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If you're spending all of your time trying to find new employees to fill open roles, but never concentrating on retension, you'll find yourself on a hamster wheel of recruitment.
This article was first published March 2, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
The United States is still in the thick of a great resignation, and companies are feeling the strain. A combination of economic factors, the aftermath of a global pandemic, and a workforce with more options than ever has left thousands of companies desperate to find new employees.
But as any good human resources department knows, there’s a chicken-and-the-egg scenario involved with recruitment and retention. The better your retention strategies, the less you’ll need to concern yourself with recruitment. And the better your recruitment, the more you’ll be able to retain employees, since you’ll have done an effective job of describing your company’s values and needs.
Retention becomes an essential piece of the recruitment puzzle, and one that’s too often overlooked. If you’re spending all of your time trying to find new employees to fill open roles, but never concentrating on how to make sure the employees you currently have will stick around, you’ll find yourself on a hamster wheel of recruitment and constantly needing new applicants in your hiring funnel.
But what does focusing on retention really look like? Recruitment can feel like a more active activity, whereas retention feels more like conserving the status quo. But in reality, there are concrete steps you can take to improve your employee retention and ensure your workers don’t jump ship.
Retention doesn’t have to look like higher paychecks, more complicated titles, or overlooking mistakes. Here are four simple employee retention strategies to consider implementing in your business so that you can hop off the hamster wheel.
Survey Your Employees
The first step is the most obvious one, and yet it’s so overlooked. You can brainstorm a thousand and one retention ideas, implement practices you’re sure will keep employees around, and still be facing a major resignation problem. Why? Because you didn’t ask your employees what they actually needed.
What you think employees want vs. what they actually want aren’t necessarily aligned. Open communication is key to employee retention, and the pandemic made that clearer than ever. Employees may no longer be gathering around a water cooler, but you still need to create avenues for conversations about important company topics.
So before you dive in headfirst with fancy programs or a long list of retention goals, reach out to your employees to see how they’re doing. Do they feel like they fit in at your company? Do they understand the tasks in front of them? Is there something they really wish was a part of your benefits package?
Whether done formally or informally, types of conversations can be really eye-opening and help you keep your workforce satisfied enough to stick around. Furthermore, by asking employees how happy they are in your current role, you’re reminding them that your company actually cares about them and wants them around.
Create a Mentorship Program
A common reason for employees to jump ship is that they feel like they’re career isn’t going anywhere. If someone feels like he or she is staring down a dead end job, it makes sense that they’d look for employment elsewhere.
A mentorship program may be able to help solve that problem. Employees can learn from people who’ve been in their industry longer and troubleshoot any difficulties they’re facing. If employees have resources at their disposal to advance their careers, they’re much more likely to stay with your company. A mentorship program says that you’ve taken an interest in your employees and that you want them to be both satisfied and successful.
It helps them see they’re role in your organization at large and feel like more than just a cog in a machine. Effective mentorship programs may even save you resources on training, since mentors can show new employees the ropes in certain areas. Moreover, you’re empowering more experienced employees to have a role in the next generation of workers, which can help them feel utilized and worthwhile. Newer employees can offer more experienced ones a fresh perspective as well.
Acknowledge Milestones and Achieved Goals
Everyone likes to feel affirmed, and your employees are no different. Make sure to take the time to acknowledge things like five-year milestones or major goals achieved.
This could be as fancy as a reception for employees who have worked with you for ten years, or as simple as a shout out in the companywide newsletter when an employee really knocks something out of the park. Again, it’s about making people feel seen, heard, and understood.
If the only time you’re really communicating with your employees about how well they’re doing is during an annual performance review, that may no longer be enough. Consider implementing monthly one-on-one meetings instead where you can go over the work employees have been doing and make space to congratulate them on a job well done. You could also think about having some type of perk, like extra vacation days, a bonus, or a sabbatical once employees reach a particularly impressive milestone (ie., every five years).
Put People First
Lastly, make a commitment to put people first. You obviously want your business to be profitable; that’s the point of a business. But many companies are facing an at-times-uncomfortable reckoning with the importance of treating your workers like human beings.
If one of your employees really wants to make it to their daughter’s softball game, what’s your company doing to make sure they can make that happen? If somebody is struggling with an intense pregnancy, are they able to work with your human resources department to complete some of their work on their own schedule? If an employee is struggling with a difficult task, is your first reaction to help them work through it, or do reprimand them for not doing a better job?
No matter how high of a salary a different company is trying to woo them with, employees will always hesitate to leave a company that really cares about them. The overarching idea of putting people before policy is going to go a long way for your company.
The 4 aspects of virtual hiring you need to have to be best equipped for a successful recruitment process in 2022.
This article was first published February 22, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
Today, virtual recruiting is the primary recruitment method for a variety of organizations. A solid virtual recruitment strategy involves not only searching for candidates through professional sites, online career forums, and social media but also conducting virtual interviews and virtual onboarding processes.
In the wake of COVID-19, recruiting is more challenging than ever. With 55% of Americans anticipating looking for a new job, and 35% of the workforce functioning remotely, there’s more competition when seeking out talent.
