Recruiting – Resource Center https://resources.eteki.com eTeki-Technical Screening for Quality IT Hires Thu, 10 Nov 2022 10:48:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 Examining 6 Recruiting Metrics, and the Key for Improving Them https://resources.eteki.com/examining-6-recruiting-metrics-key-improving/ Thu, 10 Nov 2022 10:12:46 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=1368 The post Examining 6 Recruiting Metrics, and the Key for Improving Them appeared first on Resource Center.

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How should recruiters and employers measure the recruiting process?

It’s a question without a consensus answer. There is no recruiting metrics gold standard because too many factors impact recruiting priorities and results—company size, industry, and job type to name a few. Yet to make intelligent adjustments to your recruiting process, and to evaluate the results of those adjustments, you need to measure something. But you also can’t measure everything, or you won’t get much actual recruiting done.

With that in mind, we’ve selected six metrics that you should consider evaluating in your recruiting process. After we go over them, we’ll discuss the key factor for improving whichever metrics you use.

  1. Time new hires stay at a company

What it is: Number of years that new hires remain with your organization.

Average value: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.2 years in January 2016 (the most recent time for which data is available), down from 4.6 years in January 2014.

Be aware: A number of factors can affect the median tenure of workers, including age, industry and occupation. For example, wage and salary workers in the public sector had more than double the median tenure of private-sector employees, 7.7 years compared to 3.7 years. Also, as LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2017 survey shows, this metric is valued most by smaller organizations—those with 200 employees or fewer.

Use: For evaluating the quality of hire. A shortcoming here is significant time lag; if you make a positive change in your recruiting practices today that impacts the quality of hire, it could take years before there’s a significant corresponding positive change in this metric.

  1. Time to fill

What it is: Amount of time, typically measured in days, between when a job is opened and an offer is accepted.

Average value:

As per our recent hiring metrics research, the average time to hire and fill all IT Development/Engineering roles globally, it takes 33 and 68 days. However, this number can vary greatly depending on where you are located. The U.S and Canada take 56 days to fill and 33 days to hire while Asia takes 92 days to fill and 36 days to hire.

As of December 2016, U.S. jobs take 27.2 working days to fill, according to DHI Hiring Indicators. That’s slightly below the all-time high of 29 days hit in 2015, but significantly higher than 2009 levels (just over 15 working days).

Be aware: As recruiting software provider Workable notes, time to fill can vary greatly by industry and job type: “While the industry average time-to-fill for engineering in the US was 58 days, some roles had much lower numbers, like data scientist with 28 days. Meanwhile, hiring a senior QA engineer was taking 121 days on average.”

Use: For evaluating your sourcing and hiring processes.

  1. Time to hire

What it is: The number of days between a successful candidate’s first contact (e.g. they apply for the job) and their hire date.

Average value: eTeki research found that the data shows that interviews per hire for all engineering roles across the globe are 12. In America and Canada it’s 13 but in Asia 11 in 2022

A Glassdoor survey found that the process of getting hired in the U.S. took 22.9 days in 2014, up from 12.6 days in 2010.

Be aware: As with many recruiting metrics, the time to hire can vary greatly based on job type and other factors. “High-skilled jobs that require judgment, creativity, and technical skills generally require longer, more intense job-screening processes,” Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain told SHRM.

Use: For evaluating the speed and quality of your screening and interviewing process.

  1. Hiring manager satisfaction

What it is: The level of satisfaction of hiring managers with your hiring process.

Average value: Not available due to different ways of calculating. A 2014 ERE study found that hiring managers tend to give recruiters a C-plus grade.

Be aware: An October 2016 study by workforce intelligence provider Visier found that 71% of hiring managers said that to increase the quality of people they hire, HR needs to improve its recruiting process.

Use: For evaluating the quality of hire.

  1. Submit-to-interview ratio (aka present-to-interview ratio)

What it is: The ratio of candidates submitted/presented to hiring managers to the number of given interviews.

Average value: A good submit-to-interview ratio in staffing is 3:1 or better, but in some industries can see as high as 6:1 or 8:1.

Be aware: If the ratio is high, possible causes could be poor screening, the recruiter not understanding the type of candidates the hiring manager is looking for, or the hiring manager being too picky.

Use: For evaluating the quality of screening and recruiter effectiveness. If your time to fill is high, a poor submit-to-interview ratio indicates lackluster screening may be to blame.

  1. Interview-to-offer ratio

What it is: The number of candidates on average a hiring manager needs to interview in order to make an offer.

Average value: We’ve been told an average interview-to-offer ratio is about 4.8:1. A good ratio is 3:1 or better.

Be aware: As Amy Caswell notes in a Recruiter.com article, a “high interview-to-offer ratio is a cause for concern because of the waste it creates — not just in the recruitment department, but also the wasted time the hiring manager invests in performing too many interviews.”

Use: For evaluating the quality of candidates submitted.

It’s All About Screening
No matter which metrics you use to evaluate your hiring process (the period beginning after candidates are sourced through the interview), the solution for optimizing them is the same. Great candidate screening.

If you consistently deliver or submit quality candidates in an efficient time frame to hiring managers—what we call delivering a high return on the interview—your metrics will look great. In fact, we’ve seen a company get its submit-to-interview and interview-to-offer ratios close to 1:1 through great screening practices.

Meanwhile, if you’re metrics need improvement, the solution is bound to be in improving your screening practices. Here’s a listing of quality candidate screening we recommend for tech roles (click the link for detailed descriptions of each step):

  1. Ensure the hiring manager provides a complete job description.
  2. Have a detailed intake session with the hiring manager.
  3. Filter resumes aligning with job requirements emphasized by the hiring manager
  4. Perform other prescreening activities (e.g. validating candidates’ identity and experience via social media, personality/work style assessments, automated reference checking, validating candidates’ IT certifications).
  5. During the initial conversation with candidates, evaluate for technical fit.
  6. Have candidates undergo rigorous technical interviews.
  7. Deliver technical interview videos and reports along with candidate shortlist to the hiring manager.

