Resources
Human Resources
2 min read
How to Deal with a Difficult Hiring Manager
Hiring managers can sometimes try a corporate recruiter’s patience. One of the most common complaints I hear is they don’t provide timely feedback of a candidate they just interviewed. So what can you do to prevent such behavior? I’ll get to those answers shortly but consider this scenario which I just read about on social media. A recruiter stated she recently started with a new employer and is the sole recruiter for the company. She currently has 51 requisitions (a huge burden if you ask me) that she’s trying to fill on her own and is not getting anywhere with a few members of upper management. She’s extremely frustrated of course. She goes on to say that her passion for recruiting runs deep and all she wants is to provide a great candidate experience but having to relying on others for that success is getting to her. I feel for this recruiter. It sounds like that company doesn’t have the greatest leadership or cares about her success. If you are an internal recruiter, your number one goal is to develop relationships with your hiring managers. Take them to lunch. Schedule monthly calls with them. Do any and everything in your power to know how their internal teams operate and what your leaders need to be successful. Give yourself time to connect with each one of your internal leaders for no more than 10-15 mins and it will help build a solid foundation moving forward. Hiring Manager Tactics Here are some other tactics to help bridge the divide between you and the hiring manager. Keep in mind you may be walking into a situation where the previous recruiter provided less than ideal candidates, or that let them not respond and did everything electronically, deferring to the managers timetable. Prioritize those that do respond in timely manner. Hopefully word spreads that those that do get better treatment from you. Educate hiring managers that the hiring market is very tough right now, there are (many) more jobs than candidates and therefore you need to make a difference in your overall candidate experience to attract the best talent. Sit them down, try to understand their previous experience and expectations, and begin to teach them the real value of a great Recruiter! Set up a weekly call…don’t give them a choice. If they don’t join, loop in their superior. Hold “kick-off” calls with hiring managers. Review the process, address any scheduling conflicts, set SLAs for submitting and follow up. Have a steady rotation of reaching out Call/Text/Email…perhaps sprinkled with a friendly appearance into their office. Tell them if you do not get feedback on rejects , I can’t work on better quality profiles going further. Template communications for non-responsive HMs Talk to managerBe ready to define/defend how it’s impacted hiring or brand or candidate experience. Created a prioritization matrix – if your role is a top priority / critical position, that comes with certain expectations – such as mandatory weekly touch point with recruiting, 24-48 hour SLA on submittals, etc. Remember that hiring managers are also busy, often drowning in work and just need a steady, friendly nudge every now and then. If the problem runs deeper you may want to talk to your manager to see how they can help. A good rule of thumb is to cover the expectation for feedback in the intake, again when they move to interview and set up debrief calls after the last interview. Then email to request the feedback in writing if that gets you nowhere. Put your foot down and tell them that an offer can’t be made until ALL candidate feedback has been received It’s important to remain compliant with OFCCP standards and to ensure candidates can be declined with the best experience possible. Bad candidate experience impacts the future pipeline when word gets out. Hammer that message into your hiring manager’s brains whenever possible.
