Resources
Recruiting Technology
3 min read
Mining Your Applicant Tracking Software for Talent - Emissary.ai
There’s gold in your applicant tracking software. It’s called talent. Disguised as silver and bronze, these are the job seekers who almost got hired the last time. They were edged out by a candidate with a bit more experience, an extra skill or maybe because they had a firmer handshake or were an internal referral. Now a year or two later, these runners-up have more experience. They’ve enhanced their skills and picked up others. They’ve tackled new and likely even more challenging projects than when they were first interviewed. And you know they wanted to join your organization. Especially in this tight labor market, they should be the first candidates to be considered. But they won’t be. Most recruiters never search their applicant tracking software, so they’ll never find the gold candidates waiting there. Several years ago, a survey of some 8,000 companies discovered that the resumes in their ATS might as well have gone into the trash. Not only did two-thirds of the companies have no idea how many candidates were in their applicant tracking software, a shocking 98% never made a hire from there. Rediscover Your Talent If that survey were conducted today, the percentage of recruiters who search the ATS for candidates would be higher. Credit that to the intense competition for talent and, at the largest companies, the candidate pipeline building. Still, at most organizations recruiters never think first, or at all, of searching the ATS. Why is that? Habit, born of the difficulty of searching applicant tracking software. Without training and at least some search skills, recruiters find it easier to send a job posting to job boards and the company career site. Applicant tracking software may have become more versatile over the years, but searching the candidate resumes takes time and, for most systems, a good grasp of what it takes to search with precision. Sending a stock job description out into the world takes seconds. Writing about the search shortcomings of applicant tracking software, recruitment author and marketer Travis Scott said, “They’re pretty awful for nearly everything except being a database.” Yet, as he notes, that database is “a gold mine of candidates that could become a valuable competitive advantage. Most companies won’t leverage this resource. Not because it’s impossible, but because it’s difficult.” Fortunately, today’s applicant tracking software now has artificial intelligence designed in. Instead of being limited to searching by titles, years of experience or keywords, AI enabled systems can extract all candidates matching a job description. If interview scheduling and reporting are part of the applicant tracking software – a feature most systems now include – finding your runners up is easier than ever before. Search Your Applicant Tracking Software There are also third-party AI tools that will search the entire web and your ATS, compiling profiles on the candidates they source and scoring each. As powerful as these tools are, they’re only as accurate as the information they find. If the resumes of your silver and bronze runners-up haven’t been updated, they may get missed in a search. This is why Scott and Jennifer Roeslmeier, senior digital marketing and brands manager at Automated Business Designs, say staying in touch with the best candidates is so critical. Talent acquisition professionals agree that building pipelines of candidates should be something every company does. Segment them by skills or job function so you know which pipeline to tap when an opening arises. Keep them engaged by regularly sending newsletters of useful company and industry news and periodically having them update their resume. Candidate relationship management (CRM) software allows you to automate the workflow and will schedule mailings into the future. Applicant tracking software can do some of this, though a CRM makes the process simpler and more automatic. Developing pipelines and staying engaged with your best candidates, especially those who almost got the job, gives you a competitive advantage. This talent rediscovery helps you win the war for passive talent. Says Bennett Sung, a recruitment technologist and marketer, “You are sitting on a metaphorical goldmine. Without a strategy for candidate rediscovery, segmentation, and engagement, you will never know its full worth. In today’s tight talent market, employers can’t afford to lose out on any candidates — especially not those already in their pipelines. “By combining the right technology with a curated content strategy that accounts for candidate segments, you’ll be able to keep the pipeline flowing.” Written by John Zappe
