iCIMS Hire Expectations™

When you think of recruiting in retail, you need to think about customer experience first. The entire success of a well-oiled retail machine comes down to the shopping experience. Of course, price, product and store location are parts of the equation, but nothing beats a great customer experience. Unfortunately, for brick and mortar business, recruiting is extremely challenging. High employee turnover, which means that many employees leave voluntarily, can reach 100% is some cases. In fact, the department of labor reported that 570,000 separations took place in the retail sector during September 2010; which is insane! As you can imagine, there are many reasons for such turn: pay, management, job duties, etc.  So right now you may be saying “Poor HR;" not so fast! The real pain is felt with the VP of Store Operations.

The VP of Store Operations wears many hats. Ultimately, their job is to carry out the strategies formulated by the CEO to meet corporate goals. There are many KPI’s that help determine whether or not a store is passing or failing, which falls directly on the VP of Store Operations. The largest metric is Same Store Sales. Same-store sales is a business term which refers to the difference of revenue generated by a retail chain's existing stores over a certain period (often a fiscal quarter or a particular shopping season), compared to an identical period in the past (usually in the previous year). Most of the positive or negative impact of this metric relies on the staff at the store level. For instance, higher average purchases and/or more frequent customer visits; cross selling into a broader product range or upselling to more expensive ones cannot happen without a great team. Now you know why staffing keeps the VP of Operations up at night more than anyone else.

So the next question is what can be done? The good news is that Talent Leaders within this sector are forward thinking and constantly preparing for this scenario.  Obviously, the most common strategy is to have evergreen positions posted everywhere your budget allows. I know the argument here is quality vs. quantity. I’m a big believer in this case, the more candidates, the better. We have also seen in-store kiosks work and now the emergence of social media will certainly help get the word out. In my humble opinion, I firmly believe a strong employer brand is the most important component when it comes to store recruiting. Most people may not view retail as a career path, so to be able to communicate the company’s image as seen through the eyes of its associates to potential hires will ultimately determine success. Since many customers can qualify as potential employees, I think a task force comprised of Internal Marketing (those chasing customers) and Talent Acquisition (those chasing candidates) is the perfect combination to deliver the perfect message. After all, no customers, no sales….no staff, no store experience.

Today's blog post comes to you from a Ready Prep Interview Representative!

When it comes down to it, the primary purpose of the interviewing process is to gain assurance that whoever you hire can do the job successfully.  A situational job interview consists of a series of questions focused on drawing out the actual experience a candidate has in demonstrating the specific qualities or skills that are required to do the job. The theory behind the situational job interview is that a candidate’s past performance is one of the best indicators of future performance.

While not rocket science, here are 3 tips that will help you conduct great situational interviews and as a result hire the best candidate for the position.

Ask the Right Questions
Create a list of the qualities and skills required to do the job you are looking to fill. One of the best places to start is the job description you have created for the position.  Verify your list with current employees who hold the same position or other employees who will work with the candidate you hire.

Once you have a good list of qualities and skills required to do the job, translate them into a list of interview questions that ask for situations where the candidate has demonstrated the skill or quality.  For example, if the candidate needs to be able to accept criticism on a regular basis, you might ask “Share a time when you have received criticism about your work. What was the situation and how did you handle it?”

One resource that will help you identify questions you should consider asking is Ready Prep Interview, a website that hosts thousands of job specific situational job interview questions. Once you find the position you are interviewing for, the questions are already sorted by the importance of the quality or skill being tested so you can simply start at the top and work your way down.

Require Detailed Responses
As you already know, some candidates are better at interviewing than others. One of the most common mistakes I see a candidate make is when a candidate just tells the interviewer what he or she wants to hear instead of a real situation.  For example, when asked to provide a situation when their ethics were tested, the candidate may respond by saying that honesty is an important value to them.  As an interviewer, this doesn’t tell you much. Anyone can say that. The candidate’s response won’t help you choose them over another candidate.  Especially if another candidate gives you a detailed situation of when their ethics were tested and how they overcame it.

Don’t let a candidate’s inexperience with interviewing get in the way of you hiring them. The key is to not let your candidates off the hook too easily. Push for specific examples. Feel free to ask for details. Give your candidates every chance to provide detailed examples of how they have demonstrated the skills and qualities you are looking for.

