The 2020 Deloitte CEO Survey revealed that 96 percent of CEOs agree that DEI is a strategic goal. To meet that goal, 90 percent of those CEOs are prioritizing and investing in talent recruitment, development, advancement and retention, and 72 percent are prioritizing and investing in DEI data and transparency. 

However, many organizations are struggling to bring new employees from different backgrounds into their workforce. According to GEM’s 2020 Recruiting Trends Report, 49 percent of talent acquisition professionals say “finding more diverse candidates to interview” is their biggest barrier to improving diversity. 

SeekOut’s AI-powered Talent 360 platform helps you translate positive diversity hiring intentions into meaningful actions and results — and become the diversity champion in your company.

In this article, I’ll share how to make data your ally to meet your diversity hiring goals. 

Set Realistic Diversity Hiring Targets

Too many companies set broad diversity targets for their overall workforce that aren’t based on data. If you want to make a significant difference, first gain insight into what diversity currently looks like in your organization, then benchmark that data against the talent pools you hire from. 

Perhaps, you already know Black/African Americans are underrepresented in your workforce. That’s a great start, but you can get more nuanced from there.

Explore Black/African American representation in specific teams, roles and levels of your organization, and compare that data against your peers and the regions your employees are located. You can then determine the best opportunities to improve diversity in your company. 

For example, if data from similar companies and your regional talent pools show a higher percentage of Black/African American data scientists than your company employs, you can set a realistic target to hire more talent from that group and plan your recruiting strategy accordingly. 

Understand your Talent Pools and Create Appealing Job Descriptions

As a talent acquisition professional, you’re likely used to hiring managers having multiple must-have requirements they want included in the job description. Excessive role requirements not only restrict the number of candidates you can consider — they also prevent diverse candidates from applying.

A Hewlett Packard internal report found that men will apply for a job when they have 60 percent of the qualifications, but women tend to apply only if they meet 100 percent of the role requirements.

SeekOut gives you the data you need to have productive conversations with hiring managers about how talent pools stack up against their role requirements. You can view aggregate data on every candidates’ jobs titles, skills, employment history, educational background, diversity and more.

Using these insights, you can work with hiring managers to craft reasonable job descriptions that appeal to qualified, diverse talent — ensuring no viable candidate is left behind. 

As Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape, once said, “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Data is objective and removes opinions from conversations about role requirements. Use it to be a strategic talent advisor to hiring managers and help them see the best path toward finding their next great team member. 

Create an Effective Sourcing Strategy

Now that you’ve built a job description that appeals to your talent pool, create a detailed profile of your ideal candidate and strategy for building diverse slates. 

Use your talent pool insights to determine where qualified candidates are located and what it will take to make a successful hire. Will you need a relocation budget? Is remote work an option for the role? You might need to get creative and consider how to put your company in the best position to connect with diverse candidates. 

You can then use keywords, Boolean strings, filters and AI matching in SeekOut to cast a wide net and build a pipeline of diverse candidates who match your profile. 

Reduce Unconscious Bias in Candidate Assessments

Even the most open-minded people are influenced by biases they’re not aware they have. These unconscious biases can cause recruiters to make assumptions about a candidate based on details unrelated to the role requirements. 

For example, it’s common for people to speculate about a candidate’s intelligence based on the college they attended. Even worse, talented professionals with uncommon names can be passed over for job opportunities, simply because the recruiter doesn’t want to go through the awkward experience of figuring out how to pronounce it. 

With blind hiring mode in SeekOut, identifiable details such as a candidate’s name, photo and education are removed from their profile. Your sourcing team will only be able to consider skills and experience, preventing unconscious bias from influencing candidate assessments. 

Discover and Engage Diverse Talent

You’ve built a pipeline of talented, diverse candidates. Now you need to get their attention and pitch the opportunity to them. 

Up to this point, you’ve been strategic and data-driven. But candidate outreach requires a more humanized approach. Instead of sending the same generic, cold email to every candidate you’ve sourced, personalize the message to pique their interest. Reference what about their background impresses you, whether that be specific skills, a project they’ve contributed to or a company they’ve worked for. 

Lou Adler calls this outreach approach “hiring for success.” A personalized touch helps your outreach message stand out and increases the likelihood the candidate replies and agrees to move forward in the hiring process. 

DEI Starts — But Doesn’t End — with Hiring

An effective diversity hiring strategy brings people from various backgrounds into your company. However, it isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to DEI. If two diverse employees are exiting for everyone you hire, your recruiting efforts are ultimately meaningless.

Diversity cannot work without inclusion and diversity and inclusion cannot be sustained without belonging. The LinkedIn 2018 Global Recruiting Trends Report sums it up nicely: “Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is dancing like no one is watching.” 

DEI is nuanced and multi-faceted. It starts with hiring people from different backgrounds but comes to life when you build a culture and workplace where people feel like they belong and can be their authentic selves at work. 

Request a SeekOut demo today and learn why our AI-powered talent search engine is rated the #1 diversity recruiting tool by G2. 

The post Diversity Hiring: Translating Positive Intent into Actions and Results appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Fortune Magazine publishes a report on Fortune 500 Companies’ Diversity and Inclusion Performance and ranks them every year.  Fortune uses different parameters to measure diversity, including quantitative data, such as the participation of women and minorities in the companies’ workforce, as well as qualitative, yes/no parameters such as Board of Directors policy on diversity and Daycare services. 

Talenya decided to create its own ranking for Fortune 500 companies, using only quantitative parameters that are indisputable and can be tracked over time to identify trends.

In this article, we compare the diversity breakdown and overall score of three beverage giants: The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc.  

World’s Largest Non-Alcoholic Beverage Company

The Coca-Cola company offers over 500 brands in more than 200 countries around the world. PepsiCo is Coca-Cola’s biggest competitor in the non-alcoholic beverages industry, with Keurig Dr. Pepper as another leading rival of hot and cold beverages. 

The chart below compares the three companies in terms of revenues and number of employees, as well as their Fortune and Talenya respective ranking. 

Coca-Cola: Ranked as 262 or 2?

While PepsiCo and Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc. are close in their Fortune and Talenya rankings, The Coca-Cola Company is far apart. While Fortune ranked it as number 262 among all 500 companies, Talenya ranked it as number 2! 

Here’s Why Talenya Ranked Coca-Cola Much Higher

The Coca-Cola Company was ranked only below Altria and above Walmart.  Talenya and Fortune use different parameters to measure diversity.

Talenya ranked Fortune 500 companies according to the following parameters:

1. Percent of Black/African American
2. Percent of Women
3. Percent of Hispanic/LatinX
4. Percent of Asians

Fortune combines the percentage of all minorities in the workforce into one parameter, while female participation is measured separately. Talenya measures each diversity category and women, separately. 

Like Talenya, Fortune uses Diverse employee participation in Managerial Roles as one of its parameters for measuring Diversity; however, Talenya uses three additional parameters not used by Fortune.

Talenya’s Additional Parameters

Average Tenure

The percentage of diverse employees who stayed for more than two years in their companies. This parameter reflects employee satisfaction and impacts churn.

