CBI Way blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, Recruiter On-Demand and Managed Staffing Practice Leader

Those of us in the service provider business are well aware of how service and success easily get tied to the engagement of that one-and-only-knows-my-business-resource. The client has been working with this one sourcer or recruiter since the beginning and no one you have in your entire fleet of talent could ever replace that individual…there is some truth to this, but so much can be done through a great transition, yet – that is a subject for a future blog…

This blog is about the benefits of going from working with My Favorite Sourcer to the (gasp!) Anonymous Sourcing Pool. At CBI Group, we look at sourcing as a multi-step process that begins with the research of potential candidates through all available pipelines and ends with the profiling and production of an interested candidate submitted to a CBI Group or corporate recruiter for entry into the interview process. We have a sourcing methodology and process to find all sorts of needles in the haystack. Yes, some of our talented sourcing team has more experience with financial services, others in pharmaceuticals and others in manufacturing but when our internal and external clients limit themselves to only work with their Favorite Sourcer they miss out on some great benefits.

Sourcing is about creativity, the more variety of opportunities given to a talented sourcer, the more creative they become, and this goes for every client. Having a strong vertical/niche is great in terms of knowing where to start the hunt but having different sets of eyes and different approaches leads to a wider variety of pipelines and candidates. When a sourcing team is behind you, they rely on each other for coaching, ideas, and support (you tend to get more than the Favorite Sourcer you might be paying for) and when your Favorite Sourcer goes on vacation, your recruiting pipeline does not go on hold for a week. Oh, and how could I forget to mention, your Favorite Sourcer is part of the nebulous Anonymous Sourcing Pool so you still do get their work included…

Remember – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (or the one part you are most attached to!)

The CBI Way blog series explores the tools and practices used in Talent Acquisition. CBI Way is CBI Group’s recruiting approach and methodology – it’s how we do what we do! Check in with CBI Way for insights around workforce education and training, the latest trends in recruiting technology, and how to best utilize these tools towards improving your own recruiting practices.

CBI Way blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, Recruiter On-Demand and Managed Staffing Practice Leader

So as a recruiter your #1 goal is to find the best fit for a position. You assess the position requirements, responsibilities, team and company cultural fit and interpersonal interactions with the manager and the team, you begin recruiting against all these hard and soft responsibilities, and find the perfect person. How’s that for a happily ever after?

So what happens when this top candidate gets in front of the hiring manager and the message back to you is: I want someone younger/older/male/female? We all have or will have to face this at some point. Below are three suggestions on what to do when the inevitable occurs:

1.      Ask why - There are sometimes valid (and lawful) reasons to ask for an otherwise protected characteristic. For example, if the job requirement is to model women’s dresses, the most ideal candidate may very well be a woman, or if a job is to design apps targeted for the under 30 market’s use, a Millennial may be the most qualified candidate. It never hurts to ask questions to gain clarity.

2.      Educate – In the absence of a valid reason, it is always recommended you educate (teach don’t preach!) your hiring management about non-discriminate hiring and most importantly the value to the organization of having diverse teams. (Start by reminding them their clients are diverse!)

3.      State your purpose and get back to the first sentence – your job is to find the best fit for the position — to enable the new hire’s, team’s and company’s success! If the first two suggestions don’t yield any traction from your hiring manager, it might just be best to go back to the drawing board and find the best fit!

The CBI Way blog series explores the tools and practices used in Talent Acquisition. CBI Way is CBI Group’s recruiting approach and methodology – it’s how we do what we do! Check in with CBI Way for insights around workforce education and training, the latest trends in recruiting technology, and how to best utilize these tools towards improving your own recruiting practices.

CBI Way blog spot by Glenn Koetz, Search Practice Lead and Lisa Van Ess, Outside-In® Group Lead

We have all had those days when we are sitting with our trusted colleagues talking about the nightmare candidate who came to the interview with a bulls-eye tattooed on his forehead, or the one whose answer to “Why would you like to work for us?” is “I am eating dog food at this point and will have to change to cat food if I don’t get a job”, or the one whose interview turns into a disaster right from the start. We all chuckle and agree that if we wrote a book on what we have seen throughout the candidate management process, we would make millions and could all retire… Yet sometimes in that same conversation we actually get to the, “Well, how did you handle that?”, and the wisdom shared at that point is a rare gift.

