Chris Russell (9)
Human Resources
Soft Skills In the Workplace
Soft skills in the workplace have become as important as technical skills, and many employers say they’d hire and promote someone with excellent communication skill over a more technically abled candidate whose soft skills don’t measure up. “Having the right experience and technical skills for a job is not enough,” says Emmett McGrath, president of the staffing and outsourcing company Yoh. “Job candidates also need to fit in culturally and have non-technical skills in order to success.” A survey Yoh commissioned found 75% of the 2,000 respondents would hire a candidate with soft skills even if they had less than the desired experience or qualifications. Importance of Soft Skills That echoes the importance recruiters place on soft skills in the workplace, according to Linkedin’s Global Talent Trends 2019. 92% of 5,000 talent professionals across 35 countries said soft skills “matter as much or more than hard skills when they hire, and 80% say they’re increasingly important to company success.” It’s not just white collar workers who benefit from have strong soft skills in the workplace. A research team led by Namrata Kala, MIT Sloan economics professor, conducted a year-long soft skills training program at a garment manufacturing factory. Eight months after it ended, productivity improvement and gains from quicker problem solving and better attendance returned 250% on the investment in training. Though surveys and employers often use different names or labels for the same types of soft skills, they all agree on the core important soft skills in the workplace: Communication, both listening as well as speaking and often writing Teamwork, collaboration, cooperation all mean the same: the ability to work smoothly with others. Adaptability. Employers want workers who can adjust quickly to changing circumstances and who can figure out how to that. Creativity is the ability to think of better or unique ways to solve problems or improve efficiency; out of the box thinking. Interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence. Both are used to describe the ability to get along with people and understand them on an emotional level. Since Covid, employers are placing an even greater emphasis on adaptability and resilience, adding them to the list of the more important skills in the workplace. A Lever report said the pandemic, which forced companies to make changes overnight, made adaptability even more prized than it was in the past. Communication Skills Most Wanted Good communication skills, long a recruiting priority, are still one of the top skills employers want. Companies also seek creative thinkers and workers with good emotional intelligence, skills that LinkedIn tells us are in short supply, but high demand. While all surveys agree on the importance of soft skills in the workplace, as a group, managers are most invested in improving their soft skills and learning new ones. A survey of learning and development professionals and managers discovered that managers spend 30% more time than the average employee learning soft skills. That survey also found two-thirds of Gen Z workers spent more learning last year than they did in the past and their rate of participation in learning was higher than every other worker age group. Much of their emphasis was on learning hard skills, compared to older workers who were more focused on improving their soft skills. That may be a consequence of age. Younger workers have simply had less job experience and time to learn technical skills and expand their range. Yet, as Tanya Staples, VP of product and content for LinkedIn Learning, says, “Companies today want employees that can solve difficult challenges and dream up creative and innovative ideas that technologies cannot replicate.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Human Resources
Microlearning Is Just In Time Learning
If you needed to add a video to your business presentation you wouldn’t sign-up for a course on PowerPoint. You’d search for a “how to” online to learn just what you needed to accomplish the task. That’s the difference between traditional corporate training programs and what’s come to be called microlearning. Microlearning is the delivery of task-relevant learning in small bites. It’s been growing as a tool of corporate trainers since the late 1990s. But it wasn’t until just a few years ago that it took off, as learning and development professionals recognized its value in giving workers just the information they needed – and no more — when they needed it. What is Microlearning? It’s “a way of teaching and delivering content to learners in small, specific bursts,” as the Society for Human Resource Management describes microlearning. It makes learning more meaningful because it is “just in time.” And studies that began emerging in the mid-2010s showed microlearning improved retention. Corporate trainers have long been frustrated by the twin challenge of getting workers to retain what they’ve learned in instructor-led training sessions, and convincing managers to free-up workers for training and reinforcement. Research about retention confirms the fundamentals of Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve: We begin forgetting what we’re taught within minutes of learning it. So routine reinforcement is needed. But getting managers to give up workers for even an hour, let alone half-day training is a constant battle. Meanwhle, trainers also have to contend with a