Category Archives: Recruiting

Recruitment in the New Talent Marketplace

06 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Recruiting

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…So Tim Sackett has a great new post up on his website here wherein he highlights that – due to an improving economy and the exit of boomers from the workforce – filling vacant positions is becoming exceedingly difficult for companies the world over. Employers today are grappling with the reality that great talent has plenty of opportunities to choose from when considering their next step… making differentiation more critical than ever for companies looking to fill their growing numbers of operationally important vacancies.

…With that said, the reason I’m sharing today’s post is because two things from it jump out at me:

Wage Growth: CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson spoke at SHRM on Tuesday and had some great data showing that organizations see wage growth of around 5% in 2015, and similar in years to come. Are you budgeting 5% increases? I’m guessing not!

and:

Job Design Challenges: Too many of us are working and designing jobs like we are living in a society that was pre-internet, pre-ultra connected. We still think we need employees sitting in front of us from 8-5pm, Monday thru Friday. If they aren’t sitting in front of us, they must not be working! Indeed shared that 80% of job searches on their site include this single word: “Remote”! Are you adjusting those jobs that can be flexible?

^This is powerful stuff because it speaks to two critical things that companies are going to need to do over the next few years:

1. Evolve the existing merit review cycle to compensate top internal talent at a level consistent with what they can find externally (as opposed to spreading increases more or less evenly across the entire workforce).

2. Create flexible work arrangements that accommodate the lifestyles of millennials, dual income parents, and other prospective employee populations that are increasingly seeking roles that allow them to grow in their careers while also accommodating their personal lives.

^Concerning challenge number 1, as previously noted organizations have got to start thinking about compensation differently. Far too often, high performing employees that spend much of their career with one organization end up badly under market because internal comp structures don’t allow their pay to keep up with what they could make on the external market. So then those employees eventually end up getting outside offers that force their organizations to either (i) counter-off, damaging the employee/employer relationship, or (ii) let the employee walk and expend thousands of dollars and untold amounts of time in recruitment and training to bring in a new hire (at the market rate they should have been paying the incumbent to begin with) and get then up to speed. Merit budgets are *not* 5% at median right now in most companies… which makes the fact that this is the going rate for a move in an employee’s market troubling for organizations intent on retaining most of their workforces.

…And as it concerns bullet number 2, leadership at the top of organization’s need to understand the expectations of today’s workforce. As millennials become make up a larger and larger slice of the total workforce – and particularly as they become first time parents – being able to support flexible (and in many cases remote) work arrangements is going to become a table stakes expectation for competing for talent even at the center. Not every job can be done remotely… but for companies looking to compete in coming years they will need to make the option available in cases where such an arrangement is feasible.

…Or maybe I’m wrong. This is just a Monday afternoon thought stream. Let me 1. This 4:20 PM CST post is doable because I am on vacation today.know what I’ve got wrong in the comments section below. 1

Best,

Rory

A Few Thoughts on Job Titles

05 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by in General HR, Recruiting, Talent Management

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<www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com

<www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com>

…So a while back I read a solid piece from Tim Sackett on job titles here. In it, he talks about how organizations sometimes kill the attractiveness of otherwise awesome positions by doing things like putting “Jr.” in the front of titles (or “I”, “II”, “III” etc. on the back). The idea is that no one wants to be, say, a “Junior HR Manager” or an “Accountant II”, so why not just call the positions “HR Manager” and “Accountant”?

Sackett makes the argument that companies do things like this because Managers often can’t handle the responsibility of having their entire population in one job band. The thinking goes that when given the rope to utilize the entirety of a range, managers will overpay talent relative to their skill set.

…I think that what Sackett is describing would/does happen in some cases, but in my experience most Managers are responsible in the way they manage comp – particularly if salary increases have multiple layers of approval and they are given clearly defined guidelines. Furthermore, positions with the same job title don’t necessarily have to have the same job band (which is often behind the scenes).

Instead, most of the time I think title mismanagement as described in Sackett’s post is a product of organizations with too many layers utilizing title bumps as a form of recognition. And doing this isn’t in and of itself a bad thing – after all, giving someone a bigger job title is a great way to recognize talent in a way that doesn’t cost a thing to the Company. Furthermore, there needs to be a layering of titles in order to communicate the level someone is at (e.g. not everyone can be a Director).