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Human Resources
3 min read
Annual Reviews Aren’t Worth the Effort - Emissary.ai
The season of good cheer and annual reviews is fast approaching. And that may be the last time you see those two phrases in the same sentence. No one ever looked forward to the annual review ritual. Not managers – 95% of them are dissatisfied with the way they are conducted; 58% say they serve no purpose. Not HR professionals – 90% believe them inaccurate. Nor employees — 87% find them ineffective; 55% say they have no effect on performance. Even CEOs agree. Only 6% think performance appraisals are useful. Since so few believe the annual review process is effective or serves a valuable purpose, why do so many companies still conduct them? The short answer is because they always have. Annual Reviews Need a Reboot Formal performance reviews began with the military for promotion purposes. Business adopted the concept, tying raises to worker performance. Since annual raises most often took effect in January, performance reviews became an end-of-year ritual. Once nearly ubiquitous, in the last decade companies have been rapidly abandoning the annual review. In 2016, Work Human found 82% of employers conducted annual reviews. By 2019, that percent was barely a majority at 54%. Over the last 20 years, and especially since Adobe became the first large company to give up on the annual review, corporate leaders have come to accept they aren’t just ineffective in improving performance, they too often have the opposite effect. Studies show even supposedly positive rankings can have a demoralizing effect. Among the myriad of reasons why the annual review is falling out of favor, the most obvious is that they deal with past performance, surprising employees who learn for the first time in November or December the work they’ve done all year long is not as good as they thought. Megan Krause, director of content at the performance marketing firm Investis Digital, told the Society of Human Resource Management, “I’ve found annual reviews to be, by nature, one-sided and nerve-wracking for the employee. Their pattern is typically, ‘Here, let me review everything about you and your work performance for the last 12 months. We have one hour.’” Annual Reviews are Prone to Bias Because most of us have trouble remembering what we did last week let alone 10 months ago, the ratings and evaluations in annual reviews rarely reflect an entire year’s efforts. This recency bias causes managers to give undue emphasis to performance in the last few months, which may undervalue or overvalue an employee’s actual contribution. An article in the Harvard Business Review puts it this way: “With their heavy emphasis on financial rewards and punishments and their end-of-year structure, [annual reviews] hold people accountable for past behavior at the expense of improving current performance and grooming talent for the future, both of which are critical for organizations’ long-term survival.” Annual reviews are also prone to another type of bias. Management consultant Marcus Buckingham says the “Idiosyncratic Rater Effect” influences the annual review ratings to such a large extent that the process effectively is more about the manager than the employee. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, leadership expert Samuel A. Culbert said that despite the appearance a numerical rating scale is objective, “In almost every instance what’s being ‘measured’ has less to do with what an individual was focusing on in attempting to perform competently and more to do with a checklist expert’s assumptions about what competent people do.” Despite their shortcomings, few propose eliminating performance reviews completely. Instead, most HR leaders and management experts now embrace more frequent “check-in” meetings between managers and workers. Adobe replaced the annual review in 2012 with quarterly check-ins that allow both manager and employee to give feedback, discuss expectations and plan future development. Deloitte, Accenture, Microsoft, GE and dozens of other companies followed suit, substituting formal monthly or quarterly meetings as well as more frequent check-ins; Deloitte insists on weekly check-ins. The results of what is sometimes called “continuous feedback” are generally positive. WorkHuman found that at companies where check-ins and feedback meetings are held at least monthly, three-quarters of workers are engaged. With weekly check-ins, 47% are highly engaged. The transition, as Gallup notes, isn’t necessarily easy or without problems. Managers need to be trained in how to conduct effective one-on-one meetings. It’s also not enough to provide feedback. Managers must be able to mentor and coach their team, helping each member achieve the goals they set in these check-ins. “It can be challenging for some managers to transition to this new style of management, and moreover the continuous style of performance review requires more time and energy from managers long-term,” says the HR technology company Cornerstone. Though “No evaluation system can create great managers and engage employees on its own,” says Gallup. But, better than the annual review, “They lay the foundation for a great conversation.” Written by John Zappe