A Useful Resource

If you need help with calculating recruiting metrics, Glen Cathey’s Boolean Blackbelt sourcing and recruiting blog has terrific sourcing and recruiting candidate funnel and output calculators (spreadsheets) that you can download for free.

The post Examining 6 Recruiting Metrics, and the Key for Improving Them appeared first on Resource Center.

]]> Does Regionalism Matter in Tech Recruiting? Maybe Not. https://resources.eteki.com/podcast/does-regionalism-matter-tech-recruiting-maybe-not/ Tue, 09 Apr 2019 16:28:04 +0000 https://resources.eteki.com/?post_type=podcast&p=207439 The post Does Regionalism Matter in Tech Recruiting? Maybe Not. appeared first on Resource Center.

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Podcast

Does Regionalism Matter in Tech Recruiting? Maybe Not.

eTeki is thrilled to announce our new podcast The Collective Voice, which will largely be based on conversations with national thought leaders on topics integral to the technical recruiting industry. Our initial focus will be a series about Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), one of the most relevant topics in our industry today.

D&I recruiting initiatives are no longer “nice-to-haves” for technology companies. D&I must be strategic and purposeful to create both incredible employee experiences and innovative products. Get an overview of the podcast by reading this blog or go directly to the bottom of the page to hear the podcast first.

There is no doubt tech talent is hard to find. According to Dice, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the industry’s unemployment rate hit 1.9 percent in 2018, down from 3 percent in 2015. That is incredible if you are a tech worker! It’s a potential nightmare if you are looking for highly-skilled tech talent or are working with a tight budget.

With those tech companies are

broadening their recruiting horizons to other regions. Recruiters are now on a global hunt and, as Johnny Cash would say, they’ve “been everywhere, man.” Companies are moving away from the tech mecca, Silicon Valley, to other US cities and different countries. According to research conducted by Jobbatical, 11 of the 31 Cities named most attractive for starting a (tech) business were European, including Tallinn and Estonia.

Most American’s don’t even know where Tallinn is. And the 2019 Global Talent Competitiveness Index stated the top 5 countries positioned for the best competitive edge are Switzerland, Singapore, USA, Norway, and Denmark.

It stands to reason, smart companies and tech talent pros are incorporating D&I recruiting

Understanding Regional Differences is Important, But Don’t Forget The Basics.

So, should recruiters understand cultural differences when interviewing candidates from other countries? Of course. As this LinkedIn Talent Blog article shares, following customs, norms, and temperaments is crucial.

However, as my podcast below with William Tincup highlights, when hiring regionally, don’t forget the basics. We have to look beyond literal geographical differences and incorporate a more inclusive holistic approach. An approach that looks beyond the cultural “differences” and focuses on the candidate ability, no matter where they are from, to rally around business basics. To achieve this recruiter must:

To learn more about this topic, you’ve got to tune in to our wonderful conversation with William Tincup regarding “regionalism” in the tech recruiting equation. We know you’ll enjoy it as much as we did recording it!

Conven Case study

Understand your company’s overall goals and deadlines.

Understand the realities of your budget and adjust your requirements accordingly.

Determine if your corporate culture allows for remote work arrangements.

Most importantly, assess someone’s “suitability” for the job versus just their “eligibility.”

Meet The Hosts

William Tincup

President of RecruitingDaily

At the intersection of HR and technology, he’s a writer, speaker, advisor, consultant, investor, storyteller & teacher. He’s written over 200 HR articles, spoken at over 150 HR & recruiting conferences and he’s conducted over 1000 HR podcasts.

Amanda Cole

Amanda Cole

Vice President eTeki

The annual value of services rendered for the largest programs exceeded $18M. She is a communications professional with a superior facilitation and training skills, an engaging public speaking presence and a fanatic about synergistic business relationships.

Download the full transcript!

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]]> Talking Solution Stacks: A Better Answer for Tech Recruiting? https://resources.eteki.com/podcast/talking-solution-stacks-a-better-answer-for-tech-recruiting/ Mon, 03 Dec 2018 13:18:14 +0000 http://resources.eteki.com/?post_type=project&p=206199 The post Talking Solution Stacks: A Better Answer for Tech Recruiting? appeared first on Resource Center.

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Podcast

Talking Solution Stacks: A Better Answer for Tech Recruiting ?

Tech hiring managers and recruiters face a big problem. They badly need effective tech talent, but they struggle to acquire it.

According to an Indeed survey, 86% say they find it challenging to find and hire tech talent, with 36% saying they find it “very” challenging. This raises a question: How can the HR tech industry help solve this problem? During a new edition of the Today’s Innovation Channel Podcast, titled “Do You Speak Geek? Meet eTeki,” eTeki Director of Operations Amanda Cole argued that solution stacks are a big part of the answer.

Cole joined host Peter Clayton for the podcast. They also discussed:

What eTeki does, and how our technical interview service works for clients

eTeki’s network of freelance tech interviewers, and how interviewers are vetted

Why job boards need to be looking at partnerships to stay relevant

Cole’s HR tech predictions for 2017

Solution Stacks: Good for Employers and Providers

What are solution stacks? Why do we believe they will improve employers’ tech recruiting success?

At their core, as Cole explained in the podcast, solution stacks are committed teams of businesses working together to help the same group of customers meet their business objectives. The businesses’ solutions are combined—or stacked—to become a unified solution.

