iCIMS Hire Expectations™

Corporate Culture.  We hear it so often talked about around the workplace.  For many employers, corporate culture is what draws in the best talent and ranks organizations high on “Best Companies to Work For” lists.  For employees, corporate culture is often the deciding factor for those evaluating a career change or deciding between competitive offers from different companies. 

Organizations of all sizes can easily struggle with maintaining and driving the corporate culture. Smaller organizations most often lose sight of their corporate culture as they grow and mature, while larger organizations could be forced to regain a corporate culture that has already been lost. A company culture must be actively maintained.

Because iCIMS values employees and company culture, we have recently implemented a panel of interviewers that have been selectively chosen to help evaluate candidates against our core competencies.  The goal is twofold:

1. Allow a cross-section of employees to interview candidates against our core values.  During this process, candidates are also given the opportunity to learn more about our culture from this same panel of employees, thus giving them an insider’s perspective on what it is like working for iCIMS.
2. Assist managers in the hiring decision process by offering further insight into candidates.  In one particular case, we had the hiring decision narrowed down to two candidates. Two very good candidates!  The hiring manager, after reviewing the feedback provided by the panelists, was able to make a decision based on their hiring recommendations.

This hiring approach was first brought to my attention by way of the book, “Delivering Happiness” written by Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh. He affirms that the emphasis on corporate culture has led his organization to unprecedented success and should be a company’s #1 focus.  His company later went on to be sold to Amazon for a sum total of $1.2 billion dollars; I trust that he’s doing something right!
 
While it’s too soon to be able to tell if this interviewing process has had any real success, I think it has provided for a great learning experience to all those involved.

Your first day at a new job can always be a bit intimidating. New office, new coworkers, new process and in my case, a new applicant tracking system (ATS).  I know what many of you are thinking at this point- that migrating to a new applicant tracking system is such a small thing to worry about!  Well for many recruiters, being trained on a new ATS is a commonality in their professions. My intention in writing this article is to shed some light on the good, the bad, (and the ugly) in my transition.
In my previous recruiting role as an Agency Recruiter, almost everyone's training in the recruiting process was the same.  When it came time to evaluate implementing a new Applicant Tracking System, the solution was simple: build the system in-house.  Because everyone followed the same procedures when it came to recruiting, developing a system to fit the needs of the recruiters was very simple.  And it made training everyone on the system easy as well.  The transition was almost seamless.

In coming to iCIMS, I failed to realize how many vendors compete in the Applicant Tracking space.  I had assumed that they all had the same basic functionality.  So as I was called into a usability testing session in hour 2 of my first day, I was caught off-guard when I suddenly was thrust into a program that was drastically different from what I was used to.  I was overwhelmed at the amount I had to learn.  As my training got underway, I started to pick up on the basic features and functions of our software, and things quickly started falling into place. Fortunately for me, I can tell you first-hand that the iCIMS Talent Platform really is as easy to use and intuitive as people always say it is. 

One thing that stood out in my mind (and helped to calm my nerves...) was our Training Specialist, Vanessa Katz-Siroti telling me "You don't like that? We can change it" as she darted off into the next room.  Minutes later, she would return with a set of procedures configured to me. Virtually anything and everything I wanted to change within the Talent Platform could be configured the way I preferred it be, to meet my unique recruiting needs.  A perfect example of this is how easy it was for us to change the Folder Statuses of our Candidate Profile to reflect where candidates stood in the interviewing stage.  I disagreed with a lot of what the previous Recruiter had set up.  We were able to completely alter this in literally minutes. That day, we were able to draft customized email templates and icons on my desktop for key searches I like to use daily, to help make my life easier. My initial apprehensions about getting used to this unfamiliar applicant tracking system were quickly subsiding.

There are very few things in the Talent Platform I wish I could make immediate changes to, and even these are minor in terms of the overall value the Talent Platform offers. The bells and whistles of an ATS, while they may be cool, are not the thing to get caught up on; instead, what will make your transition seamless, like it did mine, will be the ability for a system to be flexible to YOUR needs as a recruiter and your recruiting process.