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Recruiting Tactics
2 min read
Employers Using Social Media for Hiring - Emissary.ai
Social media is so pervasive today that it is seeping into many aspects of the hiring process. While at the HR technology conference last week I even discovered a new social media background check company called LifeBrand that wants to help your employees clean up their social media posts. They offer a service as benefit to help your employees remove cringeworthy content from their social media pages easy and safe. But we know social media and hiring goes deeper than that. Many employers use it to screen and vet candidates. ModernHire an enterprise hiring platform recently released new research revealing that social media is not a valid or predictive hiring tool, cautioning recruiters on the risks of incorporating it into their hiring practices and platforms. Risks of Hiring with Social Media A recent whitepaper, What Does the Science Say: Social Media in Hiring, features a study conducted by Modern Hire’s team of advanced-degree industrial-organizational psychologists and data scientists, who set out to understand the validity of social media as a hiring tool by investigating whether any relevant information from a candidate’s LinkedIn profile is related to on-the-job performance. Specifically, Modern Hire’s study focused on job candidates in sales positions, measuring success on the job with employees’ sales performance metrics. With few exceptions, Modern Hire’s research results suggest that an employee’s LinkedIn profile elements are not strongly correlated with their sales performance metrics, meaning using LinkedIn profiles for candidate selection and vetting is not shown to be predictive of candidates’ on-the-job performance. “Social media is increasingly being leveraged in the hiring process without much policy or guidance around it,” said Eric Sydell, Ph.D. and EVP of Innovation at Modern Hire. “Our latest research demonstrates that, at least at this time, using social media in the hiring process offers little to no scientific value, and can even have an adverse impact on candidates during the recruiting and hiring process.” Social Media Hiring Bias While using social media as a hiring tool can be an innovative way to engage with candidates, it can also introduce bias into the hiring process. Many social media platforms contain protected class information, and as a result, using social media for anything beyond identifying prospective candidates –– especially when it comes to the evaluation and selection stages –– increases the risk of unconscious bias and adverse impact in the hiring process. Additionally, many candidates are not aware that their social media posts will be used by recruiters and hiring managers as part of the hiring evaluation process. With the exception of LinkedIn, prominent social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were built for personal –– not professional –– use, and it is not clear whether candidates intend for potential employers to use this information in hiring situations. As an alternative to leveraging social media in the hiring process, Modern Hire’s research suggests that recruiters should focus on using unbiased hiring practices that start with quality data, as well as predictive hiring tools that are validated and fair. “It’s difficult to predict what the future may hold for the use of social media in hiring,” said Mike Hudy, Ph.D. and Chief Science Officer at Modern Hire. “With the rapid, constant evolution in social media functionality and user preferences, practices that may be fair and legally defensible today could become outdated virtually overnight. It’s important to choose hiring strategies and technologies that are scientifically proven to improve hiring experiences for candidates and results for companies.” From Tik-tok to Twitter, employers need to proceed with caution using these tools to evaluate candidates. Similarly employees need to be aware of what they post on these channels so a tool like what LifeBrand is offering employers might be an interesting benefit to give your employees to help them avoid a bad social media reputation.