As many HR professionals have seen firsthand, virtual recruiting and interviewing benefits both employers and employees. It allows employers to access a larger pool of candidates and broadens career opportunities for potential employees. Virtual interviewing also speeds up the hiring process, saves time and money for both employers and employees, and improves employee retention.
As part of our HR Technology week, we spoke with Spark Hire’s CEO and Founder Josh Tolan about virtual hiring. He explained there are four aspects of virtual hiring you need to have to be best equipped for a successful recruitment process in 2022.
1. Speed
“In a competitive market, the ability to move candidates through the process quickly can be the difference between making the hire and not,” says Tolan. In a remote world, efficiency, communication, and understanding are essential for success.
To streamline the recruiting process, Tolan recommends adopting a hiring service level agreement (SLA). In other words, it’s a series of commitments from each team member involved in the hiring process and creates accountability for everything you need to get done to hire someone. A hiring SLA can streamline and define each step of recruitment. It breaks tasks down into timelines and gets further into who is responsible for each aspect.
“The bottom line is that it’s a timeline that we as a team can hold ourselves accountable to. It sets us up for success in today’s market,” Tolan explains.
One-way interviews allow employers to reduce scheduling conflicts. With the ability to conduct unlimited concurrent interviews and the flexibility to evaluate candidates on their own time, hiring managers are empowered to make quicker decisions. Further benefits include standardizing preliminary interviews; combating bias by including more team members in final decisions; and a positive, flexible candidate experience.
One-way interviews allow employers to reduce scheduling conflicts. With the ability to conduct unlimited concurrent interviews and the flexibility to evaluate candidates on one’s own time, hiring managers are empowered to make faster decisions. Further benefits include standardizing preliminary interviews, combating bias by including more team members in final decisions, and a positive, flexible candidate experience.
This type of preliminary interview brings us to our next aspect of virtual recruiting: reach.
2. Reach
With The Great Resignation, most organizations have had to adjust their talent pool. To be successful in virtual hiring, recruiters must consider more candidates. The convenience and popularity of remote work helped expand the candidate pipeline, especially in the case of one-way interviews, which speed up the process. “Since these interviews can be completed by candidates at any time, and they don’t require any of our team members to be present, you can consistently consider more people for the role,” Tolan explains.
HR teams can further expand their reach by considering nonlocal recruiting. Rather than posting jobs only in one central location, recruiters can advertise in multiple geographic areas with different budgets.
3. Engagement
One of the most important aspects of recruiting is standing out from the competition. In a virtual world, where candidates miss out on the insight in-person interactions can offer, businesses must actively demonstrate what their company looks like. Tolan advises recruiters to bring some “in-person interview ‘flare’ into the virtual hiring process.”
So, what does this look like? One of the best ways to leverage the virtual space is to lean into video options. To make interactions with candidates more memorable, recruiters can link videos in their communications.
In one-to-one videos, or messages made explicitly for one candidate, hiring managers, leaders, or future team members can speak directly to an interviewee. “In these videos, the whole point is to make the candidate feel special and show they how invested you are into getting them on the team,” Tolan says.
Another option is one-to-many videos, or evergreen content that can be used multiple times for countless people. Examples of these include interviews from team members, employee testimonials, and “day in the life” walkthroughs of an advertised role. The key to making these videos feel personal is to make them relevant to the candidate in question.
Beyond video engagement, active engagement from all team members can give HR professionals an edge in the hiring process. Whether it’s as simple as connecting a candidate with future peers or as big as having a CEO or another member of management speak with a candidate, this type of involvement can go a long way toward showcasing company culture and the business as a whole.
4. Lifetime Value
“Employee lifetime value” refers to the overall impact a person will bring to your organization. When moving through the recruitment process with this in mind, HR departments are set up for continued success.
“As businesses, we invest so much ideation into our products and services. How about we do the same with employees?” Toland proposes.
First, leaders should see retention as a recruitment strategy. This will ensure they don’t have to drastically adjust their hiring processes, especially in challenging times like these. When building a strong staff, HR should constantly consider how compensation and benefits (like perks, bonuses, and healthy competitions) and core values (shown through alignment, transparency, and employee experiences) can help bring on talented staff members.
As HR professionals survey current and new staff, they can then prioritize new initiatives to help retain talent. As Tolan puts it, “Continuously solicit feedback from your employees so you can continuously level up your organization and extend that employee lifetime value.”
Takeaway for HR Leaders
The key to success in virtual recruitment lies in speed, reach, engagement, and lifetime value. While each of these areas is essential, it’s just as important to adapt to virtual hiring smoothly and efficiently.
“You’re not going to be able to do everything at once, so focus on a key area,” advises Tolan. “Then begin to layer in new strategies over time or focus on other areas. Eventually, you’ll have a well-rounded plan to gain a competitive advantage in this crazy environment we’re in today and for the foreseeable future.”
Data suggests that many companies are plagued by subjectivity, meaning the personal preferences, biases, and impressions of their recruitment teams may override the objective needs of the organization.
This article was first published February 15, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
In today’s labor market, many employers are just happy to acquire any talent they can get their hands on. However, it’s still important for recruitment teams to focus on finding the best fit for the needs and culture of the organization. And with fewer candidates submitting applications, employers are well advised to carefully review available applicants to prevent a great catch from slipping away.
