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.

The intent of the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) initiative is to provide a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients' perspectives on hospital care. This initiative in healthcare recruiting has become an essential part of our hiring practice. If ever there was a time to hardwire a culture of excellent patient care—to ensure that your organization is meeting its mission, protecting its bottom line, and enhancing its reputation—that time has clearly arrived.

Identifying the right skill set is not always the most important factor in hiring the right candidate. What is important is asking if this candidate will fit into one’s culture. Will they change the way a patient receives care?  Identifying the right behaviors that attribute to higher HCAHPS scores become the challenge today. Competences like ‘compassion, adaptability, multi-tasking, and flexibility’ are important behaviors to evaluate for HCAHPS, especially when it comes to nursing candidates.

The Studer Group released an article on “Four Reasons Why Those 27 Survey Questions Will Change Healthcare Forever.”

• HCAHPS provides accurate “apples to apples” metrics.

• Results are tied to quality and clinical outcomes.

• It gives consumers an easy way to compare hospitals.

• HCAHPS pay-for-performance is coming

Identifying these competencies allow a recruiter to screen candidates in a way that hiring managers will understand the true value you deliver to them during an interview process. Hospitals need employees who understand the importance of patient centric care.

To be at your best as a top Healthcare recruiter, you must understand how to impact the HCAHPs scores indirectly. Here are a few bullets to help link these together.

•  Take the time to learn what is measured. 

•  Know your organizations scores and where you are falling short. 

•    During your candidate screening, ensure you are asking questions that revolve around specific survey questions. For example: How do you treat patients with courtesy and respect? Give me examples of how you’ve changed your communication style depending on the patient/situation? How do you explain medications and treatment to patients and their families?

•  Communicate your strategy to peers, hiring managers, and executives

•  Always share your success

The question now lies, how will HCAHPS scores transform the way you select top talent? 

It’s no surprise that college students are graduating and finding that the job market isn’t as welcoming as they had initially hoped it would be. With the percentage of unemployed and underemployed recent college graduates approaching 57%, more and more students are flocking to career fairs to have a shot at landing a job after graduation. Career fairs continue to be a great way for companies to meet educated and motivated individuals who are looking for employment.

Before your recruiters attend a college career fair, make sure they have prepared by asking themselves these vital questions.

•    Are you prepared with the most efficient way to connect and source these college students?
•    Does your company have the tools to properly handle the influx of resumes it will be receiving?
•    Can you take advantage of things like tablets and QR codes to track applicants instead of bringing home a pile or resumes?

As a student going into my senior year, the last thing I want to do is bring twenty copies of my resume to a career fair, just to have it thrown atop a pile of other resumes. I leave wondering if my qualifications will ever make it to the eyes of the recruiter who is looking to fill that position or if the stack will just be misplaced? I know that if my information is stored digitally right at the career fair, I will be entered into their applicant tracking system. These recruiters will then be able to search on my qualifications, which ultimately alleviates a great deal of stress for me, the applicant.  Having digitally stored resumes from a career fair, will enable your recruiters to make better hiring decisions and ensure you find the best applicant for the job.

Another great method for attracting college graduates is to have an impressive presence on your social media sites. Companies have started to recruit socially by distributing jobs to these sites. If you want to target the top candidates, you must have the ability to go beyond your direct contacts and followers. A great way to do this is through employee referral programs. Reaching out to your employees’ contacts that are searching for new jobs automatically enhances your applicant pool with applicants you may never have been able to reach. Having employees post jobs on social media has been proven to bring in more employee referrals, sometimes 4 times as many before posting to social media! If your company isn’t ready for social media recruiting, you may be missing out on the ideal candidate for your organization.

It’s easy to assume the recruiting programs you have in place for hiring entry level positions are sufficient, but the most qualified candidates are going to be attracted to the companies that establish a presence at college fairs and on social media. Job boards are becoming a way of the past, with social media essentially taking over recruitment initiatives. Today, companies need to make themselves known to college grads and sell themselves to the applicants in order to hire the best candidates for their jobs.

This past week millions of Americans tuned in to enjoy the 83rd annual Major League Baseball All Star Game in Kansas City. This Midsummer Classic is an extraordinary event because it brings together the top talent from across the country to show off their skills and represent their team as the best of the best. The All Star game brought together the league’s heavy hitters in Prince Fielder, Jose Bautista, Carlos Beltran, and Robinson Cano. The best pitching the MLB has to offer in Felix Hernandez, Ryan Cook, and Matt Cain; and of course the fan favorites in Derek Jeter and Josh Hamilton.

Although this event is loved by baseball fans all around the country, it is nearly impossible to satisfy every opposition during the player selection process. Due to the substantial input fans have in the final selection, I can’t help but wonder how many of the incredibly talented players slip between the cracks and miss what could be their only shot at All Star greatness.