diminishing worker attention span. Pointing to a Microsoft finding that the human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s, a team of researchers found that “microlearning becomes more and more important because it emphasizes short learning duration.” They maintain the internet and the ready availability of data “affects how people view their time and how they learn.” “In the workplace, people are used to have information at their fingertips, finding the answers they need within minutes. This has dramatically changed people’s expectations of workplace learning,” they write. Microlearning solves these problems. By leveraging the internet and the near ubiquitous availability of desktops and portable devices, corporate L&D teams are making short bits of information readily available. In a survey conducted three years ago, the Association for Talent Development found “four in five respondents use microlearning at their organizations to reinforce or supplement formal training. Microlearning also was used as a just-in-time learning tool by 75 percent of participants.” If that survey were conducted today, the numbers would undoubtedly be significantly higher. The Covid shutdowns and the subsequent limit on gatherings propelled microlearning from trend to established practice. Socially Distant Microlearning “COVID-19 has forced workers to learn in a socially distanced and often remote environment, making instructor-led training (ILT) less popular,” says a blog post on Topyx, a vendor of corporate learning technology. “The COVID-19 pandemic did what competition and the productivity race could not—it tipped the scales towards blended learning and corporate training instead of instructor-led education,” says another blog post. An article in Industry Training magazine says 2020 “broke traditional corporate training” by placing resource constraints on companies and causing workers to be more reluctant than ever “to take on anything outside of their normal job activities. “Forward-thinking L&D professionals are adapting to this environment by implementing just-in-time training strategies.” As valuable as microlearning is, it shouldn’t be thought of as a replacement for other types of learning, including instructor-led training. Consider it another tool in the L&D toolbox – a powerful one for sure, but not a replacement. In the book Microlearning: Short and Sweet, authors and learning experts Karl M. Kapp and Robyn A. Defelice, caution that microlearning “Is not always the best solution for learning needs because not all of what individuals need to know to be successful can be taught through microlearning strategies.” Yet, as the demand for worker training continues to grow, microlearning will play an increasingly important role. In 2022, more companies will embrace microlearning techniques, creating short instructional videos and leveraging other technologies like AR and VR. By one estimate, the market for microlearning content will grow by almost 14% in the next two years, topping $2.7 billion. Looking ahead, Finance Digest says, “agile, flexible microlearning holds the key to extracting the full potential out of our workforces.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Recruiting Trends
Remote Hiring Is Replacing the In-Person Interview
Until Covid, remote hiring was about as common as remote workers. That’s not to say it was rare, but it was far from mainstream. Startups and companies with virtual workers would hire remotely, but most other companies still insisted on in-person interviews. Covid changed all that. When businesses were forced to go all virtual, so did their hiring. A survey in April of 2020, a month after the nationwide shutdown of all but essential businesses, found 43% of hiring managers had reduced in-person interviews; 25% had eliminated them entirely. They had to hire remotely, turned to telephone and video for interviews and increasing their use of assessments and reference checks. So soon after the shutdown it was impossible to tell what effect remote hiring would eventually have. But there were some hints. Though 41% of managers said hiring had become slower, 38% said it was faster; 21% said it was much faster. The survey found the latter group used significantly more remote hiring methods than those whose turnaround times were slower or unchanged. There was one other telling point in that early survey: there was a 50/50 split between hiring managers who wanted to return to how hiring was done before Covid and those who wanted to continue to hire remotely. Remote Hiring More Efficient Months later, a new survey bore out what the earlier survey hinted at: remote hiring made the process less challenging and more efficient. “Across the board, hiring professionals find that the work of talent acquisition and talent management is less challenging than it was [in 2019],” said the report, The State of Hiring in a Year of Crisis. As recruiters and hiring managers have discovered, remote hiring has definite advantages over the traditional, in-person process. A survey conducted just a few months ago found 93% of employers plan to continue using virtual interviews in the future. By large margins, the 1,100 talent acquisition professionals across a broad range of industries and business sizes, said remote hiring was speedier (74%) and easier to manage the process from start to finish (79%). Over three-quarters believe virtual hiring has improved the candidate experience. Candidates, too, find remote hiring less intimidating (37%); 