Internal Mobility

The percentage of diverse employees who have had more than two jobs in the same company. This parameter also impacts employee satisfaction and churn.

High Churn Risk

The percentage of diverse employees who are at high risk of churn within the next 12 months.

After this, Talenya takes the ranking of the companies across all eight parameters and gives them an overall diversity score. The overall score is used to rank the company compared to all other 499 companies.

The participation of Black/African Americans and Women in the workforce received a relatively higher weight, while all other parameters received equal weight.

As can be seen from the chart above, Coca-Cola received a very high ranking for Black/African American participation in their workforce.  They also had a high tenure among their employees. All three companies had a low score in the participation of Asian employees, but Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc did not have other high scores to make up for these shortcomings, other than participation in Managerial Roles and High Risk of Churn.

The only parameter where PepsiCo excelled was Internal Mobility of diverse employees.

On the other hand, Coca-Cola had low scores in both Asian employee participation and High Churn Risk, but it had relatively high scores in the other parameters.

So contrary to its ranking on the Fortune 500 list, Talenya concludes that The Coca Company is one of the best-performing companies among Fortune 500 as far as diversity and inclusion.

Read the Full Talenya Bi-Annual Diversity Report Here

The post Was the Coca-Cola Company Ranked Unfairly on Fortune 500 Diversity List? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

The solider does a slow turn to look at his superior and asks “…um, are we the baddies?”

There are practices and policies within the Talent Acquisition profession that go against a candidates need to see us as knights in shining armor.

Having been a practitioner for over thirty years in talent acquisition, I can tell you for certain many of us want to be the good guys.

But our behavior to candidates says otherwise.

10 Signs you are the Baddie

You Make the Candidate Interview Over and Over

It is a candidate’s market, and passive candidates are scooped up quickly. I am going to be so bold as to give you a number, and that is two.  There would have to be compelling reason to make a candidate interview more than twice.

Nowadays you can get away with a third if the candidate gets to pick the availability and the meeting is via a virtual tool.  Anything more is antiquated and shows an organization does not understand the market today.

We Move Slow

This is the kiss of death. I saw a recent social media post (so it must be true) that said while in a virtual interview, a candidate got a job offer from another organization and just ended the call.

Do you have candidates ghosting you?  This is another sign that hiring managers do not understand the market.

We need to interview within a few days of applying online and make offers within hours of the last interview to secure interest.

We ask for Information We Never Use

Old habits die hard. Do you still ask for graduation year? Or previous employer addresses? This is needed for background check, maybe.

Save those questions for that process.  If it does not have to do with the resume or EEO questions, it can wait.

We Ghost People

True story. My daughter is on the job market.  Today she was ghosted for the second time on an interview.  She scheduled the call based on the Recruiter’s availability.

Confirmed it. And sat by the phone for a call that never came.

That is the ultimate insult. How dare they!  And do not tell me “…an emergency came up”.

There is no such thing as a talent acquisition emergency. It is a sign that a Recruiter is out of their depth and overwhelmed.

We Break Up Over Text

I teach classes for the Recruiter Academy Certification.  I tell students to break up with candidates but do it with love and compassion.

Not every candidate is going to get the job. As applicants, we know this.  Just tell me.

If I took the time to get up, take a shower, put on pants that I have not worn in a year, drive (again which I have not done in a year), paid for parking, and took the time to interview, YOU OWE ME A PHONE CALL.

We are Not Transparent

Am I still in the running? AM I unqualified? Did you even view my resume?  These are questions that candidates want the answer to.

It takes only a few seconds to mass email at the end of the day a candidate disposition.  This lack of attention can be misconstrued as ingenuine and apathy.

We Abuse Your Time

Start meetings on time, end meetings on time. The employers time is not more valuable than the applicants.

Please honor the candidate’s clock, as well as your own.

We Make Promises We Cannot Keep

I have been guilty of this. I told candidates I would follow up when I knew I could not. I told candidates they seem like a good fit when they probably were not.  It was not intentional.

I just wanted to leave the call on a positive note and had not learned the art of the decline. This goes back to being transparent. Practice declines and retorts that are fair and genuine.

We Disregard Your Goals

What I really think is happening here is a failure to log a candidate’s goals and dreams. Not intentionally.

But when we consider offer acceptance rates, tying a candidate’s goals to the extended position helps for higher close rates. Use candidate goals to directly affect offer acceptance.

You Make the Hiring Manager Your god

There are three people in the hiring relationship. The candidate, the recruiter, and the hiring manager. Each person has an equal part of responsibility, expectation, and needs.

It is a relationship. All three in this trio are important.

In this market, it is important that the candidate is allowed a powerful voice.

I am NOT recruiter-bashing.  I spoke to a recruiter with 202 open requisitions this week.

Recruiters are busy. It is hard to find time for pleasantries when a recruiter is buried in work. I only ask that recruiters become self-aware and that leaders protect recruiters from max capacity.

Thoughtful use of technology can aid in efficiencies to free up time and automate processes. Let us all behave like the good guys.

Happy Hunting.

The post Are We the Bad Guys? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

With all the controversy on facial recognition, it seems like a topic too controversial to touch.

Luckily some people dare to be controversial. Just like with micro-expressions, we don’t know enough about it to say it could work or not.

There is plenty of evidence of bias and problems, but the scientific research that was done usually shows potential.

But because of the controversy surrounding the subject few scientists dare touch the topic, even less gets peer-reviewed and nothing gets replicated.

Cognitive ability

So I was pleasantly surprised when this article came on my path. This research shows that your pupil size (the little black thing inside of your iris) can be a sign of higher cognitive ability.

And just to be clear, they are not talking IQ here, that’s just one type of cognitive ability.

We found that a larger baseline pupil size was correlated with greater fluid intelligence, attention control and, to a lesser degree, working memory capacity—indicating a fascinating relationship between the brain and eye.

As the researchers say, it’s very early days. It might just be a correlation. 

It might be a biased data set, but there might also be something there.

Personality

This newest research comes on top of the research in 2018 that showed that by tracking eye movement during random tasks, like E-mailing, scientists were able to predict the Big Five personality traits with pretty darn good accuracy.

So again, just by looking at someone’s eyes, in this case, the eye movement, it seems possible to predict something about that person and about that person’s personality.

More research

Both pieces of research are cool in themselves, but not by a long shot conclusive enough to start using it.

We need much, much more research to see what is and isn’t possible.

Unfortunately, the current climate on facial recognition in hiring and laws that are being passed specifically on this topic might prevent us from actually building better tools that help recruit on actual quality.

Wouldn’t it be cool if a video interview would give you data about a person? Actual, real data on that person’s cognitive ability and personality traits?

Then a recruiter wouldn’t need to guess if that Texas is a redneck or if that Californian is a hippie? Or a recruiter wouldn’t need to be turned off because of the accent someone had and relate that to intelligence, as research has shown humans do time and time again.

And most of all, wouldn’t this be a great candidate experience? Not filling out yet another questionnaire. Not having to play all kinds of games to get someone’s ability and traits.