That may be confusing, but becomes clear when we look at an actual example. In the case of finding and hiring tech talent, a solution stack could include a reference check provider, an employment background screening provider, a personality assessment provider, and a technical interview provider (eTeki). Instead of each provider just performing its small part of the screening process, they are layered together to provide a unified solution that provides all of an employer’s candidate screening, separating the contenders from the pretenders.

“HR tech alliances are going to be essential (moving forward),” Cole said during the podcast. “Employers don’t need multiple vendors to manage. They don’t need many different billing schedules. (They) don’t need confusion about where to put what in the recruiting process.”

Meanwhile, HR tech alliances can deliver what employers do need: better solutions. In the case of the a tech recruiting solution stack, employers will get faster and more accurate screening results—candidates not only will be delivered more quickly to hiring managers, but they also will be of higher quality.

Of course, alliances are also attractive to providers, as their offerings are more attractive because being part of a solution stack makes them more robust and efficient. Additionally, providers can share referrals and combine on marketing efforts, among other benefits.

Meet The Hosts

Peter Clayton

Producer/Host The TotalPicture Podcast

Peter, an award-winning content creator as producer/director of corporate image, employee motivation, sales and marketing films, and videos. With focus on talent acquisition, sourcing, employer branding, leadership, staffing, L&D, career strategies, innovation, and the tools and technologies accelerating business and personal growth.

Amanda Cole

Amanda Cole

Vice President eTeki

The annual value of services rendered for the largest programs exceeded $18M. She is a communications professional with a superior facilitation and training skills, an engaging public speaking presence and a fanatic about synergistic business relationships.

Download the full transcript!

The post Talking Solution Stacks: A Better Answer for Tech Recruiting? appeared first on Resource Center.

]]> System Not Compatible: Staying a Step Ahead in Recruiting https://resources.eteki.com/system-not-compatible-staying-a-step-ahead-in-recruiting/ Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:03:14 +0000 https://resources.eteki.com/?p=206695 The post System Not Compatible: Staying a Step Ahead in Recruiting appeared first on Resource Center.

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System Not Compatible: What’s Shaping The Process on How You Are Getting Your Best Technical Hires

Fraught with competition, recruiting and hiring frequently get equated to military-style operations, and in the ongoing “war for talent,” no one wants to lose. This basic fact is a significant driver in the rapid and continued advancement of HR technologies. That, and a host of outside influences including low unemployment rates and an ever-widening skills gap.

Collectively, the need to improve recruiting and hiring feeds an expansive culture of innovation – and well-established marketplace. Do even the slightest research on HR or recruiting technology, and witness firsthand the sheer number of available solutions, designed to automate every last step in the process. To the point that some fear they may become obsolete. It’s overwhelming – and for a good reason.

There’s an obvious need.

Don’t become obsolete: Keep on evolving

Let’s take a moment to pause for introspection. Now, there are countless recruiting-related statistics out there in the world, but very little information about the people doing the hiring. Much like the roles that organizations look to fill, recruiters traverse multiple generations, potentially skewing towards the younger end of the spectrum, with the elders in senior positions.

In terms of understanding and leveraging recruiting technology, this is an important distinction.

For some, there is no life before technology. Period. For others, the digital transformation happened in front of their eyes. As a result, some are quicker to adopt than others, despite a possible divide between those doing the buying and those doing the using. To avoid a prospective hurdle, recognize technology as a means to an end, vs. the other way around. One that requires regular updating, recurrent monitoring, and periodic appraisal to stay compatible, compliant and valuable to the organization.

A tall order, indeed. But one with meaningful, measurable hiring outcomes.

Stay Compatible: Ways to stay in the know

To accomplish this, on top of everything else in one’s job description, there needs to be time set aside for thinking and reading. Famously, Warren Buffet reads more than 6 hours each day.

Here’s a few key ways to ensure you remain in the know.

  • Keep up with industry news. Put aside time for learning. This doesn’t have to be in the evening. Learning is part of your job and should be incorporated into your day.
  • Understand the key players in your industry. Go local, go national, go global. The idea is that you are following thought leaders in the industry that you are targeting. You cannot expect to have intelligent conversations with top talent if you are not educated.
  • Engage an analyst. An analyst can help sort through the solutions and steer a clear path to the best tech for the organization’s hiring needs. But ultimately, how this happens is less important than getting in the habit.

See that’s the key. Like running system updates, reviewing and refreshing tech is ongoing. By the time a solution gets up and running, there’s a new integration available, a new strategy to support or, new legislation changing the rules of the game. This is where those military references come into play again. With recruiting operating as a game of risk and reward, however, the only way to stay a step ahead is to continue changing stance.

Readily available tech resources

We’re not talking about subscribing to the next big ATS or marketing automation tool. We’re talking about arming yourself with the resources to break standard. Whether physically subscribing to newsletters or securing research from outside experts, the information is there for the taking.

Content and experiential tactics for technical hiring

We get it. How does reading an online publication help to land your next great technical hire? On the surface, it’s hard to make the connection. Indirectly, the plethora of knowledge is substantially more than spending your time “liking” the latest “how to” video on Facebook.

  • Start by perusing tech news sites like TechCrunch. In addition to covering giants of industry, it also profiles tons of startups, new business, and emerging products.
  • Up until 2015, TechCrunch ran Crunchbase, now a separate entity, an incredibly useful site for learning more about the particulars of both public and private companies.
  • For “tech news you won’t read anywhere else,” there’s The Information, a subscription-based option that offers yearly packages ranging from $199 for young professionals to a $749 all-access account.
  • Other tech sites worth a follow include Recode, VentureBeat, WIRED and the list goes on.