Be Consistent and Take Good Notes
While you may want to vary some of your questions based on a candidate’s level of experience, the bulk of the questions you ask should be used for all candidates applying to the same position. The consistency will help you objectively compare one candidate to another.  If you take good notes about each response a candidate gives, you will be able to refer back to your notes when making your decision. I have found that even brief notes will help me recall my impressions about the candidate. This is especially helpful if when I interview several candidates over a relatively long period of time.

The situational job interview is a great tool to help you hire the right candidate for the job.  Ask the right questions, force your candidates to give you details, and consistently ask the same questions to each of your candidates. Follow these tips and you will get the most out of your situational job interviews.

I was recently chatting with some HR professionals regarding the age-old question over whether active or passive candidates are better recruits. In my opinion, the recruiters preferring passive won the debate. Their argument was simply a matter of control. Sourcing for passive candidates puts the recruiter in the driver’s seat as they look for candidates with specific experience and/or skill sets.

Obviously there were other reasons why recruiters prefer passive candidates, but this was the most compelling (and the idea that prompted this post). When one realizes the value of recruiting passive candidates, the question becomes how to find the best passive candidates with the least time investment. Applying most sourcing methods, recruiters are rummaging through resumes on major job boards or spending hours searching LinkedIn.  These methods are great, but not necessarily efficient when resumes are old or potential candidates do not reply.

What’s the best way to find the strongest passive candidates, you ask? That is a great question with a very simple answer… compile and then source from your own talent pool of ‘warm’ candidates.

So, how does one compile and source their ‘own’ pool of warm candidates beyond searching LinkedIn contacts?

To answer this, let’s start by defining warm candidates. A warm candidate is, at the very least, aware of your company’s employment brand.  It is pretty obvious that the most efficient use of your time will be to focus on the warm candidates rather than pursuing those who are just not interested. You must keep in mind, LinkedIn contacts are not necessarily warm passive candidates by this definition. 

Keeping your talent pool warm is a little like dating. Your talent pool is your ‘little black book’. But, just because a person is in the little black book, it is not a guarantee that they will remember you. To keep candidates warm, you must stay in contact with them. Drop them a line every once in a while and show them the best of your employment brand through some old fashion marketing nurture campaigns. Basically, ‘date’ them.

The next step is to compile a talent pool full of warm candidates. How does one accomplish that? First, consider all the candidates that are already in your ATS. Perhaps, they were not a good match in the past, but maybe as time has gone by their skills or education have advanced. These candidates have expressed interest in the past and therefore they are warm candidates.

In addition to what you already have in your ATS, you absolutely must open the door wide to new talent.  To do this, your company’s career page should encourage potential candidates to submit their information even when jobs matching the candidate’s skills are not currently available.  Next, consider all those people you meet at job fairs, networking, and career development events. Even if you don’t have openings that match their skills right now, you will eventually. Any time you meet someone that seems to possess talents, skills, or experience that may eventually be useful to you, take the opportunity to talk up your employment brand (without being too much like an overly aggressive recruiter) and ask to exchange contact information, just in case.

To further develop your talent pool, encourage current employees to recommend friends or former colleagues based on talents. Make sure that current employees understand that you are interested in more than just who is currently looking for a job – you want traits, talent, and passion vs. simple availability. For example, ask employees, “who do you know that that has great project management or communication skills?” That will get the employee thinking more broadly. 
 
In short, there is a lot you can do to compile and source from your own pool of warm talent. The most important factors are simply this:  First, allow interested parties to send their resume or contact information to you – even when you are not actively recruiting their particular skill/experience. Finally, when the warm candidates start coming in – keep them warm by recommending opportunities or simply showcasing your brand. The biggest mistake a sourcing pro can make is to let talent slip through their fingers because they are not thinking in terms of future recruiting needs.

In anticipation of iCIMS’ 9th annual Customer Advisory Council, our team conducted a study to identify where clients were having the most success finding and hiring qualified applicants.