One of my favorite sayings is “You can’t manage crazy.” Unfortunately, if you have chosen a career in HR or recruiting you are called upon to do just that. Here are some proven tactics I have found helpful in managing Candidate Crazy.

Remember, as a recruiting professional you have the ability to say No.

This means you can tell the person who comes in for the interview with the bulls-eye on their forehead, “No, you are not meeting with the hiring manager.” It is up to you to screen out candidates and not waste your hiring manager’s time. In this case, I took the time to meet with this individual and tell him that the position required the quick building of face-to-face relationships in a very conventional firm and that he would be better suited to work in a more casual environment; mentioning both he and the company would be happier. The candidate thanked me, we parted ways and all lived happily ever after…

Educate, coach, and use a personalized No Thank You letter if needed.

For my dog food gal…she was a really talented, experienced candidate who made it beautifully through the phone and in-person recruiting interviews. When she got in front of the decision makers – the dog food versus cat food answer was the one she gave when asked why she wanted to work for the company. I called her to let her know she did not get the job and specifically why. I will tell you that I was very sympathetic and agreed to present her to another hiring manager with the coaching, even direction that she answer the question with why working that job for that company was important to her – we even rehearsed her answers. (File this under no good deed goes unpunished).

Fast forward to interview number two: Interviewer: “Why do you want this job at our company?” Dog food Gal: “To keep me and my kids from living in a refrigerator box in an alley.” This is when the call explaining to the candidate she did not get the job (and why) is followed by the specific No Thank You Letter to ensure that they understand they will not be coached any further and that the official rejection is required.

Maintain control when an interview starts to unravel.

And then, there are always those interviews that are complete disasters right from the start. The candidate comes in an hour and a half after the scheduled time and fails to communicate that they’re running late…or the candidate becomes emotionally unstable halfway through the interview because they realize they are not going to make it through to the next round…or maybe, the candidate becomes desperate and starts to beg you to review their resume credentials when both parties know the damage has already been done.

In these situations, it’s important to communicate to this person that the mistakes they’ve made, can be used as lessons learned or motivation for their next job interview. If they’re going to be late, they ought to communicate it! There’s nothing worse than a no-show, without any reason for it, right? When emotions get out of hand, its important to remind them that this interview is not the end-all be-all, and that the reason they are not moving forward is not because of something they lack. And finally, when it comes to credentials, (this scenario is often found most with recent college grads or young professionals), tell them that its about their potential value and capacity to grow within an organization that’s important, not always what they’ve already accomplished. Reinforcement is key to managing this type of nightmare candidate.

I am sure we have all been on either or both sides of this, the moral to the story is to take a proactive, openly communicative position with all your candidates to ensure the very best time, energy and matches among hiring managers and hire-ees!

CBI Way blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, Outside-In® Group Lead

Plan the work then work the plan.

It is a simple formula, but funny how we often forget the first part. As recruiting professionals, we are really good at “doing the work”. We get a job order, one of the dozen or more on our desk, and it is a position we have filled somewhere before, so we hit LinkedIn and are off to the races! Yes, I admit doing this from time to time.

As it is the time of year that all of us set goals and resolutions for improvement, how about this simple one – “I will have a sourcing strategy for each position or type of position I recruit for in 2013.” It is amazing how beneficial it is when you slow down to move fast, and how appreciative our clients are when they really know the effort put in to finding the right fit – that it wasn’t simply posted on the company website and you waited for that right candidate to fall out of the sky.

So what makes a great sourcing strategy? Some things to keep in mind when you’re laying out your plan:

• The history of where a similar or the same position was successfully sourced and later retained from in the past.
• A list of competitors or companies that employ the right pool of candidates.
• User groups, university alumni, veteran groups may also result in previously untapped talent.
• The right internet sources for the position, a big general job board vs. a small specific group.