With traditional media focused solely on big organizations that help move the market up and down, turning into any of these online publications will provide a more in-depth and immersive tech education. Aside from general tech, look for niche outlets that focus in on specific talent acquisition topics. Tech trends and vendors get to play here, too.

Beyond the headlines

Beyond browsing headlines, don’t overlook the more interactive experiences. Many publications host local events, meetups, large-scale conferences and online functions like webinars and social chats. Find and follow writers that resonate. If a question needs an answer, ask it. Without following the conversation, there’s no way to comprehend its impact on everyday operations. Without staying informed, there’s no way to unlock that competitive advantage everyone’s chasing.

Knowing what’s out there shaping the process, supports finding exactly who is out there, talent-wise. It’s the only way to play to the game, or in this case, win the war.

Amanda Cole

Amanda Cole

Vice President at eTeki, specializes in recruiting and training contingent resources, as well as leading organizations leveraging this type of workforce for multi-million dollar service delivery.

The post System Not Compatible: Staying a Step Ahead in Recruiting appeared first on Resource Center.

]]> How do you learn enough about a role to recruit for it? https://resources.eteki.com/how-do-you-learn-enough-about-a-role-to-recruit-for-it/ Fri, 04 May 2018 10:20:44 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=2683 The post How do you learn enough about a role to recruit for it? appeared first on Resource Center.

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Recruiters and hiring managers aren’t necessarily technical experts, and this has created a pretty wide chasm in some modern hiring contexts. Let’s say your company have a role to recruit an expert in machine learning in order to complete a big, revenue-facing project in the next 2-3 quarters. You are now tasked with finding that personalization expert, and the success of the project somewhat hinges on getting the right person into that slot. But what do you really know about personalization? Couldn’t a candidate lie to/hoodwink you if you and the hiring manager aren’t sure what you’re looking for? Wouldn’t that be a logical concern?

When you need specific knowledge and that knowledge isn’t readily accessible, where do you turn?

Here are a few ideas:
Google: This is potentially going to be the weakest idea on this list. While Google is great on many levels, you need a “trust but verify” approach when looking for information on specific tech roles or programming languages. You can use it to get a 35,000-foot view of the specs required for success in similar roles.

Reddit: Go into Reddit sub-communities for skills and roles you’re recruiting for. See what people are discussing. Look at the terminology and vocabulary. You might not understand everything in there, but sketch out some notes. What seems important? What are the big topics?

Other job descriptions: How are companies recruiting for similar roles phrasing those roles? What stands out in those job descriptions? What seems the most important?

Current employees: Who’s the closest to the type of work the new hire would be doing? Aside from his/her manager (likely the hiring manager), who will the person work with the most? What team? Go talk to them and ask what’s important. What do they need? What do they absolutely, unequivocally need from this hire, and then what’s more of a “nice to have?” Take copious notes here. The hire will be working with the team. It’s important they explain what they need in order for this project to move quickly and efficiently.

The hiring manager: They often don’t know as much as they could, unfortunately, but still, run through the role with them and ask for a one-pager on what they really need here. If they try to simply re-submit the job description to you, ask for more detailed notes on the priority of different skill sets or languages.

Early-stage interviews: Use early-stage interviews to grow as a recruiter. Ask earlier interviews to walk you through different processes and tools. Take notes on those, look them up, ask current employees about them, and then turn that knowledge into questions you can directly ask later candidates. For example, if you learn of workflow challenges from one personalization candidate, ask later candidates about what workflow tools they’re comfortable with, and if they’ve been tripped up before. Use earlier interviews to inform how you deal with later candidates. If need be, bring in the earlier candidates again for clarification around topics you now understand better.

eTeki: This is a problem we solve as well. You can use third-party technical experts, provided by our platform, to make sure your candidates are vetted in terms of technical skills. There are all sorts of benefits to this — we won’t elucidate them all here — but it means you get higher-quality candidates in front of the eventual hiring manager, which fixes your relationship with them for future hires, and someone who looks great on paper may be proven to have no true technical skills (often in previous roles they were on deep-bench teams and didn’t really have to do the work; they could hide).

What other ways have you tried to acquire knowledge about roles and languages you had no idea about when a hiring process started? Tweet us at @eteki with the hashtag #TechTalentKnowledge and let us know.

Bala Nemani

Bala Nemani, Founder & CEO at eTeki
Founder of eTeki and IT Solutions Executive with a passion for getting “candidate to role” fit right 100% of the time.

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]]> What do tech employment and hiring look like globally? https://resources.eteki.com/what-do-tech-employment-and-hiring-look-like-globally/ Thu, 19 Apr 2018 17:47:28 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=2655 The post What do tech employment and hiring look like globally? appeared first on Resource Center.

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eTeki is proud to be a Bronze Sponsor of the World HR Summit in Goa, India (and NPA Worldwide in Tampa, FL, USA) this week. The conference will have a heavy future of work focus, and is intended to be for talent acquisition leaders who want to understand the emergent Asian marketplace as well as individual contributors looking to gain more of an understanding of the global tech marketplace and the global tech recruiting ecosystem.

Global Tech Employment: Some numbers and trends
This obviously varies greatly globally and there’s an important caveat: everything, to some extent, is a “tech industry” these days. We have “smart toasters” now. Does that mean that everyone who works in the toaster production industry is a “tech employee” now? No. We tried to limit these data sets to conventional engineering, R&D, IT, and developer professions.

In the United States, the tech sector employs about 7 million people — which is 4% of the total U.S. workforce and 5% of the private sector workforce. That said, it contributes about $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy, which is roughly 8% of GDP.