45% appreciate not having to travel for the interview and the same percentage like that they can interview from anywhere. No surprise then that Peg Buchenroth, a SVP with the staffing and recruitment firm Addison Group, says, “Virtual interviews are not going away.” “Virtual interviewing will remain an option for talent acquisition, she told the Society for Human Resource Management, But as the SHRM article notes, remote hiring has limitations. Limits of Remote Hiring “In-person interviews offer a higher level of engagement. You can read body language better and get a better sense of someone’s interpersonal skills,” Buchenroth pointed out. “For roles that require strong social skills, such as client-facing or senior leadership positions, employers may want to meet candidates face-to-face.” For that reason, talent acquisition professionals expect companies to adopt a hybrid hiring process. Jobs requiring in-person interaction, such as in retail or hospitality or that demand close collaboration among an on-site team will still have a fact-to-face component. Remote hiring tools including phone screens, video interviews, assessments and, when relevant, skills testing may be used to narrow the applicant pool, but the final step will be an in-person interview. Entirely remote hiring will be reserved for jobs to be performed remotely. And this is a category of work that is expanding rapidly. Better than 4-in-10 workers could potentially do their job remotely, says the World Economic Forum which predicts a “significant expansion of remote work.” The issue for companies is no longer whether to include remote hiring as part of their talent acquisition process, but how and specifically what tools to use, says Eric Friedman, chairman and CEO of a skills assessment provider writing. “The challenge is selecting and consolidating the right tools to deliver a sustainable and effective remote talent acquisition model.” Contribution by John Zappe
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Recruiting
Candidate Experience Management
A new study from Phenom has revealed that while many Fortune 500 employers are making strides in attracting, engaging and converting candidates in today’s brutal talent market, there is still significant room to improve the candidate experience with personalization and automation especially driven by AI. Thanks to the pandemic, talent acquisition is now a business priority among the C-suite — especially across industries with high-volume hiring needs — such as healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, retail and transportation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job openings and resignations simultaneously reached highs at the end of March. But instead of using AI to effectively and efficiently scale hiring, the majority of Fortune 500 companies are falling short. In fact, Phenom says 91% scored poorly in this key area. Candidate Experience Breaking Points Here’s what happened when researchers visited the Fortune 500 career sites; Only 10% had an intuitive job search and application process Only 1% communicated application status beyond initial confirmation 89% did not display recently viewed jobs 88% did not present job recommendations based on browsing history 87% did not use a recruitment chatbot 73% lacked a job cart or favorites function to save jobs 88% did not send applicants a satisfaction survey How Employers Can Improve the Candidate Experience Simplify search and apply. Requiring three or more clicks to apply for a job is a major roadblock for candidates. The longer it takes for a candidate to find and apply to a relevant job, the greater the chance they will abandon the process and look elsewhere. One recommendation is for companies to equip their career sites with the ability to provide relevant suggested jobs based on a candidate’s keywords, skills, experience and location. Create hyper-personalization. Candidates are used to superior tailored experiences in their consumer lives. If finding a job that matches what they want is difficult, they are quick to move on. Dynamic AI personalization is one way companies can automatically match a candidate’s preferences, experience, skills and location with best-fit job openings — and surface content for candidates as they move through their own unique end-to-end talent journey across multiple channels. Automate communication. Job seekers want to know where they stand in the screening and interview scheduling process. Failure to communicate status details jeopardizes employer brand and acceptance rates. Using conversational AI chatbots, text and email campaigns are a few ways companies can automate individualized communications to keep job seekers engaged while differentiating their brand. “Hiring, developing and retaining talent isn’t just an HR priority — it is a business priority. Companies must differentiate themselves by the experiences they provide to their candidates and their employees to sustain,” said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom. “This benchmark report provides industry-specific insights and actionable recommendations for using automation and personalization to earn and keep top talent.” How AI & Automation Helps All Talent Experiences At a time when there’s never been more pressure for recruiters to fill open roles, AI and automation enables a quick, efficient hiring process that serves up best-fit jobs to candidates — and best-fit candidates to recruiters — while optimizing omnichannel communication that nurture