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With the right pieces of content, you can attract dream employees the same way you attract dream customers.
This article was first published Sept. 14, 2021, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
You may not think recruitment and marketing go hand in hand. But a huge piece of making sure your talent pool is stocked with the best and brightest is making sure your company is an attractive place to work. Therefore, recruitment and marketing need to play off one another. The job of a recruiter isn’t just to find great potential hires—it’s to get those hires to apply and commit. Marketing is an essential mindset to have during that process and when it comes to successful marketing strategies in 2021, content reigns king.
Inbound marketing, or marketing that focuses on attracting people with valuable content, isn’t just for making sales. It’s for recruiting top talent to work for your company. Instead of focusing on outbound marketing—or going out and asking people to apply for your company—consider switching your focus to inbound marketing, so that people are knocking on your door. With the right pieces of content, you can attract dream employees the same way you attract dream customers.
Think of the types of applications you’d like to see rolling in. Where did those people go to school? What does their past work experience like? What are they passionate about? What do they write about in their cover letters? Then, once you have a “persona” in your head, think about where that person hangs out online. Are they more frequently surfing Twitter or Instagram? Do they spend a lot of time on YouTube? Would Facebook be the best place to reach them? Could they be more of a blog or email newsletter reader? By understanding where your dream job applicant spends their time, you can start crafting a marketing strategy for recruitment that will help you get new talent into your recruitment pipeline.
But once they’re in the pipeline, how do you nurture those leads? That’s where top-notch content marketing can play a role. By trying to serve your audience, demonstrate your company culture, and start important industry conversations, you’ll set your business apart as a terrific place to work.
Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling in terms of content marketing pieces you and your team could create.
Industry-Specific Topics
When it comes to your industry, what are people frequently discussing? This is the easiest place to start when it comes to brainstorming recruitment content marketing. In your specific niche, there are probably topics that employees love to discuss the nitty-gritty details of. Find out what those topics are and start crafting pieces of content about them.
For instance, if you’re in the wellness industry, you may feel really passionate about which certifications it’s important for personal trainers to have. Whip up a YouTube video breaking down what those certifications are and why they’re important. Or maybe you’re in personal finance.
Topics about how people handle their money are endless—you could do blogposts on recent finance trends, new apps dealing with personal finance, or tips for people to save more money. If you’re having a hard time coming up with ideas for topics, ask yourself what trends are in your industry that drive you bananas. Sometimes feelings of aggravation are great places to start from!
Curated Pieces of Content
Some companies focus more on creating when it comes to content marketing. Those tend to be companies with deep pockets, who can outsource their social media and blogs in order to constantly have world class material. But photographers, videographers, and content strategists can be expensive. Instead, consider curating the content. This doesn’t have to be from big-time influencers in your industry, either! Your own employees are probably creating great content that would inspire a potential job applicant to reach out.
If you go to an employee outing, make sure to snag a few of the photos off social media (with permission, of course!) to share on the company account. Follow popular hashtags within your industry as well, and make sure you’re consistently checking which photos or tweets your business is being tagged in. That way, you aren’t always having to hustle and create new content, but can instead bring together existing pieces to support your overall strategy and show the people you’re trying to recruit that your business is one to talk about.
In-Office Experiences
Potential employees are going to look up your business on social media. They’re going to want to figure out the vibe of your company, understand what being in your business is like, and whether or not they’re a good fit. Something like highlighting a day in the life of one of your employees can give great insight.
Anytime your company has a major gathering or event, posting about it on social media is going to be key as well. You could do YouTube videos featuring different departments, or giving a tour of your office. If your company does fun themes like casual Fridays, that can be nice to share, too. Anything that highlights your company culture and what it’s like to be in your office will be helpful for prospective recruits.
Career Advancement Tips
If you’re hoping to attract talent that’s looking for a job, think about what they’re interested in reading about. Job seekers probably want to learn about how to advance their careers in your industry. So sharing tips about how people can get ahead and move up the ladder will always be appreciated.
Consider interviewing some of your higher-up employees and asking them to share how they got to where they are today, or featuring some of your human resources representatives to discuss some do’s and don’ts they’ve encountered on job applications. The key to career-advancement content is to approach it with a mind towards service.
Could people use these tips and go join your competitors? Absolutely. But if you put out content aimed towards helping people, it will help people remember that your business is one that truly cares about people. That’s worth a lot when it comes to talent making choices about their employment.
Providing staff with time to spend on work-related projects near and dear to their hearts is a great way to spur profitable innovation.
This article was first published Sept. 14, 2021, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
For generations, one of the primary roles of managers and supervisors has been to keep their teams on task, to maintain high levels of productivity and to ensure employees are spending their time appropriately. After all, companies don’t want to pay their staffs for personal projects, right?