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Human Resources
2 min read
The Role of the HR Business Partner - Emissary.ai
You’ve heard the term HR business partner. You may even have that role at your company. But what is an HR business partner does and how is the role different from other HR professionals? The Society for Human Resource Management describes an HR business partner as “responsible for aligning business objectives with employees and management in designated business units.” A simpler definition comes from SHRM columnist and HR author Martin Yate who says an HR business partner is “a senior individual contributor who supports and collaborates with one or more of the organization’s managers.” Where other HR professionals handle all manner of administrative tasks like compensation, benefits administration and company policies, an HR business partner is tasked with helping individual departments and their leaders and supervisors with managing and developing their team to best achieve the business goals of the company. The role combines a high degree of strategic thinking with the ability to craft and implement solutions to talent management challenges. An HR business partner doesn’t have a supervisory role, instead works collaboratively with managers, coaching them and providing performance management advice. They also evaluate skills, anticipate future needs and help to retain and hire the best talent. What do HR Business Partners Do? In some ways the role is similar to what HR generalists and managers do. There is overlap, especially in smaller organizations where generalists wear multiple hats. The difference is that HR generalist and managers spend most of their time focused on operational matters and managing the HR staff. Business professor and HR thought leader first suggested what became the HR business partner in his 1997 book Human Resource Champions. He argued that human resources has four roles: Administrative Expert; Employee Champion; Change Agent; Strategic Partner. An individual might fill just one role, more often they would fill multiple roles. At the time, HR was still emerging from its “personnel office” past. The notion of being a strategic partner to the company and more directly to individual units and managers was innovative and appealing. Large organizations took the suggestions literally, creating the business partner role, supported by HR specialists in a center of excellence and service centers to handle administrative matters. Ten years after the book was published, Ulrich wrote in HR Magazine that “Being a business partner may be achieved in many HR roles.” He explained, “Instead of measuring process (for example, how many leaders received 40 hours of training), business partners are encouraged to measure results (for example, the impact of the training on business performance).” Since that article was published, Ulrich says the role of HR business partner has evolved so much it should now be thought of as HR business partner 2.0. He list 13 “pivots” in the job. For example, in describing who HR’s customers are, he says, “HR stakeholders have evolved from internal (employees, line managers, organization) to external (customers, investors, community).” Ulrich’s pivots can be seen in organizations of all sizes. Even in smaller organizations the HR generalists recognize the need to take a holistic view of the company’s needs. HR’s Reliance on Business Partners Large organizations have expanded their reliance on HR business partners, though many, as a McKinsey analysis found, still “get dragged into transactional and operational issues. In large measure, this occurs because most HRBPs retain some operational role.” To achieve the strategic influence and success Ulrich first proposed more than 20 years, HR business partners need to access all the tools of an HR professional and have the business acumen to understand financial reports and balance sheets, market challenges and customer needs. McKinsey, a global business consultancy, proposes renaming the job “Talent Value Leader” to emphasize the “different set of responsibilities and accountabilities.” Whether they’re a talent value leader or HR business partner, McKinsey concludes that the job today must “blend talent, business and financial experience to be able to identify which talent levers can yield the most business value.” John Zappe Reporting
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Human Resources
3 min read
The Good and Bad of Counteroffers - Emissary.ai
As the competition for talent grows more intense, companies are focusing – or should — as much effort on retaining their best people as they are on recruiting. One of the tools they’re using is the counteroffer. When a valued employee announces they’re leaving for a new job, two-thirds of hiring managers admit to making a counteroffer to get them to stay, according to a survey by the job search firm LiveCareer. They do that recognizing a counteroffer won’t keep the employee long-term – the majority of workers leave within two years anyway. “In my experience counteroffers don’t work 95% of the time,” Jenny McCauley says in an article in the Harvard Business Review. “And when they do work it’s usually only for the short term — someone who wanted to leave is eventually going to leave anyway, “ adds McCauley who’s worked in HR at JPMorgan Chase and Hilton Hotels and was SVP of administration at Southwestern Energy when the article was published. Yet as the article notes, 80% of HR leaders and almost the same percentage of senior business executives say there are times to extend and accept a counteroffer. The question is when to offer one and when should an employee accept one and stay. There are definite pros and cons to weigh. Visier, an HR data analytics company, not surprisingly, says HR and hiring managers should take an analytical approach to deciding whether to make a counteroffer. With 75% of employees in the LiveCareer