Many Hiring Decisions Are Subjective
Unfortunately, data suggests that many companies are plagued by subjectivity, meaning the personal preferences, biases, and impressions of their recruitment teams may override the objective needs of the organization. According to the annual Global Hiring Survey by video interviewing, assessments, and text-enabled recruiting tool company HireVue, over a third (38%) of hiring teams make hiring decisions based on gut instinct, and roughly one-third (31%) hire based on personal connections.
These significant sources of subjectivity mean the candidate who is ultimately selected to fill an open position may have gotten the job because of his or her prior association with someone in the recruitment process, not his or her actual fit and qualifications. Moreover, when “gut feelings” and “personal connections” are used in making hiring decisions, diversity often suffers because people tend to both associate with and have a good feeling about people who look like them and who come from similar backgrounds.
Importance of Objectivity
Often, organizations that use subjective criteria and evaluation lack clear objective criteria to use in the recruitment process. The more objective criteria that can be leveraged, the less opportunity there is for subjective criteria to fill in the gaps. For example, recruitment teams that compare candidates based on whether they self-identify as possessing the skills that are important to the position may come to a different decision than those that go with a gut feeling.
Good talent is difficult to come by in today’s labor market. Companies simply can’t afford to overlook the best-available candidates because their recruitment processes are too subjective. Embedding objective measures into the process is a simple way to help avoid the implicit biases that can lead to hiring the wrong person and cause you to miss out on opportunities for greater diversity and inclusion.
As a white woman, Jami de Lou credits her experience growing up in and raising a multicultural family as key influences in her passion for DEI.
This article was first published February 7, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
It’s perhaps natural that so many of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leaders we speak to in our series on chief diversity officers (CDOs) and those in similar roles are people of color. They frequently cite their firsthand experiences with disparate treatment and professional opportunities when explaining why they chose to pursue such a career.
Our subject for this installment is Jami de Lou, director of inclusion and diversity at Cox Enterprises. She is quick to point out that as a white woman, she doesn’t fit this traditional mold; however, she credits her experience growing up in and raising a multicultural family, as well as her experience as a first-generation college student helping pay her own way through school, as key influences in her passion for DEI.
A Background in Helping Others Get Ahead
de Lou credits her early years teaching in high school and college, her graduate work, and professional speaking with giving her the critical skills she utilizes in her human-centric design approach to DEI work. “As someone who could not afford to accept unpaid internships, and who cares deeply about early access and exposure to professional careers, I advocated for young people by creating pipeline programs and internships resulting in life-changing career opportunities,” de Lou says.
Before joining Cox, de Lou spent the bulk of her career driving inclusion culture change at professional service firms, legal, and consulting. At full-service law firm Jenner & Block, de Lou worked with incredibly talented lawyers and professionals who were committed to pro bono, especially human, LGBTQ+, and civil rights. “During my tenure, I was tapped to lead talent development, in addition to diversity and inclusion,” she says, “which is where I honed strategies to embed equity and inclusion into all people processes – talent acquisition, on boarding, performance management, and beyond.”
Heeding a Call to Action
de Lou often credits Rick Palmore’s 2004 statement “A Call to Action—Diversity in the Legal Profession” as a key influence in her career trajectory. “Rick spoke at a diversity session at a conference I attended,” she explains. “I told him about my background and passion for creating change and advocating for inclusion and diversity. Rick encouraged me to work within the legal industry, as they would need people to help drive change. So, I spent a significant part of my career in professional service firms, legal and consulting before joining Cox.”
Despite not being a part of a minority community herself, de Lou says her upbringing in predominantly Hispanic and African-American communities caused her to witness firsthand the many inequities faced by people of color, even if she didn’t directly experience them herself.
“Working as a white woman in ID&E may seem unusual to many,” de Lou notes, “but I use storytelling to model vulnerability and transparency to lean into this difference. I learned to adapt to others and bring more of what I learned into my worldview and decision-making. That privilege is something I navigate in and out of with my own multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual family with every microaggression that happens in a store or restaurant when someone doesn’t think we are family because their Black and Brown faces don’t match mine.”
Promoting DEI at Cox Enterprises
At Cox, de Lou continues, “we have a long history of supporting ID&E. The Cox family has always been committed to building an organization that supports people from all walks of life.” She points to several practices focused on supporting DEI:
Talent practices are reviewed and continually improved to drive talent and promotion best practices and executive diversity based, in part, on retention and exit interview feedback.
Cox has implemented new enterprisewide supplier diversity investment and development goals across its divisions and has developed initiatives to help diverse-owned businesses grow, thrive, and compete through tools such as continuing education programs and investment in underrepresented funds and businesses.
A holistic DEI training road map for all employees empowers them to champion inclusion and diversity and provides enhanced resources and tools.
Government Affairs and Community/External Relations identifies specific company actions to make a difference in racial discrimination, criminal justice, and quality education, as well as to map out participation from the corporate level to individual employees.
Cox has also implemented a number of employee resources groups (ERGs) to provide employees with an opportunity to share diverse perspectives of various kinds and to have a voice to further input and understanding.
ERGs at Cox
Cox supports 13 ERGs for its staff of almost 6,000 employees, and more than 60 events are hosted every year.
