brick-and-mortar office? 
  • Virtual employees don’t excuse an employer from paying taxes. In fact, there is another layer of complexity added if the employee is a resident of a state different from that of the employer.   Workers Compensation policies and Business Operating Policies may need to be secured for each state where the employee resides.  
  • Income taxes differ from state to state and reconciling the taxes at the end of the year for more than one state can be a daunting task even for the accounting-minded.  Using a knowledgeable accounting or bookkeeping service to handle payroll can save employers a lot of trouble and minimize risk.
  • Health insurance may also be affected if the employees are residents of another state.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention hiring the right people. Working virtually requires discipline, trust, accountability, ability to work independently, and a strong work ethic. The candidate or current employee must have the right personality to work offsite, unsupervised, and with limited contact to other people.

For some positions, for some employees, and for some companies, the virtual office is a viable solution to hiring the right people with the right skills.

May 01, 2011 | 4 comments | View Post

Interviewing Tips for Hiring the RIght CFO

The economy is picking up steam and opportunities for CFOs to hire, as well be recruited by others, seems more likely.  An article posted last week in PC World and CIO offered interviewing tips for and from CFOs to help hire the right person the first time.

Nearly all the CFOs interviewed agreed: they wanted “a highly motivated self-starter not afraid to make an occasional mistake, with a strong commitment to collaboration and being a team player, a willingness to take responsibility for failures and successes, and the ability to keep focused on goals while maintaining passion about their work and the company.”

But wanting, finding, and then confirming those traits and skills requires more skill than ever before on the part of the interviewer. The hiring insights included interviewing tips from quite a few CFOs, recruiters and management experts.  Thanks to Focus, a business research site, I had the opportunity to participate and contribute to this article.  You can read the full article at “Hiring Insights From, and For, CFOs” or continue here to read the highlights.

One of the biggest challenges confronting managers hiring for any position, not only CFO, is that out of work candidates have plenty of time to prepare for the interview, often more than the managers doing the interviewing.  And at the C-Level and senior management levels, nearly every out-of-work exec has had some outplacement counseling which includes … yes, that’s right – interviewing skills training.  Little if any time is invested by hiring manager to update their hiring skills. When it does happen, it’s generally a few minutes here or there or one bullet on the long list of annual HR training updates. That puts many human resource professionals and especially the senior managers interviewing for the new  CFO at a distinct advantage.

In addition, many interviewers tend to do most of the talking.  “A good rule of thumb is that a good interview is 70 percent listening and observing,” was a point I made for the article.  Vibrant Mobile CFO Jeff Babka agreed and offered his own interviewing tip: “I first make sure that they understand the job, the company, our culture and my style. Then, I say, 'Look, tell me what you think I should know about you that would make me want to hire you. Start wherever you want in your life, end up wherever you want….”

Another common mistake is that managers use recommended interview questions as a checklist.  They ask one question and evaluate the candidate’s response. Then they move on to question 2 and repeat the process.  Then comes question 3. When the run out of questions or the candidate stops talking, the interview is over.

But an interview isn’t a test.  It can’t be scripted.  An effective interview should be dynamic.  It’s a conversation where the candidate should be doing most of the talking. “Interviewers have to keep probing….Interviewers tend to stop when they hear the right answer…[when] I'm looking for is to have someone tell me what some of the challenges were during that process, were you able to repeat that, did other departments repeat that success? I can go into an interview with one question and keep asking more questions about that question."

Hiring the right CFO is part science, part art.  Interviewing remains a critical component of hiring for open position. The uptick in hiring is a good sign for our economy but it will put undue pressure on the managers who are doing the hiring. In many situations, the candidate is a much better storyteller than the manager is a listener.  The article on hiring insights for CFOs offers several additional recommendations.  Read the full article here.

Feb 21, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Employers Scale Back Online Job Boards; Social Media Recruiting Expands

In a trend started during the latter half of the past decade, employers were forced to sift through mounds of online applications, thanks to the convenience of online job boards.  The recession and millions of displaced workers only exacerbated the challenge. Recruiters are forced to read a lot of applications submitted by candidates who don’t qualify. That has led many employers to scale back their use of online job boards. 

According to a December survey from the Corporate Executive Board, about 24% of companies plan to decrease their usage of third-party employment websites and job boards this year. Instead nearly 80% of the companies surveyed are hiring a different breed of recruiters who can find passive candidates, using networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIN , as well poaching candidates from competitors.