talent communities. Not only do job seekers appreciate a streamlined, personalized experience, but with efficiency at the core, recruiters and hiring managers benefit from decreased time to fill and better long-term fits. Employees are no exception. The same hyper-personalized candidate experience should extend to internal talent, who may be looking to move within their current company. By making relevant open roles and development opportunities visible, actionable and attainable, companies stand a better chance at retaining them. AI-powered talent marketplaces automate the process for an employee experience that unifies all key stakeholders: internal candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Data like this is key to improving your hiring processes and attracting more talent. I hope that you take these findings and use them to improve your own candidate experience management. Otherwise the talent you seek will go elsewhere.
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Recruiting Trends
Workforce Trends for 2022
To say the nature of work is changing is the understatement of the year. Who could have predicted the way the workforce is trending these days with remote work, vaccination mandates and a host of other changes affecting the American worker. According to ADP, the HR payroll company, the transformation of the global workforce accelerated in 2021, driven by the continued impact of the pandemic and strains on businesses amid record labor shortages and shifting worker priorities. It’s a strain felt worldwide. ADP Research Institute found that 64% of the global workforce was negatively impacted by COVID-19, including 28% who lost a job, were furloughed, or were temporarily laid off, and 23% who took a pay cut. These labor market shifts have led workers to reprioritize their needs, further redefining how and where work gets done. As a result, employers face added pressure to adjust to emerging talent demands. To help businesses navigate forward, ADP shares the biggest drivers behind work’s evolution in 2022. “The world of work has been in a constant state of motion,” said Don Weinstein, corporate vice president of global product and technology at ADP. “The needs of the global workforce are evolving in tandem with technology, and the result is transformational. Amid all the change, one common thread has only grown stronger: people power performance. To support and empower their people, employers are rooting their decision-making in data and leveraging those insights to better understand their employees’ needs and what drives their productivity. This increased visibility is fostering a stronger sense of connection and paving the way for greater growth and innovation ahead.” 4 Trends for the 2022 Workforce The Dispersed/Hybrid Workforce As employers explore on-site, fully remote and hybrid workplace models, they will look for new opportunities to increase employee visibility and better understand the needs of a dispersed workforce. According to ADP Research Institute’s “People at Work: A Global Workforce View” study, within a year, COVID-19 has significantly impacted workers’ locations. In fact, three quarters (75%) of the global workforce made changes or plan to change how or where they live, with that percentage even greater (85%) among Generation Z. Additionally, ADP surveyed small and midsized U.S. employers and found 66 percent have a hybrid work model in place. To foster connection in the absence of physical proximity, people data will shed insight into the ebbs and flows of engagement and performance, helping managers pull the right levers to support a high-performing remote or hybrid team. This new dynamic built on mutual trust will help drive employee engagement and performance. ADP Research Institute found that U.S. employees who have trust in both their teammates and their team leader are seven times more likely to feel Strongly Connected to their organization. Mission Driven Workplace Culture As employers look for ways to drive inclusion amidst new work models, connection will become a measurement of workforce culture. ADP Research Institute found that U.S. workers who feel they are Strongly Connected to their employer are 75 times more likely to be Fully Engaged than those who do not feel connected. With connection driving engagement, employers will need to heighten their focus on their people and reflect on the larger purpose that unites their workforce. Workforce flexibility will stretch beyond perceived limits and employers will embrace people-centered initiatives to build a workplace where everyone can thrive. Diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies will additionally evolve to drive true, measurable progress. ADP data shows more than 50 percent of companies that leveraged ADP DataCloud’s DEI analytics capabilities have taken action and realized positive impact on their DEI measures. Better Data Will Power Decision Makers With employees remaining remote and hybrid, operational and compliance considerations will grow, adding to an already complex regulatory environment. In fact, ADP’s HR Survey Series with HR Outsourcing found nearly 20 percent of U.S. companies with 25 to 99 employees admit they are currently facing challenges with compliance and regulatory issues, which may increase as regulations change. To navigate forward, leaders will rely more heavily on real-time data to tackle compliance proactively and guide decision-making. Quality data will be key in providing businesses with the