Isn’t this a better candidate experience if it turns out to be viable and bias-free?

The post Just look into a candidate’s eyes (with AI) appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

From there, we can help you uncover why you’re feeling the way you are and of course, what to do about it.

Are you dreading the commute? Are you anxious about being in the office all day?

What it could mean:

For many of us, remote work has become something we have come to love and thrive in.

It is possible this new way of living is just up your alley, and that’s okay!

What to do about it:

Consider if you’d be happy doing a hybrid of in-person and remote work (and what balance you’re okay with), or if you’d prefer to work fully remotely. (which is okay!)

Then, explore whether it is feasible to bring this up to your manager. The time is NOW to voice opinions and concerns about this to see what is feasible as things are changing.

It is possible your company has already put up a new rigid policy and/or won’t budge on your preferences, in which case, you want to consider how strong this feeling and desire is for remote work, and consider finding a purely remote role.

Are you dreading seeing your colleagues? Are you dreading revisiting the company culture?

What it could mean:

The environment and culture of a team or company are an underrated element in our overall job fulfillment.

Aligning with the values and personality of the company and those around you can make or break how you feel day-to-day.

What to do about it:

Decide if your team is the killer here, or if it is the company at large. If it’s just the team or manager, is there another team/manager with a better culture you would be happy joining?

Unfortunately, culture is a really difficult thing to change. So if you’re not vibing or thriving in your company’s environment, it may be time to explore finding a new company and culture fit where you can be yourself.

Are you dreading the work you need to be doing? Are you feeling generally unfulfilled?

What it could mean:

Consider three separate parts to any work experience: role, industry, and environment.

Ask yourself: is it the day-to-day responsibilities that I’m not aligned with and/or is it the company mission that doesn’t intrigue me?

You want to find a role where you align with the style of the work, feel challenged, and care about the work’s impact. With the company, you want to believe in the mission, purpose, and output of what that company does, who it helps, and why.

Either the role, industry, and/or environment, could be levers for you to uncover which area needs room for improvement.

What to do about it:

If you need some clarity on the best fit role or industry for you, pursue career exploration. Career exploration is a process that is distinct from and a precursor to the job search, including a series of steps of practical learning and self-reflection in order to compare, contrast, and clarify which career path you are confident in pursuing (role, industry, and environment).

Then, you can determine if you can make a move internally or if you want to job search to find a new role elsewhere. Give yourself the opportunity to uncover what path is a great fit for you, and find support to ease the search.  

Recognize that it is feasible to find a path that aligns and challenges you. 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, so let’s look to them to figure out how they found and pursued a path that aligned so well with them.

Listen to yourself.

The important thing to realize is to always listen to yourself. If you’re having any feelings, understand where they are really coming from, how strong that feeling is, and if it’s having an effect on you, explore potential solutions. You deserve nothing less.

Often, in careers, we brush aside our feelings or delay acting on them, only to realize weeks, months, or years later that we’re miserable.

Remember that you can explore support from peers, mentors, or coaches to at least sort through how you feel and consider ideas or next steps you’d feel confident and comfortable with, before taking any action.

The post Anxious about going into the office? Here’s what it could mean… appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Total quality management (TQM) was in vogue during my undergraduate years and early career in industrial engineering. The U.S. was catching up to the Japanese in manufacturing production as their Toyotas outperformed our Fords.

Your company couldn’t deliver a competitive product without an optimized manufacturing process. Strategy followed suit as companies invested in new capabilities. The race to data-driven everything was on.

My career began at Raytheon’s Waltham plant, where I supported manufacturing lines for U.S. Navy radar and communications systems. Remember the aircraft carrier in the original production of Top Gun? Can you see the radars moving to track the action?

My production line manufactured the wiring harnesses to power those systems. After Raytheon, I supported F-16 fighter aircraft production. That mile-long factory was a sight to behold.

Industrial engineering has its roots in process design, and correspondingly, quality control. Years of problem-solving and an MBA prepared me for strategy consulting. Essentially, strategic analysis is a lot like sleuthing a production line issue. The goal to build quality into strategy design so production runs seamlessly.

We often point to strategy execution as the point of failure when the design process requires an overhaul. It is, after all, in design when we test assumptions, grab our tried-and-true analysis tools, and make the big decisions, data-driven, of course.  

I’ve spent the last twenty years leading empathy-based and data-driven strategy engagements for organizations driven by purpose. The research and analysis have been rigorous, from demographic profiles to population projections and customer journey maps.

Our goal? To build alignment and vouchsafe the decisions to be made.

Turning the Sweet Spot Inside Out

As a strategist, my job is to master the most effective tools. Strategy isn’t a race for efficiency; instead, it requires a focus on effectiveness and “doing things right.” After using various tools, I landed on The Strategic Sweet Spot in Harvard Business Review’s Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? by David Collis and Michael G. Rukstad.

The Strategic Sweet Spot positions a company to answer this question, “How can we meet customer’s needs in ways that rivals can’t or don’t?” That question is the jumping-off point to discover a competitive advantage rooted in the customer value proposition.

The Strategic Sweet Spot uses a classic Venn Diagram to point the user to the sliver of overlap between your company and your customer, the section your competitor can’t touch. The assumption? Your vantage point matters most. And then, unexpectedly, a discovery in 2018.

That assumption was wrong. Mastery of The Strategic Sweet Spot led me to turn it inside out. The catalyst? A customer mindset, the holistic appreciation for your customer, their head, and their heart.

Embracing a Customer Mindset

When setting strategy, we typically prioritize quantitative data analysis and undervalue the human perspective. Often, executives delegate ownership of the customer to the marketing department, emphasizing journey maps and experiences to drive brand engagement.

What if the assumptions behind that decision are irrelevant? What if our beliefs and opinions—as executives, boards, and employees—are less important than we’d assumed all along? What if our customer belongs at the center of our strategy, their voice the one that matters most?

My eureka led me to this realization. Your strategy process needs to reflect the latest thinking. Just as TQM evolved, so too strategy must evolve for a future relevance. Two inputs culminated in my eureka experience in 2018.

First, I’d mastered the Strategic Sweet Spot. Second, I was open to seeing beyond the Venn Diagram to imagine what might be. I realized the following.

• Your company’s view of the competitive landscape isn’t nearly as important as your customer’s view of the choices available to them.
• Customers care about what matters to them and what matters the most.
• Customers search for options constantly, especially in the post-pandemic world.  

Your customer seeks an emotional connection. They expect to connect with a differentiated brand, product, and service that speaks to them. They crave unique and unexpected offerings.

Let’s bring empathy, understanding, and data together to identify what matters the most. The result? A composite customer persona derived from robust qualitative and quantitative data. An iterative process tests and confirms the insights.  

An effective strategy process is rooted in a customer mindset. That perspective brings together two crucial strategy concepts—customer value proposition and competitive advantage—attuned to the realities of today.

You understand what matters to your customer and what matters most. You are also clear about what makes you distinctive, your competitive advantage. That unique nexus is the source of differentiation and the cornerstone of your differentiation strategy.