“Cox employees can join any of our ERGs, which all have chapters across our divisions focused on driving ID&E through education, professional development, business and market insights, and community engagement,” says de Lou. “Our ERGs are amplifiers of employee voices to help Cox drive not only our ID&E strategy but also our company’s purpose, which is to Empower People Today to Build a Better Future for the Next Generation.”
de Lou adds that employee feedback on Cox’s approach has been very positive. “We will continue to listen and remain flexible to ensure we stay in tune with the diverse needs of our employees, customers, suppliers, and the community.”
An Internal and External Focus on Diversity and Inclusion
Supporting internal diversity through recruitment has increasingly become a priority for organizations across the United States—and Cox is no exception. But where it stands out is its comprehensive approach to supporting DEI.
“Everyone, regardless of age and experience, wants to feel as though their organization was designed with them in mind,” says de Lou. “They want companies to reflect the businesses, clients, and communities in which they live, operate and serve. This is true across the board—suppliers, executive leadership, and the entire workforce. That’s why we support minority, women, veteran, disability, and LGBTQ-owned businesses in our companywide purchasing process.”
Cox companies spend about $800 million annually with diverse suppliers, with a goal to increase annual spending to $1 billion by 2026, de Lou notes.
The company has also built a 5-year road map to improve the representation of women and people of color in leadership within the organization.
“Cox’s pursuit of a diverse culture has been a 100-plus-year journey,” de Lou says. “I say pursuit because there’s always room for improvement. We are taking additional steps to make our company more inclusive than it is today.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are increasingly popular goals touted by a wide range of organizations across many industries, but many businesses pursue them largely for PR purposes. Companies like Cox, though, know that in order to derive the very real business benefits of DEI efforts, it’s necessary to place a genuine focus on those efforts.
An important part of ensuring this focus is leveraging the passion of DEI leaders like de Lou who see DEI not just as a job but also as a lifelong passion.
The first step to attracting skilled workers is to catch their attention in a job posting.
This article was first published January 31, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
In today’s job-seeker market, recruiting is more competitive than ever. With more openings, and fewer applicants, it’s important to secure talent as quickly as possible. According to an Ipsos survey, there are 5.2 million fewer people working today, with 7% of workers actively looking for a new job.
The first step to attracting skilled workers is to catch their attention in a job posting. The average person sees over 3,000 messages in a single day—how can your post stand out? We spoke with Katrina Kibben, Founder and CEO of Three Ears Media, to learn how to make a job posting shine.
Hiring Manager Intake
While the intricate details of a job posting can make all the difference, recruiters always need to begin with hiring manager intake. Recruiting teams should meet with hiring managers to understand what the company is looking for. The conversation should be focused on the specific traits, skills, and experiences managers are seeking in a new hire.
Recruiters should make standard intake questions to be more specific. For example, change “How can we ‘sell’ your job to candidates in a job post?” to “What’s special about this team as compared to other teams you’ve worked on?” The goal of these questions is to find the qualities that will make candidates thrive in a role.
“Questions inspire imagination,” Kibben says. “You should be picturing people when the question is over, not a list.”
Recruiters can record intake conversations for later reference. In transcribing the conversation, you’ll be able to capture what hiring managers are looking for in their own voices. You can include direct quotes from managers, or you can highlight reoccurring traits, themes, or adjectives to identify exactly what’s needed from a candidate.
What’s in a Job Posting?
A good job post has four parts:
1. The job pitch, which details everyday activities and minimum requirements.
2. About the company, which explains the company’s background and is usually styled like a press release.
3. Skill story, which details the impact of work and skills necessary for the job.
4. Any legal information, such as a note saying the company abides by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The Details of a Job Posting
In the social media age, people’s attention spans are short—most dedicate an average of three minutes and five seconds on a single task before being interrupted or distracted. Recruiters can best hook candidates by accommodating people’s ability to focus.
Two hundred fifty words, or the average length of a social media post, is the perfect size for a job listing. A job posting, which people go out of their way to read, should be concise and interesting. Recruiters should opt for bullets rather than dense text and should limit a bulleted list to about 7 points or 1/3 of the overall visual. Men are likely to apply to a job if they meet 60% of listed criteria whereas women apply if they are 80% or more qualified based on said list. The longer a job posting is, the more likely it is to deter women from applying.
When looking for talent, recruiters should focus on experiences rather than cliches. Far too often, applicants find postings rife with buzzwords like:
Top talent
Ninja
Fast-paced company
Rockstar
Start-up vibe
We’re like a family
Employer of choice
Winning team
Employees are our greatest asset
Self-starter
Work hard, play hard
“These words do not have universal meaning,” Kibben says. “‘Being collaborative’ at Three Ears Media and ‘being collaborative’ at Disney are two different experiences. We need to use buzzwords in the context of experiences that make them true.”
They explain that to achieve universal understanding, job descriptions must base qualities and skills on experiences. For instance, instead of saying “be collaborative,” write, “Our most collaborative team members do X.” A candidate will have a better understanding if he or she meets criteria when it’s grounded in an example.
Recruiters should include mandatory requirements that are truly necessary. “Mandatory means you could not under any circumstances figure out how to do something if you have not done this before,” Kibben says. Anything else that is helpful, but not essential to a job’s duties, are not considered mandatory skills or experiences.