confidence they need to act. As an example, to better manage return to the workplace policies including vaccination tracking and testing, employers are turning to timely people data. Through its ADP Return to Workplace mobile solution, ADP reports workers have completed more than three million health status surveys since the tool’s launch. Digitization Will Change the Employee Experience As business models evolve amid global shifts, businesses will turn to technology to drive efficiency and expand capabilities by eliminating task work and refocusing efforts on strategic growth initiatives. According to ADP data, monthly users of its ADP Mobile Solutions app increased over 25% from last year as workers leverage self-service tools, helping to remove administrative tasks from HR practitioners’ plates, enabling them to focus more on their people. This digitalization will benefit both employers and employees, as employees seek greater flexibility and control in their employee experience. ADP believes also that a surge in skills-based hiring will drive innovation further. Their research institute’s “People at Work: A Global Workforce View” study found more than one-in-four workers (28%) report having taken on a new role or changing role due to pandemic labor market shifts. The number increases to 36% for Generation Z workers. Following a period during which employees were forced to reskill, people will continue to prioritize their skills and pursue opportunities to apply their unique strengths. To accelerate performance, employers will need to focus on those individual strengths and provide opportunities for employees to develop new skills or embark on a new career trajectory with more opportunity for growth. Additionally, employers will also rely on helpful technologies like machine learning to identify workers with the right skills in unique places, such as pools of former applicants who previously applied for other roles.
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Human Resources
Employee Benefits Packages Being Challenged
With the quit rate at record highs and employers struggling to find and retain talent, many organizations say it’s nearly impossible to offer enough benefits to satisfy their employees. According to a new survey from The Harris Poll published by Express Employment Professionals, nearly 1 in 3 companies that have experienced an increase in employee turnover this year (32%) point to better perks offered elsewhere (e.g., Summer Fridays, unlimited vacation days) as the reason for the higher turnover, which increased from the second half of 2020 (26%). Almost 1 in 5 companies report some of the biggest hiring difficulties their company will face over the next twelve months are that their pay is not competitive (18%) and/or their benefits are not competitive (17%). However businesses seem to realize the importance of competitive pay as the majority (63%) expect the average wage at their company will increase in 2021, while 28% expect no change to wages. Notably, the proportion expecting wage increases has been steadily growing over the past year (52% in the first half of 2020, 58% in the second half of 2020 and 63% in the first half of 2021). Further, 43% of companies expect their employee benefit packages to increase in 2021 as compared to 2020, and around half (49%) expect their benefits to stay about the same. “Competitive pay and employee benefits have never been more important,” said Greg Sulentic, Express franchise owner in Lincoln, Nebraska. “It’s not about pulling people into the workforce; it’s about stealing employees from your competitors. Staffing recruiters often feel like sports agents trying to put the best offer out there just to pull a welder or CNC operator from their current job to ours. Hourly wage rules all, but sign-on or retention bonuses can be a draw.” As to what extra perks businesses are using to entice workers, Sulentic says it’s all about time off and travel. No limit on paid time off, true “forced” sabbaticals of month-long vacations or vacations paid for by the company. Flexibility for employees is something more leaders need to offer. In Michigan for example, Express franchise owner Reggie Kaji has some clients paying employees for a full 40-hour workweek, but they only work 34 hours. “It’s shocking considering this would have been absolutely unheard of in the past,” he said. “We also have another client offering bonuses of $1,000 per quarter for retention and good attendance. “Turnover is happening across the board for compensation purposes, not benefits, but actual pay. Honestly, it’s the ‘Wild Wild West.’ I really don’t see the tight labor market cooling down for at least a year.” Sulentic also doesn’t see much hope on the horizon for labor shortages and competition to ease up as long as employees are unavailable. “Labor participation is remarkably low, and we don’t anticipate a major improvement,” he said. “People are just not coming back into the workforce.” For the overall health of the economy, we need those who are on the sidelines to rejoin the labor force and the sooner, the better, Express CEO Bill Stoller said. “It’s a job seekers’ market right now, and when you find the right candidate, businesses should be prepared to make them an employment offer as soon as possible,” Stoller said. “Any delay and you risk losing top talent altogether.” Competitive pay is just part of the solution, employee benefits packages need to be boosted and adjusted much more quickly to avoid an increase in turnover.