With all that said, the big issue here comes when an organization has job titles that don’t align with the market equivalent of the work being done. This practice is sometimes (though not always) a close cousin of the much more sinister choice to pay less than the market rate for a job. Doing the former doesn’t carry with it the same consequences as doing the latter (because while people leave companies all the time for pay reasons, almost no one leaves a company just because of job title), but it can nevertheless be a huge miss. Ultimately, poor title management can lead to lowered employee engagement internally and kill recruiting efforts for positions posted externally. And this is a pet peeve of mine because title mismanagement should theoretically never happen because it should be such an easy thing to get right. If your employee would be an Engineer if he/she were working anywhere else, call him/her an Engineer at your company as well. End of story, right?

^Just my 2 cents. As always, please share your thoughts (letting me know what if anything I got wrong) in the comments section below.

Best,

Rory

10 Must Follow* Tips For New College Grads From an HR Guy

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Job Interviewing, Personal Development

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1. There is an asterisk in the title because, really, what the heck do I know? -_-A few days ago I became aware of a project TheLadders is running where they are reaching out to writers and asking them what advice they would give for new graduates attempting to break into the field (TheLadders are a career resource for professionals across all vocations and at at any stage of their careers).

…Okay. So advice for 22 year olds just starting out their professional careers. I can do that (I think). Here goes… but keep in mind that this is mostly practical advice geared towards how to obtain maximum career success based on my own individual (and often meandering) experience and anecdotes:

1. Don’t worry too much about your first salary – instead, focus on the type of work you’re going to be doing.

Unless you got your degree in an in demand STEM field or are starting with a top-paying employer (e.g. Google, GE, BCG etc.), chances are your first salary isn’t going to be very high. And even if you fall into one of those buckets (or are an unusually good negotiator and/or fortunate), what qualifies as a “high” salary to you now is likely negligible in the grand scheme of things. As a new college grad you should regularly be seeing big (in some cases double digit) percentage increases in salary annually early in your career if you are getting frequent advancement opportunities. Pay flattens out as you get deeper into your 30s, but as a 22 year-old don’t worry about the difference between making, say, $38k and $52k out of the gate. That difference will turn out to be negligible latter in your career (even factoring in time value of money) if you land jobs that teach you rare and valuable skills. Incomes well in excess of six figures are in your grasp as you enter your 30s (and earlier, for some), but you have to develop a scarce skill set that adds a lot of value. And you probably aren’t going to learn (most of) this skill set in school. You will learn it on the job. So when taking that first job ask yourself “How does this make me better?” not “How much does this pay me?” Taking the former approach will pay off over time.

2. Get lots of different experiences. Don’t stay in any one role for too long (which is not necessarily the same as not staying with one company).

Don’t stay in any one role for two long. This doesn’t mean that you need to constantly jump employers… but if you aren’t getting regular opportunities to advance into bigger (or at least different) job assignments during your first 4-5 years in the workforce then you need to move on. One of the worst spaces to be in early in your career is to look up and see that you are 28 and have been in the same transactional Customer Service role that you were in when you were a 21-22 college graduate. Don’t be that guy/gal. Get new experiences as much as you can when you’re young.

3. The greatest predictor of what you will accomplish in the future is how you spend your time now. So use it wisely.

…So you graduated college. You get to relax on the weekends from now on, right? Wrong! College is where you learn how to learn, but your post-grad career is where you learn how to apply that skill towards your career and continued education. If you aren’t continually finding ways to advance your skill set during your off time – e.g. in the form of research briefs, MOOCs, trade associations, networking, professional designations/certificates etc. – then you are doing things wrong. You create separation from your peers by how you spend your time when you’re not at work. Everyone puts in a minimum of 35-40 hours during the week… that’s table stakes in today’s employment marketplace. What are you doing when you’re off the clock, though? You always need to keep getting better, which means that you should never stop learning or looking for an edge.

4. Sleep.

Do as I say, not as I do…

…But seriously, sleep. The improved level of performance you will have on 7-9 hours sleep (how much you need varies by person) compared against what you can produce on less makes getting a good night’s rest common sense.

5. Early in your career, try not to quit your job if you don’t have something else lined up first.

This is one of the worst mistakes I see 20 somethings make. They decide that their job isn’t challenging them enough / their skill set is underutilized / whatever and so they quit their jobs without something else lined up. But doing this (i) wrecks your resume, (ii) kills your negotiating leverage when you get your next role because you lose walk-away power, (iii) undermines your employability with the very real percentage of employers that don’t consider unemployed people and (iv) is a bad habit to get into when the going gets tough. If your job sucks then just suck it up and slog through every day until you find a new (better) gig that you can transition into.

6. If you are in your 20s and the first 5+ years of your career you’re only seeing 3-4% year over year pay increases then it is time for a change.