Takeaway for Recruiters
Last year alone, there were more than 99 million jobs posted. In such a competitive market, job postings are the first and most essential key in recruiting talent. With the right format, language, and detail, recruiters can set their companies up for success at the very start of the hiring process.
“Hiring is always hard, no matter what,” Kibben admits. “But the one variable we can control in that very challenging matrix of getting the right person in is how we ask about people. Job posting are the currency of that ask.”
Recruiters and recruitment processes are often impacted by implicit biases that can make them subconsciously shy away from older and younger workers alike.
This article was first published February 1, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
Companies are increasingly seeking to cultivate more diverse and inclusive workplaces. Typically, that effort is considered through the lens of race, ethnicity and gender, but age is also an important component of diversity and inclusion. Unfortunately, recruiters and recruitment processes are often impacted by implicit biases that can make them subconsciously shy away from older and younger workers alike, depending on the situation.
Age Discrimination at Both Ends of the Spectrum
“Age discrimination means that over-50s are more than twice as likely as other workers to be unemployed for two years or longer if they lose their current job,” writes Sophia Epstein in an article for BBC Worklife. “One study showed that a 50-year-old worker was up to three times less likely to get an interview than a 28-year-old applicant.”
Disfavoring older workers is perhaps what comes to mind first when one thinks of age discrimination. But the unconscious bias around age cuts both ways. Younger workers are also at risk of losing out due to implicit bias. “It’s not just older job-seekers facing automatic rejection; young people can also be discounted for roles because of their age,” writes Epstein. “Although this type of ‘reverse’ ageism is much less researched, studies show that younger workers can be considered undesirable employees, and that this can lead to them not getting hired.”
Legal and Practical Implications
Discriminating against older workers is a violation of federal law. Discrimination doesn’t even need to be the intent of policies that favor younger workers over older workers. “An employment policy or practice that applies to everyone, regardless of age, can be illegal if it has a negative impact on applicants or employees age 40 or older and is not based on a reasonable factor other than age (RFOA),” says the EEOC’s Age Discrimination page.
While most people are probably more familiar with the federal prohibitions on discrimination against older workers, some states also have laws against reverse age discrimination, meaning discrimination against younger workers. Legal implications are perhaps the most immediate and concrete effects of age discrimination, but they are certainly not the only nor most impactful implications.
Any policy or practice that disproportionately disfavors certain groups puts companies at a disadvantage compared to more inclusive organizations, which consequently miss out on the insights, worldviews, and experiences of underrepresented demographics. In a follow-up post, we’ll discuss some tips and tricks for recruiters to avoid ageism from any end of the spectrum.
Finding recruiters that are able to identify, recruit, and retain top talent will help your organization immensely.
This article was first published January 25, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
As the job market continues to heavily favor applicants, it’s become more and more difficult to attract top talent and get them to commit to your business. Those help wanted signs in store windows can make companies nervous—it seems as if everyone’s hiring, and in that type of economy, the stakes are high when trying to find new employees. In order to focus on making great hires, you may be looking to first grow your pool of recruiters. But going about recruiting a recruiter can feel like a difficult task.
Recruiters are some of the most important people in your company structure. It can feel a little backwards to be spending time and resources on recruiting a person whose job is to, well, recruit, but it’s actually a must. If you aren’t bringing on hardworking, talented employees, your business will struggle, even if your product or service is world-class. Finding recruiters that are able to identify, recruit, and retain top talent will help you immensely.
But securing those top-notch recruiters isn’t always an easy task. A lot of companies are in the same boat right now; they have lots of open positions, and not enough talent to fill them. Therefore, it’s a great time to be a recruiter who’s on a job hunt. How do you find excellent recruiters, and then convince them to come and utilize their talents for your business?
Maybe you’re looking to hire a new recruiter for the first time. Maybe you need to expand your already-existing recruitment team. Or maybe you have an opening for a role that’s going to require an expert recruiter to fill. No matter what your situation is, there are a handful of best practices for recruiting recruiters that will help.
Here are three secrets to recruiting recruiters that will stick around, fill your open roles, and help your company thrive.
1. Remember the Basics
Believe it or not, much of recruiting recruiters is similar to recruiting any other position! All of the same best practices will carry over—that you want to be where the talent is, you want to involve your entire team, and you want to identify which parts of your company culture are most essential to convey. Don’t get overwhelmed by the thought of recruiting recruiters as if it’s an entirely new industry you’ve never had experience with before. Many of your previous systems and processes can work to fill the recruiter role. If you have recruiters working for you currently, ask them for recommendations, or ask them what made accepting a job with your company a no-brainer. That will help you find similar talent.
So don’t forget the basics: having a cohesive company brand, attend networking events, and reach out on LinkedIn. These tactics work just as well when you’re trying to attract recruiters to your team.
2. Emphasize Tech Savviness
One thing that’s an absolute must in a recruiter? Tech savviness. It’s obvious that much of our lives and business are conducted online, and the coronavirus pandemic only sped up the process. The metaverse, in many ways, is already here. While almost all of your employees are going to need at least a basic set of tech skills, having recruiters that are able to quickly and efficiently utilize online spaces is vital. Most people who are looking for jobs are doing so online, and in new, innovative ways. Recruiters need to be able to quickly adapt to new software, systems, and platforms.