Long ago, in a conference room far, far away, many of us in the talent acquisition field probably gave an answer in an interview that sounded like this: “I love that hard-to-fill position. I love the digging, detective work, the hunt!” Really, we all do. There is a great satisfaction in finding the right talent for the right role after having to put some creativity into it… and I promise you, some planning and creativity will go a long way. Try it with your next opening!

The CBI Way blog series explores the tools and practices used in Talent Acquisition. CBI Way is CBI Group’s recruiting approach and methodology – it’s how we do what we do! Check in with CBI Way for insights around workforce education and training, the latest trends in recruiting technology, and how to best utilize these tools towards improving your own recruiting practices.

CBI Way blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, Outside-In® Group Lead

Have you ever interviewed for a job, met with five people (four are late), one reads your resume in front of you, and – get this – all five ask the same exact questions circa the 1990’s? Wow! Everyone already knows your strengths and weaknesses! They even know why there is a three year break in work on your resume! You leave thinking, “Why did I bother coming in at all?!“

Yes, I have had that interview, too.

One of the great things about CBI Group is that we view our candidates and our applicants as our customers. Therefore, we work to make sure the type of interview experience mentioned above does not happen within our conference room walls. So let me ask you this, as a recruiting professional, how often do you think of the hiring manager as the client? Candidates are probably viewed as inventory, right? Well, if they are, they shouldn’t be….

There is a lot of hype in the ATS community about the Applicant Experience. The movement considers everything from the time it takes to apply online for a position, to the number of times duplicate data entry is performed, to those horrible “Thanks but no thanks. Your resume is on file.” automated responses. So what if you are not the CTO and are dealing with some restrictions on the automated front? Let’s not forget good, old fashioned human touch. Let’s look at planning the interview process.

Here’s a simple and effective way to enhance your client’s and candidates’ interview experiences:

1. Have an agenda. Make sure each interviewer has a subject to cover with the applicant.
2. Provide sample questions to each interviewer. These sample questions should be different and unique. This ensures that the hiring decision is made from a fully informed, and well-rounded collection of  perspectives, covering all aspects of the job and cultural requirements.
3. Leave time for questions.  Give the applicant time to ask questions and/or to wrap-up.
4. Enclose a rating form for the interviewers. This will accelerate the speed of decision making. Speedy decision making makes applicants happy!
5. Enclose an Interview Experience Form for the applicant to share with the interview team. (Uh oh! Peer pressure and a little friendly competition to consider!)

Taking one (or all) of these steps will markedly improve the applicant experience. While an interview does not guarantee that the applicant will get the offer – it may mean that they are not the “right person, right now”.  However, your candidate may very well become a paying customer, vendor, partner, or competitor in the future, so be sure to leave every applicant with a great experience.

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The CBI Way blog series explores the technology tools used in Talent Acquisition. CBI Way is CBI Group’s recruiting approach and methodology – it’s how we do what we do! Check in with CBI Way for insights around workforce education and training, the latest trends in recruiting technology, and how to best utilize these tools towards improving your own recruiting practices.

CBI Way blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, Outside-In® Group Lead

In our inaugural CBI Way post, Getting the Most Out of Your ATS, I outlined the right steps to take when selecting an Applicant Tracking System for your company. Today we will focus on what to do after you select your ATS and how to create a better client and candidate experience!  In our first post, I advised readers to follow Suggestion #3: Encourage early adoption and use! As I sit down to write this post, thoughts on politics and executive leadership come to my mind (What can I say? Election Day was a couple days ago. ‘Tis the season. ). So, think about your new ATS system as a political candidate. How are you going to win the popular vote with your company to best implement and encourage its use?

You have a big task in front of you called implementation. Your Campaign Manager should be your vendor partner. Stop and make the time to truly engage them in the installation and implementation of this business changing tool. Leverage them in meetings, trainings, interface with your IT department and to partner with you to ensure the communication and information is done to the nth degree – make sure you get what you are about to pay for. Don’t forget to use the expertise of your new partner early on when they have dedicated the time to you and your team! The only media hype you want is positive hype!