I said in point #1 that you shouldn’t worry about comp for your first job – and you shouldn’t… but that’s because as a 20 something you should be seeing regular healthy pay increases if you are (i) with a company where you are getting regular advancement opportunities and (ii) learning rare and valuable skills. To be fair, most employers aren’t equipped to give top performing employees the sorts of wage increases they could find on the open market externally simply because comp structures haven’t caught up to the changed world of work yet… but that shouldn’t be true for you if you’re a 25 year-old that is just hitting your stride. If you are consistently a top performer in your 20s and all you’re seeing are 3-4% increases year over year then it’s time to move on.

7. Deliver on the work that you say you will deliver on.

When you are first figuring out how to work it can be hard to do this well because it is easy to over-promise due to unrealistic expectations, but over the long run the best way to grow your professional brand internally is by consistently delivering on the work you’re expected (and volunteer) to do at a high level.

8. Treat everyone in your workplace with respect.

No one likes to work with a jerk, so don’t be one. In fact, go a step further and treat everyone as well as you can all the time. This doesn’t mean being a wet blanket (more on that below) but it does mean being kind. This will pay dividends over time.

9. Don’t be afraid to speak up and stand your ground. You have to hold people accountable.

20 somethings often struggle with holding people accountable and standing up to co-workers/customers/bosses/whoever that are abusive or otherwise don’t respect their boundaries. Don’t be afraid to have an opinion, though, and if someone is treating you unfairly or otherwise walking over you don’t be afraid to push back. People will respect you more when you can do this, and furthermore being able to stand your ground and push back are table stakes skills of being a good people manager (which is often a typical step up on many career ladders).

10. Sleep.

I said this already. I know. But I am saying it again. It’s that important. Get your 7-9 hours.

…With that said, don’t just take my career advice. There are lots of other things beyond those mentioned above to consider if you want a fulfilling career. For example, if you want advice on work-life and all that jazz, check out these awesome posts from other former-college grads turned professionals providing advice on how to make the best of the start of your career.

As always, let me know what I got wrong (and right) in the comments section below.

Best,

Rory

A Few Thoughts on Mission Focused Work

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Compensation, Recruiting

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<www.rockwallisd.com

<www.rockwallisd.com>

1. I will get to the idea behind my post title in moment. Stick with me, please.…So lately I am really enjoying the Department of Labor Blog. 1 It is sneaky entertaining, marrying my all-time favorite HR topic (comp) with a recent love (labor and employment law).

To the former point, I high recommend checking out the DOL’s new post (here) on the highest paid STEM jobs and the (growing) market for them. For the curious: The highest paying STEM role in the employment market today is that of a Petroleum Engineer (clocking in at just under $150k), while STEM jobs as a whole have an average base salary of $85,570 – nearly twice the average of all other positions ($47,230).

With that said, I’m sharing this DOL post because it’s a great example of just how much where you work – as defined by region and industry – matters. From the piece:

For example, computer systems analysts who work in motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing might make $58,940 a year, but computer systems analysts working in support activities for mining might make $118,770.

and;

Besides having a high concentration of systems software developers, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, also was the highest paying metropolitan area for this job, with an annual mean wage of $138,410. Wages for systems software developers in other metropolitan areas ranged from $52,720 in Lafayette, Louisiana, to $124,220 in the Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, California, metropolitan division. At the state level, wages for this job ranged from $68,580 in North Dakota to $124,070 in California.

^We’re talking about more than a 100% differential in pay for (presumably the same job as defined by title) dependent on where one lives and/or what sort of business one supports. Data points like those above really drive home for me the fact that – unless you’re a company with insane margins like Google/GE/Exxon Mobil etc. – trying to compete for top of market talent by making pay the primary value proposition is a losing play over the long run. Instead, for most companies having a great employer brand has got to be first and foremost about being a place where people are empowered and inspired to do great work. Otherwise, sooner or later most of your top performers are going to leave your organization if you aren’t a market leader on comp, right?

…I feel like this realization is misunderstood based on the way that most employers sell their jobs, though. Maybe it’s because job descriptions are written by HR folks instead of Marketing folks, but too often companies try and sell opportunities on title/comp/benefits when they aren’t really leaders there. Or they sell on job scope, which is great if you have an exceptional opportunity open but less compelling if you’re filling the same job (on paper) as a dozen other firms.

…There is also a problem with many jobs on a structural level. I say this because most roles are designed in a purely utilitarian capacity as opposed to keeping an eye on engaging… and when I say engaging I don’t define that as needing to get rid of the mundane stuff that is (on some level) part of most roles; but I do think that if you want engagement and retention in your workforce over and beyond what you can incentivize through remuneration and security, that your employees need to understand how their work fits into creating/supporting the product(s) you’re selling. And they need a certain degree of autonomy in how they do their work.