Delivering a Differentiation Advantage

Without a compelling uniqueness, your company risks being essentially equivalent, or worse, misunderstood, by savvy customers. Confused or disinterested customers will pursue other options.

It’s easier than ever to lose a customer to an unknown competitor that is a scroll, click, or keyword search away, thanks to the power of smartphones.  

I leave you with these suggestions to accelerate strategic success.

• Build quality into strategy design through an iterative, human-centered process. That approach allows you to test and retest assumptions as you gauge interest in the big ideas.
• Elevate the voice of your customer when setting strategy. Embrace a customer mindset to reveal what matters most, and use those crucial insights to connect value proposition to differentiation advantage.
• Creativity, passion, and energy during strategy setting will carry you through to execution. The more you can rally your team around customer mindset and the opportunities for differentiation, the better. After all, your team wants to engage with exciting and unique work, a sense of purpose their goal.

Let me close with this final suggestion. Connect your company’s purpose and differentiation strategy to create sought-after alignment.

Your customers and team will thank you for it. Let me know how it goes. I’m rooting for you.

The post Pushing past the Strategic Sweet Spot: Incorporating Your Customer’s Perspective appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

All kinds of different research shows, on average, that Gen Z is more likely to go back to the office than Gen X and Baby Boomers, since building those relationships early on in your career is easiest done offline.

The one thing though everybody agrees on — getting the culture piece right in a remote or hybrid environment will be the biggest challenge.

So is this the time to start living our Employer Brand?

Company Culture

How do you keep your company culture alive in a remote or hybrid environment? How do you keep people engaged if they don’t show up to your building every day? How do you pass your corporate values to new hires?

Wait. Pass your values on to them?

Isn’t ‘not fitting the culture’ the number one reason for rejecting a perfectly suited candidate? And now you’re telling me we need to pass the culture on?

What is our employer brand worth if we cannot select based on our corporate values?

Hire on Value Fit

Every employer branding presentation I have seen in the past couple of decades, at every event I visited, started with “We did workshops in the organisation to learn the true values of our organisation.“

They usually end up with a pretty generic video that if you know the values you understand how they are in there.

In the ‘age of remote work’, this post-pandemic world — where we will be in the office a lot less — at least for most companies, shouldn’t we start living our Employer Brand? Our corporate values?

Shouldn’t we hire based on values fit — so our culture is embedded in the people not working at the office?

Why don’t we take Employer Branding to the next level and define the values like they really are? Not as a hollow term, but an answer to how do we deal with certain situations?

How do we expect a manager to react to a data breach or an employee mistake? Or how do we expect an employee to fix his or her mistake?

In assessments, we call these ‘situational judgment tests.’ You get a situation and you get three or four perfectly reasonable answers that show a totally different culture. 

To give you an example of culture-defining situations here’s one.

You get a call from your clients, the product is down. How do you react?

A) You gather your team right away and figure out what’s going on.

B) You look at what’s going on and try to fix it yourself.

C) You call your manager to decide if this is your issue or if the team needs to get involved

For all three answers, I have a client that will say that’s the perfect answer. It’s a very telling example of culture.

The new employer brand

The new employer brand is about the genuine values of the organisation. Measurable values that you can select on. Let’s stop rejecting people on cultural fit and start hiring or rejecting them on value fit.

Let’s get people in the door that share your corporate values and build a strong culture from there. In a remote or hybrid environment that’s the only way.

The post The Age of the Real Employer Brand appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

“Two or three months’ vacation after the hard and nervous strain to which one is subjected…are necessary in order to enable one to continue his work…with energy and effectiveness.”  -President William Taft, 1910.

Apparently, Americans weren’t keen on the idea of a nice, long vacation and no law was passed. Other industrialized countries took notice of this “memo” and instituted guaranteed paid vacation time, such as Sweden and Germany, mandating seven weeks of paid vacation per year.

Now, 111 years later, we still have no guaranteed paid vacation days. Nor any federally mandated paid parental or sick leave.

That’s abysmal compared to all other developed countries.

That’s why the data science team at Resume-Now asked 950+ Americans about how much leave they took and if they were aware of the paid leave available in other countries.

Here’s a quick overview of the disturbing findings from the study:

• 27% of working mothers had only 5-6 weeks maternity leave
• 59% of women avoided calling in sick when having pregnancy symptoms
• 26% of employees had just 2-5 days of paid sick leave
• 18% of survey-takers had 6-9 days of vacation
• 61% of respondents didn’t know the average parental leave in Europe is 26 weeks

Vacation Leaves Something to be Desired

Sunbathing with family, taking a solo museum tour, or hiking with a buddy in the woods…no matter what’s your pleasure, we all need a respite from the grind.

But, are we getting enough time for these pleasurable activities?

It’s typical to get more than 20 days of vacation in Europe.

The average number of paid vacation days for those working in the private sector for at least a year is 10 days, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We wanted to find out if our respondents had the same.

And, it turns out, our sampling reflected those stats. A whopping 45% had between 10-15 days of vacation. Shockingly, 15% had just 1-5 days. This shows that we’re seriously overworked.

Time to relax for fun is one thing, but time to relax in order to recuperate is quite another. We wanted to find out if our survey takers had enough time to tend to themselves when feeling under the weather.

A Lack-of-Vacation Loophole

Those who are vacation-deprived have a clever solution: calling in sick when feeling peachy.

If you have enough paid sick leave in the bank, it stands to reason that employees who are running out of vacation days milk their sick leave. Those in the study reflected this stealthy solution.

An impressive 41% reported falsely calling in sick between 1-5 times per year. And who can blame them?

When it comes to vacation leave, the United States falls far behind many other developed nations, and a work-life balance really doesn’t exist.

Wellness is not a top priority, which is also reflected in the shortfall of sick leave time.

Sickening Amount of Sick Leave

It’s an unfortunate fact that at least 20 million Americans go to work sick because they do not have any paid sick leave. This approach is not popular in other parts of the world. At least 145 countries provide paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses, with 127 providing a week or more annually.

In the United States, on the other hand, there are currently no federal legal requirements that require employers to provide paid sick leave for their staff.

In the study, it was clear that the respondents were severely lacking in sick time.

A sickening reality: 26% had only 2-5 days of paid sick leave available. A quarter had just 6-10 days. And, sadly, 2 out of 10 had no paid sick leave at all. 

It stands to reason that many American workers are going to work sick to avoid losing pay.  Not a good look during a pandemic.

They’re faced with the unfortunate choice of working sick or not getting paid, with 33% of them agreeing that the amount of sick time they had was adequate.

It’s obvious that we’re not getting enough time to recuperate when feeling under the weather.

No Paid Maternity Leave

It’s frankly an embarrassment. Other industrialized countries often have up to a year of paid maternity leave. The United States has none.

Although the Family Medical Leave Act ensures that employers with 50 or more workers must allow parents 12 weeks of job-protected leave per year to care for a newborn, that leave is unpaid. And many moms have to take off sick and vacation days to take advantage of this.