The 20% Project
As it turns out, employees spending paid work time in pursuit of personal projects is exactly the idea behind the 20% Project. As the name hints at, the 20% Project refers to companies allowing employees to spend 20 percent of their paid work time on projects of a personal interest. Of course, these projects still need to be work related, but they don’t need to reflect an employee’s specific job duties or job responsibilities.
3M is one of the best-known advocates of this concept, embracing their 15% project in the wake of the Second World War. The idea was that creativity thrives in unstructured time, and that giving the smart scientists at 3M ample time to think and create on their own could lead to new innovations to help the company maintain its cutting edge.
Tech Companies Lead the Way
Another well-known company, Google, has one of the most high-profile implementations of the concept in the form of their 20% Project, writes Bill Murphy Jr. in an article for Inc.com: “The idea is pretty simple: It's that you, or a team, or a company—anyone, really—should divide your time working, so that at least 20 percent is spent exploring or working on projects that show no promise of paying immediate dividends but that might reveal big opportunities down the road.”
Murphy writes that the concept has paid genuine dividends for Google in the form of Google News, AdSense, and Gmail, all of which the company attributes to embracing the 20% principle.
While it’s critical for businesses to maintain the productivity of their workforces, insisting that their focus be solely on job-related priorities isn’t always the best solution. For positions that require or even just benefit from productivity, providing staff with some time to spend on work-related projects that are near and dear to their hearts might be a great way to spur some profitable innovation.
How could you put the 20% Project idea to work in your organization?
Employers should communicate the reasons for calling employees back to the office—reasons that often go beyond just needing the equipment and space found in the workplace.
This article was first published Sept. 2, 2021, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
When COVID vaccines rolled out months ago, employers and employees alike began looking forward to getting back to the office, where they could once again work alongside coworkers instead of isolated in their homes.
Even though the delta variant has stepped up fears and changed some employers’ plans, many are forging ahead and going back to prepandemic workplaces. That means employers have a lot to think about, and attorneys who advise employers say they may need to do some out-of-the-box thinking.
Dealing With Resistance
With the pandemic dragging on, some employees worry about exposure to the virus if they return to the office. Others are still dealing with childcare and school closures, and others are reluctant to go back when they’ve come to appreciate working from home.
So, how should employers approach a return when many employees are resistant?
“Employers should be thoughtful and intentional about articulating the reasons why on-site work is necessary,” says Susan W. Kline, an attorney at Faegre Drinker in Indianapolis, Indiana. “That rationale needs to go beyond organizational leaders’ preferred work style and look to the responsibilities of all personnel who are required to do at least some work on-site.”
Kline points out there may be “value in personal encounters that occur when people are working in the same space for mentoring, building stronger interpersonal relationships, and creating greater opportunities for spontaneous idea generation and problem-solving.”
Therefore, employers should communicate the reasons for calling employees back to the office—reasons that often go beyond just needing the equipment and space found in the workplace.
Evaluating Performance
Assessing employee performance also requires careful communication. Early on, employers likely were more lenient in their evaluations than they would have been had the pandemic not happened, but now that people have had time to settle into their new routines, employees need to know what’s expected.
“For many employers, it’s time to hit ‘reset’ on performance expectations,” Kline says. “If expectations have been lax because of the limitations of remote work or recognized personal challenges, employers need to gently let employees know that although things are far from the way they were going into 2020, we are now at a point where full-time best efforts are required and accountabilities will be re-established.”
Employers also need to recognize that many employees are still dealing with pandemic-related hardships. Listening to the various challenges can help.
“Allowing employees to have input into how performance should be evaluated going forward can help managers gain insight into team members’ challenges, their new ideas that have come out of our shelter-in-place experiences, and their career development plans and desires as they may have evolved over the last year and a half,” Kline says.
Wage Concerns Related to Continued Remote Work
Even though many employees want to continue work-from-home arrangements and many employers are willing to accommodate them, wage and hour concerns must be considered.
Kline says the longer the remote work model continues, the greater the potential for legal exposure in such areas as:
Claims for reimbursement of business expenses, such as a portion of home Internet access costs;
Risks the employer isn’t withholding taxes for the employee in the appropriate state or locality;
Off-the-clock working time not being captured and paid because time recording systems aren’t well-adapted to the remote work model, including checking messages outside of the normal workday; and
Understanding what constitutes noncompensable commuting time versus compensable business travel time.
Mental Health Issues
With employees continuing to juggle work, school, childcare, and other concerns, management needs to keep mental health issues top of mind, including how they may implicate the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and similar state laws.
“This is an area where managers likely need specific training, both to recognize when an employee may be struggling with mental health challenges and to know how to provide support without running afoul of laws like the ADA,” Kline says. “That can be a delicate balance.”
Kline says leaders need education about resources available to employees as well as for themselves. The labor shortage makes that education even more important.