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Human Resources
3 min read
The 4 Most Common Hybrid Work Models
It hasn’t yet displaced the tradition of working in an office for 40 hours a week, but the hybrid work model is rapidly being adopted by companies of all sizes. Here’s some examples of how companies are tackling the issue. Ford is allowing its 30,000 salaried office workers to work from home most of the time, coming into the office for meetings and group projects only when face-to-face interaction is considered essential. Microsoft transitioned to a hybrid work model allowing the majority of its 160,000 workers to work from home up to 50% of the time. Managers are able to hire from anywhere and establish their own team norms, which could mean working remotely most of the time. Google adopted a modified hybrid work model of three days in the office and two days working remotely. Workers can apply to go completely remote based on what they do and the needs of their team. CEO Sundar Pichai said, “60% of Googlers are coming together in the office a few days a week, another 20% are working in new office locations, and 20% are working from home.” These are just a few of the companies that have adopted flexible work policies combining remote work with some office time. While several companies – Slack, Twitter and Spotify among them – have decided to go entirely remote, the majority are adopting a “hybrid work model.” The name can be misleading, suggesting there is one formula when, in reality, there are several. What they have in common is that employees get to work from home at least part of every workweek. Hybrid Was Already in Demand Hybrid work began gaining momentum long before the Covid pandemic made remote work a necessity. Gallup’s State of the American Workplace found that in 2016 43% of workers spent at least some of their work time away from the office. By 2019, 48% said they worked remotely at least one day a week; 30% did so full-time. One of the obstacles was management concern that productivity would slip with too many remote workers. The pandemic proved just the opposite. Workers were more productive. They invested some of the commute time saved in work. With the majority of workers preferring to work remotely at least three days a week, 83% of companies in a PwC survey said they were adopting a hybrid work model. A quarter said they would be fully or mostly remote. Photo: PWC It’s not just U.S. workers who want to work remotely at least part of the workweek. Adecco found workers globally echoing the PwC findings about remote work preferences. Globally, 53% of workers want to work a hybrid week where at least half their work time is remote. What Employees Want from Hybrid Work “The last 18 months has proved that remote work does not come with a loss of productivity, and that a more inclusive and flexible way of working is possible. More than three quarters of workers want to retain flexibility over their own schedule, going back into the office, but on their own terms,” said Adecco. Now, that the discussion has shifted from “Should we do it” to “How do we do it,” organizations are tinkering with various iterations of the hybrid work model. Here are the most common types: Remote focused – In this model, the default is for everyone to work remotely. Meetings are conducted online. Only workers with jobs that cannot be performed remotely will be required to be on-site. This model is most appropriate for companies with knowledge products, such as software development, consulting, accounting and creative services. Office focused – Workers at companies with this model are expected to be on-site, with exceptions determined on an individual or team basis. This model is common where the majority of employees routinely deal with customers face-to-face, such as in retail, consumer banking, food service and hospitality. Companies may provide flexible work schedules and in some cases, are establishing co-work spaces to reduce employee commute time. Professional staff or salaried office workers may be offered more opportunities for remote work. Employee option – This is the Ford model. Employees who have worked remotely during the pandemic can choose to continue working from home. They’ll come into the office for meetings and certain other activities as determined by their manager. Mixed – This is the most common type of all the multiple hybrid models. Employees spend part of the work week in the office and part working remotely, which may be at home or at a co-work space. How many days in the office vs. working remotely vary with the company, though the majority seem to be leaning toward three days onsite and two days remote. All these hybrid models are a work in progress. Each company will experiment with the right mix of remote, onsite and flexible co-working arrangements. The only certainty, as PwC said in its most recent Pulse Survey is that “an all in-person workplace is no longer the norm. “The challenge for leaders: bringing out the best aspects of face-to-face teaming for all employees, whether in the office or not.” ### John Zappe Contribution ###
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Recruiting Tactics
2 min read
Why You Should Be Posting to Niche Job Boards