The experience of a Northeastern Wisconsin employer highlights the problem of what I projected several years ago would be a “resu-mess.” The employer had 134 $15-an-hour entry-level job openings. It received 850 applications. After reviewing them for high school diplomas or GED certificates, work history and experience, it eliminated 450 applicants. The remainder were tested for physical dexterity and given eighth-grade reading and math tests, which eliminated 208 more. The remaining 192 applicants were given personal interviews which focused on character issues.

That article enticed me to visit our applicant processing system to assess the relationship between the number of ad views to completed applications per open position.  For Chief Marketing Officer, 285 potential candidates viewed the ad using a combination of an online job board and LinkedIN. Seventy-two completed the application, but only one candidate met the requirements of the client.  A sales executive position attracted 170 candidates after being viewed by 5,636 jobseekers. A search for hospitality associates caught the eye of 21,234 candidates.  Eight hundred thirty-nine (839) applied.  Less than 150 applicants qualified for interviews.

This sheer volume of applications is forcing companies, small and large, to rethink how they recruit. Simply cutting back on posting jobs to CareerBuilder or Monster isn’t enough.

Qualified but passive candidates are building connections in LinkedIn. But many companies have blocked accessibility to networking sites.  Human resources professional, generally a conservative group, are also often reluctant to join networking sites.  Without access to online networks and a robust list of connections, recruiters are fighting this war for talent in handcuffs.

This onslaught of applications is also being processed and filtered by fewer recruiters and downsized human resources departments. Recruiting, compliance and administrative human resources functions in many small businesses are handled by one employee.

More applications and fewer resources lead to delays in responding to candidates. Top candidates may fall through the cracks and be ignored.  Likewise, they might be turned off by a slow response and lack of acknowledgement.  That’s an ill-advised strategy that employers competing for a precious few qualified employees afford to continue.

An online applicant processing system (APS) is one solution many companies are adopting.  An APS allows employers to open the recruiting funnel without overwhelming resources to filter out unqualified candidates.

Using an APS, a hiring manager creates a job listing and then adds screening filter questions. Each question is carefully weighted and prioritized. Candidates can apply using an unlimited number of online job boards such as CareerBuilder, Monster, Indeed), free job boards, social media networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, employee referrals, and other sites like Craig’s List. When the manager logs into the APS system, he or she can quickly view all candidates or filter for only candidates who meet the minimum qualifications. Unqualified candidates can be notified automatically using the system’s email templates. 

An online Applicant Processing System is a smart, cost effective solution to a growing problem confronting nearly every organization – recruiting qualified candidates.

Jan 24, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

The Party’s Over, Employee Turnover On the Rise

Hiring figures are starting to creep up. Layoffs and terminations are falling. That’s great news for our economy and the unemployed. But there’s some danger lurking in the shadows for employers.

The unemployment rate fell in December to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent in November, the Labor Department just reported. It was the lowest in 19 months as the economy generated a net total of 103,000 jobs and marked the biggest one-month decline in the jobless rate since April 1998. The economy added 1.1 million jobs, or an average of 94,000 jobs a month in 2010. While that’s a far cry from the 200,000 needed to jump start our economy, it’s a dramatic turnaround from just a year earlier.

In addition, fewer jobs were eliminated in nearly every major industry in 2010. Downsizing in 2010 fell by 59 percent compared to the previous year. Employers announced 32,004 planned job cuts last month, the lowest monthly total since June 2000, when employers cut 17,241 jobs. The 2010 total was the lowest since 434,350 job cuts were announced in 1997.

Ironically this good news may not portend good times for employers. An employee migration has begun from those businesses that reduced labor cost by massive downsizing and squeezing every last bit of productivity out of the survivors. As the economy improves, an employee exodus will accelerate, especially for employers who aren’t paying attention.

The media rang in the new year with multiple reports that hiring is on the rise. Goldman Sachs projects that employers will add 2.2 million jobs this year, or about 180,000 a month, double last year's amount. Moody's Analytics puts the figure at about 250,000 per month.

For employers that have used the economic downturn and the scarcity of jobs to justify putting it to employees by freezing wages, cutting benefits, and reducing resources, the party is about to end.  For employers who took this tactic, voluntary turnover is almost certain to rise dramatically as their employees learn there are new outlets for their efforts and talents. In addition, these employers likely will have a more challenging time making new hires as word of their actions gets around and impacts their reputations.

Jan 10, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
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