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Recruiting
Job Application Process Still Frustrating Candidates
Despite employers complaining about a lack of applicants, a big reason why appears to be their frustrating job application processes. InFlight Corporation, maker of the employee experience platform, recently announced a new study of the job application process and related opportunities for improvement. The findings reveal significant gaps between the expense of attracting a candidate and diminishing engagement due to friction in the online application process. They “mystery shopped” the career sites of Fortune 500 companies, using the search term “software developer,” a hard-to-fill role that is consistent across all organizations. The process started on Google, where nearly 70 percent of all job searches commence and followed the number of clicks it took from the first click of “Apply Now” through the application submitted confirmation page. InFlight’s Founder and CEO, James La Brash, said, “When it comes to the candidate experience, the promise of a quick and easy apply process starts with the ‘Apply Now’ button. The reality is quite different: Our research shows that two-thirds of candidates are made to click ‘Apply Now’ three or more times, and an average of 51 clicks are required to get through an application, which is time consuming and undermines the desired outcome.” Given the recruitment marketing expenditure involved in attracting qualified talent – especially in a highly competitive labor market – having unnecessary roadblocks in place is counterintuitive and creates friction in the apply flow. The job application process is often a rapid barrage of questions, fields and clicks that candidates need to navigate to advance through the process. Additionally, as soon as a candidate starts the apply process, InFlight learned that 48 percent of the Fortune 500 are sharing brand positioning with their applicant tracking system’s logo, creating confusion on the part of the candidate as to where their information is going. In addition to the discovery that “Apply Now” experience is far from prompt, the research uncovered a disconnect between the people who are designing the experience and the people who buy and configure the technology. Expecting to see a stronger correlation between employer branding and application experience quality, it was apparent that the candidate experience suffered in the process. Even when organizations were savvy about including recruitment marketing visual brand elements, the corresponding technology experience wasn’t configured to support positive impact and high application completion rates. La Brash concluded, “Designing and executing a quantitative study of your company’s apply flow is a complicated undertaking. Many organizations have pieced together in-house and external systems to achieve their intended goals without considering the overall quality of the candidate experience. With so much competition for workers, organizations cannot afford to have systems that provide a candidate experience that undermines their talent attraction goals.” It is remarkable that in 2021 we are still talking about frustrating the candidates with unnecessary clicks and barriers when it comes to the apply process. Leaders need to demand better from their HR tech staff when it comes to implementing any kind of software that touches the candidate experience. They need to hire more usability experts that bring a candidate focused mindset to the implementation. Any employer that doesn’t take the apply process seriously is putting themselves at risk of not filling roles quickly enough. “Easy Apply” should become the norm in our industry, not the exception.