“Employees may be overworked, which contributes to their struggles, and supervisors may be leading departments that are understaffed, making it difficult to prioritize supportive one-to-one interactions,” Kline says.
Accommodation Worries
The mental health problems triggered by the pandemic mean many employees will be seeking accommodations as they’re called back to the office. The ADA requires that workers with physical or mental impairments that substantially limit a major life activity, such as the ability to work, are entitled to reasonable accommodations to help them perform their jobs.
That doesn’t mean workers are entitled to whatever modification they request if another change would cause less disruption in the workplace, but employers need to enter discussions with employees with an open mind, says Lauren Moak Russell, an attorney with Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP, in Wilmington, Delaware.
In an article for Delaware Employment Law Letter, Russell wrote that discussions of accommodations are often “plagued by catastrophic thinking.” Too often, she says, managers fear that if they grant an accommodation, then everyone will expect something.
“But such an approach is unproductive, and fears of a slippery slope aren’t a valid basis for denying an accommodation,” Russell wrote. She suggests managers get past their fears by considering the worst-case scenario an accommodation might produce.
“Of course, if the accommodation truly poses an undue hardship to your business or requires you to eliminate an employee’s essential job function, then by definition it isn’t reasonable and doesn’t have to be granted,” Russell wrote. “Considering the possible outcomes can help quell managers’ fears and make the discussions more productive.”
While you don’t want to rush the process, there are ways to reduce your hiring time.
This article was first published Sept. 7, 2021, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
Hiring is both an exciting and a laborious process. It can be great to add some fresh blood to your lineup of employees who can bring a welcome burst of fresh air and hope in the new employee’s potential. Whether you’re replacing an employee who left or creating a new position, finding just the right person can be fulfilling.
But at the end of the day, hiring someone can also be incredibly time-consuming. A third of recruiters spend over 20 hours a week on sourcing new job candidates—half of an average workweek. Employee turnover leads to hours spent in drafting job descriptions, posting your available openings, seeking out candidates, reviewing applications, and interviewing potential new hires.
And that’s before you’ve decided who you’re bringing on. After you make a hire, you then need to train the person in all aspects of the position and potentially your company and industry. Recruitment takes a lot of company resources. Therefore, any way you can save time should be embraced. While you don’t want to rush the process, there are ways to reduce your hiring time and make sure no days are wasted.
Here are four hacks to reduce your hiring time so you can spend less time on LinkedIn and more time serving your customer base.
Nurture Talent Leads Before You Need Them
When it’s time to bring in new hires, it’s helpful not to have to start from scratch. Sure, you’ll do the usuals—posting openings on your company website, reaching out to potential talent on LinkedIn, making sure word gets out about your opening, etc. But imagine having a pool you can turn to so you can personally extend invitations to someone to apply. For that to become a reality, you need to have a “talent pipeline” into which you can put leads. You shouldn’t only be thinking about recruitment when you have an open position. How can you keep an eye on talent you’d like to potentially recruit in the future?
In-person networking events, LinkedIn, recommendations from people in your industry, or other online resources can help you start building your talent pipeline. By keeping a pipeline for potential new recruits, you’ll have ample time to get them familiar with your company, excited about your culture, and interested in working for you.
Set Firm Interview Requirements
Any good recruiter or HR representative knows an application can only tell you so much. Bringing someone in for an interview is the best way to get to know his or her personality and learn more details about his or her experience. But interviews take up quite a bit of time. It’s not just the hour or so spent chatting with the candidate; it’s also the schedule coordination, the pre-interview prep, and the post-interview breakdown. Therefore, you should consider being semi-choosy about who is invited in for an interview. The mindset of well, we’ll just bring them in and see may sound like a good idea on its surface, but once it translates into hours and hours of conversation that don’t go anywhere, you’ll regret not being more selective.
One of the best ways to do this is to set up firm requirements of who you’re going to invite to interview. Is there a minimum amount of experience you want to see? A certain software you want a person to be proficient in? A willingness to relocate? A certain level of education? The specifics will depend on your company and industry, but by deciding beforehand what the requirements are going to be for an interview, it will prevent you from wasting time on interviews that you’re already fairly confident won’t lead to anything. It can also help you feel more assured walking into interviews—you already know this person has some terrific qualifications, and you know your time is being used well!
Utilize an Applicant Tracking System
It’s amazing how much time can be spent just tracking your applicants. In order to keep things neat and organized, make sure you have a system in place. Just searching your inbox for “job interview” doesn’t count! An organized spreadsheet, a well-structured Trello board, or some other application can help you keep track of who has applied, whom you’ve responded to, and where they are in the process.
Tracking your applicants well will allow you to cut back on hours spent figuring out who’s being interviewed, whom you need to reach out to, and who isn’t going to make it to the next step of the process. Make sure you have your system set up before you start looking for job candidates—otherwise, it’ll feel like changing the tires on a car that’s already rolling.