The next hurdle to clear is adoption and user acceptance. This is where the popular vote vs. the Executive Order comes in. Remember that you have a lot of interested parties, departments, and people looking forward to their lives being made easier, so start with the request for a vote. Which people would like to ‘Beta Test’? Who wants to be up and running first? Who wants to own training and education internally? Who wants to design the templates? Who wants to test the system? The best virtual team is comprised of engaged team mates!

Do you need to worry about the Electoral College for your ATS election? We know that the popular vote isn’t the sole deciding factor when electing political officials. Does this apply to your ATS implementation process? What if all the IT and Payroll teammates are the ones to volunteer to train recruiters and HR users or map out the candidate experience? Oops…where is your recruiting team in these critical processes? Be specific in what you put on the ballot – make sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute, but get the right people and right energy in the right positions.

When is it an Absolute Monarchy and not a Democracy? This is really important as  you get to be the Queen (or King) when it comes time to turn on the new system and turn off the “old way” of doing the things. You are also the Monarch when it comes to ensuring you get everything you negotiated and signed in your contract with your partner at the price agreed to.

So you made it through election season, and the system is implemented. How do you keep your voters happy over the long haul? You just said you would cut taxes and stimulate growth! (or was it cut administrative burdens and stimulate productivity?). As part of my closing statement, I encourage you to keep these two recommendations in mind:

• Keep the number for the vendor help desk close by. You may need to send out screen shots of the user guide when the help you need is not readily available, especially in the early days of using a new ATS. Assign one of your internal team members to be the end-user support for the first 30, 60, 90 days. Yes, a real, live, known person dedicated to help users (and – gasp! – even applicants) will put you SO FAR ahead of the curve in gaining user acceptance.

• Seek feedback! Does it take an applicant 2 hours to apply for a job? Does it take a recruiter 3 days to get an offer letter when it used to take 2 hours? Stay true to your campaign promises. Implementation and launching processes are often very tactical times overrun with project plans, workflow diagrams, and business analysts sending out verbose SOP’s. Don’t lose the vision along the way!

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The CBI Way blog series explores the technology tools used in Talent Acquisition. CBI Way is CBI Group’s recruiting approach and methodology – it’s how we do what we do! Check in with CBI Way for insights around workforce education and training, the latest trends in recruiting technology, and how to best utilize these tools towards improving your own recruiting practices.

Guest blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, CBI Group team member

Oh, the joys of automated information! For those of you in corporate or service provision recruiting organizations who have, will, or are considering upgrading from your “little black book” of hot candidates to the slick, shiny, and new Applicant Tracking System (ATS), do read on, learn, and laugh!

Some pointers/things to consider when setting up your ATS:

1. You need to slow down to go fast. Invest the time in vendor selection, options, and data preparation to upload as much as you can into the new system while the pricing/consulting/time is included in your system implementation. Yes, this means (in SO many cases) hire the data entry person to get all the info into (yikes) Excel for upload. Scan and parse if you really do have drawers full of paper, and assign a talented, interested, technically savvy recruiting professional as the project lead. Do not punish your warmest, fuzziest “people person” by assigning them ATS implementation if they are not a natural, engaged fit!

2. Don’t go cheap. Invest in the “additional custom development” (I still fail to understand why feeds between ATS, payroll, and HRIS are “custom” not “standard and included”, but what do I know?)  to feed data into and out of your ATS. Make sure not to freak out the nice payroll people and assure them you will never as a recruiter be able to go through the ATS and change someone’s paycheck nor will the influx of online resumes result in paying thousands of not hired applicants. Do all you can to strive for one person/department inputting data ONCE. There is no more serious buzzkill than to implement a new system then look to your recruiters/HR staff to enter the same data repeatedly into the ATS, HRIS, Payroll, CRM and the home-made access database “systems”; trust me, those feeds pay for themselves tenfold. Listen closely to your users and when you hear, “This was quicker and smoother when we did it manually!” make sure to listen closely!