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Human Resources
How to Use Talent Assessment Tools
In the fierce competition for talent today, companies are turning to talent assessment tools to give them a leg up in hiring and promoting workers who not only have the skills for the job, but who will also be a good fit. Recruiters use talent assessment tools to test the extent of a job candidate’s know-how, learn their work style and see if their personality is a good match for the company culture. These tools help predict a candidate’s performance in the job, providing both recruiters and hiring managers greater insight into a candidate than a resume and interview alone can. Recruiting may be the best-known use of talent assessment tools, but it’s far from the only way these tools help companies made smarter workforce decisions. A report by the Society for Human resource Management says machine learning and artificial intelligence have broadened the reach of the newest talent assessment tools. Beside hiring, SHRM says these tools today are used to “evaluate current employees for different roles, identify employees with high leadership potential, compare talent within an organization against industry or geographical benchmarks, understand talent strengths and gaps, and develop employees’ long-term value.” The SHRM practice report details a dozen different types of assessments beginning with the more common and familiar job knowledge and personality tests to such specialized ones as writing and physical fitness, which, the report explains, “require candidates to perform actual work tasks to determine whether they can meet the physical requirements of a job.” 5 Types of Talent Assessments The most widely used assessments fall into four or five broad categories: skills specific to the job, personality and behavior, cognitive which covers critical thinking and communication, and integrity, which is just what it sounds like. There are talent assessment tools designed to test each of these areas. Many are intended for specific job types. A Google search for “talent assessment tools for customer service representative” turns up dozens, with several specific to individual industries. The hospitality industry alone has multiple generic talent assessment tools available, while most of the largest hotel groups have their own customized tools Before deciding what talent assessment tools to use SHRM says, “The first step in selecting an assessment tool is to understand what the target job or role requires the employee to do by conducting a job analysis that focuses on identifying critical work activities and/or competencies.” This may seem obvious, yet as the example illustrates there are any number of different types of customer service jobs. Generic talent assessment tools abound, however their predictive value for a specific job and industry will be limited. Knowing not just the broad job category, but what the specific role entails and how it’s to be performed is essential to selecting the right talent assessment tool. The next steps in choosing the right tool, as the SHRM report explains, is to determine the validity of the test and its potential for adversely and unfairly impacting protected groups such as those over 40, minorities and women. In addition, how will those being tested react? And, of course, what’s the cost? Talent Assessment Validity SHRM’s practice guide goes into detail about each of these decision points. Briefly, what you need to consider are: Validity: Does the test reliably predict performance? Criterion validity is the relationship between scores on the test and actual business outcomes. Content validity means that what the assessment tests for is directly relevant to the job or the desired behaviors. Adverse impact: Consider whether the test leads to a disproportionate hiring of a majority group versus the minority group. Says SHRM, “If an assessment produces an adverse impact, the only way to defend its use is by showing that it is a valid predictor of performance and that alternative measures are not feasible.” Candidate reaction: Especially in pre-hiring assessments, the test-taker reaction is critical. A negative experience can be expensive to the company, causing it not only to lose the job applicant, but others swayed by reviews posted online. Test-takers have a more positive reaction to talent assessment tests that measure work behavior via simulations and work samples versus abstract and hypothetical multiple-choice tests. Costs: Off-the-shelf talent assessment tools will cost less than those built specifically for a company or job. Technology has reduced the overall cost substantially. Most tests are talent online with scoring and ranking automated. There are many excellent, valid assessments available today for nearly ever industry and job. Whether customized or off-the-shelf, talent assessment tools can help recruiters and managers – and individual employees themselves — make better, more informed workforce and career decisions. ### Contribution by John Zappe ###
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Recruiting
Holiday Hiring Is Setting Records This Year