Focus on Company Culture
The best way to limit time spent on recruiting and hiring? By having a company culture so beneficial to your employees that they don’t want to leave for greener pastures! The longer employees happily stick around, the less time you’ll have to spend recruiting new ones. That seems obvious, but company culture can be emphasized in the recruitment process to lower turnaround time. Once you find the employee you want to hire, you don’t want the person waiting around thinking about the opportunity or clicking through LinkedIn again to see if anything better came along.
As soon as you reach out to a potential job candidate, the clock starts ticking. Waiting a week to hear back from a potential employee can really mess up your hiring timeline. You want the person to be fired up about the potential of joining your business. Stay connected to applicants throughout the entire process. Also, by highlighting your company’s compensation, benefits package, and innovative work experiences, you’ll ensure that potential employees are quick to respond to your e-mails and are eager to commit.
Employers are trying to reconcile a world where millions are without work, yet they can't fill roles and employees are quitting in record numbers.
This article was first published August 30, 2021, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
The global pandemic has created many situations that have been labeled “unprecedented,” and a lot of those have been related to employment. Right now, employers are scratching their heads trying to reconcile a world where millions have been without work, yet it’s still difficult to fill roles and employees are quitting in seemingly record numbers.
Let’s take a look at a few of the many reasons why employees today are still quitting during a pandemic, as well as some of the reasons not everyone is eager to return to the fields they left behind.
Reasons Behind the Resignation
Here are some of the leading causes behind the recent surge in employee resignations:
The pandemic created a situation where people started to evaluate what was truly important in their lives. Many found that their work life did not match up with their big picture goals or objectives. This may have led them to make a major change in career path or finally go back to school. Or it may have meant leaving an employer who has not lived up to what the individual thought they would be.
While there was a brief respite when the vaccine rollout was underway and it seemed like things were getting back to normal, it’s clear today that the pandemic isn’t done. This means many people have had shifting work needs, some multiple times – like the need to be home to care for others, such as ill loved ones, children who cannot attend daycare, etc.
Many people feel unsafe going back to work due to (real or perceived) lack of protection from contracting COVID-19—and the risk isn’t worthwhile to them. If remote work isn’t an option – either due to the nature of the job or the policy of the employer – they may opt to leave instead.
Wage stagnation is finally starting to break, pressuring wages upward. If employers do not follow suit for existing employees, they may be more likely than ever to seek more money elsewhere since millions of jobs are available today.
Many simply found that remote work (or other forms of work flexibility) were a feature they found too good to give up. When employers began asking them to come back, many have said no.
Some have simpler reasons: with staffing shortages seemingly everywhere, the strains on existing workers can be rough. Some people are no longer willing to put up with those levels of stress and have decided to leave as a result. Even if none of the other reasons applied.
For some it’s as simple as giving up things like a long commute and trading it in for something simpler or with more flexibility. These individuals may not be leaving the workforce, but they’re changing roles, contributing to the shift in employees.
For others, it comes down to how their employer actually responded to and during the pandemic itself. Did the organization offer support? Were there resources for those facing illness or caregiving needs? Were steps taken to reduce risks for employees?
It’s easy to see this is a varied topic, but there are a lot of reasons employees are still leaving.
Employees Are Still Leaving – What Does This Mean for Employers?
While the answer to this question will vary depending on any given organization’s situation, there are a few things employers should be thinking about. Employers should be paying more attention than ever to things like:
Improving company culture
Showing employees that they’re valued
Providing benefits that employees want
Allowing flexibility in work locations or hours whenever possible
Ensuring work-life balance for both in-house and remote employees
Offering training and employee development programs
Focusing on improving employee engagement
Ensuring recognition programs are in place and being used well
What has been your experience? Has your organization seen a significant change in turnover in 2021?
One challenge employers and HR departments now face is keeping remote staff engaged amid the uncertain rollercoaster of a pandemic that refuses to fade.
This article was first published August 30, 2021, by HR Daily Advisor, a sibling publication to HealthLeaders.
Just a few weeks ago, we, along with businesses and HR observers around the country, were discussing the logistics of bringing staff back to the office as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes and fades away. What a difference a few weeks can make! With COVID resurging in the form of the Delta variant, businesses that had been planning to bring staff back to the workplace, and many that were even beginning to execute those plans, now find themselves delaying employees’ return.
This delay may be frustrating for those that spent time and energy planning the return, but even more significantly for some companies, the delay represents a potential psychological blow to a workforce that already experienced a year and a half of trauma and uncertainty from the pandemic.
One of the many challenges employers and HR departments now face is how to keep staff engaged as they continue to work remotely amid the uncertain rollercoaster of a pandemic that refuses to fade. In this feature, we discuss some key strategies for employers to keep their remote workforce engaged.
