SCRUM recruiting revolves around time blocks, where a very specific amount of time is reserved for various stages of the recruiting process. This provides teams with the benefit of staying on task and higher deadline success rates. There are always challenges with every form of workflow, however. But Jackie discusses ways to minimize these weaknesses.

Regarding the return to work, we seem to be in a strange “hybrid” transition at the moment. Companies want workers to come back for a few days a week, or perhaps even for just a productive luncheon.  There’s been pushback from this change, but what’s the root cause? Is it laziness, a hatred of traffic, or do they just want to be able to pick up their kids from school easier?

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The post SCRUM Recruiting and the Return to Work with Jackie Flake appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It’s easy to get caught up in the ego of recruiting, but checking your feelings is an important aspect of recruiting. Remove your emotions from the equation so that you can really focus on the candidate in question. “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit”

Stay genuine, stay authentic, and keep the tenacity from when you first started this gig. It’s easy to get bogged down in the trenches of this messy career field, but if you make sure you focus on the accomplishments of others and the success of those around you, you’re gonna set yourself up for success.

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The post Knowing Your Value with Joshua McAfee appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Too many times companies miss the mark. If you don’t make sure someone has felt seen throughout the hiring process, they are going to leave at some point.

How does Adam do it? By making sure that every step in the communication process feels valuable and important to new employees. This means that he takes care to ensure they’re aware of their role in the company, how they’ll fit into the team, and what they can expect from their future colleagues.

His goal is to create an environment where employees feel seen by leadership, which leads to better retention rates and greater productivity.

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The post Reverse Engineering the Hiring Process and the Power of Onboarding with Adam Meekhof appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

“How big is the team?” The typical question, right, especially since I noticed that the fintech startup was about 140 people deep and was established about five years ago.

There was a pause. “That’s the best part; this person will get to build the team!”

“Oh, cool-cool. So…” I paused and took a deep breath because I knew exactly where this was heading. “Where is comp on this?”

After muttering that they were looking for a “real up-and-comer,” I knew where compensation was. “Help me understand, is this an IC or a leadership role?”

“Both!” they exclaimed.

“Both? How can this be both?” I had to ask. After reiterating that this was a startup and that the ideal candidate would wear many hats, I got the picture: my friend was asking me to refer to them a recruiter who would be enamored with the title and the prospect of being a startup’s only recruiter at a salary well-below market.

Games, Games, Games

Are companies playing Monopoly with job titles?

You betcha! It’s the ultimate game of inflation and deception. Smaller companies with limited resources may use job titles creatively to attract and retain talent or make themselves look like a big deal. But let’s be real; the only IT guy at a company could be the CIO, but companies may use different titles to stretch their budget and make the most of their limited resources.

Additionally, companies may use more general or ambiguous job titles to avoid having to pay for higher-level positions. This can inflate job titles to create a better image of their company and to attract and retain top talent. Or to make the job sound more important or prestigious to attract top talent. But let’s face it, people are emotional and ego-driven, so if it’s a title that seals that deal, often, organizations might be willing to flex on titles.

Title inflation happens for perfectly understandable reasons. Businesses are now in cost-cutting mode. Corporate-title inflation has crept into the workplace and is rising precipitously. Layoffs, hiring freezes, and concerns about a recession are spooking C-suite executives

Employers — and recruiters — have a clear incentive to make titles sound more attractive. A loftier title can go a long way when they’re tapped out on compensation

Experts say that title inflation can usually crop up in a few ways. Vanity titles are common in the startup world, especially in companies that lack a clear organizational hierarchy. With fewer rungs on the corporate ladder, promotions might occur less often — but that doesn’t stop companies from offering title-only upgrades, where employees assume a more prestigious job title without a pay increase or added responsibilities.

It serves to solicit unqualified candidates. Excessive title inflation can hurt the reputations of companies and their recruiters and could even question how qualified existing teams are. I mean, can you imagine a finance team with a bunch of inflated, ridiculous titles? That would be a disaster! And let’s not forget about the bizarre titles like “customer happiness hero” or “office ninja”. These are just empty buzzwords that don’t give any information about the role. So, job title inflation is like trying to put whipped cream on a turd, it may look nicer, but it’s still a turd.