Holiday hiring will top 1 million this year, with Walmart and Amazon together accounting for more than a quarter of the total. The global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said retailers, grocers and logistic firms, including Fed Ex and UPS have announced holiday hiring plans of 939,300 workers. That count, which was as of mid-October, was already the largest number of workers to be announced in the 10 years the firm has tabulated holiday hiring plans. Since then, Big Lots said it would add 15,000 seasonal workers and several retailers increased their holiday hiring goals. Amazon, Walmart and Macy’s now are expected to hire 561,000 workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported hiring by the private sector in October surged to 604,000. Among the key sectors for holiday hiring, employers in retail and logistics brought on 141,300 new workers. Bars and restaurants, which have struggled for months to hire workers, added 119,000 workers, partially in anticipation of the seasonal surge in holiday parties and events. To lure workers companies are offering all sorts of incentives. To encourage workers at its distribution facility in Southern California, the discounters Dollar Tree and Family Dollar dangled a $1,000 bonus as well as flexible schedules, healthcare insurance and an extra $2 an hour for peak season work. Holiday Hiring Goals To meet its holiday hiring goal of 90,000 Kohl’s is offering bonuses of up to $400. Competitor Macy’s is paying a $500 bonus to employees who refer workers. Amazon’s holiday hiring bonuses range as high as $3,000 with hourly pay that averages over $20. As attractive as these offers are, the additional incentive is the permanent hiring of some of these seasonal workers. In announcing its holiday hiring plans in September Target said, “When the holidays are over, many of those team members will have the opportunity to stay onboard.” UPS pointed out in its holiday hiring announcement that it has a “track record of turning seasonal jobs into careers.” A third of its workforce began that way, according to the company. In years past the holiday hiring push would begin in August and September. This year, because of worker shortages stemming from the Covid shutdowns, hiring by some companies began as early as July. Incentives also are richer. Retailers like Target promised their existing workers greater flexibility in scheduling, more hours for those who what it, and premium pay. Attracting workers has never been harder, which is why so many companies are hoping to fill permanent positions from among the seasonal workers they hire. Money.com said of the 561,000 holiday positions Amazon, Walmart and Macy’s have, 37% of them are permanent. To meet holiday hiring goals, recruiters pull out all the stops. Besides the incentives and an early start, companies host multiple job fairs and post openings on every major job board and on those targeted to workers looking for temp and part-time jobs. Their ads prominently feature the signing bonuses, improved pay and other incentives. Social media ads extol these incentives and encourage sharing the job postings. Most of these high volume employers also turn to staffing companies to help recruit workers or to have them supply the workers directly. Weeks before launching full-scale recruiting campaigns, recruiters contact seasonal workers from years past hoping to rehire them and, as Macy’s does, asking current staff for referrals. With so many companies competing for workers, speed of hire is paramount. UPS said that of the 100,000 holiday hires many “will have an offer in hand within 30 minutes of applying.” All high volume employers have tools that make it possible to interview, assess and hire workers within hours or even minutes of receiving an application. Holiday Hiring Solutions Indeed.com, the largest and most heavily use job board in the world, has Indeed Hiring Platform, which allows recruiters to post a job, screen candidates, schedule and conduct online interviews, including by video, and make an offer in hours. Most other major job boards have some sort of similar high volume solution. Many of the biggest employers will use two or three of these sites. Smaller companies need to use some of these same tactics to meet their holiday hiring needs. Nationwide, the insurance company, suggests turning to staffing companies as a first choice. It will cost more to bring in seasonal help that way, but the workers will be vetted, are likely to have experience in the particular line of work and all the paperwork and onboarding will be handled by the staffing firm. Nationwide also suggests contacting local schools, “But don’t wait to recruit workers once (school) breaks hit and students leave town for vacation or are hired by other businesses prepping for a seasonal surge.” Some small businesses have had success asking their customers for referrals. As the biggest companies have demonstrated, holiday hiring requires much more than simply posting job openings and waiting for applications. Employers have to use all their tools and techniques to attract candidates and make hires. You can’t expect to compete for workers by doing what’s always worked in the past. This year, holiday hiring is tougher and so highly competitive that, like as many companies have found, it takes competitive pay, flexibility, cash bonuses, speed and incentives such as the possibility of permanent work, to make a hire. John Zappe Contributed
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Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions.
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