Only 56 percent of employees are eligible for FMLA based on an FMLA survey. Too many moms—and dads—do not have enough time to bond and care for their little bundles of joy.

The results from the Resume-Now survey confirmed the disturbing truth: Moms and dads had very limited time to spend with their newborn.

Nearly 3 out of 10 dads were only able to take 2 weeks or less of leave.  

Of the moms, 27% took 5-6 weeks off. A shocking 20% took only 3-4 weeks. It shouldn’t be possible that a mom was not able to take any time off after giving birth, but 3% of moms reported taking no maternity leave.

The amount of time off these parents were able to take is minuscule as compared with most developed nations.

A devastating reality is that many moms simply didn’t have enough sick and/or vacation time left to take as much time as they needed. A full 32% of moms said they couldn’t take that time because they had no time left and needed the money.

And 19% were afraid of losing their job. As one mom said,

“I was supposed to be grateful that my company wouldn’t fire me for taking 12 weeks of unpaid leave. It’s a joke.”

Ignorance is Not Bliss

The satisfaction levels of survey-takers were baffling. Americans seem to be satisfied with the amount of sick leave, vacation, and parental leave they have. Nearly 7 out of 10 said their vacation days were adequate, 33% were satisfied with their sick leave, and 42% felt their parental leave time was enough.

And perhaps it comes back to that not-getting-the-memo idea.  

Perhaps if U.S. workers were made more aware of the leave available in other industrialized countries, they’d be a little less…satisfied.

In response to several “Did you know?” questions, most respondents were unaware of the policies of other developed nations.

“Did you know that the average amount of parental leave in Europe is twenty-six weeks?” 

61% said no.

“Did you know that there is no federal minimum for paid vacation or paid public holidays in the U.S.?” 

47% said no.

“Did you know that most countries in Europe give their employees 20 or more paid vacation days?” 

54% said no.

“Did you know that the U.S., Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and a handful of island nations in the Pacific Ocean are the only countries that don’t require employers to provide paid time off for new mothers?” 

63% said no.

It’s not that all Americans feel that the situation is fine and dandy. There were voices among respondents saying that the situation regarding vacation, maternity leave and sick leave should improve and be brought into line with European standards:

“I think that America is a live-to-work and not a work-to-live society and this is reflected in the low number of paid days off most workers receive.”

“I think the US should offer time equivalent to European nations.”

Work to Live or Live to Work?

Although we are a world leader in many areas, America lags well behind other countries when it comes to paid leave.

Not only is there a lack of paid leave, but Americans are kept in the dark about how common it is to have plentiful leave in other countries.

Maybe it’s high time for the United States to also become a leader in terms of social satisfaction and innovation in the field of work-life balance and institute paid leave policies that support the hardworking people who make this a great country?  

So far, these only seem to be illusory dreams—dreams of a President over 100 years ago that failed to take hold.

The post Americans Left Out with Lack of Leave appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Luckily, through my years of career coaching, I’m here to tell you how your job rejections can actually be a source of learning so you can strengthen your job search strategy and outcomes.

Think of job searching like a funnel. Depending on the point in the process where you’re seeing less optimal results, it can actually tell you a lot about how to improve.

Are you uncovering enough open opportunities?

Your first “job” in job searching is to uncover active, open roles. If you’re not finding out about any open roles, it is possible you’re relying too heavily on the online job boards.

Don’t sleep on the fact that 70-80% of jobs are landed through networking and that a large portion of open roles are not always posted online.

Be sure to find the right guidance, coaching or mentorship to understand how to network effectively and strategically to identify open roles.

Are you struggling to land first-round interviews? 

It is possible that either:

You are relying too heavily on the online job boards.

Networking can be a way to ‘get your foot in the door’ whereby an informational chat can lead to an internal referral and a first-round interview.

This allows you to be recognized as a candidate and not just an online application.

You may be applying to roles that are not the best fit for you.

If you’re applying online and your resume is being referred internally but you still don’t see any first-round bites, reflect on the level of role, the type of role, whether you need some upskilling, and how well your materials and personal branding aligns with your direction.

Are you landing interviews but not final rounds? 

Usually, these early screening rounds are a core assessment for your fit for the role. This could be a telltale sign that you’re applying to too great a variety of roles and that you’re not sure which is the best fit for you.

Or that you’re not clear enough in your explanation as to why they should be sure you would excel in that role. Consider pursuing career exploration to clarify your best fit role.

Are you landing final round interviews but not landing offers? 

Succeeding in Interview Projects & Presentations:

If you’re being given case studies, projects, challenges, presentations, etc. and you aren’t moving past these, consider whether the role you’re applying for is something you’re naturally aligned with and feel strong at doing.

• Do you have a strong understanding of what the role requires and entails?
• Can you present how you would handle this work in a way that proves that either you have handled similar challenges in prior roles or that your strengths, tendencies and inclinations make you a natural candidate who would excel at handling those specific types of challenges?
• Do you need to pursue a course or certification to strengthen and develop relevant skills? Or are you pursuing a path that isn’t the best fit for you?

Interview Practice:

Another consideration at this stage could be how you show up in interviews, i.e. answering questions in a way that is succinct and structured, choosing relevant stories to tell, having an energized tone and demeanor, having professional body language, building rapport with the interviewer, and more.

Interview practice is extremely underrated as a beneficial tool to help you succeed once you show up for that interview.

Find Culture Fit:

Remember that interviews are about assessing your skills and potential but also your culture fit. Try to proactively identify companies that align with your values and personality.

Try to make your interview as comfortable, natural, enjoyable, conversational, and fun as possible.

Prove your genuine interest in the role and company through your energy, but also let them get to know you as a person. Smile!

Do you believe you?:

At every stage, consider whether your story makes sense for why you want this role and why you genuinely believe you would excel and thrive in the role.

If you don’t understand the role’s expectations or genuinely believe that you would excel in it, why should anyone else?  Career exploration can clarify the right direction.

What feedback are you hearing or feeling?

You should always ask for feedback from interviewers but even if they don’t share it with you, your self-awareness and reflections are more than sufficient for you to know what you can do better next time.

After every interview, allow yourself to reflect on what you did well and what you can improve (i.e. how you target roles and companies, how you prepare, how you communicate, etc).

Know that things are sometimes outside of your control. 

If you’re genuinely applying to the right types of roles and companies, you have the skills to thrive in that role, the companies are a culture fit for you, and you are clearly and convincingly articulating why you are the best fit — Then just know that as long as you genuinely believe you are on the right path, you will find the right fit in a matter of time.

But if any of these pieces feel out of place, remember to reflect and act on whichever area of your approach can be improved in order to more efficiently land a fitting role.

The post How Can Job Rejections Strengthen Your Job Search? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

A college degree is valuable in a competitive job market. But, it should not be the deciding factor when you make a hiring decision.

To understand why, let’s answer some of the biggest questions surrounding evaluating job candidates based on their education.

Is it Common for Job Candidates to Have a College Degree?