In order to provide the most current and comprehensive data, we analyzed our 1,200+ clients’ source effectiveness reports. These reports assess recruitment advertising sources and the volume of candidates coming from each. Additionally, the report highlights the quality of such sources by displaying where candidates were in the recruitment process by source (ie: Did a lot of candidates come from a given source, but all were automatically disqualified?). On the flip side, the reports show if certain sources produce candidates who move farther along in the process. We pulled 12 months of candidate source data from August 2011 through July of 2012 that was accurately tracked by leveraging the automated source tracking feature of the iCIMS platform. This feature takes away the risk of candidates falsely identifying their source by automatically locking in the true origin of candidate to ensure accurate reporting. The organization’s that benefit from the iCIMS platform range in size from companies of 10 employees, to global corporations well over 100,000; ensuring our report was applicable for a full range of organizations. Combined, the data provided insight from over 1 million job postings, 25 million applicants, and 285,299 hires.

This is the first time that iCIMS has taken an in-depth look at just where our clients are finding their new hires. We believe, at iCIMS, that this will provide a great deal of valuable information for those clients. Of the 285,299 hires, 29% came from external sources; the other 71% came from referrals, internal hires, company career sites, and undefined sources. This is extremely exciting news because this confirms that iCIMS clients are better leveraging the tools at their disposal to make jobs visible via their corporate and in-house portals, as well as through employee referrals to bring in qualified applicants.

Though we are thrilled to see a high number of new hires coming in from these types of sources, the data also reveals the impact of external sources in the hiring process. Of the identified external sources of hire, Indeed.com, CareerBuilder, Monster, Craigslist, Linkedin, and Simply Hired, emerged as the top branded external sources of hire with sources such 3rd party recruiting agencies,  job fairs, and campus recruiting also making the list. Indeed alone accounted for more hires than all other branded sources combined and stood far out from the pack, delivering 77% more hires than the second highest external source.

As iCIMS ramps up for our advisory council, we are extremely excited to share and discuss this useful data with our client base, combined with the new and exciting features our roadmap provides for the coming year. Our clients will be given invaluable tips on how to fully incorporate both the new functionality and research findings to optimize their recruitment strategy overall.

You may not know it yet, but the people entering your stores, purchasing your products, and returning time and time again, may be the perfect candidates for your jobs. These people are your customers, and many retailers sometimes forget that their customers can be a valuable recruiting source. In fact, they may even be your best candidates because they are users of your products and services, which means they can best represent them to other customers, like themselves.

Here are 3 tips on how to jumpstart a successful customer recruitment campaign:

Tip #1: Use Your Resources

You have the resources to communicate with your customers, so why not use them for recruiting too! These resources are your emails, your company’s social media accounts, and even your store receipts. I would approach emails with caution because you don’t want to annoy your customers with tons of recruitment emails. Instead, send an email every quarter highlighting all of the great perks of working at your company (i.e. employee discounts, work environment, and events). Keep in mind that a lot of your customers are passive candidates and may already have a job; however, it may take just one email from their favorite retailer to persuade them to apply.

A lot of retailers are now using social media to connect and engage with their customers. It’s their way of sending and receiving instant feedback about their products and services. It is also a great outlet to let customers know that they are hiring. Use your company’s Facebook Page to post out current openings, or create a Facebook Page dedicated to your careers. With a Facebook Career Page, you can post helpful articles and tips on resumes, cover letters, and interviews, as well as your jobs.

Lastly, use your store receipts for more than, well, a receipt. ERE.net posted a great article on how Wells Fargo used their ATM receipts as a recruitment source. On the bottom, it said, “With you when you want a career opportunity that’s right for you”, along with a link to their career site. Genius, I know!

Tip #2: Provide a stellar candidate experience

Although customers can be your best candidates, they are still your customers. It is highly unlikely that you will hire every person who applies, ensure a positive candidate experience so they will remain loyal customers. Make the application process as simple as possible. Nothing puts an applicant in a worse mood than filling out a long and tedious application. Let your candidates apply with their social profiles from LinkedIn or Facebook. This way, they can skip the manual data entry and have all of their information auto-populate in your forms. Also, open the channels of communication and build a relationship with your applicants. It could be simple things like sending an email to confirm their application or thanking them for applying to your job opening that can have a big impact on their candidate experience.