I know this is table stakes/obvious stuff to some, but I it gets missed far too often (even though doing it right can really be a source of competitive advantage).

Just a Tuesday thought stream…

As always, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Best,

Rory

A Friday Thought Stream About Learning and Career Development

07 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in Personal Development, Recruiting

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…So I am constantly overwhelmed by what I don’t know. Every time I feel like I am making progress in life and really figuring my career/the big picture/whatever out, I’m exposed to something that completely humbles me.

…Sometimes (always?) this is a little maddening: No matter how much I learn about my field, it seems like I am not learning enough; And no matter how much I expose myself to, I feel like I am always missing something. At times my knowledge base feels broad but shallow, and at other times it feels far too narrow. I’m sure part of these feelings are just driven by a good old fashioned case of impostor syndrome… but mostly I just have a long ways to go before I’m a subject matter expert on anything in HR and/or business.

…I periodically peruse the Linkedin profiles of friends/colleagues/total strangers in my field to get a sense of what they’re learning and doing (to help me figure out if I’m focusing on the right things). And having done quite a bit of this – in addition to reading this and that – over the past few years, I now have a few vague notions of what I’m doing right/wrong; for example, I know that much of my recent work has been far too transactional – I need to spend less of my time driving processes and more of it managing projects that have significant business impacts. And I feel like I need to hone in on a specialty (although this doesn’t necessarily mean I should leave Generalist work behind). I am determined to make this specialty data analytics… but sometimes I very much feel like I am failing at developing this skill set the way I should.

…Right now there are a lot of things that I’m doing for the first time, and I mostly do them well (or at least okayish), but I could more or less always do them better if I only had more time to hone my skill set on the “insert various thing here” that I’m working on as opposed to just executing on it to completion and then moving on to the next thing. Speaking of which… I am getting good at executing, which is a plus. By this I mean that while I may not have worked on “insert whatever here” before, I can now quickly understand most problems, identify the stakeholders I need to involve/influence to fix the problem, identify the fastest action plan to solve it/get from point A to point B, and then implement said action plan to get there. And this feels like something approaching a skill – or at least a competency.

…This is just a Friday morning thought stream for everyone else wondering if they’re taking the steps they need to take to be VP/President/whatever of _____________ in 5/10/15 years. And for everyone still reading, here is a wonderful insight from HR Exec Kris Dunn on how to get a passive candidate interested in a role. I was initially going to write about my thoughts on this and changed my mind (as you can read above), but I really love the insight and so want to share it today anyway:

…candidates who don’t direct apply to your position love to be considered “passive” candidates, even though they become active the minute they say they’re interested. With that in mind, you ought to start every conversation with a candidate you sourced (they didn’t directly apply) by telling them what you are looking for, then asking them who they know who might be a fit.

You didn’t ask them if they were interested. That’s a compliment to them. But don’t worry – if what you’re selling is attractive, they’ll be happy to tell you.

…Check the piece that the above quote came from here (I think I may add the above to my recruiting toolkit).

And as always, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Best,

Rory

The Power of Consensus

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in General HR, Recruiting

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I am a huge fan of building consensus: More people buying into an idea means more people invested in its successful implementation: After all, as the old adage goes; “two heads are better than one.”

I am also a big believer in the wisdom of the crowds; or, rather, the idea that the many are smarter than the few. More often than not, people simply make better decisions together than they do acting alone.

…That’s why I love this article from HR Consultant Sharlyn Lauby on Peoplefluent that touches on the utility of using social collaboration in the hiring process. In it, she writes about the rise of various tools (including video) being used to educate hiring teams on evolving best practices around interviewing and screening. She also mentions using these same tools as a vehicle to facilitate discussion within a team on job applicants.

Such a process is a departure from the way recruiting is done within many organizations. Most hiring processes today involve a Generalist or Recruiter using phone screens to cull the applicant pool, followed by applicants meeting face-to-face with a hiring manager that then makes the final hire decision. There are some innovative companies like Google and Amazon that are breaking from this tradition, introducing more layers to the decision making process or even taking the hiring decision away from the manager entirely (making the final hire choice a team based decision). But these are the exception, not the rule.

With all that said, I don’t know that there is a “perfect” hiring process – such a process will (and should) vary by organizational culture and individual team. Conversely, I *do* think that as a general rule getting more people involved in decision making (hiring or otherwise) is a good idea. The trick here is doing so while avoiding analysis paralysis (as often happens when too many people are involved in a process) and/or bogging down your organization in bureaucracy (limiting its ability to be dynamic, which at this point is table stakes in most industries).