The European Union varies more widely, but a broader sense can be found: In 2015, 33.9 million people were employed in the manufacturing sector in the EU 28, a figure which represented 15.4% of total employment. Of these, 2.4 million were employed in high-tech manufacturing, corresponding to 1.1% of total employment. About three times as many were employed in high-tech knowledge-intensive services, which accounted for 2.9% of total employment.

Specific Asia-Pacific data shows about 3.86M employees directly in the IT-BPM industry in India. India is an interesting case — it will be good to hear from TA leaders at the conference — because their IT sector laid off 56,000 people at the end of 2017, in large part because newer technologies have wiped out what used to be India’s tech core: maintaining servers and infrastructure. In other words, lower-cost options got replaced by AI needs, and that resulted in layoffs throughout India’s tech sector. Despite the layoffs, the IT sector in India is still worth billions of dollars — IT services spending within the country was $9.5B U.S. in 2017.

China is seeing 6.5% annual growth, of which 11-15% comes from human capital. There are more than 27,000 high technology companies in China alone, and while their tech companies are collectively worth only a third of what America’s are, populations including The Economist claim they’re catching up faster than expected — and could be the dominant tech employer in terms of both revenue generated and total number of employees within 15 years. Japan has been losing talent for years, and currently has 1.48 jobs for every applicant.

South America has seen a few of its urban hubs (such as Santiago) become global tech destinations, with Argentina getting tech investment up to 1.5% of GDP and employing about 115,000 in full-time equivalent “near-shorting” roles.

Hiring is on the uptick, although visa issues remain
Based on LinkedIn data at the end of 2017, 56% of talent acquisition executives from 35+ countries said their hiring volume is increasing, which speaks to an idea of an overall rise in hiring.

The key issue globally is visa clarity. With increased tensions in different areas of the world, simply moving top tech talent from Country A to Country B isn’t easy. It never was easy, per se, but it’s becoming more complicated.

Foreign tech workers interest in U.S. firms appears to be in decline, largely because of uncertainty around immigration policies of the current Presidential administration:
Foreign Tech Workers interested in US companies
Moreover, as noted in research by Hired:
Forty percent of our survey respondents have considered relocating to another location since the 2016 election. Of those individuals, nearly one third cite Canada as their top choice (32%), followed by Germany (12%), Asia (10%) and Australia (10%). Furthermore, it appears as though Brexit has had a negative impact on tech workers’ decision to relocate to the UK. While 6% of respondents listed the UK as their top choice if they were to relocate, another 43% of respondents said that Brexit had made the UK a less desirable place to live.

This undoubtedly changes the game on how recruiters approach their role, especially if relocation to U.S.-based roles is (a) legally-challenging and (b) increasingly less desirable.

Startups also muddy the picture. When you combine the rise of startups with uncertainty about visas, you have an interesting intersection where the recruiting function might need to work more with the legal and compliance side in order to win the war for global talent.

What increased global hiring also means
For recruiters — and this is sure to be a big theme of the conference in Goa — there is a whole different set of skill assessments that need to be done on candidates. These include:

  • Can they work virtually?
  • How well do they work with team members who aren’t physically sitting by them?
  • What is their language aptitude relative to the rest of the team?
  • What tech stack will they be using where they’re based and does it speak to your org’s tech stack?
  • Where have they worked before?
  • Were those roles virtual?
  • How long have they stayed in previous virtual roles?

While some of these are age-old recruiting questions, some are much more relevant to an era of increasing global hiring.

Finally, there’s a cost factor. Global hiring is more challenging. How are you going to mitigate the cost of a bad hire? Are you going to turn to more contract recruiting? Are you simply going to award less headcount over time? What’s the plan for the bottom line?

What have you observed in your area with regards to tech employment and hiring? Will you be at World HR Summit to discuss? If not, feel free to tweet @eteki with any stats, charts, graphs, or data you’ve seen about either the global picture or in your area.

Snigdha Masa

Snigdha Masa
Business Development Manager, is a self-driven passionate consultative sales professional with ideas, initiatives and activities aimed towards making businesses better.

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]]> How can recruiters maximize the phone screen? https://resources.eteki.com/how-can-recruiters-maximize-the-phone-screen/ Thu, 12 Apr 2018 13:46:23 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=2627 The post How can recruiters maximize the phone screen? appeared first on Resource Center.

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Years ago, one of my colleagues was based out of Minneapolis. He and his wife had decided they wanted to leave the area (largely because of weather), and he was looking for jobs in other cities. We all know that looking for a job somewhere you’re not currently based is a challenge, and my colleague ran into all sorts of problems when interacting with recruiters.

One got on the phone screen and assumed he was already based in Austin, Texas — even though they had exchanged several emails before the call explaining the geographic situation.

Most recruiters did the old “walk me through your resume” and when he got to his current situation, they’d say “Oh wait, you’re based in Minneapolis? Why are you applying for this role, then?”

My colleague says of this time: “It was incredibly demoralizing. It was as if recruiters didn’t do any research, didn’t pay attention to what I was saying in the documents I sent or on my resume. It was just awful.”

Finally, he did get a job — although it was a long process and unfortunately, recruiters didn’t make it any easier.

The phone screen is a dying art
First of all, we simply don’t talk on the phone as much as we used to. The landline has been in decline for a generation or more, and while smartphone usage is up, fewer are using it for phone calls. It’s more for apps and services.

Secondly, the recruiter function has become more focused on a large amount of tasks. This may change with automation increasingly getting to scale, but what’s happening right now is that recruiters are super-busy in almost all verticals — and especially tech verticals. Because of that busyness, they don’t have time to properly understand candidates before the phone screen commences. That’s why you have issues like the above that my friend experienced.

The standard phone screen is often the old 1-2 punch of, “Let me read the position description to you” and, “Walk me through your resume.” It’s hard to get a lot of quality information about a candidate that way.