Tip #3: Automate your tasks

All of these tips can be implemented, but if you want to receive maximum ROI on these campaigns, you need to automate your tasks with a recruitment technology like iCIMS. Instead of manually posting jobs to your Facebook Page, use a technology to post your jobs during set times and frequencies – set it and forget it! In addition, if your customers aren’t looking to apply to your jobs, allow them to pass your jobs along with one-click job sharing to their social networks. Don’t forget to enhance your candidates’ experience with branded career sites that allow them to easily search and apply to jobs. Lastly, send automatic, mass-personalized emails to notify applicants that their resume has been received.

Put these tips to the test and you’ll be one happy and successful recruiter!

I'm a firm believer that one-on-one, in-person communication is important, especially in a world where emails, instant messaging, Twitter, and Facebook dominate. I'm sure everyone has experienced an issue where their written words were construed to take on a tone that was never intended. While those issues are usually resolved by hashing things out with a conversation, taking the time to do that initially, could just as easily prevent the issue in the first place.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the Annual HRPA Conference and Tradeshow in Toronto. At the event, there were plenty of HR professionals talking about the latest trends, but there was one that stuck out. I had a discussion with a conference attendee, which centered on increasing interpersonal communication, and decreasing dependency on technology to boost success rates in candidate and employee management. As a representative of iCIMS, a SaaS provider, I was opposed, but the more I sat on the subject, the more I understood exactly what he was getting at - it's about striking the balance.

Candidates and employees alike need a gateway to information that will impact them - whether they need to understand what the process is for the performance review period or at what stage of the interview process they're at as a job candidate or hiring manager, people need access to information in a central location and need to know who they can call, for further explanation of certain topics.

Solely using technology to communicate can create gaps - it has to be used as a supplement to a conversation. On a supplemental level, technology can create a rounded process that not only supports the initial communications, but drives messages home with corporate branding and a defined organizational tone that can be referenced in the future. Not only does this improve communication, but it helps define an organizations' culture and values while simultaneously streamlining processes and procedures.

So, my question to HR Professionals is how have you utilized technology to support communication within your HR programs and how has it impacted your results?

We've all heard the line about HR being a cost-center to a company, but there is a growing trend among progressive HR Leaders to buck this notion through a creative means to drive new revenue. The source… in-bound candidates and job seekers. Think of how many resumes/applications your company receives on a daily basis. Over time, this becomes a group of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of individuals that have expressed interest in employment with your company. These people have suggested that they want to make your brand a part of their careers; a part of their lives. This audience of captive interest is invaluable to a company; however, many solely see this value within context of talent acquisition. More and more companies have found success in strategies that convert this passion for employment into an even greater passion for your brand.

Over the past decade, talent acquisition departments have vastly improved their approach to employment branding. Within the iCIMS' Talent Platform, many clients already use our HTML Communication Center to deliver branded communications. Some of the more progressive companies have taken this a step further, aligning their efforts directly with Marketing, by incorporating coupons or discount codes on the automatically generated emails that a candidate receives when applying. In addition, how about softening the blow of a rejection letter by including a similarly branded gift certificate for in-store or online use? Consider this:

A candidate applies online for a general manager position at a national restaurant chain. In his confirmation email, an eye catching HTML coupon is included for 10% off the entire bill at this restaurant. This applicant, already excited about the prospect of working for the company, now shares this passion with his family with dinner to your nearby restaurant location. This helps to foster both an increased employment brand image, as well as the brand loyalty every marketer aims to develop.

All promote a healthy job seeker-employer relationship, develop more general brand awareness, and (for iCIMS users) are actually very easy to make reality within our technology. 

Applicants are hanging on every word from the employer about their application, so there is your captive audience. Nearly guaranteed to read it!! Run that by your marketing friends and see if their ears perk up. Of course, this type of program may not make sense for all organizations, but for many it seems like there could be numerous benefits. For these brands, a program along these lines, with discount codes specific to HR, could certainly add a new arrow in HR’s profit center quiver. While this kind of strategy might not break many sales records at any organizations, every company values new ideas to improve the bottom line... and especially value those progressive minds that bring such ideas to the table.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this concept and if you think it would make sense at your company.