Moreover, recruiters can no longer rely on a simple resume to tell them everything they need to know, as people’s work experiences have become more varied and unique. The days of working at the same job for decades are largely over, and the internet has provided a lot of different ways to make money that are much less traditional.
Tech savviness and technical capabilities should be near the top of your list in terms of requirements. When seeking out recruiters, make sure to emphasize the importance of using data, curating candidates digitally, and navigating online spaces. Make sure that part of your interview process involves categorizing an applicant’s technical skills.
Since you’re looking for someone with technological know-how, you, too, should be in digital recruitment spaces. Don’t just focus on face-to-face networking and social connections; instead, consider Facebook ads, LinkedIn posts, and YouTube videos. If you formulate an ideal candidate in your head, think about where that person spends time online and make sure you’re in that space.
3. Have a Trial Period
Lastly, similar to a sales job, recruitment is a great field to embrace the trial period. You can ask terrific interview questions and get references galore, but you’ll never truly know how someone’s going to perform until they’re in the job, doing the work. Measuring your Return on Investment (ROI) of a recruiter is fairly simple—which talent are they able to attract? If you hire a recruiter and four months later haven’t seen any fruits of their labor, it may be a major red flag. Depending on your industry and a mutual comfort level, decide upon a period of time that can serve as a trial employment period. At the end of that period, take a look at their recruitment pipeline and have them walk you through which recruiting practices they put into place. At that time, you can decide to continue in your partnership or part ways.
If you do decide to embrace a trial or probationary period in order to make sure your new recruiter is high-performing, make sure that your policy is clear and explicit. You don’t want to get in legal trouble for unlawful termination. Moreover, make sure you put your best foot forward on your end of things. This trial period is also for the employee’s benefit, so that they can determine if your workplace is a good fit for them. So make sure you’re really displaying your company culture and treating your employees in a way that assists with retention.
Social proof, such as testimonials, can go a long way when it comes to moving people through the recruitment pipeline.
This article was first published January 17, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
No matter how many social media platforms arise, coupon codes are created, or new technologies are formed, a good old-fashioned testimonial continues to be one of the most important sales tactics available. You can talk about how great your product or service is all day long—it’s your job! But until someone else confirms it, customers don’t have a reason to take a chance on you. A testimonial—even a short, informal one—can go a long way towards helping people make decisions on your business.
The same can be true for recruitment. You obviously have a motive: you’re trying to bring top talent to your company. So from a candidate’s perspective, you may be inclined to stretch the truth, exaggerate, or draw conclusions where there’s no evidence. It’s more helpful to hear things from current employees than someone whose job hinges on them coming to work for the company. That means testimonials can be powerful tools to help with your recruitment efforts.
You may be thinking that you aren’t a marketer, you’re a recruiter. But at the end of the day, recruiters need to do a lot of inbound marketing to be successful at their jobs. Social proof, such as testimonials, can go a long way when it comes to moving people through the recruitment pipeline.
What Are Testimonials?
Simply put, testimonials are a third party giving feedback about your company. In the case of recruitment testimonials, they’re a current or former employee giving their opinion on what it’s like to work for your business. These would be comments on your workplace culture, your benefits package, or any other relevant pieces of information that may help you in your recruitment efforts.
Testimonials don’t need to be long to be effective. In fact, they shouldn’t be! People have pretty short attention spans, and very few people are reading all of the copy on your website. You want text to be skimmable and visually appealing. That means that short, punchy testimonials are often more effective than long, rambling ones.
How Can You Gather Them?
Testimonials can be gathered a few different ways. The easiest? Just ask employees! Employee surveys are a simple way to go about gathering information on what it’s like to work for your business. Make sure you’re transparent that testimonials may be shared publicly while emphasizing a desire for honesty—nobody should feel pressured into faking love for a job they don’t have.
Another simple way of gathering testimonials is during year-end reviews. Simply ask employees how they feel they’re job is going, if they feel appreciated, if they feel that their job has matched their expectations, and any other relevant questions. If you get particularly positive feedback, ask permission to share it in your recruitment efforts.
Lastly, check out websites like GlassDoor to see what employees say anonymously about your company. That can be a great place to gather real information about your employees’ satisfaction level.
What Makes a Great Testimonial?
When you’re deciding which employee testimonials to use, there are a few things to consider. First of all, stories sell. Again, even though you’re not technically in sales, you’re still trying to sell a person (top talent) on a concept (working for your business). Storytelling is an effective way to get a point across, so if any of your employees share stories about times they felt particularly cared for or celebrated as an employee, make sure to share them.
Secondly, testimonials are specific. Someone just saying “working for X company is great” isn’t nearly as helpful as “working for X company makes me excited to go to work every morning because I can use my skills to make the world a better place for families”.
Lastly, gather testimonials from a variety of positions. You don’t want to only have them from managers; it will make lower-tier job candidates wonder if you simply treat the higher ups well. You don’t want to only have them from entry level candidates; it will make more experienced talent wonder if they’re really going to fit in with your company culture. Credible sources are an extremely important part of testimonials, so make sure you have a variety of them.