Listen, Both Passively and Actively
Employers across the country are spending a lot of time and energy wondering how their employees are doing amid the chaos of the pandemic. That chaos, of course, extends beyond those employees’ work lives. Many are dealing with strains of child care; uncertainty around back-to-school policies; financial stress; and, of course, the direct impact of the pandemic on their health and the health of their loved ones.
But this shouldn’t be an exercise in guessing and assumptions. The best way to determine how employees are feeling in the current environment is to ask them and listen to what they’re saying.
This includes passive listening, like collecting and paying attention to unsolicited feedback, which could include e-mails to the HR department or small talk between a manager and his or her subordinates.
It also includes active listening, which means not just listening to the words being spoken by the other person but also digging deeper to get to the complete message. Active listening means paying attention to body language, the tone of someone’s voice, nonverbal pauses, etc. It also involves asking follow-up questions when something is unclear or an initial response seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Be Transparent and Frequent in Providing Updates
Just as employers don’t need to spend all of their time wondering and guessing how employees are feeling, employees shouldn’t need to wonder and guess what’s going on with the company’s COVID policies. There’s enough uncertainty around the pandemic without having to add unnecessary uncertainty around company requirements.
Employers should update employees as often as possible on their return-to-work plans and schedule and provide avenues for employees to ask follow-up and clarification questions.
If and when companies do bring staff to the office, being transparent and maintaining two-way communication around health and safety protocols and precautions are essential. The last thing employees want to worry about when they return is whether they’re exposing themselves and their families to illness.
Flexibility
Many employers are understandably eager to get staff back to the office. Some feel their employees are more productive within the structure of the workplace, while others long for the increased opportunities for collaboration. But employers need to understand that their staff may be at very different comfort levels with returning to work, and a one-size-fits-all approach is highly unlikely to be successful.
Flexibility in this context means working with employees—within reason—on a case-by-case basis on their return to the workplace. A key caveat here is “within reason.” Realistically, not all companies can accommodate fully remote staff indefinitely. Some industries and job functions may simply not be conducive to remote work. Similarly, some employees may not perform as well from a home office as they do in a corporate office. However, even if an employee’s role needs to be performed in the physical work setting, employers can still be flexible in managing the transition back to the office.
A common experience for employers around the country is high turnover and difficulty finding workers. Companies perceived as unnecessarily inflexible may find their staff more disengaged and eager to jump ship in favor of an employer they perceive as more flexible.
Maintaining a Personal Touch
Just because staff aren’t in the office with their colleagues and supervisors doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity to establish and maintain personal connections. Telecommunications technology has made tremendous advances in recent years, and video calls can add a more personal feel than e-mail and voice-only phone conversations.
Video chats don’t need to be strictly business either. Many companies have used these platforms to arrange virtual happy hours and other social events. Although teleconferencing is not a perfect replacement for in-person social interaction, it’s certainly better than none at all.
In addition to trying to bridge the in-person interaction gap with videoconferencing, employers should make extra efforts to reach out and see how staff are doing more generally. This can be as simple as more frequent informal check-ins, for example.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a tremendous challenge for employers from the outset. In addition to the obvious logistical challenges of keeping staff productive and efficient from their home offices, employers are increasingly struggling to keep their staff engaged as the restrictions necessitated by the pandemic drag on. Companies that fail to keep staff engaged risk decreased productivity, poor morale, and employee turnover.
In an age when companies are struggling to find and retain quality staff, the risk of turnover in particular should be a key motivation to keep staff happy, safe, and engaged.
Executive positions are often the most challenging to recruit for. As an HR professional, you know just how important it is to find the right match for the business. A wrong executive hire can lead the company in a negative direction that can be difficult to recover from, which puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.
When you’re hiring a new chief technology officer (CTO), there’s often added complexity. This is a highly specialized position involving a professional who can direct and guide operations in a rapidly changing technological landscape. A candidate has the potential to positively impact your business growth or leave you lagging behind your competitors.
So, what are some key considerations when hiring a CTO? Let’s dive a little further into this position.
Understand the Role
If this is the first time your company is hiring a CTO, you must take time to understand the finer points of the role. This will help you pinpoint the aspects of applicants’ skills that are not just right for the position but also most important for your company.
The core responsibility of a CTO is to direct and oversee all technological processes for an organization. But this person’s duties go beyond just choosing what hardware and software should be implemented in operations. The CTO is responsible for identifying and assessing any risks and opportunities associated with technological tools and ascertaining how trends can be leveraged to impact the bottom line, not to mention ensuring staff and stakeholders alike are educated on technology protocols within the business. The skills your CTO should possess must reflect this. Technical expertise in areas like coding, networking, and even software development can be beneficial. While leadership ability is essential for any executive, CTOs need to apply active authority over the direction of all tech projects. Therefore, you’re looking for a candidate to effectively guide and empower employees during major technological shifts.