When money is tight, a bump in the title is a way of recognizing someone’s efforts cheaply. Job title inflation is the increasing number and size of grandiose job titles in corporations and organizations without a corresponding increase in pay or increased importance. For organizations looking to bring in new employees, an inflated job title may confuse and disappoint applications if the role turns out to be a lower-level position than they were expecting. Ultimately, that can waste time and money in the recruiting process.

Knock-Knock

Who’s there?

The CIO.

The CIO who?

The CIO of the company, but don’t let my title fool you, I’m still just the only IT guy here.

Additionally, companies may use more general or ambiguous job titles to avoid having to pay for higher-level positions. Could companies inflate job titles to create a better image of their company and to attract and retain top talent? To make the job sound more important or prestigious to attract top talent?

Job titles are a key part of an employee’s currency on the labor market and can affect how someone’s career progresses, how much money they make, and even their status among peers and customers. And just like with any asset, a disconnect between the supposed value and the fundamental truth can end poorly.

Think about what’s happening in the world of Engineering recruiting. Title inflation for engineers is becoming more common, even in large companies. A senior software engineer at Uber, who spoke anonymously to Protocol, said she was promoted to senior engineer within three years of starting her first engineering job. This promotion allowed her to double her salary when Uber hired her and many of her peers are advancing at the same rate. The engineer said she expects her career to “plateau” a bit after climbing early.

So What’s the Harm to Recruiting?

Job title inflation can hurt recruiting efforts by making it difficult for companies to attract and retain top talent. When job titles are inflated, it can create confusion and mistrust among potential candidates and employees, as they may question the validity and value of their role within the company. Additionally, inflated job titles can also create unrealistic expectations and a lack of clear career progression within the company, leading to dissatisfaction and high turnover rates. Furthermore, when job titles are inflated, it can also make it harder for companies to compare and compete with other companies in terms of salary and benefits, which can also hurt recruiting efforts.

Also, consider the candidate and their future job prospects: job title inflation can make it difficult for candidates to stand out in the job market as their title may not accurately reflect their experience and expertise. It can also create confusion for recruiters and hiring managers as they may need help to distinguish between candidates with inflated titles and those with experience and qualifications. Additionally, candidates can struggle to negotiate salary and benefits as their inflated title may not align with their actual experience level. Overall, job title inflation can create a lack of trust and credibility for the candidate in the job market.

What’s Next with Job Title Inflation?

Inflating job titles is a growing trend in the workplace, particularly among smaller companies looking to attract and retain talent or make themselves appear larger than they are. Inflated titles can stretch budgets, make jobs sound more important or prestigious, or avoid paying for higher-level positions. However, this practice can harm the company and the individuals involved. It can create confusion, mistrust, and unrealistic expectations among employees and candidates, leading to dissatisfaction and high turnover rates. It can also make it difficult for companies to attract and retain top talent, compete with other companies in terms of salary and benefits, and for candidates to stand out in the job market. Therefore, recruiters should be aware of the potential pitfalls of inflated job titles and consider them when evaluating candidates and positions.

The post Now, There’s Job Title Inflation On The Rise? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Hillary has a passion to find developers and designers that are passionate about making waves in this monopolized search industry.  She also expresses how reinventing search for your organization is a challenge, but vital to getting brand awareness out there. Google has its merits, but there’s a fundamental problem with consolidating search towards one particular algorithm.

She has had a very unique and challenging recruiting experience, and despite it all, has learned how to navigate this space quite effectively.

Key takeaways on reinventing recruiting:

1. How she builds a foundation of trust when scouting new hires to get to the bottom of people’s passion.
2. How to break through those difficult recruiting communication walls to bring up your quality of hire.
3. Where and how to un-earth top dev talent to become part of the “in crowd”

We mentioned our upcoming #HRTX live and online events in our podcast, so for those excited about it you can learn more here!

The post Reinventing Recruiting and Reinventing Search with Hillary Geissinger appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In today’s podcast, we talk with Rachel Clark GTM Recruiter at NexHealth about how companies can stay competitive and still scale in a down economy. Rachel shares how to keep ramping up as competitors are downsizing and playing it safe.

Being a recruiter is more than just taking orders. Dig to the bottom of your team’s weaknesses, then apply improvements during this slow period so that you can set your organization up for success in the future. Don’t just sit idly by, excited by the fact that your work load is reduced. This is your opportunity to prove to your organization that even in a hiring scarcity your department can still provide that extra level of support.