3. Encourage early adoption and use! Invite all potential users to the demos, let them play in the sandbox, engage and involve them in the testing. Also (while this seems sneaky – it isn’t) communicate upon implementation when the old, funky manual processes and systems will be “shut off”. This sounds like, ‘On November first, the only way to generate an offer letter is through the new system.’ This is important and will greatly ease or prevent the burden on support staff now managing the output of multiple systems and processes, all parties will benefit from the new automation.

4. Design workflows that mirror your accepted, routine business processes. Utilizing a great Business Analyst is key here! You will get faster and happier users when the system intuitively follows steps they do every day.

5.  Pay attention to the templates. It is best to start with the copying of what you use now,  and tweak later. There’s always room for adaptation and improvement.

Remember, automation and system implementation of any flavor often starts with the desire to decrease cost, manual time and labor, human error, and having your talented staff spending time on lesser valued, routine activities. Other motivations are driven by the intent to collect and retrieve better information and be able to analyze that information to make better hiring, workforce/resource planning, and business decisions.

Don’t lose sight or focus on your intent and strategic goals when automating your recruiting, applicant or HR processes, as it is easy to do when immersed in the tactics and details of a system implementation. When you balance keeping both the forest and the trees in sight, your recruiters, HR staff, applicants and hiring managers will all thank you.

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The CBI Way blog series makes its debut by exploring the technology tools used in Talent Acquisition. CBI Way is CBI Group’s recruiting approach and methodology – it’s how we do what we do! Check in with CBI Way for insights around workforce education and training, the latest trends in recruiting technology, and how to best utilize these tools towards improving your own recruiting practices.

Guess blog post by Lisa Van Ess, CBI Group team member

OK, we’ve all done this. Admit it, we all have this story. Sometimes it stays hidden away, locked in the closet: the embarrassing ’lesson learned’ that we diligently strive to never, ever repeat again. Other times, we share the story with others to try and save them from making the same mistake, but shockingly, history does sometimes repeat itself! Some of us, when we share the various responsibilities of HR, Recruiting, and Team Leadership, may still be painstakingly unraveling all the fun that comes in the aftermath of making the bad hire, the gift that may keep on giving for weeks and months to come…

Most commonly, the reasons I have seen or (gasp!) participated in making a bad hire under duress, fall into the following categories:

Recognize any or all of the above? Yeah, me, too!

So, what can we do as recruiting leaders? The solutions really are simple:

1) Slow down. Slow your client down and reset time-to-fill expectations. This means not settling, this can also mean making the call to say, “I need another two weeks to do this right. I don’t want to do it fast and risk presenting or making a bad or inferior hire.” It is important to get in front of this one early, don’t miss a delivery deadline THEN tell your hiring manager or client it will take longer. Engage in the conversation as soon as you see the issue arise. We often agree to challenging, even impossible deadlines (as recruiters we are a competitive, fast-paced bunch) with the intent to quickly help our clients and solve problems. Being candid and informative with your clients to allow the time to hire the right talent goes a much, much longer way than the I-beat-the-impossible-time-to-fill-deadline by 5 hours! Ever start someone pending the last 24 hours of a background check being complete? (C’mon, admit it, we all know that story – classic example of do it right vs. do it fast.)

2) Offer a contractor or consultant. Help this poor hiring manager manage their work and life with an interim solution while the search for full time talent continues! Oh, and if you negotiate a nice ‘contract-to-hire’ deal, the contractor just may be your hire.

3) People change. Really, they do. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes for worse, sometimes they’re just different. Even if the potential candidate used to work for you, you worked for them and they taught you everything you know, was at your wedding or college graduation party and is a wonderful person (and they still are). Interview them anyway. Not only is it a great opportunity to catch-up, but you need to take the time to make sure the journey they have been on since you last worked with/for/near them is a match for the next stop on their journey: your current opening. Don’t deviate from your proven successful, consistent recruiting and hiring practices no matter who the candidate might be, and last (but not least) do make sure to complete your background check process and check current references.