You should also determine what skills your CTO will need now and in the future. Talk to executives and department heads in other areas of the business to better understand what tech challenges are coming down the track. If your industry is expected to be impacted by the switch to 5G, you’ll likely need a CTO with additional skills related to change management. If you work in online commerce, your CTO will need to demonstrate strategic thinking to develop user experience (UX). Think about the general skills needed, as well as those tailored to your organization.
Review Experience and Achievement
When hiring for any executive role, you’re benefiting from not just candidates’ skills but also their professional experiences. You’ll likely find many candidates share skill sets that would be advantageous to the role, but each will be distinguished by his or her own achievements.
Though experience can be relayed through recommendations from colleagues, the best first summary will likely be on candidates’ résumés. One of the hallmarks of a quality executive résumé is it tends to go beyond just listing employment history, education, and duties. Rather, candidates will utilize experiences and achievements as tools to explain how they bring value to an organization. You should look at how they frame the context of an achievement concerning how aspects of their personality and skill set had a direct impact on the success of a project. Compare this with your list of needs for a CTO; what does their approach to previous experiences tell you about how they can help your business thrive?
A key part of the candidate experience includes education to some extent. For a CTO, this might be a bachelor’s degree in a tech field or certifications in ethical hacking and networking. But it’s also important to bear in mind that a traditional education does not always mean the candidate is right. Indeed, you could be missing out on quality executives from marginalized racial, socioeconomic, or neurodivergent backgrounds who may not have had access to tertiary-level education. Make sure your recruitment is also open to self-taught candidates. Particularly in tech fields, this has become a sign of a valuable, committed, and creative mindset.
Consider the Personality
When you’re hiring a CTO, it can be tempting to focus primarily on the technological impact this employee can have on your organization. This is obviously important, but it can be just as vital to make sure the executive you choose will have a positive influence on the overall culture of the business as it grows. This means considering your potential CTO’s personality.
It’s difficult to determine personality traits from a résumé or employment history, but a candidate’s experiences can help highlight whether he or she has a certain level of tenacity in overcoming obstacles. Additionally, the time the person has spent with previous companies can point to his or her commitment to engaging fully with a business and its goals. For the most part, your opportunity to gain important information here will be during interviews.
One of the most helpful cultural aspects to talk to potential CTOs about is their values. Their approach to elements such as business ethics, diversity and inclusion, and integrity must be consistent with that of the company. After all, they’ll be tasked with overseeing systems that impact the entire business, as well as influencing and interacting with stakeholders of all levels. While it is important to have employees of all backgrounds and varying opinions, it is vital to the positive trajectory of the business that your values still mesh.
Conclusion
A CTO is an essential component of large businesses in our digital age. To find the right one, it’s important to gain a deeper understanding of what type of executive influencer your business needs. Remember, you’re not just looking for a skill set with a solid history; how candidates applied their abilities and the personality that drives their actions are just as vital. With some attention to the whole candidate, you can identify a valuable contributor to your company’s trajectory.
If you’re interested in scoping out a job candidate's online presence before bringing them onboard, how can you make sure to keep things fair, legal, and appropriate?
When it comes to hiring, your company is looking for the best and brightest. But reading through resumes, perusing cover letters, reaching out to references, and hosting interviews can only tell you so much. How can you tell if an employee is going to fit into your company culture? How can you be certain they aren’t going to do something public online that embarrasses your business? If you’re really looking for a 360-degree view of an applicant—their lifestyle, personality, skillset, and more—you may feel tempted to check an applicant’s social media accounts and digital footprint.
According to a recent study, nearly 90% of employers are screening the profiles of job applicants and over 70% of Human Resources professionals say that they’ve held back a job offer because of something they spotted on social media. It’s become common practice for businesses to want to scope out a person’s online presence before bringing them onboard. There are even third-party companies you can hire to screen an applicant’s social media profiles for things like scammy behavior or illegal drug use. But if you’re interested in doing so, how can you make sure to keep things fair, legal, and appropriate?
Most people understand their social media profiles will be looked at while they’re applying for a job. But that doesn’t mean that you as a recruiter don’t need to use responsibility and prudence when checking out an applicant’s Instagram or Twitter account. Here are a handful of do’s and don’t’s on screening the social media accounts of your applicants.
Do: Research the Laws In Your Area
There are some national laws, like the Civil Rights Act, that prevent you from discriminating against an applicant based on race or gender. But certain states have more specific laws about reasons you can refuse to hire someone. Make sure that you’re paying attention to your particular area in order to avoid getting hit by legal action. Discrimination lawsuits are not fun things to be a part of. You also don’t want to find something out on social media and find out after the fact that you can’t consider that particular finding when deciding whether or not to offer employment. It will already start that employee’s job off on a bad foot—and that isn’t fair, to either you or them.