Employers who post their openings to just generalist job boards are missing out on a rich source of qualified candidates from hundreds of niche recruitment platforms. Indeed.com, ZipRecruiter, Monster and other generalist job boards attract millions of job seekers each day, so it would seem to make sense to post openings there. But if that’s the extent of your recruiting campaign, you need to know why you should be posting to niche job boards, too. Unlike generalist sites that have every kind of job, niche sites are specialists. They list jobs only in a specific field or industry or geography, or that target certain communities or societies. Instead of getting the 5 or 10 million visitors a day that Indeed gets, niche sites might get a few hundred to several thousand job seekers a month. That’s a good thing, as it eliminates the curious, the unqualified, but hopeful and others attracted purely by the pay or benefits. Even with sophisticated search tools, you can guess what the odds are the candidate you want will find your job among the 2 or 3 or 4 million listings on a generalist job board. 5 reasons to Use Niche Job Boards If that’s not reason enough why you should be posting to niche job boards, here are five more: Reach a targeted audience Because of the specialization of niche job boards, you are much more likely to find just the candidates with the skills and experience you want than on a general job board. Candidates coming to a niche site are looking only for the kind of jobs the site offers. As Susan Vitale, chief marketing officer for iCIMS told the Society for Human Resource Management, “Niche job boards are particularly useful for cutting through the clutter and finding talent for hard-to-fill roles, specialized positions, specific industries — or to tap into unique candidate audiences, such as military veterans.” Candidate quality is higher Niche job boards tend to attract only those candidates who are professionals in the field. These candidates have the specialized skills and relevant background. They’re attracted by the type of work, the opportunity of the job and they are more knowledgeable about companies and culture because of their networking than are the job seekers at one of the generalist job boards. Connect with passive job seekers The best niche boards offer far more than just a collection of job openings. Many, especially those of professional and trade associations, began as a source of news and information about their industry. They built a specialized community of engaged individuals committed to staying abreast of developments in their field and improving their skills. They may not be actively looking for a job, but could be interested if the right opportunity were to come along. Less competitive Instead of being one employer and one job on a generalist site with over a million jobs and thousands of employers, a niche site gives your job far higher visibility. Since most niche sites sell listings on a duration basis (a week, a month or longer), your job is going to show up in a search based on how well it fits, rather than how much you paid for a top position. Opportunities to build your brand Just by posting to a niche site sets you apart from your competitors and shows job seekers you know where the “real” talent goes. Mandy niche sites also offer companies opportunities to reach out to their members directly, sponsor webinars and continuing learning credits and post news of their organization. According to a recent iHire study, overall job board usage is up. 58.9% of employers said they increased their reliance on job boards and online recruiting platforms in the past year. Further, 49.6% said they do most of their recruiting through job boards, and 23.4% said they do all their recruiting through job boards. Just remember that niche job boards don’t have the traffic of the major job sites but they do offer better quality, particularly in some hard to fill industries. So it’s more about quality than quantity. ### John Zappe contributed
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behavioral interviews
3 min read
What Is a Behavioral Interview?
Despite the widely cherished view that an interview is critical to hiring the best candidates, nearly every study of the question has found practically little predictive value to the usual interview methods. A 2013 research paper bluntly declares, “Unstructured interviews are a ubiquitous tool for making screening decisions despite a vast literature suggesting that they have little validity.” Wharton Business School Professor Peter Cappelli echoes that observation in the Harvard Business Review: “Just winging it and asking whatever comes to mind is next to useless.” Is there an alternative? The answer is the behavioral interview. Defining Behavioral Interviews What is a behavioral interview? It’s a disciplined approach to predicting future performance by evaluating a job candidate on how they handled specific situations in the past. Instead of a free-wheeling interview focusing largely on technical skills or answering hypotheticals, a behavioral interview aims to learn how a candidate used their skills, knowledge and talent by asking for specific examples of what they did to accomplish goals. When structured, meaning every candidate is asked the same set of questions, studies prove behavioral interviews have a predictive value significantly higher than nearly every other method of evaluating performance. What is a behavioral interview like in practice? Here’s an example drawn from a guide published by the Society for Human Resource Management: Interview question: “Describe a situation in which you used persuasion to convince someone to see things your way.” Follow up questions to ask: “Tell me a little more about the situation” “What exactly did you do? “ “What was your specific role in this?” “What was the result?” In this example, the interviewer is probing for how the candidate works in a team setting, how they handle conflict and how they communicate their ideas. How they behaved in the past is a strong predictor of how they will in the future. According to Professor Katherine Hansen of Albright College’s Experiential Learning & Career Development Center, behavioral interviews accurately predict future job performance as much as 55% of the time compared to 10% for the typical situational or conversational interview. To be successful, behavioral interviews require planning to determine the competencies to look for. SHRM’s guide tells us recruiters and hiring managers need to identify the “knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) most critical for success” for the specific job, as well as the behaviors that are important to the organization. This latter point goes to the question of cultural fit. One of the most common approaches to developing the behavioral questions to determining competencies is STAR: Situation, Task, Action and Result. In the