How do we improve phone screens?
Here are the key ways:

Do your research: You should spend about 5-6 minutes per candidate before a phone screen going through their:

  • Resume
  • LinkedIn
  • Any Google search results
  • Anything else you can find, have, or know

Here’s one example from a few weeks ago about the power of research. One of my colleagues was rushed on an initial phone screen, and the candidate kept giving him one-word answers. Admittedly it was a bad interview, but her technical skill set was high, so she was advanced to a second interview. Before that screen, which was still with my colleague, he did more research and found that she was a dog lover and donated to dog charities often. He brought that up. Almost instantly, the one-word answers about her professional experience became longer, more context-heavy answers. The research changed the emotional connection, which changed the quality of the interview.

Read resume bottom to top: Many recruiters read top to bottom, preferring to focus on the last 1-2 positions held. I prefer reading bottom to top, and then opening the interview discussing that first role out of school. This provides an instant emotional connection to the candidate, because now the candidate feels like you actually looked at their resume, instead of just saying “Walk me through it.” Also, it allows you to see how their career progressed, when they got more responsibility, when they changed industry, etc.

Use the “dummy curve:” When recruiting for tech positions, say to candidates something like, “I don’t know all the tech specs and terms as well as you do, so I need you to walk me through some of that.” This will (a) give you a greater knowledge base, which you can then use on other candidates and (b) open them up to discuss their work in more detail, which can lead to follow-up questions and make your interview more robust.

Use the answers of previous candidates to create questions for future candidates: This is especially true in tech recruiting where you may not know about a specific technology or coding language. Ask questions of the first 2-3 people you screen. Then, in the next 10 screens, you can use their answers and language to frame questions for later-screened candidates.

Learn from sales: Because of the silo effect in most companies, many recruiters never think to go talk to sales and learn from them. But what does sales do all day? Outreach, discussion, learning more about people, researching them, trying to build an emotional connection, etc. Recruiting and sales are the same thing in many respects. In one case you need clients/customers for revenue, and in another case you need future employees to help drive that revenue. The process is very similar, however. So we need to be learning from sales. Ask if you can sit in on mute for an intro call. A sales intro call is very similar to a recruiter phone screen — both sides trying to learn about each other, connection being developed, information flying. Sit in on a few and see how the best salespeople work those calls. Then apply some of those approaches to your own phone screens.

sam

Sam Velu
Sam Velu has over 20+ years’ experience in staffing and solutions delivery of human capital for various domains. He is a highly sought-after IT recruiting trainer. Sam helps companies to strategize delivery models, validate these processes with metrics and utilize social data to make smarter and quantifiable decisions regarding talent management. The alignment of process and metrics in sharing and developing best practices within the staffing and recruitment industry are his passion. Sam was recently called upon by TechServe Alliance to serve on their Taskforce on the IT & Engineering Talent Shortage.

The post How can recruiters maximize the phone screen? appeared first on Resource Center.

]]> Your candidate is NOT a match https://resources.eteki.com/your-candidate-is-not-a-match/ Fri, 06 Apr 2018 12:33:23 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=2621 The post Your candidate is NOT a match appeared first on Resource Center.

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A hiring manager’s worst nightmare is bringing in the wrong person for the job. There’s cold comfort knowing that it happens often in business, but that doesn’t excuse the hiring manager from responsibility.

So, what do you do in these situations and how do you work on preventing it in the future? Here are some suggestions.

Why Do Bad Hires Happen?
The first is a bad hiring process. Recruitment systems have to be tuned to draw the right candidates for the right job, but current recruiting systems (especially resume scanning systems) can create a lot of false positive matches. Such systems are easy to game. This means humans do need to review resumes.

It also means that job postings must make sense. A well-known complaint in IT is a job posting that asks for five years of experience in a technology that’s only been out for two. Silly mistakes like these are unprofessional and invite people to game the system by dangling out lies about how they match impossible requirements.

This leads to the second reason, bad communication. Recruitment teams absolutely must communicate with managers about the real necessities of the job. Making any sort of assumptions about the technologies, skills, and education necessary without managerial input is a royal road to bad hires. HR must also know enough about the specifics of these requirements to judge hires in interviews, or bring in whoever the direct report will be for the candidate into the interview so they can weigh in.

A bad reputation (reason three) can also be an underlying problem, though this usually stems from bad communication. For instance, the candidate’s assumptions about a job might not match the reality of it and create a bad hire because of the mismatch. Alternatively, a division in the business might have friction with HR or a particular recruiter due to a personality conflict or a history of bad hires.

The Earlier The Better
The sooner you can identify a bad hire, the better. The trouble is that there are many reasons a candidate might be bad. We’ll set aside HR violations in this article and focus on job performance issues.

The first thing is to identify the problem hire. This can only be done through regular communications with managers, especially in the first year of a hire. HR professionals aren’t psychic, and a manager might want to keep a likable but incompetent hire around due to a workplace friendship. Managers must put the health of the business over their workplace relationships, and a regular checkup can help them keep that in mind.

The sooner you can identify, the better, preferably within the first three months. But the only way to catch a bad hire that soon is to communicate regularly with managers about new hires.

Staying Accountable
It’s only natural to want to shift the blame to others on the team. Perhaps it was the applicant’s fault that they weren’t completely honest with you. Perhaps there was a disconnect between the hiring manager and the manager of the department. Whatever the issue was, you’re ultimately the one responsible for the bad hire. And for that, it’s necessary to take ownership.

The best managers in the world are the ones who are able to take responsibility for their actions and take measures to prevent mistakes from happening again. Mistakes happen, but it’s the recovery that will make you shine.

