Employment Screening | 5 Ways Your Employee Onboarding Helps Pt. 1

by Employment Screening Alliance | Jun 21, 2016 | Employment Screening

Employment Screening | 5 Ways Your Employee Onboarding Helps Pt. 1

Employment Screening | In a world that is more transparent and connected than ever, it’s becoming increasingly clear that employer brands are defined by employee experiences, not marketing teams.

‘Employer Brand’ is basically a fancy term to describe a company’s reputation in the talent market. And the truth is that the employee voice is perceived as more trustworthy than the CEO – so supporting employee success and general well-being is a mission-critical element in attracting and retaining talent.

This comes at a time when social media continues to find its way into every aspect of our digital lives. Reviews, comments and feedback about internal practices will eventually find their way to social channels, and 79% of today’s candidates are likely to use social media in their search.

With these two factors in mind, HR leaders need to be aware of the reputation they are crafting in the talent market and ensure they’re supporting a top-notch employer brand. This starts with solidifying your employee experience through the onboarding process.

The onboarding experience for a new employee is the most important opportunity for setting expectations on how their employee experience will be at your company.

Here are five strategies that you can implement during the employee onboarding process to build the bedrock of a robust employer brand.

Employment Screening | 6 Essential Sales Tips For Recruiters Pt. 2

by Employment Screening Alliance | Jun 18, 2016 | Employment Screening

Employment Screening | 6 Essential Sales Tips For Recruiters Pt. 2

Employment Screening | 3. Build trust. Don’t sound like a robot

It often comes down to the simple fact that nobody will ever buy anything from somebody they don’t like or trust. And the key to gaining a prospective client’s trust is to build rapport.

Anyone can pick up a phone and dial a number. Anyone who dials enough numbers will eventually get to speak to someone. There’s plenty of technology out there that can even do the dialling for you.

But as we all know it’s what happens after the prospect picks up the phone that matters. As I mentioned earlier, if your only objective is to close the deal, or if you baffle your prospect with bullsh1t, it’s never going to happen. A robot can dial a number. A robot could even repeatedly recite a series of facts. But a robot can’t build trust, rapport or a long-lasting business partnership.

4. Believe in what you are talking about

Whilst you certainly don’t ever want to come across as overly salesy, you also don’t want to sound like you don’t believe in (or worse still that you don’t care about) what you’re talking about.

It’s damn hard to sound as enthusiastic on the 27th prospect call of the day as it was on the 1st one. But if you just sound like you’re ‘going through the motions’, it’s never going to work in your favour.

I used to encourage my recruiters to have a small mirror on their desks. And whilst I may have sounded like a robot walking around the office saying “remember to smile when you dial”, I’m telling you it worked. If you look enthusiastic, and you look like you believe in what you’re doing, that energy (and hopefully passion too) will come across over the phone. If you don’t then it won’t. It’s as simple as that.

5. Never sound desperate

Then there are those recruiters who no matter how hard they try to mask it, they actually sound desperate over the phone.

Maybe it’s the pressure of the KPIs or call quotas that gets to them, but it’s not a good look when a prospective client’s first impression is that you are begging them to talk to you (let alone to buy from you) simply so that you can meet your numbers.

Listen to yourself very carefully when you’re next on the phone. If all your phrases end with your voice going ‘up and to the right’ (as I like to explain it), then all your prospective client is hearing is “please?”, “can’t you just give me one chance?”, or “save me … I’m drowning here”!

6. Being manipulative is never going to work in your favour

Whilst you might (by some sheer fluke) succeed in getting some kind of verbal commitment over the phone (potentially helping you hit your target), as soon as the call is over your prospect will have a chance to reflect and they will then most likely pull out of any deal, or just not go ahead with the ‘order’.

Personally my first reaction if I ever feel like a sales person in a store is pressuring me, or if I feel they are being a bit too suave is to run. It’s the same on the phone … only instead of running they just need to hang up.

So rather than coming across as ‘too smooth’, take the time to ask open ended questions and learn more about the person on the other end of the phone.

You might just end up working with them one day. -recruit loop

Employment Screening | Secrets LinkedIn Probably Doesn’t Want You to Know Pt. 2

by Employment Screening Alliance | Jun 12, 2016 | Employment Screening

Employment Screening | Secrets LinkedIn Probably Doesn’t Want You to Know Pt. 2

Employment Screening | 1. Reach out to followers first. Your LinkedIn Career Page followers are 81% more likely to respond to your InMails than those who do not follow you.

1. Don’t mix work and the weekend. InMail messages sent on Saturdays are 16% less likely to get a response than those sent during the work week.
2. The closer it is to the weekend, the less likely talent is to respond. InMails sent on Thursday between 9 and 10 AM are 12% more likely to get a response than those sent on Friday during the same time.