Where Can You Use Them?
There are plenty of places to use recruitment testimonials that will have an impact. Think about all of the different places you “touch” a job candidate during the recruitment process.
Social media platforms: Do you regularly feature employee testimonials on your social media pages? Once a month, try to make sure you’re doing a brief post featuring an employee speaking about his or her positive experience working with you. Share fun behind-the-scenes office content as it arises—think screenshots of your Zoom holiday mixer or group photos at the summer barbeque. Not everything has to feel as explicit as a testimonial in order to be effective. Don’t forget that you don’t want to only share testimonials when you’re actively hiring. By sprinkling testimonials throughout your content no matter your hiring status, you’ll build up your brand as an employer and help keep yourself front of mind when talent begins to search for a new job.
Your website is another crucial place for employee testimonials. On your “jobs” page, make sure you have at least a handful of blurbs from current employees speaking into why they enjoy working for your company.
Your company’s LinkedIn profile is perfect for employee testimonials. They can easily upload them natively and whenever job seekers find your page, they’ll instantly see how much people enjoy working for your business.
Any hand outs at job interviews can feature a few brief testimonials. If you give job candidates a benefits package or folder at the interview, just tuck in a sheet with a few testimonials included.
If you’re a recruiter, you can include a one or two sentence testimonial in your email signature. Then anytime you reach out to a potential candidate, they’ll see positive words about your company and what it’s like to work there.
Steps companies should make to stay on top of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was first published January 17, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
For the past few years, COVID-19 has been a constant stressor. For businesses, there is some uncertainty in how to best handle the pandemic from a legal standpoint.
“The situation has been extremely fluid. There have been a lot of changes,” Castagno says. “It’s been a bit difficult for leaders and organizations to try to navigate all of this.”
At the federal level alone, vaccine mandates are in flux. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires healthcare workers to be vaccinated. OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) mandates companies with over 100 employees to require vaccinations or weekly testing. The Supreme Court upheld the CMS standard, while OSHA’s ETS was overruled as of January 13. Employers are still urged to stay alert, as OSHA will be reevaluating its options to keep workers safe during this pandemic.
The best way for companies to remain in compliance is to stay on top of breaking news and policies.
Steps Toward Compliance
Regarding OSHA’s ETS, the only thing struck down was the mandate to be vaccinated. Voluntary vaccination still stands. Employers still have an option to have private vaccination or testing rules. Murphy explained that employers should still take note of employees’ vaccination status, and leaders should start to develop and implement policies regarding vaccine mandates.
In addition, employers need to ensure that they are following their state and municipal COVID-19 rules.
“Make sure your employees are clear on [your COVID-19 policy],” Castagno says. “There is a lot of ambiguity right now, and you don’t want to add to the anxiety or other mental health concerns of your team.”
State Laws and Remote Work
Many businesses are moving to hybrid or entirely remote work. In addressing a return to office, leaders need to ensure that they’re in compliance with federal COVID-19 guidelines as well as state labor laws. As remote work grows in popularity, some organizations are hiring workers who operate in an entirely different state from the company itself.
Murphy explains, “It’s possible [employers] may have to be aware of and provide certain rights and benefits to employees working in a different state. It’s entirely dependent on what that state law says.”
Certain states, and even cities, prioritize where the employee is located. In those situations, employees will get said benefits regardless of where their employer is. Family, medical, military, and paid leave laws, in particular, can be dependent on where an employee lives.
Work-From-Home Accommodations
In a similar vein, accommodation requests are more common than ever. While many employers are moving to hybrid work, just as many employees are making ADA requests for remote work accommodations.
“The courts don’t see remote work as such an undue burden on the employer. They don’t think it’s an unreasonable request for a lot of employees,” Murphy says. “Courts are going to see a work from home accommodation to be much more reasonable and something they’re going to expect employers to grant way more than they ever used to.”
As such, businesses should handle work from home requests with caution, logic, and understanding.
In Summary
The pandemic is not as one-dimensional as simply following federal guidelines. Businesses must consider all possible areas of legal repercussions to best maintain compliance.
To prepare for current and future compliance, knowledge and action is necessary. As Castagno says, “As HR professionals, and as leaders, we want to sat as much at the forefront of [change] as possible.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) runs deeper than black disenfranchisement, chief diversity officer says; it also includes anti-Semitism, Asian hate related to COVID-19, politics, the war in Afghanistan, and natural disasters.
This article was first published January 10, 2022, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
The murder of George Floyd and the resulting focus on the Black Lives Matter movement have fueled a renewed focus on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) not just in the United States but also around the world.
There is a wide range of issues companies are grappling with today. The pandemic, of course, has been one major impact. Black Lives Matter and concerns about how black people have been disenfranchised for decades is another. But DEI runs deeper than that, says Carin Taylor, Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) at Workday.
DEI issues have also recently been focused on anti-Semitism, Asian hate related to COVID-19, politics, the war in Afghanistan, and natural disasters.
It’s a time, she says, “where I think it’s getting both complex and also exciting because we now have so much attention on the diversity space and there’s a lot to solve for.” It’s exciting, though, because people are listening and taking meaningful action. “That’s critical as we have to continue to make long-term progress in this area,” she adds.