Rachel Clark takes us to school and touches on:

1. Scaling in a down economy: The metrics and KPIs that you need to be aware of.
2. Internal mobility, and how to facilitate healthy internal growth.
3. Vital candidate experience checkboxes that are crucial in any economic climate.

Listening time: 22 minutes

Noteworthy quotes from Rachel Clark about scaling in a down economy:

“I was the first external hire for my recruiting team, so it was really exciting to be the first person to help establish best practices, and bring recruiting up to the 21st century for a team who has moved people around internally but never had a trained recruiter.”

“It’s a give and a take. Different hiring managers have different ideas…but if as a recruiting team we’re all focused on reaching that ideal state together, we can be successful long term.”

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The post Scaling in a Down Economy (While the Competition Plays it Safe) with Rachel Clark appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Teaching and empowering others is in Vanessa’s blood. We’ll dig into what’s changing in sourcing for 2023, especially with the industry layoffs.

In this episode we dig deep into:

1. Sourcing Efficiency: How you can position yourself as an asset to to your company.
2. Training: What and how to train, and what you need to know.
3. Mastodon, The Blue Devil, chatGPT and more.
4. The tools Vanessa can’t live without.

What’s Changing in Sourcing for 2023?

From a sourcing perspective, what i’m really encouraging people to do is to try and stay as up to date as possible. Because those are the people that are gonna retain their jobs.

What is changing at the moment is, it’s not all about what you say, Brian, the scraping and those kinds of things, it’s how to be effective for a company without costing them a lot of money. So not spending a lot on like, LinkedIn Recruiter licenses.

Job boards, do they still have a place? It’s all about how do we still source, but we do it more creatively, maybe without such big overheads.

Listening Time: 35 minutes

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The post Sourcing Efficiency, Training, and the Blue Devil with Vanessa Raath appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Here’s how to fix it.

Listening Time: 29 minutes

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The post Candidate Experience in a Market Where People Get Ghosted appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In this episode, we talk with Julia Levy, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at CommScope.  Julia brings a unique perspective as a leader of a global TA team who is also a leading voice in recruitment marketing.

Listening Time: 35 minutes

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The post Recruiting Recruiters – The SEC, Natty Ice and Julia Levy appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Focusing On Fundamentals

One of the fundamentals of hunting for qualified candidates is leveraging Boolean search, and for me, it means marrying AND, OR (|), or NOT (-) to the site: command. This marriage is often referred to as X-Raying a website. It is a fundamental part of advanced sourcing.

If built correctly, delivers highly targeted results and helps find the most relevant candidates. This search technique can be accomplished in a variety of search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Exalead, just to name a few. For a deeper dive on search engines, take a listen to Ronnie Bratcher here.

I tend to use this method to quickly and easily locate candidates’ info from web sources that are indexed by these search engines with one Boolean string. The more you use the site: command, the better you’ll become at it and the more you’ll want to play with it as a tool to uncover profiles. So let’s play.

Let’s start with site:polywork.com before we get granular. Just starting, we realize that Google tells us that the Polywork domain has about 42,300 links for us to explore. On the other hand, Bing shows us less than half of the links to Polywork. This lightly illustrates how using different search engines brings back different results.

Why does this happen? Simply, it’s because each engine uses different algorithms and produces slightly different results. if you’re searching for something obscure, if one search engine is good, two is definitely better. You can even try a third or fourth engine before the diminishing returns start to make it a waste of your time.

Let’s add some complexity and get more specific. Let’s say that we are looking for recruiters or sourcers. Using site:polywork.com (recruiter | sourcer | “talent acquisition”) on Google, we discern that there are roughly 800+ profiles of recruiters, sourcers or talent acquisition folks.

Let’s dig into some of these results.

While looking for recruiters, sourcers, and talent acquisition professionals illustrates one type of search we could do, it posits the fundamentals for us to build upon.

Looking for Developers & Engineers

Looking for software developers and engineers is my bread and butter, my stock and trade, the bees knees. That’s what led me to Polywork in the first place. Let’s look for developers and engineers using Google. What do we find? About 10,000+ profiles.

What if we want to look for specific frameworks or languages? Ask and you shall receive.

Want to look for people in a specific geography? How about New York?

What about using some natural language search to find profiles that are “open to work”?

But let’s say I want to find their contact information? Remember the little trick I did previously with LinkedIn? Let’s do that using Polywork. 