After you’ve acknowledged a bad hire was made, it’s time to go into recovery mode. How do you fix the error that was made? You’ve got several options.

Remove the Bad Hire
It’s obvious that the person isn’t working out for your company’s needs in the position that you hired the person for. Removing them outright from the company may be the best option. Try not to let the time and money invested in the person overshadow the debilitating effects that the person may have on your bottom line.

Retask the Bad Hire
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes the weaknesses may show up in the position that the person was hired for. That’s okay. It happens. If the person has a good attitude and is eager to learn, retasking them for a different but related position might be the better option than removing them outright.

Interview the Bad Hire
Make it important to get good, quality feedback from the person and rely on communication to give you insights into why the bad hire was made in the first place. Are the problems that you’re having systemic, or are they with the person? A good exit interview will clear the air and pave the way for clarifying and refining your hiring processes. The idea here is that even when you make a mistake, you should take measures to avoid having the mistake happen again.

Hiring badly can cost employers thousands of dollars, in the salary, training, and retraining that’s necessary after it’s been made. Fortunately, mistakes can be recovered from and made things of the past. While nothing can truly remove all of the bitterness that a bad hire leaves, it is possible to recover.

The post Your candidate is NOT a match appeared first on Resource Center.

]]> Taking Back HRtech – The Wild Wild West https://resources.eteki.com/taking-back-hrtech-the-wild-wild-west/ Thu, 29 Mar 2018 18:15:59 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=2606 The post Taking Back HRtech – The Wild Wild West appeared first on Resource Center.

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Technology in recruiting can oftentimes feel like spackle. Recruiters use it to fill the holes in their background, expertise, experience, value, or something else. We can put our entire faith in the system, because we’ve been told and sold that the system and the process will solve everything.

The problem: not enough in recruitment is doing a good job of identifying the actual problem they need to solve, and not enough are vetting the existing technology enough either.

Let me be clear, though: Technology has not harmed recruiting
I believe deeply in technology. I think it has done great things for talent acquisition and it will only continue to evolve into bigger and better things.

But the technology is only as good as the recruiters using it, or — perhaps this is the more accurate way to represent it — how the organization framed up the usage of the software suite. This is often why “software” becomes “shelf-ware.” If it doesn’t work with existing workflows or the recruiters aren’t educated on it or allowed time to poke around, adoption isn’t going to be high, the contract won’t be renewed, and we’ll be back at Stage 1 in 12-18 months with a new tech stack. No bueno.

How can TA professionals be better about using technology?
Follow this bouncing ball:

Collect data on your processes: This is everything from response rate to emails to interviews scheduled to time to fill to whatever else you want/need to track.

Analyze that data: See where the actual pain points and problems are. Don’t invent them in meetings. Actually look at what’s happening in your organization and see where the problems are.

Now begin going and assessing technology: You can talk to vendors, but when you do, keep the specific problem in mind. Ask if you can get a case study or speak to an existing client who has dealt with that specific problem.

Bring in the right parties: Assessing tech can’t come from just a TA leader. You need to bring in the whole team who might be using the software. They need to see what it’s like, how similar it is to current workflows, etc. Sometimes the vendor will push back on this, but if they want the sale, they’ll usually agree to team-driven demos. Then you need to bring in people from IT (to check on enterprise implementation and connection with other suites), finance (contracts), etc. This isn’t a “HIPPO” (highest paid person’s opinion) situation for the highest-ranking TA leader. This decision needs to be made as an ecosystem.

Use your own data: Demos are done with clean data. Clean data is designed to work in demos. That’s the point. Your data is a bit messy. You should get demos with your data, and/or a 30-60 day trial. But what’s the point if you don’t understand how it works with your data?

Beware the con jobs: “Our product has AI in it” and “It will reduce the cost to hire” are two that always pop out for me. You need to ask deeper questions. What form of AI? What does it do? How does it learn as it goes? How will it solve your issue? HR technology vendors have exploded in recent years, in part because of the low cost of entry — but in part, sadly, because we as a profession haven’t gotten wise enough to catch the tricks.

HR Tech is still the wild, wild west
Once the marketing teams get a hold of it, we get to a place where supposedly every platform can do everything under the sun — but we should be smart enough to know that it’s all in the name of the sale. It might not do everything. And it might not help our specific need.

We should think on this differently: You know how cars are compared? Standard vs. add-on features? Price? Reviews from actual customers?

What if we built a system that compared HR tech around a series of standard variables? So if you wanted to figure out what chatbot was best for you, you’d access this webpage, look at the different features and price points, get in touch with some past customers, and tune out the marketing-speak to get towards the best solution for us.

This is something I’ve heard more in recent years at trade shows and during “conference season.” More people seem to want this — an easy way to compare options and understand what they need.

At the very least, build one internally. Pull in info from vendors (their marketing-speak). Talk to customers and record that. Get pricing information. This comparison dashboard is what should be presented to the ultimate check-writers.

The bottom line
We need to ask tougher, better questions as a profession. We need to be smarter in assessing how and why technology makes sense for our problems. Don’t be afraid to push the status quo. Don’t be afraid of doing the homework. As you do this, your recruiting skills are going to improve too! You’ll be a better analyzer. You’ll be a better thinker. You’ll be a better question-generator.

Tech can be great for recruiting, but we as TA pros have to do more to make sure we’re analyzing and vetting it correctly.

steve

Steve Levy
Steve Levy brings an atypical combination of recruiting expertise and a technical experience to his performance-focused engagements with clients. A founding member of the recently launched Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals, Steve is widely known as a talent acquisition influencer across many industries and has been recognized as one of the most influential technical recruiting thought leaders, one of the top people to follow in social media recruiting, and a Top 100 Twitter Accounts Job Seekers MUST Follow. Check out his blog Recruiting Inferno or catch him as a respected speaker at sourcing and recruiting conferences.