Research indicates about 36% of the U.S. population has completed at least four years of college. And in 2019, approximately 3.9 million U.S. students graduated with at least an associate’s degree.

One of the biggest reasons people pursue a college degree: to stand out from the competition in a fierce job market.

The National Center for Education Statistics notes the employment rate was higher for those with a college degree than those with only a high diploma in 2019. As many job seekers explore ways to land the top roles, they may be increasingly likely to earn a college degree in the years to come.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Hiring a Candidate Who Has a College Degree?

Research shows employers believe candidates with a college degree are often more “job-ready” than their counterparts. These candidates fine-tune their hard and soft skills in school so they can hit the ground running on day one at a new company.

There is also high demand for job candidates who hold a college degree at companies of all sizes and across all industries. This creates plenty of competition for businesses that want to attract quality candidates to myriad roles.

Additionally, it may inadvertently force a company to miss out on hiring an exceptional candidate, because he or she does not have a college degree.

However, the right hire generally fits within a company’s culture, is open to learning, and has the drive to succeed regardless of their educational background.

So, even if a candidate has a college degree, there is no guarantee he or she will thrive with a business.

Why Look Beyond a College Degree to Identify Top Talent?

Putting too much emphasis on a college degree can lead to an unconscious bias during the hiring process. It can put your business into a perilous position where it immediately removes outstanding job candidates for consideration from a variety of roles.

In this instance, your company won’t have a chance to meet with candidates who possess appropriate qualifications outside of your educational requirements. This can ultimately lead to poor hires who put major dents in your bottom line.

There are sometimes biases relating to the quality of a job candidate’s college degree as well. For instance, a company may ignore a candidate who holds a degree from an online university, but this is a mistake, as nearly all online degrees today are properly accredited and well respected.

If your business does still filter out online degree holders, you’re missing out on yet another vast talent pool.

Considering job candidates without a college degree helps you expand your talent pool, too. It empowers you to build a talent pool of diverse candidates who can help your company reach its potential.

Let’s not forget about the value of on-the-job training, either.

If a job candidate without a college degree has the right skills and background, he or she can learn the ins and outs of how to perform different tasks at your company. The result: this candidate can become a valuable contributor to your business.  

How Can You Determine If a Job Candidate Is the Right Choice for Your Business?

Don’t wait to hire top talent for your team. Here are four tips you can use to help you look beyond a job candidate’s educational background and determine if he or she is the right choice for your company:

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI can be a valuable recruitment tool if you know how to use it properly. You should not use AI to remove candidates for consideration from roles if they do not have a college degree.

At the same time, you should not rely exclusively on AI to vet candidates for roles. Instead, deploy AI recruitment technology in conjunction with your everyday hiring process. This can help you speed up the process of evaluating and hiring the best candidates.

Digitize Your Hiring Process: Not only is digitizing recruiting a means to sustainable business practices, setting up digital filters to instantly remove job candidates from consideration for roles that don’t align with your requirements allows you to streamline your processes.

These filters can help you identify terrific candidates who may or may not hold a college degree.

Improve Your Brand: Prioritize your brand strategy. Ensure job candidates know what to expect from your company and what your business is all about. This boosts the likelihood that top talent will consistently pursue roles at your company.    

Be Agile: Work diligently to hire top talent as quickly as possible. The longer you wait to add an amazing professional to your team, the more likely it becomes that they may join one of your rivals.

The Bottom Line

The best companies do everything in their power to identify, attract, and retain top talent. Do your part to engage with job candidates of all educational levels, and your business is well-equipped to hire the best professionals.

The post Should a Degree Be a Deciding Factor in Hiring? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Great.

We would love to source and find people who fit what you are looking for. But we need to start having realistic candidate expectations based upon the current state of the hiring market.

We are in a highly unique market, therefore 2021 should be deemed the year of flexibility. In this inimitable year, expectations need to shift.

To understand this employment outlook, we review three shifts in market components.

This is a Candidate’s Market

This is no longer a market where the candidates need and rely upon your job, this is a candidate’s market. Companies are now a product placed upon a shelf, competing amongst each other for the candidate to buy into them.

Your good company reputation and name are not enough.  Compounded by the fact that during the start of the covid-19 pandemic, many employees stayed at their jobs — resulting in a 47% drop in applications in all industries.

The market is recovering from this drop, but this means that as a Sourcer, the role of a salesperson has become an even more integral part of the hiring process.

This process can take time because it involves sourcing the candidate, making multiple reach outs, and selling the candidate on the role, the company, and why they would want to leave the familiarity and security of their current job for your role in a market that is unsure for them.

The 2021 Candidate is Smart

Today’s candidates are smarter than ever. With one search (and they will), potential candidates can review your company’s reviews, salary and benefits, management, culture, and work-life balance information.

Even if your company is at the apex of a candidate’s career, candidates still want to know what’s in it for them.  A lack of transparency in the salary or the nitty-gritty of the position can lead to unhappy candidates that will decline interest in the position or simply ghost.

Therefore, it has become important that not only Sourcers sell the role and the company to the candidate but provides a white glove candidate experience, including transparency for the role they could potentially step into.

We Are Entering a Millennial Candidate Market

By 2025, 75% of the US workforce will be Millennials. This is an important number to know because according to the Bureau of Labor and statistics in January 2020 the median tenure for all wage and salary workers was 4.1 years.

When it came to workers between the ages of 25 and 34, the median tenure was only 2.8 years. Let me repeat that for those in the back.

Millennials only stay at their jobs for an average of 2.8 years.

So, when a hiring manager asks for no job hoppers, this is a relatively small few compared to the tenure statistics of millennials. Therefore, there needs to be some flexibility when it comes to the expectations of a job description. These are not always relevant to the statistical data of the current job market.

Millennials are focused on their career growth. Therefore, the three major factors in attracting and retaining millennial talent are the ability to career path, flexible work options like working remotely, and most importantly, pay.

These are all aspects that Sourcers need to address to attract millennials for various roles in today’s market.

The current market is no longer a falsity or “what-if” scenario. It is here, it is now.

It is our responsibility to educate hiring managers on these market shifts. We are the talent professionals. At the very least, anonymously forwarding this article to them counts. As I keep saying, adapt or perish.

Happy Hunting.

The post Market Shifts and Hiring Manager Education appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Here are a few things you can reflect on to ensure you strengthen your approach:

Are you applying to a role that is too junior or too senior for your tenure and level of experience?

Jumping up a level sometimes can be more easily done internally within a company. While the number of years of experience on a job posting can sometimes be misleading, do your best to apply for role titles that feel commensurate with your tenure, experience level, and skillset.

Are you applying to a role that you’re not sure is the best fit for you? 

If so, consider pursuing career exploration to clarify the best fit for role, industry and environment. Having confidence in your ideal direction will create efficiency and effectiveness in uncovering networking connections, targeting the right companies, and easily proving you are a strong fit in interviews.

Ask yourself, from 1-10, how clear are you that you’re pursuing a [role/company/industry] that is a fit for you? Are you applying to various options for roles and industries?