example above, the initial question asks about a situation. The second question in the follow-up list asks about the action the candidate took. The third question seeks to elicit details about the task, while the last asks about the result. SHRM’s guide recommends creating a rating scale, and offers a sample template. There are multiple other templates online, many from assessment vendors and colleges. What they all have in common is an insistence that ratings be clearly defined and supplemented with notes and comments in real-time. A rating system allows for easy comparison among multiple candidates and, if multiple interviews are involved, among each of the evaluators. Structured behavioral interviews can reduce bias Besides improving the predictive value of job performance, structured behavioral interviews can reduce bias because all candidates are asked the same questions and all questions are directly tied to the competencies required for the job. For that same reason, candidates will get a better feel for what the job entails. Despite their superiority over unstructured situational and conversation interviews, the relevance of what is a behavioral interview to what it was in the past is becoming less clear. Job seekers can easily find lists of stock behavioral questions, many with suggested answers. Though SHRM’s guide explains how to tailor questions to the specific organization, job requirements and culture, too many organizations will simply choose their questions from these lists. Savvy candidates will practice their answers, using the STAR system to give hiring managers the answers they want. There’s also a suspicion that past performance may no longer be as compelling a predictor of future performance as it once was. Artificial intelligence, globalization of markets, the nature of competition as well as the effect of the Covid pandemic are changing the nature of work dramatically. With workers having to learn new skills and evolve competencies sometimes in months, how a candidate handled a situation last year may be less important than how they will handle something entirely new and unforeseen next year. Rather than walk away from examining past behavior entirely, behavioral interviews may need to include questions about how a candidate would apply their experience to similar situations complicated by today’s changing workplace. As professor and recruiting thought leader Dr. John Sullivan says, “Hiring managers should be less concerned about how someone acted in the past and more concerned about how they will modify their behavior and act differently in today’s completely changed environment at your company.” *** John Zappe Contributed
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Recruiting Trends
3 min read
The Talent Shortage (and what to do about it)
The talent shortage currently faced by most employers is at a 15 year high according to one report recently published by the Manpower Group. A quick summary of that report shows the difficulty of filling jobs today; “Hiring optimism has returned to levels not seen since the start of the pandemic yet that optimism is being tempered by the highest levels of global talent shortages in 15 years with 69% of employers reporting difficulty filling vacancies. European employers are reporting the most difficulty filling open roles with the biggest impacts being felt in France, Romania, and Italy. In the U.S. employers report their most optimistic hiring intentions in more than 20 years, driven by Hospitality & Leisure as states open up.” And the shortage of talent appears to be here to stay. Korn Ferry says that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people. It’s happening in part due to demographics. There simply isn’t enough new talent to replace the retiring ones. In this country, the majority of baby boomers will have moved out of the workforce by 2030, but people are having less kids which leads to smaller pool of talent. 69% of Employers Can’t Find Enough Talent The talent shortage, which is generally defined as the disparity between an employer’s hiring needs and what available skills candidates have to offer—has a variety of causes. The global pandemic has become the biggest cause of course, which only exasperated an already tight labor market before it hit. In 2019 Manpower said 59% of employers could not fill jobs fast enough and that number has increased to 69% in 2021. A significant rise in just two years. Throw in the fact that many office workers want to be remote, at least some of the time, companies are struggling to figure out the right mix. In that same report 8 in 10 workers say they want a better work-life balance. Remote work is the best way they see that happening. When LinkedIn proposed more in office hours employees pushed back. They quickly changed their minds over worries of turnover and now allow workers to work exclusively from home. Flexible working arrangements appear to be the most coveted of all employee benefits. But let’s take a look at what else you can do to address the problem. How to Combat a Talent Shortage Boost your brand and make culture more visible. In times like this employers need to rise up above the other employers. You are all hiring so the companies that can create messaging and stories that resonate with active and passive candidates will get more applicants. Give candidates a reason to come work for you and shout it from the rooftops. Use social media, your career site and your job postings to create a unique message that candidates will want to engage with. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your job marketing efforts. Sometimes those experiments can pay off if you think outside the box. Be proactive – start sourcing. Employers need to employ proactive strategies such as sourcing candidates on a regular basis to keep the hiring pipeline full. A number of online services can help you do this such as Visage.jobs or Recruiter.com. Or you can simply go the traditional route and hire recruiters or staffing firms to do the sourcing for you. It’s a time intensive strategy but it works if you make the effort. Empower Internal Mobility. Leverage your employees to fill talent internally. Talent mobility is a big trend in the enterprise world and we are seeing the major software vendors like Workday and others beef up their internal mobility solutions. Providing employees with a career ladder not only keeps them learning but improves retention rates and even acts as a recruiting tool. By showing potential candidates how they can learn and advance in your organization, employers can attract more talent. Make it a point to have your employees skills in some kind of internal database. Maintain a viable employee referral program. Use your employees to spread your hiring message. This is probably the fastest way to increase applicants. By leveraging the social networks of your employees you greatly amplify your recruiting efforts in a way that costs you nearly nothing. Some employers even gasify this strategy by offering rewards and prizes to the employees that do the most sharing. So start creating content and links that your team can easily share and if you need to get some software to help manage it look into some employee advocacy vendors to help you launch that. Automate you’re hiring process. When you ask applicants it’s clear that employer communication is lagging. In a recent survey 46.8% of employers said that “unresponsive candidates” (not hearing back from applicants after reaching out) is a top online recruiting pain point. On the other hand, 48.8% of job seekers said the same about employers – they are frustrated with applying for jobs and receiving no response. Moving forward, both parties will need to commit to communicating with one another and say “no” to ghosting if they want to find the right hires and the right opportunities. Employers need to automate all standard communications and incorporate things like text messaging and interview scheduling to automate as much of the process as they can. Today’s candidates want easier ways to interact with you so take those pain points off the table and automate them. If anything, the global pandemic has taught us that now is the time to re-think how we attract talent. The workers of today want flexible, trusting work environments that help them blend work and home. The skills shortage may continue but those employers who embrace change in talent acquisition will find themselves ahead in the race for talent.
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Human Resources
3 min read
Why New Hires Fail and What to Do About It
One of recruiting’s secrets is that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months. It’s a shocking statistic that was first reported in 2005 by the leadership training and employee engagement firm Leadership IQ. It’s been confirmed by multiple studies, including several that broke new hires down by type and level of responsibility. Dr. John Sullivan, professor of human relations and a recruiting advisor to many of the largest companies in the world, reported that these studies found: 50% of hourly new hires quit or are fired in their first six months Between 40% and 60% of management new hires fail within 18 months. 40% of new CEOs fail in their first 18 months. Kevin Kelly, CEO of the global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, told the Financial Times, “We’ve found that 40 percent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months. It’s expensive in terms of lost revenue. It’s expensive in terms of the individual’s hiring. It’s damaging to morale.” As serious as the new hires fail rate is, recruiters and hiring managers are now coping with an equally troubling trend: candidates are “ghosting” recruiters – disappearing from the hiring process without notice — or just not showing up on the first day. At the same time, an increasing number of new hires are quitting within a few months, some within days of starting a new job. A Jobvite survey of 1,500 workers found 3-in-10 had quit a job in the first 90 days. 7% admitted to “ghosting” an employer after the interview. An Indeed survey of 4,000 job seekers found 29% of them had ghosted and nearly a quarter had accepted an offer but didn’t show up. As troubling as the ghosting trend is for employers, having new hires fail or suddenly quit is worse. Besides having to begin the recruiting process all over again, there’s a loss of productivity, a hit to team morale and the potential that others may choose to leave, a phenomenon known as “turnover contagion.” Estimates of the cost of turnover range from a low of around $4,500 for entry- and lower-level workers to more than 200% of salary for senior management. It’s tempting to blame the recruiting process. And there is some truth to that. The Leadership IQ study found poor interpersonal skills were most often the cause of new hires failing. They fail because: 26% can’t accept feedback 23% were unable to manage emotions 17% lacked motivation to excel 15% because of the wrong temperament for the job The lack of the right set of skills was the cause only 11% of the time. In hindsight, 82% of the 5,247 hiring managers surveyed admitted that in the interview there were “subtle clues that these employees would be headed for trouble,” but they were ignored. Other research suggests that the onboarding process bears as much responsibility, as well as an unrealistic or incomplete description of the job and the company culture. What can employers do to reduce the new hires fail rate? Leadship IQ offers this: “If managers focus more of their interviewing energy on candidates’ coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation, and temperament, their hiring success will improve.” Dr. Sullivan said employers must redesign their recruiting process to use “data that reveals which process elements accurately predict future success on the job.” He estimates that as much as 75% of the hiring decisions involve human intuition – a “gut” feeling – rather than hard data. Preventing new hire failures and quits starts with how the company portrays itself. Candidates need to get an accurate feel for what it’s