survey reporting that money – on average a 20% pay hike – was the top reason for accepting a new job, Visier suggests companies begin their counteroffer decision-making with compensation. How does the employee’s comp compare to their peers and the employee group? Do they perform at a higher level? It’s also useful to see how the person compares to others working at a similar level but in different functions. “This comparison helps you determine how well she is being compensated within her existing pay band,” says Visier. The next step is to assess the employee’s value to the company. Top performers are universally more productive than their peers. How much more productive depends on the job, but studies put the floor at about 40% to over 400%. If the individual is a strong performer, what is their future value? The Visier formula takes into account the employee’s tenure at the company and their growth potential. This is something of a balancing act between rising star with a short tenure, untested by adversity, and a longer tenured, steady performer who may have reached their peak. In addition, the effect on the team, the work unit and the company as a whole has to be considered. Research shows that it can cost anywhere from 1x to 3x salary to replace a worker in a significant, white-collar or professional role. This takes into account the recruiting and training cost, the effect on the team that has to cover the work, as well as the loss productivity until the new hire is up to speed. If the new job offer is from a competitor, the impact is easily far greater. Even when the analysis points to a counteroffer, many HR professionals and hiring managers say they’re a bad idea. Almost a third in the LiveCareer survey said counteroffers hurt morale and create trust issues with the employee – if they were willing to leave once, they’ll do it again. Nor, say 45%, is it a long-term retention solution. As it turns out, there’s a good deal of evidence to support that. The survey found 57% of employees who accepted a counteroffer were gone in two years; 17% left in less than one. An HR executive told the Society for Human Resources Management, “Our theory is that anyone who can get another job can also get more money. And if we’re pushed into making promises about future promotions to keep someone on board, it gets to be real messy, and I have to wonder about that employee’s commitment.” For some of the same reasons, employees should think long and hard before accepting a counteroffer. Nearly a quarter of senior executives in a survey by global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles advised turning down a counteroffer. 40% said accepting one would adversely affect their career. A counteroffer with a pay bump may be tempting, but more often there were other reasons behind the decision to consider another job. The LiveCareer survey found 62% of workers left because the new job was a better overall fit. More than 4 out of 10 said it offered a better career path, better work assignments and because they simply desired a change.. Just as employers should take an objective look before making a counteroffer, employees should do the same. In the end, 45% of all counteroffers are turned down.
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Recruiting
3 min read
Digital Strategies for Campus Recruiting - Emissary.ai
“Recruiting with pizza parties is cancelled,” reads a Handshake graphic that cleverly summarizes the state of college recruiting 2021. It’s as much a nod to the impact of Covid’s effect on campus recruiting as it is a statement of how the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digital recruiting strategies. Handshake, the leading college recruiting platform, says 97% of colleges will host virtual career events this fall; 93% of employers will do the same. While that’s largely out of necessity, employers and the students themselves are finding virtual recruiting offers advantages over the traditional in-person job fairs and meetings. Half of the 2,400 students in a Handshake survey said they preferred virtual interviewing. Of those who attended a virtual recruiting event, three-quarters appreciated the schedule flexibility; 71% said it was less intimidating, and two-thirds said virtual recruiting was more convenient. Even after the pandemic ends, 87% of students want at least some recruiting to be virtual; 54% want half of the recruiting events to be virtual. Employers and college career center leaders agree. 79% of employers and 92% of colleges said they will continue to attend and offer virtual recruiting events. Many employers were experimenting with digital strategies in the years before Covid shut down college campuses. They found success with a multi-pronged approach that included a robust career site aimed at Gen Z, a strong and responsive social media presence, video and livestream events and in-person and virtual job fairs. Yello, a recruiting platform provider with a campus specialty, surveyed students and recruiting professionals to discover the most effective digital recruiting strategies. Recruiters said webinars/livestreams and group and one-on-one video interviews produced the best results and helped them meet the most students. Those relying exclusively on campus job board postings and virtual career fairs were less successful and met the fewest candidates. The 1,000 students in the survey agreed that video interviews, livestream events, virtual coffee chats and phone interviews were all effective ways to connect with them. But they also scored email and social media higher than did the recruiters. As the evidence suggests, talent acquisition professionals need to go beyond virtual job fairs to include multiple methods of connecting with students. A well-thought out digital strategy should include at least all or most of the following. Campus Recruiting: Video Nothing beats video for driving results. Both students and recruiters agree video