Don’t: Use Hackers
Are there companies that boast an ability to hack into someone’s social media profile to spy on them for potential employers? Yes. Should you utilize them? Absolutely not. First of all, these hackers often use illegal methods, like impersonating a person or business entity online. Secondly, this is an abuse of a potential employee’s privacy. If he or she has set their profiles to private, respect it.
Do: Consider Your Boundaries
It makes sense that a business would be cautious about hiring someone who’s very outspoken politically. But everyone will have varying degrees of comfort on political outspokenness, as well as which topics you’re willing to disagree on. There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer here, but it’s important to spend some time considering how willing you are to have a politically outspoken employee, whether they agree or disagree with you on certain policies. Just because someone’s politically active in their personal life doesn’t mean they’ll bring it into the office. But someone who spends a great deal of time talking politics on their Twitter feed may bring an energy you aren’t looking for. Maybe you agree with someone strongly and have no problem with them being an activist on the weekends, or maybe you disagree but don’t mind as long as they’re views don’t come into the workplace, or maybe you’d prefer not to have an employee who talks publicly about their political views at all.
Again, there’s no right or wrong here—it’s up to your individual company culture.
Don’t: Put Too Much Stock in Social Media Personas
Most people know that an employer has a good chance of looking at their social media profiles. That means they may have cleaned them up before you’re even seeing them—it’s likely that they’ve deleted any inappropriate photos or statuses. This isn’t a bad thing; it shows that he or she is considering how they look online. Furthermore, just because someone posts a photo of themselves at a bar on a Friday night doesn’t mean they won’t be a terrific employee! Social media research shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all of your hiring process. Keep an open mind and try not to let yourself be overly biased by something you see on a person’s profile. One option to avoid stereotyping or letting negative thoughts creep in when they shouldn’t? Don’t do a social media screen until after someone’s been interviewed in person and you’ve come to an informal decision. That way, you know you’ll have to find some serious red flags in order to change your mind.
Do: Check Out What They’ve Said About Employers
One huge no-no? Someone badmouthing their employer on social media. Everyone needs to vent about his or her boss from time to time, but that’s something that should be done to a spouse or trusted friend—not the internet. If someone has so little respect towards their employer that they’re angrily complaining about them on Facebook, that isn’t someone you want in your office. It can hurt morale, make a mockery of your business, and expose company troubles to the public.
Don’t: Go All The Way Back
Social media may feel relatively new, but it’s actually been around for a long time. You’re likely looking at potential employees who had a Facebook profile in high school or a TikTok account in college. Remember that when we’re young, we all may have shared things that would make us wince now. Don’t judge people too harshly by statements made when they were sixteen. You’re trying to decide if the person would make a good employee now, not if they would have just a month after getting their driver’s license.
Employee training has traditionally focused on a job’s specifics—for example, a payroll specialist should be trained on how to operate the company’s payroll system and deal with staff questions, a building manager should be trained on key areas of building monitoring and maintenance, software engineers should be trained on new and improved methods for effective and secure coding, etc.
But there are many areas of general training that companies often overlook. Some employers might assume their staff already possessed these generic skills and knowledge, while others simply may not have thought to include them. In this post, we look at a few non-job-specific areas employers should consider incorporating into their training programs.
Time Management
All employees can benefit from training on time management, and the benefits to employers that dedicate time and resources to such training can include increased efficiency and productivity.
Safety
Workplace safety issues aren’t limited to a forklift driver knocking over a row of shelves in a warehouse or a construction worker falling off a roof. Accidents can also involve chronic injuries caused by years of sitting at a desk with bad posture or poor office ergonomics. Companies that avoid safety incidents can keep employees at work more consistently and avoid some insurance and workers’ compensation issues.
Environmentalism
Training employees not to waste paper, water, electricity, and other resources can not only help save money but also boost a company’s image as a steward of its community and environment.
Customer Service
It might seem obvious that you shouldn’t be rude to a customer, but for many employees, particularly those without a traditionally customer-facing role, this may not be the case. Every employee, regardless of role, can benefit from learning some basic tenets of customer service. For those who already have a solid foundation, company-mandated customer service training can help drive home the importance of that value to the entire organization.
Ethics
Ethics training could include items with concrete legal or regulatory implications, such as antibribery laws, in addition to topics like being honest and transparent with colleagues, superiors, and subordinates. The benefit is that employees and customers generally value working for and with organizations and teams they perceive as ethical.
Although it’s clear you should train staff on their roles’ specifics, there are other nonspecific areas that may also warrant attention. Dedicating some time and resources to these areas could make the entire organization more effective, safe, professional, and efficient.
When executives devise enterprise risk management strategies, the goal is often to protect the company from outside attacks or unforeseen events that could damage its reputation and integrity. The challenge for HR professionals, however, is finding a way to prevent the problems that occur inside an organization from sinking the ship from within.