like to work for the organization. “You want to give them the ability to self-select in, as well as self-select out,” says a whitepaper on “How to Hire for Success.” The guide echoes Sullivan and other experts in emphasizing the use of data in selection. Survey both top performers and those at the bottom to discover the work ethics, attributes and traits of each. Use these to develop a process to know exactly what qualities to look for – and what to avoid – in hiring. Train managers in behavioral interviewing. Develop a series of questions around the most common reasons why new hires fail, and probe for examples and situations where the candidate can show how they set and achieve goals, collaborate and handle disappointment. Onboarding is also key to reducing both the new hires fail rate and improving the retention of new workers. Sullivan and others advise making onboarding a long term process that includes career pathing and personalized training to give your new worker the skills – both hard and soft – to move along their own career path. Managers need to act as coaches, meeting frequently with their new team member to give them feedback on their performance and especially to get their feedback on the job. Bamboo HR research says what would make new hires want to stay is more attention from their manager, recognition for the work they do, clear guidelines and effective training. As professor and author Michael D. Watkins writes in the Harvard Business Review, “Onboarding is among the toughest types of job transitions. Why? Because new hires, even if they are experienced professionals, are unfamiliar with the business, don’t understand how things really work, lack established relationships, and have to adapt to a new culture. Research has shown that challenges in the latter two categories are the biggest reasons for quick turnover.” “Being systematic in onboarding,” he says, “Brings new employees up to speed 50% faster, which means they’re more quickly and efficiently able to contribute to achieving desired goals. Effective onboarding also dramatically reduces failure rates and increases employee engagement and retention.” Contributions by John Zappe
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Recruiting Trends
2 min read
Defining Talent Intelligence
There’s been a lot of talk among HR technology vendors when it comes to the phrase ‘talent intelligence‘. Many platforms now incorporate that term as part of their feature set but what does it actually mean? Especially to the average Human Resources person who might be using it. A recent thread on LinkedIn suggest the following as a definition; “Talent Intelligence is the application of external data relating to people, skills, jobs, functions, competitors, and geographies to drive business decisions.” But in a poll on that same thread there’s a slightly broader phrase that people seemed to gravitate towards; “Talent Intelligence is the augmentation of internal and external people data with the application of technology, science, insights and intelligence relating to people, skills, jobs, functions, competitors, and geographies to drive business decisions.” I think the phrase mainly evolves from the growing field of people analytics. Former ERE editor Todd Raphael said this recently about TI…”I think people analytics generally show what happened. For example diversity analytics showing where people dropped off at each part of the hiring process and where it was worse under which manager. On the other hand talent intelligence would be forward thinking forecasts. The middle school teacher could make a great product trainer. The restaurant general manager can make a great customer service department leader or logistics manager or something else. Forecasting to make decisions for the future.” In their rush to differentiate themselves a few vendors started redefining the term and now it’s being used more and more by others in the space. A growing number of player now identify their products as talent intelligence tools. Here’s a look at some of those tools who promise to deliver data about talent; retrain.ai – claims to be the first AI platform that breaks the data silos in your organization and synthesizes internal data with thousands of external data sources. By connecting three robust datasets about people, jobs and training programs, we generate useful, validated, unbiased and actionable workforce intelligence. Censia – The Censia Talent Intelligence Platform applies AI and machine learning to talent data enabling Talent Acquisition and HR professionals with continuous, extensive and actionable insights delivered as a headless solution via API. ENGAGE Talent – a talent intelligence platform that uses artificial intelligence to score the employment volatility within a company, in order to address retention, recruitment, and skill supply and demand gaps. LinkedIn – the use of data and insights to make people your competitive advantage. Includes data about skillsets, talent demand and supply. It’s clear that today’s employers need to stay up to date on what’s happening inside and outside their own talent datasets. Doing so allows you to make better decisions and forecasting future hiring needs. Understanding this data will help you; Keep your salary and benefits on par with competitors to attract top talent. Keep your recruiting and HR teams focused on the bigger picture like the candidate experience. Getting and keeping the right candidates to help reduce turnover and increase retention. Spot problem talent areas before they arise. However it is defined the talent intelligence sector is only going to grow in importance as HR becomes more data oriented. Michelle Saunders a global recruiting executive says talent intelligence should be viewed holistically—internal and external, just as the full talent life-cycle. “In order to drive informed decisions we need to leverage external benchmarking, business use case, skills/adjacent skills, competencies, capability building etc..It is also the reason why a company’s most potent indicator for retention is their competition.”