The post Taking Back HRtech – The Wild Wild West appeared first on Resource Center.

]]> We Need Proactive Recruiting Now More Than Ever https://resources.eteki.com/we-need-proactive-recruiting-now-more-than-ever/ Thu, 15 Mar 2018 16:31:28 +0000 https://www.eteki.com/?p=2584 The post We Need Proactive Recruiting Now More Than Ever appeared first on Resource Center.

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When I worked for the #1 technology staffing agency in the United States, I met the most successful recruiter in the company.  What she said then is still clear to me today, “I don’t recruit for jobs on the board (our open reqs).” I couldn’t wrap my head around that, so I sat down to learn what her secret sauce was. Her philosophy and method was to consult with her account manager,  build a portfolio of the technologies that were used in his active and prospective accounts — and using a variety of tactics, she would build a funnel of passive candidates in those technology stacks.

She was a master at maintaining and nurturing those candidates. She developed, nurtured and maintained a seven-figure pipeline. It’s like a game of chess – she thought ahead and had all the right moves.  So whenever her account manager’s requirement hit the board, she already had a bench of qualified candidates.

Wayne Gretzky’s father, Walter, taught “The Great One” how to win with this mantra, “Go to where the puck is going, not where it has been”.

Tactics
Let’s explore some of the tactics essential to proactively build a robust pipeline that will increase your success in existing accounts and win you opportunity in prospective accounts.

Existing Accounts
In existing accounts, or ones where you are able to talk to the hiring manager, develop an open relationship by describing your proactive sourcing approach. Let them know that you are willing to put your team to work for them before they even have a need. You must ensure that the hiring managers know you are not going to turn this open relationship into sales pressure.  Present it as being more like a talent show. Use the up-front “skin-in-the-game” value of your team’s efforts, to get buy-in to proactively submit exceptionally qualified passive candidates, even before an open job order exists.

Oftentimes, hiring managers will have internal issues with an employee, but not be at the point of considering replacement. Providing a pipeline of exceptional passive candidates oftentimes creates an opportunity to make a “replacement placement” that was not even in the works.

The key involves establishing the value of the intake session to the hiring manager, and a developing comprehensive sourcing strategy.

Prospective Accounts
With prospective accounts, you will likely have an incumbent staffing provider who already has a competitive advantage. So before we focus on what you can do to win an opportunity to compete, let’s recognize what everyone else is leading with:

  • I will work harder than anyone else
  • Give me the hardest to fill requirement
  • I’m young and hungry and will work harder
  • I’m old and experienced and will work smarter
  • I have a billion LinkedIn connections
  • I will give you better rates
  • I will find you the best candidates
  • I will find you more candidates
  • I will only show you the best two candidates
  • I have a big “S” tattooed on my chest and my friends call me “StaffingMan”
  • I’m pulling the same candidates off the job boards as everyone else but I’ve given each of them a pack of Tic-Tacs.

When a hiring manager pays your company for a candidate, they are not investing in your sales acumen, they are investing in your proactive recruiting process.  So it is important to be aware that presentation is what gets you in the door – product is what keeps you there.  Take the sales ego out of your playbook – stop selling yourself and start selling your recruiting process.

Account Mapping
With both existing accounts as well as prospective accounts, Account Mapping is the key to proactive recruiting.  When you recruit proactively you end up with product the competition does not have.  As noted by Glen Cathey of Boolean Blackbelt fame, “Posting jobs yields a very low percentage of qualified applicants – sometimes less than 5%-10%.”

In what I like to call “espionage recruiting,” proactively gathering intel from candidates is the key to account mapping.  

The goal is to analyze your current sourcing methods, and then refine as many as you can to become low effort-high impact.  

  • Reference checks
    • Peer references = possible passive candidates
  • Job boards
    • Reverse resume searches
    • Search for reference names and phone numbers
    • Learn what technologies your business development prospects are using
  • User groups
    • Never try to sell, be honest, and seek understanding
  • LinkedIn
    • Write posts and share in relevant LinkedIn technical groups, as well as provide thoughtful commentary on posts shared by IT thought leaders.
    • Use Boolean to search for candidates open to making job changes. (“looking for” or “new opportunities”) AND “title”
    • If you don’t get the response you’re looking for with prospective candidates found in your Boolean search, use the similar profiles feature to the right.
  • Boolean Searches
  • Intel from candidate  
    • Who else is hiring?
    • Company structure of past employers
      • Who was their best “go-to” person when they faced tough challenges?
        • Uncover the most senior talent
      • How were hiring decisions made?
      • Who are the key players?
    • What other agencies have they been approached by?
      • What jobs did they turn down?
    • What other agencies have they worked for?
      • Likes and dislikes
    • What offers have they turned down
      • New business development targets

The goal is to focus how much recruiting effort and time is expended in finding a submittable candidate who is likely to get the job.  Put a little effort into organizing the discarded data which that recruiting effort produced.

A simple way to look at it is you started with one job requirement.  You sourced 6-8 reasonable candidates, of which one gets the job. You have 7 marketable candidates left, and a wealth of candidate intel to lead you to new business opportunities you didn’t know existed.

What’s different about your proactive recruiting process?  Do you have a crystal ball to identify which candidate is best suited for the job, like eTeki’s 2,500+ expert freelance tech interviewers?  Tell your hiring manager something they have not heard already, something that contributes to their success.

Get Trial Started
Rob Miner

Robert Miner
Chief Revenue Officer at eTeki, helps businesses increase revenues and decrease internal costs by providing state of the art technical screening.

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