This is a key trigger to take a step back and ensure you learn enough about each path to prioritize the best possible fit for you.

Career exploration is an impactful process to pursue before you begin your job search journey.

Are you searching for companies in the wrong industry?

If you already have proven experience in a certain role, it’s great to apply for companies within industries that you have a genuine interest in, so they see that you are genuinely interested and invested in contributing to their mission.

Are you applying for companies at the wrong size or stage? 

Consider whether you are the best fit in a smaller, scrappier organization, a large corporate organization, or somewhere in the middle.

Are you applying “everywhere and anywhere”? 

If you are applying exhaustively for too many hours a day, to numerous roles per day, not only will you feel burnout, but you will start to reduce the quality of your efforts in finding the right applications.

It’s best to choose your top 10 target companies and focus on only a few at a time, so that way you intentionally focus your efforts on pursuing companies you know would be a great fit.

Could you benefit from some upskilling to prove your interest and fill any skill gaps required for your ideal direction?

Consider which course or certification would be most interesting and most relevant to push you towards your ideal direction.

Could your branding be improved? 

Your materials should clearly align your background and strengths with your ideal direction. Your branding should be consistent, clean, simple, and clearly prove your fit. (Think: resume, LinkedIn, professional summary, video pitch, cover letter)

Could you improve the clarity and impact of your communication during interviews? 

Interview practice is massively underrated as a helpful tool. Seek out coaches, mentors, or peers to listen and give you feedback.

Are you avoiding pursuing certain elements of the job search that feel unnatural or uncomfortable? 

(Like networking, interview practice, etc)? Are there other “mindset” areas or hesitations you could use coaching on to ensure you feel ready, willing, open and confident to pursue a strategic job search?

Could you benefit from some guidance on job search strategy and best practices? 

If you’re not sure where to spend time, how to approach networking, how to target companies, etc, there are best practices and career coaching experts out there who can help teach you what to do so you’re not left guessing. Once you know what to do properly, consider #11 below.

Are you in need of some structure and accountability? 

Using your time wisely in job search is the key to your success. Set goals, measure outcomes, and learn from those metrics to determine where you can improve.

Consistent effort and networking volume is key, so create accountability systems that will work well for you.

Are you being creative?

Don’t forget to use LinkedIn as a means of engaging in a relevant professional conversation, prove your thought leadership,

Are you taking care of yourself holistically to ensure your mindset remains confident and positive? 

Pursuing a creative project or learning/skill development opportunity can really help during a time of searching so that you don’t forget your value.

Are you being transactional or strategic?

Try to avoid feeling like you’re “checking the box” with any job search activity. Remember that both networking calls and interviews are conversations that serve as a mirror into the work you may be doing, so consider:

• Who do I want to talk to?
• About what types of topics or problems?
• Why do I care about these topics or problems?
• How will I efficiently target these particular people or companies?

Are you pursuing the same efforts over and over again?

in a “heads down” manner, or are you iterating your approaches based on outcomes? Remember to reflect on your job search strategy, where your time is going, the approaches you’re using, and the outcomes you’re seeing, to be sure you pivot and improve the areas that aren’t serving you.

And by the way, these areas for improvement could relate to your practical strategies, your sense of accountability, or even your mindset.

Don’t forget to “interview them back.”

It’s possible you’re showing up to interviews telling the interviewers what they want to hear without truly reflecting on whether that was the right fit company or environment for you. If it wasn’t the right fit after all, reflect on what elements of a company environment are important to you and then be creative in terms of how you can find more companies that fit the culture you align with.

Depending on your answers, consider whether career coaching, peer support, or any other form of mentorship and accountability could serve as both emotional and practical support to help you succeed in your job search.

The post 15 Key Considerations to Improve your Job Search Outcomes appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

You’re juggling multiple job openings and hiring deadlines, all while trying to coordinate stacked schedules for several rounds of digital interviews. 

It’s no surprise that only 2% of people get job interviews.

98% of Applicants Won’t Land an Interview

Ouch. Most applicants don’t get invited for an interview. A 98% rejection rate is discouraging for job seekers, but it’s also bad news for recruiters and hiring managers. Why?

Because chances are, within that high percentage, there are some great candidates who were just filtered out too soon.

1. In some cases, candidates may be filtered out because their resume isn’t ATS-friendly. Regrettably, some resumes aren’t formatted properly, making them difficult for your applicant tracking system to read.
2. Other times, candidates simply don’t jump off the (web)page. For whatever reason, their resume falls flat. The applicant hasn’t done a good enough job “pitching” themselves for the position. Maybe they downplayed strengths or overlooked transferable skills. The resume simply doesn’t speak to how their experience is relevant to the job.

It’s especially likely for promising candidates to be overlooked during high-volume, high-pressure hiring. When you’re trying to hire a large number of employees in a short amount of time, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

There never seem to be enough hours in the day to interview as many candidates as you’d like. But by limiting the number of people you interview, you risk missing out on top talent.

How to Interview More People in Less Time

It turns out this high-volume recruitment dilemma is a very solvable problem. The secret is simply removing the barrier of time.

We’re all adults with busy professional and personal lives. Schedules rarely line up. When you’re free for an interview, the hiring manager has a conflicting appointment.

Maybe the candidate isn’t available during business hours because they’re already employed elsewhere. You can either work late in hopes of aligning schedules, or you can remove the need to meet in real-time.

Inviting people to record answers to your interview questions allows you to give more candidates a chance—and still hire in less time. Because while you and hiring managers may not have time to schedule dozens of interviews, you likely have time to watch short videos of candidates introducing themselves. Fast-forward or skip over responses as you see fit.

Since 93% of communication is non-verbal, you can learn so much more about applicants by watching a recorded video than you could from a one-dimensional resume. And that leads to better hires.

The benefits of asynchronous (not occurring at the same time) interviewing for hiring teams are obvious, but will job seekers like it?

Persuading Applicants to Participate in Video Interviews

As a recruiter, of course, you want the candidate experience to be positive. Your employer brand and your future workforce depend on it. If you’ve heard rumblings that job hunters aren’t keen to complete asynchronous interviews, think again.

First off, lots of people are totally willing. At a time of historically high unemployment, people are looking for work in mass numbers. A little camera shyness is not going to stop them from making a case about why they’re the person for the job.

Secondly, people who outright refuse to participate in a pre-recorded video interview may be:

a.) Under informed about the benefits this type of interview offers them (of which there are many)

b.) Headstrong rebels just waiting to defy other work processes and become a thorn in the side of the HR department

That’s why I’m calling BS on applicants who resist video interviews. Completing a video interview on candidates’ own time is an indicator of their willingness to follow directions, and, frankly, their appetite for the job.

When you think about it from a candidate experience perspective, pre-recorded video interviews offer complete convenience, empowering applicants to complete it when and where is best for them.

Total freedom

• Record interview responses 24/7. Applicants can do it in the morning if they’re an early bird, or late at night after the kids have gone to bed.