Guest blog by Lisa Van Ess, CBI Group team member

Hi Everyone! It’s me again, still hanging on to the catch phrase Talent Acquisition. Most of us, whether we are corporate or agent recruiting professionals, spend the vast majority of our time practicing “Fill-the-Open-Job” recruiting and often, in doing so, stumble across some really great talent.

Hmmm…so you stumble across a Wildly Talented Individual and don’t have the open requisition. What to do?

Those of you in the retained, engaged, and contingent search space may dust off your “Most Place-able Candidate” hats and begin to market this person to your favorite partner clients, and/or start researching companies who just might have the opportunities for this unearthed treasure. On the corporate recruiting side, do we do the same?

Many of us are still realistically dealing with an economic and employment market where approved requisitions are carefully managed, perhaps resulting in an avoidance or difficulty in marketing talent to internal or external clients when there is not a direct fit to that super-duper, triple confirmed, approved headcount detailing the exact requirements of the recruited talent.

I’ll offer some thoughts and techniques to use in any market under any hiring condition:

1. My last blog focused on determining whether or not a person can and will do an open job, so the first item of business is to offer to your hiring management how wonderfully this talented candidate will culturally and behaviorally fit with the team, company, or client.

2. Have your homework done on what exactly they can do! Can they perform a ‘hard to fill’ job that, when open, takes forever to fill but just isn’t open right at this moment? Can they do two different jobs or portions of responsibilities needed to ’round out a team’? Do they possess the specialized industry, competitive, or technical experience needed?

With these thoughts in mind, don’t pass up on the pleasant surprise of finding ‘Will Do Talent’ – in fact, plan for it! Engage, market, and explore the opportunity to make your clients and candidates even happier and even more effective!

Guest blog spot by Lisa Van Ess, CBI Group team member

Those of us in the recruiting and HR business have used a lot of terminology over the years to describe what can simply be defined as an employee service. Clear communication (even to the point of corporate jargon interpretation), match-making, coaching, and advisory business are all components of this service. The newest descriptive term happens to be Talent Acquisition. Perhaps it is my years in financial services, but this one has the same ring to it as Human Capital.

Both terms seem to monetize people; which, while I have built and sustained a career in the solid belief that people are any organization’s greatest asset, looking at them as purely dollars and cents feels like they are just numbers. Companies, leaders, and recruiters don’t really get and keep talented people through acquisition (unless your organization merges with or takes over another firm), or the occasional bidding war for talent that may feel like a hostile takeover, especially when you lose this compensation-based battle.

Recruiting is really all about identifying, attracting, and retaining the talented individuals that fit the culture and values of your organization and who can take your team to the next level. A really simple process for this is:

1. Know your client, company, or team’s business and culture; and know the job you are seeking to fill really, REALLY well.
2. Identify and reach out to networks of talent whose experiences and values are a fit for open opportunities and genuinely tell your client’s or company’s story with detailed information about the job.
3. Those who respond to your story will be potential ‘fits’ for your opportunities, follow-up and don’t let a talented person slip into that legendary recruiting/HR Black Hole!
4. Thoroughly screen and get to know your candidates – A very wise recruiter once told me that there are only two questions you need answered in determining if a candidate is a fit for a job: “Can this person do the job? Will this person do the job?” I focus on the ‘Will’. Will they do it? Will they be happy doing it in the long run? Will the team/organization be happy with them? I have learned along the way that someone who ‘Almost Can’ but ‘Definitely Will’ can be taught the necessary skills while a ‘borderline willing person’ may never fit.
5. Set clear expectations about the job, culture, company, career and compensation advancement – the good , bad, and the ugly. Let people be fully knowledgeable about signing up for something, eliminate surprises!
6. As a leader, HR, or recruitment practitioner deliver on the expectations you set and invest in your newly acquired, talented employee! Lead, coach, tour-guide and mentor – acclimating to a new job is never easy. Remember why you selected this talented person and support them, you won’t be sorry.

So, whatever we call it next year, the constant practice of finding, attracting, relating as a human and collaborating honestly through the recruiting and on-boarding process, investing in and supporting people will always result in the building and retention of talented teams!