So I, much like many of you I'm sure, am frantically trying to complete my holiday shopping for friends and family. As much as I try to finish this daunting task in the early Fall, every year there are a few people on my list who cause me much angst to find that perfect gift and stretch my creative process.

As I began tackling this year's holiday gifts, I found myself thinking about overhauling my "gift process" to better leverage assisting technologies. Crazy, perhaps…or perhaps you think I just need to get on the band wagon? My husband thinks I'm obsessive with my whole approach to holiday gift sourcing and tracking and perhaps he's right. But with 30+ people to shop for, if I'm not careful, December 24th will be here before I know it, and rather than finding that perfect gift I'm excited to give, I fear I'll end up getting close family a holiday sweater, or worse yet, a re-gift…

So, what's my process now? It's what I'll call an organized mass of spreadsheets:

1. I've got my spreadsheet that tracks the family and friends to shop for, their interests, and potential gift ideas,
2. Our overall budget and expense breakdown by person and gift,
3. And the status of each gift in the process - drop down menus to eliminate confusion if the gift is on order, shipped, arrived, or wrapped.

With the onslaught of highly beneficial technology available, I need to consider moving my offline flow to a more efficient, productive technology for managing my efforts. A quick search online, and I am easily shown that my painful spreadsheet tracking can be laid to rest with some automated tools designed to enhance my productivity and reduce my manual efforts. An obvious recruiting correlation here that you might think I’m stretching for, but work with me… it's here!

• Sourcing: Finding that perfect gift, like finding that perfect candidate, can easily be facilitated with sourcing technology. Check out this site where I can define profiles and personality traits for my gift recipients. A pre-defined list can be generated: http://www.gifts.com/profiler. 
• Tracking: Like losing a resume in a paper pile, I am at risk of one-off-post-it notes with gift ideas that don't make their way to my spreadsheet. Centrally stored data for tracking gift lists and wish lists would reduce my manual tracking. Some great options here: http://lifehacker.com/5700124/five-best-gift+tracking-tool.
• Organizing: Like the tracker, staying organized and well informed with all of my gift/recipient – or key candidate – data in one accessible location is ideal. Amazon's Gift Organizer is just the ticket: https://www.amazon.com/gp/gift-central/organizer?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0
• Reporting: Whether you're an HR Professional looking to pull recruiting metrics or a gift-obsessed holiday shopper like myself looking to stay on budget, reporting technologies are key to success.

So it's clearly time to replace my old, faithful spreadsheet and embrace technologies that can improve my efforts. I will let you know which one rings in as the favorite. So stay tuned faithful shoppers and good luck in all your holiday efforts!

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if your recruitment message could remain the same when sourcing passive candidates from around the world? Life would be much easier…

I say this because I’m currently in the process of researching best practices for sourcing passive candidates. And, in all of my findings it seems that what works for one group of people, may not necessarily work for another. Solution: targeted messaging. I am sure you have heard this all before, but I think one of the most effective ways to source passive candidates around the world is to 1) understand what they value and 2) speak their language.

When passively recruiting, whether through mass email or other channels, it is important to modify your recruitment messaging to reflect your target audience’s interest. With a little research, you can determine what company principles these candidates value. In a discussion with one of my coworkers, I found out that in India some candidates prefer the financial stability of a company and the popularity of the brand name, as both will help them better network in business circles. While other candidates might be more interested in monetary benefits such as a retirement savings plan.

Further, one of the more basic, yet interesting, fumbles that recruiters can make when recruiting international candidates is word choice. Let’s take a simple example:

You recruit for a best-in-class company with an outstanding onboarding program. You want your new recruits to succeed, so you therefore provide a seamless onboarding program with the right training to help them transition successfully. Well, now you are opening an office in the UK, and you need some local talent to support your endeavor. When targeting a certain sector, choose the right words! So, while the word “onboarding” may be used in the UK, you might want to try using a more common word: “induction”. Why not try changing your messaging to say: “We provide an unmatched induction programme because we want all of our personnel to succeed.”