Social media monitoring is on everyone’s mind because of how visible and accessible it has become and because, in the event of an incident, many perpetrators vent their frustrations and intent ahead of time.
According to a 2018 Gartner report, 50% of the 239 large corporations surveyed were already monitoring employee e-mails and social media accounts. Whether an employee has a public account or one that is visible to coworkers and friends, posts about personal or work-related frustrations may be on HR professionals’ radar. But whether to act and how to respond to this information are less clear and more fraught.
According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) study, which examined 160 shooting attacks between 2000 and 2013, nearly half of those occurred at businesses, such as offices, warehouses, malls, restaurants, movie theaters, bars, supermarkets, and distribution centers. A separate study conducted in 2016 found that in nearly 60% of lone-actor terrorist attacks, the person involved wrote a letter or public statement before the attack that outlined the beliefs behind it, highlighting that these threats are preventable as long as companies remain on the lookout for them and intervene.
Privacy concerns and the sense of being observed by an employer may give employees pause, and without a clear policy, it is impossible to respond to possible threats or concerns without bias and in a standardized way. If navigated correctly, social media monitoring can solve these problems and protect a company from fraud, workplace violence, and other threats. Here are three common questions on the minds of HR and security professionals regarding how to use social media monitoring to keep employees and businesses safe.
Why might a company monitor employees’ social media accounts?
Workplace threats are often preceded by warning signs, such as social media posts about intended acts or language that reveals a deterioration in mental health. According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, 77% of active shooters plan their attack at least a week in advance, and on average, active shooters display 4 to 5 observable concerning behaviors in the months, weeks, or days leading up to an attack. And in almost half of the attacks for which a motive could be identified, the reason was the same: an interpersonal or employment action taken against the shooter.
Besides mitigating workplace risk, the biggest benefit of social media monitoring is that it helps keep employees safe. A monitoring system that detects a concerning change in mental state can flag problems for immediate intervention, giving employers the opportunity to provide counseling and resources to employees who are struggling.
Early intervention through monitoring serves a dual purpose: It enables employers to get employees help when early warning signs surface and prevents the planned final action from coming to fruition.
How do I implement social media monitoring within the workplace?
There need to be clearly defined protocols that require specific responses based on an escalating scale so an employee’s potential early warning signals of frustration and language that indicates an imminent threat to that individual or others are both appropriately dealt with. The key to achieving that distinction is implementing this policy within a framework of anonymity, which separates the event (i.e., post) from the individual’s identity to remove human bias and misconceptions from the equation.
Laying out the benefits and reasons behind social media monitoring, particularly as they relate to employee well-being and protection, can help secure employee buy-in and support. The future of the workforce may be overwhelmingly remote, and changes in day-to-day interactions that would ordinarily raise a red flag may no longer be visible.
Companies may also consider building out a vision for employee social media monitoring with consent, ideally as part of an opt-in process during preemployment screening. Establishing employee buy-in requires employers to be transparent about the monitoring process, which can most easily be done by creating a standardized policy for dealing with this information.
What do I do if the system flags a potential problem with one of my employees?
One of the greatest challenges for most employers will be deciding whether to act on an alert and how to decide what action to take if they do. A threat should only be escalated if it meets the criteria set out in the company policy, whether that means suicidal language, indications of an imminent threat, or another metric for employee frustration that has been previously outlined for monitoring. And until then, social media monitoring can remain anonymous to protect the privacy of employees and mitigate any bias in the review process.
After a threat has been escalated, it’s important to have resources in place to deal with the implications. If an employee is at risk of harming himself or herself, the first step is to speak with the individual about any concerns and provide him or her with the information to contact a mental health counselor.
The goal is to de-escalate a situation and provide employees with a course correction to protect themselves and others and to avoid taking serious disciplinary action if possible. Involving law enforcement should only be a last resort, but it should be done if that is the best way to keep employees safe.
Social media monitoring by employers is an extension and improvement of existing practices that were designed to make the world, and the workplace, safer. For issues of national security, there is no need for consent or notification, and social media sites are themselves monitoring user accounts for breaches in policy or etiquette. The fundamental difference in implementing social media monitoring within the workplace is that it is a collaborative process designed to protect both sides.
Social media monitoring is one piece of the puzzle for employers looking to protect their companies, and it must be combined with conversations with employees and managers to effectively integrate monitoring via people, process, and technology so there is a holistic risk assessment model in place. People are the lifeblood of an organization, and utilizing all of the available technology to protect them needs to be a top priority for employers.
There is no going back to a time without workplace threats and risk, but today, executives have unprecedented access to information and tools to keep their organizations and workforce safe. No organization wants to be unaware of publicly posted threats. Social media monitoring can and must be done right—with transparency and anonymity—to stop preventable tragedies and problems going forward. Executives have much to gain by taking this opportunity to revolutionize their risk management and too much to lose by ignoring it.