…This is just a thought stream, so I may have some things wrong here. If so, as always please let me know in the comment section below.

Best,

Rory

Infographic Thursday: Navigating the Recruitment Cycle

28 Thursday Aug 2014

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Ultimate Software has an infographic up on their site about the recruitment cycle. It illustrates that there’s a lot of great talent out there for employers with strong sourcing and on-boarding strategies. To get a clearer picture of what poor performance in these key areas might be costing your business (and for some helpful hints on how to get better), check out the full infographic below. And as always, if you like what you see you can follow Ultimate Software on Twitter here.

RecruitmentInfographic

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Best,

Rory

Sunday Reading: July 13, 2014 – Gen Y, Sourcing Strategies, and Talent Branding

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Recruiting, Sunday Reading, Talent Management

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Sunday reading for July 13, 2014:

Apologies for the late start today (it’s 7:07 p.m. central time as I sit down to write this), but here are my recommendations from today’s reading:

1. Executive & Leadership Coach Ray Williams has a well-written piece on Linkedin outlining all that Generation Y has to offer… and the economic challenges that may prevent them from accomplishing it. As a Gen Yer myself, I found the piece representative of the unique strengths our cohort brings to society as well as a sobering reminder of the things it has working against it. I’m recommending this one for managers/employers because understanding the dynamics at play here is an integral component to empowering your younger talent to succeed and in the process driving bottom line results. Check the full piece out here.

2. Conradin Merk, Jonathan Silver, and Fabio D. Torrisi have a piece up on McKinsey Insights highlighting a sea change in the way that organizations think about sourcing talent. Wear as in the recent past outsourcing was an increasingly prevalent talent sourcing model, for many organizations nearshoring (locations in neighboring countries), farmshoring (lower-cost locations in the company’s home country), or even onshoring are now preferable alternatives. Particularly in the manufacturing sector, decreasing natural gas prices and a rebounding economy (now clamoring for select luxury goods) has made hiring domestically and in some cases even onshoring a prudent business decision. I love this piece because of the big picture outlook it provides of the global talent marketplace. Check out the full piece out here.

3. Deloitte asks readers to consider how companies should consider leveraging social to grow its talent brand in this excellent piece. The piece correctly points out that the talent brand and employer brand are owned by two functions that don’t traditionally work closely together (HR and Marketing)… making a unified talent/employer brand difficult. But conversely, it’s hard to deny the value companies like Google and BCG have added to their talent brands by leveraging social media channels. Check this one out in the link above, and consider following Deloitte on Twitter here.

As always, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Best,

Rory

Infographic Thursday: How Do Executives Get Recruited?

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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Filling job vacancies for executive positions can vary greatly from other job openings for business owners and human resource departments. To this point, screening and qualifying executive candidates can be difficult for business owners not experienced in hiring executive talent. With this in mind, PierceGray Executive Search Recruiters has put together a guide and infographic for business owners that walks them through both how executive search firms operate as well as guiding them through the process of recruiting executive talent. Check this one out below, and while I can’t find a Twitter feed, if you like what you see here then consider contacting them here.

And again, special thanks to Matt Zajechowski (whom has shared some great content with me in the past) at marketing agency Digital Third Coast for exposing me to today’s infographic. You can follow Digital Third Coast on Twitter here.

How Do Executives Get Recruited?

As always, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Best,

Rory

Selling Passive Candidates on Opportunities

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

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…So this morning I read a great piece from Jim D’Amico at ere.net. You can check it out here (and you should as it’s a really short, good read), but long story short he takes the position that recruiters have a framing problem. They look at the recruiting process through the lens that talent is difficult to find, but what they should be doing is recognizing that it is easy to find talent, but the challenge is selling them on the opportunity at the company they work for. She goes on to say that in such cases organizations should be investing in training recruiters how to sell and close passive candidates (and/or addressing the institutional factors that make their company an unattractive place to work). The candidate shortage should then take care of itself, theoretically.

While the piece glosses over the reality that as a society we *do* have shortages of skilled labor across a variety of functional disciplines and trades, I like its point that on an individual level organizations can resolve their own talent shortages simply because most companies don’t effectively train their talent teams on how to upsell their candidates or effectively brand themselves as premier employers.

…I recently moved and am still working off of a mobile device, so I’ll hold off on a deep dive into this topic for now. But I thought the author had an interesting point and wanted to share.

What is your organization doing to resolve issues around recruiter training? What could it be doing differently? As always, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Best,

Rory