By Lars Schmidt
I am not a thought leader, and neither are you. This also goes for all the ninjas, mavens, jedis, rock stars, and gurus. Sorry folks.
The term ‘thought leadership’ once had meaning, but it’s been hijacked and diluted by the countless numbers of self-proclaimed [insert superlative here].
Once reserved for individuals truly transforming their respective fields, ‘thought leadership’ now extends to anyone with a strong opinion and a flair for self-promotion. [Read more…]
Ed.Note: This post originally appeared on Amplify Talent, and has been republished here with the Author’s consent.
By Lars Schmidt
Hiring. It’s one of the top factors in determining whether your organization will succeed. Your people, and the culture they help you build, shapes the DNA of your organization. What are your values? What do you stand for (and against)? Why do you exist as an organization? The answers to these questions are generally framed by the founders or executives, but your employees are the ones who determine whether your organization truly lives these truths.
When you’re an early stage startup or small company, hiring tends to involve tapping your collective networks to see who you can hire. This process may lack diversity, but it’s a path of least resistance and generally leads to low-scale hiring success. As your organization grows, these networks grow thinner and begin to dry up. This tends to be the growth stage when most organization will bring on recruiting help, whether in-house or agency, to help them reach new candidate pools.
When you’re in high-growth mode you need to build an interview model that’s efficient, effective, and continues to provide the critical lens through which you want your candidates to be viewed through. It’s important this process has enough structure to be followed, but scales and offers flexibility when needed. The ‘Ideal process’ will vary as it should be tailored to each organization, but the following items should be factored in to most high-growth interview procedures.
Things move fast in high growth organizations, particularly startups. Strategic decisions (including hiring plans) can be made over coffee or beers. It’s important to have a light-weight process that ensures the appropriate stakeholders (Finance, HR/Recruiting, Division lead) have all signed off that the position is within budget and organizational hiring timeline/priorities. You’re recruiting resources are valuable, and you don’t want to waste time building and engaging candidate pipelines for jobs you won’t hire.
Recruiting is a team sport. Successful companies get this. No matter how effective your recruiting team is, the reality is that their reach only goes so far. It’s vital to build programs that allow the entire organization to rally behind the company’s growth. Strong recruiting teams will develop programs to ensure that all staff are aware of current hiring initiatives (particularly essential roles), and equip their colleagues with the tools and resources they need to be effective brand ambassadors.
When you’re hiring at scale, it’s important all the stakeholders are really dialed in on the profile you’re targeting in each role. The hiring manager and recruiter should meet with the interview team before interviews begin to discuss the job description, target profile, intangibles, projects and initiatives they will work on, how the role interacts with their area (for cross-functional interviews, which most will tend to be), cultural fit, etc. This discussion is vital in ensuring all the stakeholders are on the same page and fully aware of what they’re vetting.
The recruiter should discuss the ideal process with the hiring manager during their search strategy kick-off meeting. The interview process should be generally defined so internal teams know what to expect, but also flexible to allow you to accelerate if you find stellar talent that has competing offers. The recruiter is generally the top end of the filter – evaluating candidates fit, motivations, qualifications (generally for technology roles), and identifying any potential blockers that might need to be overcome. Once determined qualified, the candidate will generally speak or meet with the hiring manager via phone/Skype/etc. This step is not always necessary, but important for technology roles to vet skills more deeply than a recruiter may be able to vet. Evaluations, code samples, and problem-solving/behavioral exercises help streamline this stage of the process. Free tools like Skype and Google Hangouts, or paid tools like WePow and HireVue, are valuable here as they allow more robust discussions in the early stages of the process to determine fit and potential. Following the initial vetting to confirm viability, the candidate will come in and meet the interview team for further vetting on skill and cultural fit. I find adding some structure to those interviews (behavioral questions, splitting competency evals per interviewer, etc.) adds value to this stage.
This is a really important to embed and reinforce throughout the interview process. How an organizations treats candidates, good or bad, is a tweet of GlassDoor post away from your talent pool. If you communicate regularly and treat every candidate with dignity and respect, you have an opportunity to create advocates. They may not get hired, but they will have a deeper respect for your company – and they will tell their friends. Open and regular communication goes a long way in enhancing candidate experience. An example is a recent ‘Candidate Experience Pledge’ we created to give NPR applicants a detailed overview of what to expect from the moment they apply.
After the interview, you’ll want to get the stakeholders together to discuss feedback. There are a variety of ways to do this. One way I’ve found to be productive is brief written evaluations (based on pre-determined templates) sent to the hiring manager and recruiter, followed by a group discussion. Gathering the written feedback in advance allows for unbiased input, and raises potential red flags to be discussed in the meeting. The eval includes a thumbs up/down on support for hiring. The hiring manager has the ultimate decision, but should ideally get near consensus from the interview team. Any red flags that are surfaced should be discussed and addressed during the review meeting.
These are just a few things to consider when developing a high-growth interview process. What tips and procedures have you found successful when developing your hiring plans?