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Recruiting Trends
3 min read
The Rise of Digital Nomads
There’s a new class of workers who travel the world while working remotely. They are the digital nomads who discovered during the Covid shutdown they could just as easily work from a hostel, a campground or an RV as from an office. What makes these digital nomads different is that they are full-time employees with traditional jobs. Once mostly composed of freelancers, contract workers, and the self-employed, the nearly 11 million digital nomads now include millions of traditional job holders. Doubling in just one year, there’s now more than 6 million of them working almost anywhere they please. As a study by MBO Partners explains, “The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in major changes in the make-up of digital nomads. The biggest shift is that traditional job holders have been unleashed from their offices and many, instead of staying in one place, are taking to the road. In 2020, the number of traditional workers working as digital nomads grew 96 percent, from 3.2 million to 6.3 million.” The pandemic also increased the number of independent workers opting for the digital nomad lifestyle, but by a much smaller 12%, to 4.6 million. The pandemic prompted other changes in the ranks of digital nomads. Boomers, who previously accounted for 27% of the cohort, now make up 17%. GenXers declined by 3 points to 22%. The researchers say the decline in these two groups is due largely to Covid’s health risks “making them temporarily less interested in a nomadic lifestyle and more comfortable staying at home.” On the other hand younger workers jumped at the chance to work and travel domestically and abroad. Their share grew from 48% to 62%. By far more men than women are digital nomads. The split is 59% to 41%. The racial makeup, however, mirrors the U.S. population: 70% white, 14% African American, 7% Hispanic, 7% Asian, and 2% other. The study also found these workers to be far more technically savvy, better educated and they participate much more in work-related skills training than their stay at home counterparts. They’re also very satisfied (81%) or satisfied (9%) with their lifestyle. The same can’t be said for their employers, most of whom have no policies or programs and may not even know just how remote their remote workers are. When the pandemic forced companies to go virtual, like most other employers Morgan Stanley was expecting its employees to work from home. Most did. But a small, yet significant number discovered that remote could be anywhere in the world there’s internet access and cell service. So many became digital nomads that in June CEO James Gorman bluntly declared the company office was the place to be. “If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this ‘I’m in Colorado and working in New York and getting paid like I’m in New York.’ Sorry, that doesn’t work.” This geoarbitrage – workers from high-wage areas traveling to low-cost areas – isn’t the only issue rankling employers. There are legal concerns over labor laws and tax rules that vary from state to state and, even more significantly from country to country. Littler, the global employment law firm, saw the trend toward cross-border telecommuting as important enough to publish a special report. What to do about “Global COVID Nomads discusses the legal issues and compliance risks employers face when their employee travel outside the area. Covid Nomads “Domestic covid nomads cause compliance issues when they get away and start working in some new state, province or municipality,” notes the report. “But a global covid nomad, by definition, triggers international legal challenges. These challenges can be particularly tough to rectify, even hard to spot.” Individual workers too have to be aware of differing tax laws, not to mention visa and residency requirements. Global nomads may be on the hook for paying income tax in both the US and the country where they work. The situation is less complicated for domestic nomads, but they still need to understand multi-state tax rules. Travel websites and remote work job boards have sprung, if not to the rescue, at least to offer help. TravelingLifestyle, for example, has an entire section focused just on digital nomading, listing countries with tax incentives and other programs to lure digital nomads. Other sites have lists of jobs especially suited to the digital nomad lifestyle. Will the digital nomad trend survive the end of the pandemic and employers’ return to the office hopes? Without question agree employment professionals. Writes Dan Schawbel, author and managing partner of Workplace Intelligence, “Digital nomads will continue to roam the world post-Covid and companies that want to attract and retain them will enable their lifestyle in exchange for their highly-skilled talent, productivity.” Coincidentally enough, among the tech and creative jobs FlexJobs lists for digital nomads, one type in particular stands out – recruiter. John Zappe Contributed
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Recruiting Technology
3 min read
How to do Video Job Interviews