It is possible to grow anyone’s LinkedIn from 0 connections to 3,000+ connections under one month without getting restricted by LinkedIn. Be very careful not to come across as a connect spammer. Have a genuine reason to justify the invite to connect with anyone to respect the LinkedIn Community Guidelines.

I advise against any automated LinkedIn connection tools. High-volume connection invites should be controlled and limited to at the very most 200-300 invites per day and 3,000-4,000 invitations per month. I have been enjoying about 60% acceptance rates. Sending a connection request works as a probing signal to see whether that person is open to communicating or not. Clean up any one-month-old invitations every week in the LinkedIn Connect Hub.

The beginning of all sourcing begins with cleaning up and completing your LinkedIn profile to look and feel like a professional recruiter, or better yet executive search recruiter. Most people connect and respond to executive search recruiters even if they are not executive level yet. Make your profile and profile picture likable.

Second, get the Boolean search optimization process down cold. If the Boolean search is a tough nut to crack, use tools that have Boolean search recommendation as a good starting point. Take on a data-driven approach to perfect the Boolean search by testing results and counting the accuracy, experimenting with the Boolean string, re-testing, and optimizing again.

Here is an example Boolean string to search for Java Web Application Engineer on Spring/Groovy/Grails that shows 9 out of 10 relevant profiles.

Employment Screening | Office Design Can Help Entice Prospective Hires Pt. 2

by Employment Screening Alliance | Jun 8, 2016 | Employment Screening

Employment Screening | Office Design Can Help Entice Prospective Hires Pt. 2

Employment Screening | 3. Make the case for private work space

In the age of communal work spaces, you don’t have to convince potential startup hires that they’ll be able to socialize at the office. Communication is the norm. Instead, some applicants might worry that they won’t be given the quiet time they need to do their job and get home at a reasonable hour.

This is especially true for jobs that require constant use of the phone, like sales or business development. Showing that you have comfortable, private phone call space might make all the difference to someone whose career depends on it.

4. Sweat the small stuff

Never forget the practical details. I’m talking about things like internet speed, coffee brands, and social outings with the team. The details might be minute, but demonstrating knowledge and awareness of the little things that make work life fun will boost your credibility with a potential new recruit. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to trust a recruiter’s sales pitch if they could tell you the office’s upload/download speed at the drop of a hat?

When talking to potential new employee, you want to build credibility and trust. If you understand the employee’s tastes and preferences (even if they’re trivial), your goals will feel more aligned. Sometimes, it’s the little things that are most effective at indicating your company culture.

You might take it for granted because you work there, but your office really is the first non-digital impression you’ll make on prospective hires, and we all know that first impressions count. If your space is appealing and you pitch its value in a way that makes sense to the applicant, you’ll fill your talent gap in a snap. –Recruit Loop

Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss employment screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!

Employment Screening | Office Design Can Help Entice Prospective Hires Pt. 2

by Employment Screening Alliance | Jun 7, 2016 | Employment Screening

Employment Screening | Office Design Can Help Entice Prospective Hires Pt. 2

Employment Screening | 3. Make the case for private work space

In the age of communal work spaces, you don’t have to convince potential startup hires that they’ll be able to socialize at the office. Communication is the norm. Instead, some applicants might worry that they won’t be given the quiet time they need to do their job and get home at a reasonable hour.

This is especially true for jobs that require constant use of the phone, like sales or business development. Showing that you have comfortable, private phone call space might make all the difference to someone whose career depends on it.

4. Sweat the small stuff

Never forget the practical details. I’m talking about things like internet speed, coffee brands, and social outings with the team. The details might be minute, but demonstrating knowledge and awareness of the little things that make work life fun will boost your credibility with a potential new recruit. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to trust a recruiter’s sales pitch if they could tell you the office’s upload/download speed at the drop of a hat?

When talking to potential new employee, you want to build credibility and trust. If you understand the employee’s tastes and preferences (even if they’re trivial), your goals will feel more aligned. Sometimes, it’s the little things that are most effective at indicating your company culture.

You might take it for granted because you work there, but your office really is the first non-digital impression you’ll make on prospective hires, and we all know that first impressions count. If your space is appealing and you pitch its value in a way that makes sense to the applicant, you’ll fill your talent gap in a snap. –Recruit Loop

Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss employment screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!

Employment Screening |The Essential Recruiting Metrics

by Employment Screening Alliance | Jun 1, 2016 | Employment Screening

Employment Screening | The Essential Recruiting Metrics

Employment Screening | If you measured every metric that every article on the web suggested you should measure to confirm whether you are recruiting effectively or not, you would end up spending most of your time measuring your recruiting activities as opposed to actually recruiting!