In some results the email address is obvious, but in other instances, we need to dig into the profile. In this instance, the gmail address appears at the end of the Summary section.

Practice Makes Perfect

While using Polywork as an example produces profiles, there are lots of other social networks that you can use site: command to uncover and connect with prospects. Next time you come across another social site like Facebook, Twitter or LeetCode, try adding the site: command to the mix and see what results it will produce for you.

Remember, being a good sourcer or recruiter is to constantly remain curious. A great recruiter or sourcer acts on that curiosity and acts on it.

The post Building Within Site: Command appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Here’s what we cover:

1. 1. Fink accuses Ryan of not speaking English
   2. Tim talks about recruiting recruiters
   3. How he lost 95% of his revenue and why switching from tech recruiting to manufacturing has been the best decision he’s made in a long time.

Listening Time: 25 minutes

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The post Wooda, Staffing and Lifting People with Tim Visconti appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

What about the kind of information you seek when hunting down an expert, candidate, or potential partner on a platform like LinkedIn?

It would certainly help to know proactively the types of projects each person has led, or all the relevant extras they take on across their professional and personal lives, such as hosting a podcast, mentoring, or volunteering.

Next Generation Professional Social Network

Welcome to Polywork, a professional social network where people share what they do and collaborate with others.

Polywork is a small design-obsessed team working on building the next generation professional social network to enable people to share what they do and collaborate with others.

They believe that the world needs better information on what people can do to make it more productive. lets users create a free personality-focused professional profile where they can share updates and send collaboration requests to others on the network.

In contrast to LinkedIn, Polywork features “badges” to highlight personal and professional skills and interests as opposed to focusing just on a job title. Users also have the option to add projects and accomplishments to career timelines.

Whether it was pivoting careers or starting new projects like a podcast or a store on Etsy to pass the time, the pandemic amplified a growing trend of people who do more than one type of work. Existing professional social networks use the job titles we hold and schools we went to as the main way to identify who candidates are.

Is This Flawed and Outdated?

Consider for a minute the myriad of similar job titles we look for Site Reliability Engineers. At companies like Facebook, these engineers are called “Production Engineers.” Looking on LinkedIn for “Site Reliability Engineers” or “SRE,” actually eliminates results based on job title that could be a fit for the role. 

Yes, as a social network dedicated to professionals, LinkedIn offers a treasure trove of business contacts, but I’d argue that there is more to learn about our candidates which yields better outreach and increased engagement.

All the result of being able to find or decipher a better picture of who our candidate is and what they are interested in doing or producing.

On the professional networking side, the approach allows users to get a quick visual overview of an individual — perhaps fleshing out some of the dry details they already saw on their LinkedIn account — and quickly navigate to individual examples of specific activity.

Recruiters looking for professional ice-breakers will probably relish the chance to find more up-to-date material to work with, ahead of making a cold pitch.

Current professional networking platforms don’t cut it. Your moniker might read “Software Engineer” or “Product Manager” or “Designer” and perhaps the school you went to. But these titles alone don’t come close to capturing what we actually do in our professional lives or the types of work we find motivating.

Enter Polywork and Resume 2.0

As opposed to being a resume directory with a social-professional network built adjacent to your resume profile, Polywork is a historical professional portfolio or journal that also is a social-professional network.

Polywork focuses on letting people tell their own stories and all they’re capable of, so we can meet new people, supercharge our teams, and unlock creativity.

From capturing details like who you collaborated with on various projects to career highlights, to a system of community-created badges reflecting both personal and professional traits, Polywork is building a new professional network, from the ground up, that reflects how we work in 2022. 

It looks like Polywork is building a professional network that strongly appeals to the aesthetics of young professionals like influencers, developer advocates, designers, hustlers, lifestyle entrepreneurs, models and musicians.

These have been the early adopters. While making these observations, it’s important to consider the function and future of resumes because it becomes apparent that this network is for everyone. 

What is a Resume, Anyway?

A resume is a pdf you email to a company. Another way to see it is that a resume is a burdensome standardized method of communication.

A resume is job-history-oriented, and that we use to verify an applicant’s supposed “experience,” right?

Candidate says they know Java, so they know Java. Right? Well, how well do they know it? Can you verify it via a code test or a code snippet from Github?