Lars Schmidt is the Founder of Amplify Talent, an employer branding and recruiting optimization consultancy based in Washington DC. You can follow him on: Twitter at @ThisIsLars, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
The following is a re-post from a guest post shared on RecruitingBlogs.com recently. You can find the original post here.
By Lars Schmidt
This week I’ll be presenting at Recruiting Trends annual conference. My session,Recruiting Lessons From The Trenches: How To Develop, Champion, And Manage Social Media Recruiting Strategies That Work, will explore how recruiting leaders can develop and integrate social recruiting into their workflow, and the impact it has.
There is a lot of chatter about social recruiting; benefits, costs, ROI. My aim will be to demystify some of that, and provide actionable examples of how to implement social into your branding initiatives.
With all the buzz around social, it’s easy for recruiting leaders to get caught up in the hype. Don’t. If you feel compelled to get your recruiting efforts on social, just to say you are, it will show – and it won’t be effective. It’s not enough to have a presence on social. You have to actively and regularly nurture your network and build the type of engagement that helps supplement your traditional recruiting methods.
While I do think an employment branding strategy should be integrated into every recruiting strategy, the delivery mechanism doesn’t have to be limited to social media. Your career site, job descriptions (like the example on the right), candidate experience– all of these are tools at your disposal to enhance your talent brand.
If you decide to pursue social, it’s important you’re prepared to put in the time and work needed for it to pay off. Social is not a quick fix solution. It takes roughly a year to build an engaged network that begins producing measurable and consistent results in source of applicants and hires.
At NPR, we’ve built ‘the big three’ (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) into our top 10 sources of applicants and hires. Twitter, specifically, is our #4 source of hire. It’s been a key resource for helping us reach that elusive ‘passive talent’. This didn’t happen overnight. It took months of engaging, tinkering, and learning to build the kind of engaged community the bears this fruit. You can learn more about NPR’s employer branding journey here.
The image below is a graph from my Recruiting Trends presentation breaking down the three phases of a social recruiting roadmap. This is based on my experience at NPR, and skews towards the employment branding aspect of social recruiting.
So yes, social recruiting takes time. It takes a sustained commitment, and it’s not for everyone. If you’re recruiting blue-collar talent, there are other resources where your time may be better served. However, I personally feel social has transformed recruiting and should be a component of most organizations talent strategy. It’s not easy, and it takes commitment, but it’s worth it.
I understand the thought of this kind of commitment to social can be overwhelming for talent leaders. Trust me, as a non-profit recruiting leader I certainly feel your pain of limited resources – time being the most valuable. There are tools you can use to help you be more efficient, but it’s really about going through a process of trial and error to find the best way to incorporate social into your workflow – even if it’s just you managing it all. It can be done. And when it is, social can be a game changer to level the playing field and be an effective add-on to your traditional recruiting efforts.
Lars Schmidt is the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition & Innovation at NPR where he is responsible for providing leadership and advocacy for talent acquisition strategies that align with NPR’s strategic mission and core values. You can follow him on: Twitter at @ThisIsLars, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
The recruitDC fall event is coming on November 14, 2013! Join us for a morning of information sharing, networking and learning with your DC area recruiting colleagues. We’ll be descending on the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD for our venue.
Visit the Eventbrite site to grab your tickets so you don’t miss out!
As always, a tremendous THANK YOU to all of our sponsors: Indeed, WANTED Analytics, Cleared Jobs.net and Brazen Careerist!
7:30am to 8:30am Registration and Networking
8:30am to 8:40am Welcome Remarks
8:40am to 9:45am – Keynote Presentation – Big Data is Interesting, but Little Data is Critical! Tom Becker, VP Recruiting, Manpower
The role and function of the talent acquisition leader is in significant transformation. CEOs and senior leaders are increasingly looking for the talent acquisition function to be more data driven and to better articulate their ROI. There seems to be a new set of skills which talent acquisition leaders much have to be successful. These skills are change management, process management and most important data management. This session will address how “little data” has big significance in how companies can transform data into insights to drive performance. Next generation companies are using talent data to predict hiring demand and focus their talent acquisition functions on key positions which constrain the organization. They are also using performance management technology to build sophisticated models to optimize their teams and to deliver real-time data to their key stakeholders!
9:45am to 10:15am Break
10:15am to 11:15am
Call me, maybe: Mobile recruiting is here… now what?
There’s a lot of hype when it comes to mobile recruiting – but at many companies, it’s still a relatively new concept. You may feel pressure to begin scrambling to put the right tools in place but where should you start? And what are the watchout’s and gotcha’s? Through this panel, local recruiting leaders from Marriott International, GEICO, Amtrak and MITRE will share their insights on developing a mobile strategy and implementation tips… because they have actually lived through it.