A Passion for People
Taylor plays a dual role at Workday, where she is focused on both internal employee needs and offering insights on the kinds of information and services that might be valued by fellow CDOs in other organizations. Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and HR, serving more than 9,000 customers globally and representing 55 million workers.
What attracted her to Workday, she says, “was the opportunity to further expand our diversity and inclusion—D&I—efforts, influence our products, and have engaging discussions with our employees and customers about our D&I initiatives.” It’s a role that has a lot of potential for impact both internally and externally, with a broad and growing audience of organizations and individuals.
Taylor describes herself as a people person. She cares about people, and she wants to help them survive and thrive. She’s in a role, she believes, that will allow her to do just that.
The Path That Led to Workday
Taylor started her career at Cisco Systems, working initially in the customer service area. Realizing she was interested in becoming an operations leader, she set out to gain experience in sales, finance, and operations.
Then someone told her: You really should think about going into diversity. She was not immediately excited about the prospect because she didn’t fully understand what diversity was about at that time. “I really didn’t want to be seen as the face of diversity,” she says. “I did have my reservations.” But she was encouraged to check it out, and when she did, she discovered there was something in the work and something about focusing on bringing people together and focusing on the whole notion of D&I that she was passionate about.
So, she made the shift.
At first, Taylor managed employee resource groups (ERGs), which she enjoyed. She was fortunate, she says, to have had a leader at that time who really believed in and supported her—she was given opportunities to elevate her voice and learned more about management at the senior level. She began speaking publicly on behalf of the company and established Cisco’s first Diversity Council.
From Cisco, she moved to Genentech, where she first took on the role of head of diversity. “I had a great time learning there and then had an opportunity to bring over what I was learning to Workday.”
That was 4 years ago. At that time, she says, “I intentionally started with a process of a three-year journey to drive awareness, action, and accountability across the entire organization.”
Broader Opportunities to Make an Impact and Institute Change
Taylor had an immediate positive impression of Workday and its culture. During the interview process, she asked everyone she encountered about the culture. “I’m a people person and I wanted to know that the culture was going to work for me.” What she found, universally, was that “everyone said the same thing—‘we have this fantastic culture with wonderful people, and everyone wants to help you succeed.’”
Another big driver in her decision to join Workday was the potential for elevating her voice outside of the company. “I wanted to make sure I was having a very broad impact on both the tech industry as well as the DEI space,” she says.
The final driver was the ability to impact the company’s product and, in doing so, impact the DEI practices of other companies around the globe. One example of that is VIBEIndex, an offering that helps organizations assess their current level of organizational maturity related to belonging and diversity and helps them learn best practices to advance their programs. VIBE is Workday’s approach to diversity, and it stands for Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity. VIBE Index, says Taylor, is “a way to measure parity across points of intersectionality along the employee lifecycle.”
For instance, she explains, if race and gender are two attributes of interest, how do you think about the points of intersection between race and gender for your community at work and then determine whether there’s parity across the employee life cycle—hiring, leadership, promotions, attribution, etc.?
Are Asian women having the same experience as white men?
Is there parity across how we’re looking at how they’re being promoted?
How are we assessing leadership and inclusive hiring practices?
The index provides a single score based on everything a company is doing around diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity. It provides a baseline that can serve as the foundation for continuous improvement.
Taylor has also been able to continue to leverage the power of ERGs to provide both a voice for employees and an important source of input and insights for Workday.
Getting Strategic About Employee Belonging Councils and VIBE™
Workday has 10 Employee Belonging Councils (EBCs), also referred to as “affinity groups,” with more than 55 chapters around the world. Before Taylor joined Workday, the EBCs were at a very grassroots level, she says.
Shortly after she started with the organization, she brought the EBC leaders together for the company’s first Global Employee Belonging Council Leadership Summit. The EBCs’ goals are to support a more diverse population and to advance the professional development of the groups’ members. They also provide important input for the organization and its DEI efforts.
These days, says Taylor, EBCs are “very vocal.” They are, she adds, “probably the most elevated voices that are coming through right now in terms of helping us understand what’s happening within our communities and how we can help to address those issues.” She points to the Black @ Workday and Families @ Workday EBCs as two examples of this.
During the racial unrest of summer 2020, she says, the Black @ Workday EBC “really stepped up and helped us to understand what they were feeling, how they were experiencing work as well as what they were experiencing externally.” During the pandemic, she says, the Families @ Workday EBC “were extremely, extremely useful in helping us understand the perspective of the caregiver during the pandemic.”
Workday’s strategic approach to D&I is centered on its values and supports its VIBE strategy, extending throughout the organization. VIBE Councils and VIBE strategies are embedded into Workday’s functional areas, e.g., engineering, HR, etc.
Taylor says she is “thrilled to have the opportunity to influence D&I at Workday, with our customers and across the industry. I’m proud of what my team and I have been able to accomplish in a short amount of time, and I know there’s still much more to be done. As we look to the near future, we’ll continue to openly discuss the topic of D&I and set company-wide goals to increase the diversity of our workforce. And by encouraging an open dialogue, we will uncover new ways to enrich Workday’s culture of bringing one’s best self to work each day.”