Home-field advantage

• Similar to how athletes tend to win more often when competing at their home base, job applicants also have this advantage. They can minimize interview nerves by reducing distractions and creating an environment that sets them up for success.

High visibility

• The easy shareability of the recorded videos grants applicants unique opportunities to introduce themselves to hiring decision-makers sooner in the game. Otherwise, it’s unlikely applicants get the chance to get facetime with senior management that early in the hiring process.

Unless the videos are being analyzed by a computer (c’mon, that’s just weird), real recruiters like you review them!

Educate and reassure applicants that asynchronous interviews are not the same as artificial intelligence (AI). That’s a common misunderstanding and not a reason for job seekers to resist pressing that record button. It all comes down to positive positioning.

Accelerating High Volume Hiring Without Compromising Candidate Quality

Finding top talent and accelerating recruitment are often considered two opposing factors. But recruiters don’t need to compromise candidate quality for speed of hire. You don’t have to settle for lesser-quality hires simply because you need to recruit quickly.

Removing the barrier of time is a foolproof approach to mass hiring that maintains forward momentum without sacrificing the quality of your hires.

The post The 2%: Maintaining High-Calibre Candidate Selection During High Volume Hiring appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Six months ago, more than 45% of employees – essential and remote workers – reported suffering from burnout.

Why could churn be higher this year? As the U.S. slowly emerges from the pandemic, people feel their lives are becoming more predictable and under control again, creating the mental bandwidth to consider a job change.

There’s also more freedom. Geographic location is no longer a driving factor during a job search, thanks to the virtual work trend that is here to stay in many industries. Talent pools have truly become nationwide, if not global.

It’s vital for organizations to consider that while everybody is in this same storm, we are not all in the same boat.

To reduce burnout for high-performing employees and get acceptance on job offers, organizations need to find new ways to relate to employees and candidates that demonstrate genuine empathy.

Recharge to renew motivation

Supporting employees in overcoming burnout is important for everyone in the organization. Try these strategies to help reduce stress and elevate outlook in your workforce:

Help employees stay challenged intellectually. For some, taking on new responsibilities and having the opportunity to learn will recharge them and keep them motivated. Find ways to focus less on the minutiae of a job description and more on enabling employees to use their skills and passion to help move your organization forward.

At Modern Hire, we encourage our team members to consider internal mobility options to shift into other areas of the company that interest them or take on projects that get them excited. Taking on different job responsibilities, even on a short-term project basis, can break up the routine.

It also contributes to professional development.

Encourage employees to disconnect and recharge. Because people were unable to travel for vacations last year, many opted to not take time off. Even if not traveling, PTO is essential to unplug from work, recharge, and avoid burnout. At Modern Hire, for instance, we regularly encourage our employees to take time away from work and truly disconnect.

Organizations must foster a culture that respects and values time away from work, so employees get that mental break.

Support work/life flexibility. One of our company values – Invest in People – centers on providing employees with the flexibility to focus on what is important when it is most important. Sometimes the most important thing is finishing a big work project with a looming deadline.

Other times, the most important thing is cheering on your kid at their soccer game, taking care of your ailing parent, or dealing with any of life’s other demands. Trust your people.

Give them the flexibility they need to attend to all the things – work and personal – that are important to them.

Consider office reopening plans from your employees’ view. It’s not easy to maintain your culture when everyone is virtual, but you’ll do damage if you require people to come back when they say they aren’t ready. Many people don’t want to give up the flexibility they’ve built into their lives.

Some organizations are asking for volunteers to begin the return to work; others are giving hybrid work schedules a test.  

Make it easy for candidates to accept your offer

As organizations rebuild for the future, they need to translate their concern for employees into the hiring experience for candidates.

Here are a few hiring strategies that will show candidates you care about eliminating burnout and ensure you’re extending offers to the right candidates:

Be clear on your reopening plan. Solid communication on this will highlight your attention to employee burnout. It also helps ensure candidates who are hired during an all-virtual mode aren’t caught off guard by a mandatory return to the workplace. Your entire interview team should be consistent with this message.

Understand why candidates are looking. Are they running away from the same factors that will cause job fatigue with your organization? Are they settling for you because they just need to leave a current employer? You want to make sure they are joining your team for the right reasons.

Offer candidate-centered hiring experiences. Give candidates a window into your organization and treat them fairly, with dignity and respect, in your hiring process.

A science-based virtual hiring platform can provide the tools your team needs to create the right job-relevant experience by:

• Streamlining and building on the candidate’s journey, so they are not asked the same questions in every step and have more opportunities to use their own words rather than answer multiple-choice questions.
• Enabling efficient and easy hiring team collaboration, so interviewers are well-prepared not only about the role but about each candidate’s background.  
• Inviting candidates into your process with an honest look at the role and your organization during pre-hire assessments, so they can make informed decisions about their fit if you decide to extend an offer based on the assessment data.

This pandemic forever changed how people and organizations think about where, how, and when work is done.

Successful companies won’t try to turn back the clock, especially when there are new opportunities for organizational and personal growth, and different challenges to solve with employee burnout.

They will continue to evolve their culture, their messaging, and hiring processes. Employer-employee relationships of the future will be more human-centric than ever.  

The post How To Overcome Burnout In The Hiring Process appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Dutch insurance giant Achmea for example gives their applicants the opportunity to decide on the method of communication. The candidate gets to decide if the recruiter should call, WhatsApp, or e-mail.

Turns out 80% never changed the default status of phone.

Of course, this wasn’t tested in an A/B test, so maybe people like to be called. But we see this everywhere and there are actually a lot of good psychological constructs for this behavior.

1. The default sets the norm and most people don’t like deviating from the norm.
2. A conscious choice costs mental energy. If a choice is already made for us, that’s easy.

GDPR compliance

So do we see this on other aspects of the careers website as well? Yes. For example, GDPR compliance checks in Europe. Most companies have a “check the box” but some offer the candidate the choice of when to have their data removed—between 28 days or 1 year—after the application process is finished.

No matter whether it’s 28 days or 1 year, the default option gets selected about 70% across the board according to Dutch ATS Hirevserve.

Not just online 

In case you’re now wondering: maybe people just don’t care enough about these things. Let’s take a choice that could decide between life and death: organ donation. That’s an important one, and one you would think people care deeply about right?

Well, Germany and Austria have pretty similar cultural norms, yet the number of organ donors in Austria is twice as high as in Germany. Why?

The default option at registration in Austria is yes and in Germany is no. In Austria, you have to make a conscious decision to unregister. In Germany, you have to make it to register.

What defaults do you have? 

So what defaults do you have on your careers website? Do you have a range in your search bar? If so, what made you decide that is the right default?

Do you send job alerts at different time intervals? If so what’s the default interval?

And in case you think you don’t have a default because they always need to select something, you forget that the first option you offer is the one selected most often.

The effect isn’t as strong as a pre-filled default, but it’s still there.

Defaults matter

There is no wrong or right with defaults. But never forget you have the power to nudge people. Or actually, by definition, you will nudge people.

So whatever choice you make, make a conscious one, as your choice unconsciously affects those of many.

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