Also, it is essential to have the right tools in place to drive your messaging. Sourcing and CRM tools usually make it pretty easy to send frequent, targeted messages to the right people. There is nothing worse then sending a message intended for Italian candidates to Japanese top talent.

Although you are an HR Professional, it’s important to leverage those basic Marketing skills when sourcing passive candidates. Target your messaging and you may just find you are sourcing the top talent needed to drive your company’s success.

I always start off my morning the same: get up, take out/feed the dog (Penny), get myself together for work, pour my cereal and coffee and grab my copy of Entertainment Weekly…I mean the New York Times. Yesterday was no different. Cereal was in place, newspaper was in line. All I needed was my coffee and I was good to go. I stood up from my chair, went about seven feet and bam…sneak attack…the dog went for the newspaper. (Oddly enough, not the food…) Even the dog wanted to read all the news that's fit to print! Or eat it anyway. Slow to react, the dog shred the paper in about 2.53 seconds. In a huff, I got the newspaper away from her, dumped it in the recycling and opted for the entertainment magazine instead. Penny lives and breathes the very definition of troublemaker, but there is one other word that I like to describe her as: a Doer. Penny is proactive. She searches for what she wants and she gets it. I chose to write about this little anecdote because 1) I find any chance I can to talk about my dog and, 2) what Penny did made me think, ironically enough, about my job. By studying my movements and waiting for the exact moment, Penny was one step ahead of me. I was unprepared for her move and thus, she gained an advantage over me. Now, let me subtly link this to Human Resources. It reminds me that HR thinkers need to stay one step ahead in order to develop a competitive advantage in the “war for talent”.

Everyone is competing to become an expert in their position. And, being in an industry that connects directly with Human Resource topics, I, too, find myself on this quest for absolute knowledge. Through research and analyses, HR professionals can stay one step ahead and create a competitive advantage that will lead to a more effective HR department.

Creating a competitive advantage can be process or employee specific. Let’s look at an example:

Company X and Company Y both operate in the Retail Industry. Both have stores in all fifty states and both require 30 employees per store. Company X has a 75-person talent pool to acquire candidates from while Company Y only has a 45-person talent pool. With a larger talent pool, Company X is more likely to source qualified talent quickly; thus lowering time-to-fill and improving employee retention. Obviously, Company X has developed some sort of competitive advantage causing an increase in candidate engagement as compared to Company Y.

The main question is: what did Company X do differently? Well, there are a number of possible answers. For example, Company X has an:

• Easy-to-complete application process
• Notably positive corporate culture
• Correctly targeted recruitment campaigns

But the real answer is they took the knowledge they gained through research and applied it to the challenges they were facing with departmental efficiency.

Human Resources is an age old department with age old processes. What companies CAN do is take those standard processes and learn how to effectively deploy them. And, as time passes, so do techniques. Bigger and better techniques surface (i.e. social media, applicant tracking systems, CRM tools, etc.) enabling companies utilizing them to create larger talent pools, acquire more specialized candidates, lower recruiting expenses and create a competitive advantage in the war for talent.

Here are a few examples (as you know, there are many):

Global Competitive Advantage:
Global firms can focus on a more diverse employee base when targeting top talent. In a SHRM study, more than half of the companies evaluated found a greater competitive advantage after focusing on diversity. The greater the diversity, the larger the scope of backgrounds and skills; thus, companies were able to effectively operate in a more global environment.

Hourly Competitive Advantage:
Companies that rely on hourly hiring can drastically reduce paper expenses and lost document error associated with high application volumes. By installing on-site web-based application kiosks that enable all walk-in candidates to directly send their information to an online database, these companies can eliminate the time and money spent on application data entry and printing. More time can be spent on sourcing top talent.

Employee-Type Competitive Advantage:
Healthcare organizations, for example, require a wide variety of workers often with necessary certifications. These companies can target LinkedIn focus groups to source specialized employee types such as nurse, part-time and volunteer.

So, stay one step ahead by researching, analyzing and implementing. Acknowledge the challenges you face, research solutions, and implement for a more effective department. Create a competitive advantage within your HR department to acquire top talent before your competitor does. As for Penny, I think it is time to practice “Stay”.