For the better part of two decades, recruiters have used video interviewing to accommodate working or distant candidates, hiring teams with busy schedules and save on travel costs. It was a modestly growing trend among large and some mid-sized employers until the covid pandemic ended face-to-face meetings. In just a few months, 89% of all companies were conducting virtual interviews. Suddenly recruiters and hiring managers accustomed to face-to-face interviews had to cope with a whole new way of conducting an interview. Few knew how to do video job interviews, so most just plunged ahead and interviewed candidates as they always had. Yet video interviewing is different from in-person interviews in ways that are both obvious and subtle. Each has unique advantages — convenience and speed for virtual interviewing and engagement and personal connection for in-person interviews. With 81% of talent professionals expecting video interviewing to continue post-Covid, knowing how to do video job interviews is essential. The new norm will be a hybrid model combining video and in-person interviews, according to 41% of recruiting leaders. In this primer we’ll discuss how to do video job interviews and describe differences and some of the best practices. When to use video interviews Video interviews are most often used in situations where the candidate is remote and so is the job, or when a highly desired candidate is hesitant to take time off from work to travel. Video interviews are also a convenient way to avoid scheduling challenges, especially when the candidate is to meet with more than one person. In high volume hiring, one-way video interviews, where candidates respond on camera to a pre-recorded set of questions, are often used because they make it possible for a recruiter to review dozens of candidates in the time it would take to do just a few phone screens. Virtual job fairs serve the same end enabling two-way conversations that can lead to immediate job offers. Best practices How to do video job interviews effectively takes more than good lighting and a solid internet connection. It’s not just conducting an interview the same way you would if the person was sitting in front of you. Just as for an in-person interview, candidates need to be told the when and who and what to expect. Beyond that, they need instructions on how the technology works, especially if you’re using one of the many video interviewing platforms instead of the more familiar Zoom, Skype or Google Meet. Communicate technical details Give your candidates tips about lighting and the proper setting. Remind them the video will be recorded. To avoid the potential for interviewers being biased by what they see behind the candidate, suggest the candidate use a neutral, virtual background or, better yet, provide each candidate one. Encourage candidates to do a test run before the actual interview. And be sure everyone knows what to do in case of a loss of access. Be professional – and forgiving Log on early. No one likes to be kept waiting, but online there’s no one to reassure the candidate that the interviewer will be right with them or is running a few minutes late. If that is the case, let them know by text or email. During the interview, be professional. Without the clear cues from having a live person in front of you, there’s a tendency to be more casual. Turn off your phone and messaging apps on the computer. Focus on the candidate and don’t multitask. If you’re taking notes, let the candidate know. Otherwise it can appear you’re not paying attention. Adjust the camera position so you’re looking straight ahead at the candidate. Look directly into the camera and not down at the screen when speaking, as that’s how you make eye contact. Be forgiving of the unexpected. Latency in the connection can cause slow responses and image freezing. If your candidate is interviewing from home there may be interruptions: a barking dog, FedEx at the door, or children talking. Show the company culture One of the less obvious differences with a virtual interview is that candidates don’t get to see anything of the company culture and the environment. LinkedIn says 51% of candidates want an office tour. As a substitute, offer a virtual one. Bigger companies bring in a production team to create a highly polished tour, like this one. You can also create a compelling tour by doing what Datadog did and pull together a collection of individual pictures. Standardize the interview Whether virtual or in-person, the most effective interviews are structured. Because virtual interviews can be recorded, asking a standard list of questions of each candidate allows for easy comparison and reduces the potential for bias. At the conclusion, inform the candidate of the next steps. The video job interview advantage For companies that know how to do video job interviews effectively, they can be an advantage over competitors that don’t offer them or don’t do them well. A survey by the hiring technology provider iCIMS found 83% of candidates see employers that use them as more innovative. Virtual recruiting is not just here to stay; 7-in-10 talent acquisition professionals expect it to become the new standard in recruiting. In fact, 23% expect to rely exclusively on video. In this tight hiring environment to be competitive and attract the best people wherever you find them, it’s more important than ever that every member of the recruiting team knows how to do video job interviews well. 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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