interviews are the most effective part of a digital strategy. Video interviewing is even more valued by students of color, according to the Handshake survey, which makes it a critical part of reaching diverse communities. Video also has an important role in building brand awareness and engaging students in the company culture. Video clips on the organization’s career oages and on its social media sites – Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tock – put a face on the company, giving candidates a look at what it’s like to work there. Campus Recruiting: Webinars and livestreams Colleges are livestreaming events to recruit students. Employers are doing the same, livestreaming company tours, conversations with employees and company leaders, and Q&As on career opportunities and company culture. More narrowly focused webinars that target specific departments or majors engage students by discussing career trends and the job market and industry developments.. One important advantage these two digital strategies offer is the ability to collect names and email addresses of attendees. With students ranking email high among their favorite ways of connecting with employers, this allows recruiters to follow up with students. Campus Recruiting: Coffee chats These are informal conversations that are not interviews. In pre-Covid days, some recruiters would Tweet out an invitation to meet at the local Starbucks to talk about the industry, get career advice and learn about their company. The virtual equivalent takes the same approach. They may be one-on-one or group chats. One effective technique is to hold a post-webinar coffee chat to continue the conversation. Campus Recruiting: Social media A mistake employers make is to use their social media presence as little more than a bulletin board, posting company news and announcing events. A more valuable approach is to engage students by hosting livestreams or live conversations with recruiters. Comment on important developments to show industry leadership. Respond to questions about company culture and discuss training and advancement opportunities. Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok make it easy to target by the use of hashtags. For Facebook and similar sites consider a separate campus recruiting page. Don’t overlook the review sites like Glassdoor, CareerBliss and Fishbowl. Students don’t. So know what’s posted there and be prepared for tough, even uncomfortable questions. Answer them honestly. The digitally savvy generation Today’s college students are as comfortable using tablets and smartphones as previous generations were using typewriters and fax machines. To reach them, employers were adapting their college recruiting strategy to include a strong digital component well before the pandemic. Now, three cycles into Covid-limited campus recruiting, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found almost 8-in-10 employers are continuing to increase their virtual recruiting options. Digital strategies are still evolving, but as Yello’s survey showed, the most effective recruiting is still personal. John Zappe reporting.
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Recruiting
1 min read
Meaning of RPO in Recruitment - Emissary.ai
RPO is a frequent term used in recruitment circles but also brings some confusion. According to the RPOA (Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association), RPO is “a form of business process outsourcing (BPO) where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external service provider.” A company can hire an RPO agency to provide all staff and typically that staff uses the company’s recruitment technology and offices. They are essentially acting as full time staff despite being employed at the RPO itself. It’s very typical for RPO companies to work with their clients for many years, while working to improve their recruiting processes. Should Your Company Use an RPO Provider? RPO has traditionally been used at high volume recruiting organizations. These employers outsource this level of recruiting in order to save on costs. But there are now more flexible options of an RPO company, meaning that smaller companies have started to engage providers such as having them source/shortlist candidates. More RPOs are now offering various strategic solutions to employers to help them compete in the war for talent. How RPO’s Work There are typically three ways you can engage an RPO provider. On-Demand: Based on a specified contract with a defined number of roles and timeframe. Department-Based: This is where the RPO company takes over an entire function such as IT staffing. Full Service: All internal recruiting and hiring is taken over by the RPO firm as an in-house team. And these are the services they usually offer; Strategic Planning: The provider will work with employers to understand their hiring needs and craft a plan to meet those recruitment goals such as forecasting, recruitment process and more. Recruitment Marketing: RPO providers market client jobs through job boards, social media, referrals, and networking to drive candidate exposure to jobs and employer brand (a major differentiator from staffing solutions). Sourcing Candidates: Sourcing talent includes initial reach outs and explaining the employer value proposition to potential candidates in order to keep the pipeline full. Candidate assessments: Providers will also assess candidates at the beginning of the recruiting process to ensure they meet minimum requirements and have interest in the role. Candidate Experience: The overall recruiting process includes how candidates are treated and how easily and enjoyable the experience is. RPO’s will typically “own” this highly critical function because that experience is reflective of your employer brand. Who are the Major RPO’s? The major RPO providers today include companies such as Alexander Mann, Cielo, Orion Talent, PeopleScout, FutureStep and Pontoon.