It’s not like carrying a certification from your state’s Bar Association, is it?

There is this supposed authenticity via the resume. With a resume it primes the hiring manager or recruiter to use job-history oriented as the filter:

• Is this person changing jobs too frequently?
• Does this person have gaps in their workplaces?
• Does this candidate really know Java?

After all, Java is to Javascript like Ham is to Hamburger. Same thing, right?

The problem with this analysis (and complete absence of logic) is that these are concerns and do not tell if an applicant is qualified.

Also, it does not adapt to the market as a whole.

Shitty References and Bogus Endorsements

References have not been legitimate for years.

Anyone can pretend to be your reference. Anyone can endorse your work without tangible proof.

People on LinkedIn will endorse me as being knowledgeable with SEM. This is preposterous.

The reason they endorse me: I used to place a lot of search engine analysts, managers, and sales people. It would be more useful if the proof of endorsement was tied to an activity such as posting a SEM certification like Google AdWords.

You can kind of replicate this on LinkedIn by mentioning people on a post in the public time-stream. However, it eventually becomes lost and cannot be easily filtered. The LinkedIn social network is adjacent, not your resume.

Opportunity Over Spam

Direct Messaging on LinkedIn, on the whole, is people messaging you for unsolicited services. It has us treat every connection or relationship with suspicion and apprehension.

Polywork has messaging with a purpose before being sent to a target user, a first big step to cut down on spam.

I could see them expanding this feature with their AI assistant to assess whether the sent message is genuine, meaningful and a wanted communication. The system could quickly penalize unapologetic spammers via an internal karma system.

Another option is to associate activity tags with contact types. This would allow contacting users to be forced to understand the context of what they are messaging for — and do their homework to understand if there is genuine alignment.

Can’t LinkedIn copy these features? Like how they can copy Instagram User Stories and Clubhouse audio chats?

Sure they could.

LinkedIn could replicate these features, but — and here’s the but:

The fundamental way the social network works, like connections and resumes profile through the public live stream, these features would be subject to exploit that render them not as valuable.

LinkedIn Resumes are not useless, but their value and purpose are going to change. LinkedIn is not positioned to deliver on Resume 2.0.

Find a Developer

If you know me, you know that I try 100 different ways to find developers and engineers. What does this Polywork have to do with developers?

The normal combination today for developers applying to a job is Resume + LinkedIn + Github.

Isn’t that a lot of “stuff” to supply in an application?

Polywork can solve all this in one package. I think that will be better for developer communities for their proof of work. 

Duplicative Work

Convincing people to duplicate their social networking activity or indeed ditch their existing hard-won social media networks looks like a big ask. The risk is irrelevance, despite a pretty interface.

Sure LinkedIn is boring. The whole point is that it’s low maintenance.

Polywork’s name and philosophy suggests it might be okay with being added to the existing mix of professional and social networks, i.e. rather than replacing either. But, well, a supplementary professional network sounds like a bit of a sideline.

Polywork launched in April 2021 but isn’t disclosing user numbers yet — and is currently operating a wait list for sign ups.

The post The Next LinkedIn appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In this episode, we talk with Kristina Finseth, Senior Manager, Outbound Growth Marketing at Greenhouse, all about the world of the candidate marketing lifecycle, email copy and social selling. This is the episode that dives deep into the weeds on the what and the why of email and what you should consider as you are building your candidate journey.

Here’s what we cover:

1. 1. 1. Deliverability
      2. Crapy email copy
      3. Insightful No’s
      4. 7 Step lifecycle candidate engagement
      5. SPF, DKIM, DMARC Setup – to infrastructurally support the domain

Listening Time: 43 minutes

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The post Avocados, Deliverability and $h*tty Email Copy. It’s What’s For Dinner appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In this episode, we speak with Veronica Jenkins, CEO of Hive Talent Acquisition to explore what companies are doing, and what they should consider as they take the leap into designing their diversity blueprint.

Listening Time: 23 minutes

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The post Building your Diversity Blueprint with Veronica Jenkins appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

We discuss with Shannon Pritchett, Sourcer-ess Extraordinaire, on what it takes to build community. Shannon is an industry veteran who had built some of the most influential powerhouse communities in our space.

Listening Time: 43 minutes

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The post Sourcing School: What Every Community Marketer Needs to Know with Shannon Pritchett appeared first on RecruitingDaily.