Recruiting metrics are absolutely essential, as long as you are tracking the most relevant activities for you and your team … and your priorities can certainly shift depending on the circumstances.

From my two decades in the recruitment game, I know that unfortunately for many hiring managers (and recruiters too for that matter) the notion of recruiting metrics is often ignored or even deemed irrelevant.

What are the most essential recruiting metrics for you or your organisation? What behaviours are you hoping to create through the use of effective recruiting metrics and employment sceening?

For example, it’s a no brainer that the cost of every hire should be measured, but have you considered all the costs involved in a hire? Recruiter fees, whether internal or external, are straightforward. But what about the time it took the hiring manager to interview?

What about your ‘offer to acceptance ratio’? It’s great to be in a position to make an offer to a rock star candidate. Unfortunately, if they then turn it down for something else, you are back to square one. This process costs you time and money, as well as morale, which is why this is also an important measure.

How many formal offers did you have to extend before you ultimately filled the role? This measure can go alongside your ‘cost of hire’ metric.

The answers to any metric driven question will vary depending on whether you are assessing or measuring certain activities from the perspective of a recruiter, hiring manager or HR specialist.

We wanted to uncover the most important recruiting metrics inside organisations of any size … from startup right through to enterprise. So we assembled a panel of experts who shared their ideas from various angles –sourcing and talent attraction; candidate selection and assessment; through to staff retention and attrition.

1. Sourcing Metrics

Wendy keeps a very close eye on specific sourcing metrics at Movoto (where sourcing is handled in-house as opposed to externally). In other words she places a strong emphasis on the process before a candidate even moves into the actual recruiting funnel. Some of the specific activities she keeps a close eye on include:

• How many potential candidates were reached out to in a particular outreach campaign?
• What was the open rate on specific messages?
• What percentage of sourced candidates moved through to a phone screen?
• How many touch points were required before candidates start to respond?

Wendy also stressed that if a prospective candidate replies with a “thanks but no thanks”, it’s still a perfect opportunity to keep in touch with that candidate.

This becomes another metric in itself – ie how many candidates that agree to a phone screen or an interview, or who eventually accept a role with Movoto, initially declined the opportunity to speak with someone from the talent acquisition team.

2. Recruiter Performance Metrics

Ty explained how he and his team look very closely at the recruiting funnel and how the recruiting team at JobVite stick to the philosophy that “recruiting is marketing” which plays a key role in the metrics they measure.

Metrics are examined at JobVite to help spot bottlenecks in the hiring process. For example “time to fill” or assessing how long a particular requisition remains open can reveal which departments might be sitting on resumés for too long or how long an average candidate might be ‘stuck’ in the interview process. If a candidate is stuck in a ‘holding pattern’ for too long, they could decide to withdraw or actively pursue other options.

3. Metrics Around the Candidate Experience

Annie and the Talent Acquisition team at Citrix place a huge emphasis on the results of the Candidate NPS.

A Net Promoter Score questionnaire is sent to every candidate who either has a phone interview or a face-to-face interview with Citrix.

The metric centres around the result of a single question: “On a scale of 1 – 10 how likely is it that you would recommend the Citrix interview process to a friend or colleague?”

Annie also believes in what she refers to as the “silver medalist phenomenon”. Much like Wendy’s “thanks but no thanks” theory, Annie and her team keep stats on how many candidates who may have been pipped at the post for one opportunity are ultimately successful in securing a different role later on. In other words the ‘silver medalists’ are an essential group in the Citrix talent pool.

4. The ‘Efficiency Ratio’ vs. the Cost of Hire

The cost of hire is something each of our panelists keeps a close eye on. Basically it is the total cost of recruiting divided by the number of hires made over a particular period of time.

You should consider these factors when calculating the cost of hiring new employees:

• Advertisements placed;
• Setting up and maintaining social media accounts like Facebook and LinkedIn;
• The time your hiring managers spend interviewing potential employees;
• Invoices to contract recruiters or fees to external recruiters; and
• Any accounting and administrative costs involved in setting up a new employee (eg contracts, pay accounts, health benefits etc).

On the other hand, the ‘efficiency ratio’ is another (alternative) metric – especially for any talent acquisition team / hiring manager recruiting roles at different seniority and pay levels.

As opposed to dividing the cost of of hiring by the number of employees, you divide the total cost of hiring by the total of all the salary packages offered to the new hires in the same period of time. This can be quite eye opening.

Towards the end of the webinar, Ty asked the question that I am pretty sure anyone working in talent acquisition would be thinking: “Does anyone actually have a perfect system for tracking these metrics?”.

How you track your metrics is up to you. But as each of our panelists strongly agreed, it’s what you do with the information you measure that counts.

Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss employment screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!