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Human Resources
2 min read
What‘s an Intake Meeting? - Emissary.ai
Every talent acquisition professional knows that one of the most important steps to a successful recruitment campaign – maybe even the most important – is the intake meeting. Why? Because intake meetings accelerate the hiring process by aligning the hiring manager and recruiter on the requirements of the job and the type of candidate that will make the best hire. Yet 55% of organizations don’t require an intake meeting. Many of these are smaller employers where recruiters may have dozens of jobs to fill and lack the training to understand the importance of an intake meeting. Yet these are the very organizations where intake meetings can have the biggest impact in filling jobs quickly. What is an intake meeting? It’s the first step in the hiring process. It’s when the recruiter and hiring manager get together to discuss the skills needed to do the job and the background and experience the manager most wants. Dig Deeper on Intake Meetings But an intake meeting is more than a review of the job description. At an intake meeting the recruiter will dig deeper to understand what the “must haves” are in a candidate, as well as the “nice to haves.” The recruiter will also seek to discover the type of personality and temperament that will make a hire a good fit with the team, the organizational culture and the manager’s leadership style. One of the most important parts of an intake meeting is managing expectations. A CareerBuilder survey found that 20% of the time hiring managers have unrealistic expectations and compensation ranges that are out of sync with the market. Without an intake meeting, there might be little chance of even recognizing these disconnects, let alone resolving them. And that almost guarantees a lengthy search time, candidates that disappoint and an unhappy relationship between hiring manager and recruiter. “It’s important in setting the hiring manager’s expectations for who’s out there and what they’ll require in terms of pay and benefits,” says Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder’s former chief human resources officer. Preparing for Intake Meetings Coming to intake meetings prepared with data showing what competitors are paying for the same job and what the talent pipeline is like will help bring a hiring manager’s expectations in line with market reality. Having this kind of data also demonstrates the recruiter is on top of the talent market, which will make it easier to gain acceptance by the hiring manager of other recommendations. Intake meetings themselves are more like a question and answer session or an interview than a free-wheeling discussion. To keep these meetings focused and productive recruiters come prepared with a series of questions covering the nature of the job, the specifics of comp, work schedule, responsibilities, skills, both technical and so-called soft skills, start date, the number of candidates and interviews, and so on. Once these details are covered, the questions should be about fit. There’s no point bringing in candidates who check all the technical and skills boxes, only to find their personality isn’t a good fit with the team. Questions here go to management style, the need for collaboration and teamwork, opportunities and what the manager considers success. There’s no shortage of guides answering the question of what is an intake meeting and explaining how to conduct one. The questions they offer – and there are intake meeting templates available online – may differ in the specifics, however they all agree on the importance of holding an intake meeting before beginning the search for candidates. Hiring managers may be reluctant to take the time to meet. Others may be doubtful of their value. But they’ll come to be believers when they see the results: candidates that more precisely meet their requirements and their expectations, resulting in making better hires in less time. ### John Zappe Reporting ###
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Human Resources
3 min read
Best Practices for Managing Remote Employees - Emissary.ai
As more and more companies embrace hybrid work, they’re finding managing remote workers requires more than good communication and collaboration tools. Maintaining the company culture is at least as big a challenge, say business leaders. Employees add training and career development to the list. The experience over the last 18 months has taught us much about effectively managing remote workers. Managers have learned that teams can be as productive – or more so – working remotely, which is an important part of trust, an essential part of successfully managing remote workers. In fact, trust is one of the nine tips the research and advisory firm Gartner offers for managing remote workers. “Managers may be concerned and even frustrated to lose the constant visibility they once had into their employees, but don’t respond by micromanaging,” cautions Gartner. In our list here of some best practices tips for managing remote workers, we put trust first. Its importance can’t be overrated and not just for those working remotely. It is fundamental to building