Key takeaways will include:
– Key trends driving the need to develop a mobile recruiting strategy
– Mobile recruiting vendor landscape and considerations
– Implementation insights and advice
Moderator: Jessica Lee – Director, Digital Talent Strategy – Marriott International – Panelists: Kerry Noone, Employer Brand Manager, Amtrak; Shannon Smedstad HR Social Media & Employment Brand Leader, GEICO; Gary Cluff, Corporate Recruiting Manager, MITRE
OR
10:15am to 11:15am
Exerting Influence: How to Build Interest, Trust and Confidence in New Candidates, Ideas and Tactics
Recruiters and recruiting leaders are constantly working to build trust–with candidates, vendors and their own leaders. This trust is necessary to make the case for joining the organization, adopting innovations in the organization or convincing a hiring manager that a unique candidate is the best fit. During this panel, four leading recruiting professionals will talk about their successes in building trust to exert influence in the organization. They’ll share both internal and external examples of how to make the right case and what data, direction and emotion is needed to get that win. We often talk about the skills recruiters need to be successful but overlook the behaviors. If you want to take your recruiting organization forward and innovate with new candidates, ideas and tactics, you don’t want to miss this session.
Moderator: Susan LaMotte, Founder & Principal Consultant, exaqueo – Panelists: Bill Blackford, Recruiting Manager, Merlin International; MIke Bruni, Talent Acquisition Manager, SAIC/Leidos, National Security Sector; Luke Daniel Mann, Technical Recruiter, Northrop Grumman Information Systems; Lars Schmidt, NPR, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition & Innovation.
11:15am to 11:30am Break
11:30am to 12:30pm
Closing Session: Fast and Furious: 60 Social Media Tips in 60 Minutes!
In this lightening round session, local social media superstars share their quick tips on making social media more effective for recruiting, building brand and connecting. This is a great way to end the morning with 60 tips to walk out the door with to make difference in how you connect with your community.
Moderator: Kathleen Smith, ClearedJobs.Net; Panelists: Adelia Curtis, Living Social; Holly Biena, Capital One; Kerry Noone, Amtrak, Francesca Hawk, AIS and a few more rock stars for spotlight tips!
And more….Would you like to participate? Submit your social media tip during registration and maybe your tip will be picked!
At the Spring 2012 recruitDC event, I had the privilege to share with the recruiting community tips on how to incorporate veteran hiring into a recruiter’s mindset. The poignant beginning of this presentation was the opening by Colonel David Sutherland, former Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The local DC area recruiting community made me very proud when they gave Colonel Sutherland a standing ovation first when he came to the stage, and second when he finished. The second best moment was when all the recruiters in the room raised their hands and committed to hiring two veterans by the end of the summer.
Through my interviews with the panelists, we learned some key things that every recruiter and company can do to hire more veterans. One basic point of this is commitment. This is not a program you flip on with a switch or pay a subscription fee to. This is a commitment as a recruiter you need to make to go the extra step to train yourself, connect with the military in your community, and maintain these relationships throughout your career as a recruiter. What will you get in return for this investment of your time? A talent pipeline that is ready, trained, skilled and loyal. Did I also mention that military personnel get the job done, take initiative, have leadership skills and will do anything for you and your company – just like they have done in the military?
I have spoken with many military personnel and military spouses who actually feel that it is a detriment to their job search if they share that they are military. I am flabbergasted every time I hear this. There appears to be ignorance prevalent within the HR and recruiting community that military may mean something other than highly trained, skilled and dedicated professionals.
From working with many recruiters and companies, here is my drill down list on incorporating veteran hiring into your talent strategy:
Some of the tactics to incorporate military hiring into your talent acquisition pipeline are:
Find the veterans in your company: After recruitDC, several recruiting managers went back to their companies and researched how many veterans worked for them. Many were shocked at how many veterans were already in their companies. What can these veterans who are already work for your company do for you?
Find the veterans in your community both online and offline
Educate yourself on military lingo
Create a military buddy system within your company
As was shared by one recruitDC colleague in his post “I Would Die For You,” Lars Schmidt rounded up some resources a recruiter can use to hire veterans. These are all good resources, but you first have to be a better recruiter.
After recruitDC, we had a chance to talk with Colonel Sutherland’s replacement as the Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel Henderson. One point was clear for him based on feedback from his troops. In the military if someone doesn’t reach their goal, they are given feedback and retrained. Job seekers aren’t given any feedback as to why they didn’t get the job. Even if you don’t launch a military hiring program, I would ask that if you are not going to hire someone in the military, please take the time to give them feedback on their application, resume, or interview. Yes there will be a series of “policies” that may possibly prevent you from doing this, but as a service to our military please provide suggestions and feedback on what they could do better in their job search. You may not be able to hire them, but you will have provided a great connection with your company, enhanced your employer/recruiter brand, and helped the community. You might even get a referral.
Kathleen Smith is the Chief Marketing officer for ClearedJobs.net. You can connect with her on Twitter at @YesItsKathleen. Follow ClearedJobs.net at @ClearedJobsNet
Follow Colonel David Sutherland on Twitter at @DSutherland_TSP or on LinkedIn