a strong relationship between manager and employee and manager and team whether onsite or working remotely. From multiple sources, we’ve collected the best practices and tips and condensed them into top five with trust being #1. Managing Remote Tip: Communicate in multiple ways It doesn’t matter how you do it – sophisticated tools make it easier –staying in regular contact with your remote workers is critical. Tailor the method of communication to the nature of the message. A tool like Slack is ideal for short and quick notes and reminders. Email is best for longer messages, updates, detailed instructions for a project and the like. Choose video calls for team meetings and regular one-on-ones, but don’t just make them all business. Encourage remote workers to share personal stories – water cooler talk – to build camaraderie and strengthen interpersonal relationships. McKinsey, a global business consultancy, says, “Videoconferencing, which, compared with audio, improves the ability for participants to show understanding, anticipate responses, provide nonverbal information, enhance verbal descriptions, manage pauses, and express attitudes.” Managing Remote Tip: Set clear expectations early and often Even when an entire team works together in an office, misunderstandings and ambiguity about expectations, assignments and policies occur. Remote work only compounds the problem. Setting clear expectations, communicating them regularly, ensuring everyone has heard and understands what they are and getting their buy-in avoids confusion, disagreements or worse. “There will be questions,” a business executive tells the Society for Human Resource Management. “Be accessible and provide clarity on priorities, milestones, performance goals and more. Outline each team member’s availability and ensure you can reach them when needed.” Managing Remote Tip: Build relationships; be transparent This requires good and frequent communication, but goes a step further. With an onsite team a manager will get to know their family, their hobbies and how they spent their weekend just by being around them and hearing people talk. Managing remote workers requires a deliberate effort to learn those details, which are so much a part of building personal relationships. Just as team meetings should intentionally include small talk, every conversation with a remote employee should include this kind of personal connection. Individuals may feel awkward about intentionally sharing even such benign details as their plans for the weekend, so jump start the conversation by sharing first. Set up a Slack or other communication channel for team chit-chat and contribute to it. With members scattered across multiple time zones, rotate the starting time of all-hands calls. Never schedule them solely for your convenience. Be as transparent as possible. Treat each member of the team equally. If there’s company news to share, inform everyone at the same time. Honest and regular feedback is even more important for remote workers who lack the visible and subtle cues of onsite workers. Feedback should be via scheduled one-on-ones as well as employee-driven performance conversations. In these conversations discuss career development and opportunities for training and stretch-assignments. Regular feedback and recognition play an important role in managing remote workers as it lets them know where they stand and how they’re doing. Managing RemoteTip: Recognition is essential Recognize workers and their contributions publicly. Some managers make “brags and praise” a part of every meeting, giving workers a chance to point out their own successes and to call out their colleagues for their efforts. Gartner says, “Effective recognition not only motivates the recipient, but serves as a strong signal to other employees of behaviors they should emulate.” It reinforces the team and organization culture and, as studies and research have demonstrated, consistent recognition improves engagement. In General If these tips sound familiar, they should be. They are the fundamentals of all good management. Managing remote workers amplifies their importance. The lack of personal and often impromptu face-to-face interactions amongst co-workers can easily create feelings of isolation and disengagement if managers aren’t proactive in nurturing a feeling of belonging and team. Especially for hybrid teams, where some work remotely and others are present in the office, it may be easier to assign a plum project to a worker you see every day. That signals to those working remotely that you play favorites and their career prospects are dimmed because they aren’t present. Leaders therefore need to always be aware there’s truth in the old adage that “out of sight is out of mind” and consciously work to stay in touch with their remote workers and treat them equally. Managing remote workers does take greater skill and a different style of leadership. Not every manager is a good fit for leading a remote team. Those who are and those who invest the time and training to learn how, find the successes and satisfaction are every bit the equal of leading a team you can see. ### John Zappe contribution ###
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