Similar to this process in Major League Baseball, companies of all shapes and sizes pick their own “All Star Teams” each and every day when they source, hire, and onboard top talent for their organization. These candidates may not be judged on the speed of their fastball or their batting average; however, the productivity and assets new employees will bring to their team are just as valuable to an organization as a great player is to a baseball team. 

Choosing who the All Star players will ultimately be is a painstaking process; comparable to the hiring procedures HR teams go through on a daily basis. The average HR recruiter spends most of his or her day sifting through resumes to determine which applicants make the first cut for their team; it can then take weeks to handpick candidates that are fully qualified for the position.  Once their talent pool is narrowed to a reasonable number, recruiters will spend the upcoming weeks interviewing all of these candidates to determine if they fit in with their company culture.

The process is very tedious and costly. Combined with the ongoing war for talent, this means if recruiters do not act on these applications in a timely manner, their very own Derek Jeter or Josh Hamilton may already be playing for the other team. To avoid this from happening, HR executives must be prepared with streamlined processes in place to decrease time and cost-per-hire. What is the best way to do so? By ensuring your company has a robust, user-friendly, and successful Applicant Tracking System.

If you are unsure of what this is, think of it as a Baseball Roster. You have your starters in their positions, the reserves behind them, and your best pitchers, ultimately followed by your relievers. All the potential players are readily available and fully prepared, on-demand. Most rosters include the player’s stats as well. The pitchers with the lowest ERA’s are usually at the top and the batters with the highest batting averages and on-base percentages are easily spotted over those who are not performing as well. Rather than sifting through your entire deck of baseball cards to recruit the top players for your team, you can easily refer to your roster and quickly fulfill the current opening on your bench.

An ATS is your very own roster for your Human Resource department. All of the applicants who apply to your organization send in their resume (baseball card) and it is automatically uploaded into your system (roster). You can view the applicants by highest GPA, highest level of education; most years of experience, etc. Don’t let your top talent slip through the cracks; make sure your ATS is fully satisfying all of your recruitment needs, ensuring this season's selection process is a painless one.

In the current age, when we don’t know the answer to a question, we tend to turn to our good friend Google for the answer. In 2011 alone, Google performed a total of 1,722,071,000,000 searches – that’s an average of 4,717,000,000 searches per day! Needless to say, Google will be there to provide you with an answer to your question, but none of those 1,722,071,000,000 queries will tell you which candidate is the best fit for YOUR company. In fact, it might even provide an answer that is completely opposite of what you are desperately hoping to hear. Therefore, consider these three points when making important executive business decisions.

1. The most experienced candidate should get the job.
Some of the most important decisions made in an organization involve hiring new employees. Without a superior workforce, your efficiency and productivity will suffer. Therefore, recruiters must provide hiring managers with the best candidates for the position, every time.  But, what happens when your hiring managers don’t know who to hire?

A recent Fast Company article entitled “8 Rules For Creating a Passionate Workforce”, mentions that one must hire for passion and commitment first, experience second, and credentials third. To be honest, I was surprised to see experience second; however, candidates who are passionate and driven are more likely to thrive in your work environment than those who have prior experience but lack the necessary dedication.  Ultimately, looking for individuals that fit in with your corporate culture is just as important as finding someone with the technical skill set.

Remember: If the candidate looks good on paper, confirm he/she can also exemplify the necessary qualities to succeed and fit in with your organization!

2.Sourcing specialists must be proactive to find quality talent.
Because recruiters can leverage applicant tracking systems to collect job applications and communicate with candidates, they often have been seen as reactive to the candidate’s job request. But, what happens when there aren’t enough candidates that apply to your company?

Now, more so than ever, recruiters and sourcing specialists are constantly searching for qualified candidates on job boards and social networks. By using a sourcing system, HR departments can leverage internal operations to create a talent community for enhanced candidate engagement. What this really boils down to is the ability to capture a person’s information without requiring an application to be submitted. The visitor (with a click of a button) can simply show interest into  employment opportunities, while simultaneously adding themselves into a greater pool of candidates on the back end for recruiters and sourcing specialists to access. By creating this talent community, a reactive process is formulated allowing sourcing specialists to communicate with just about anyone that shows interest.

Remember: You just can’t communicate with the candidates you don’t have!

3.    Turnover rate is a large factor when measuring the effectiveness of your HR program.
Many will agree that a company’s biggest asset is its people. If you hire good people, sell a good product, and back it with quality support, your company will undoubtedly succeed. But what happens if you don’t hire good people? 

Some might assume that a high turnover indicates an ineffective HR program, but companies shouldn’t worry about these raw figures. Sometimes, high turnover could be seen as a positive entity. To shed some light, if a company loses 10 people because they weren’t fulfilling their job responsibilities and/or had trouble meeting expectations, is the company really concerned about their turnover? If HR can replace those 10 newly open positions with stellar recruits, one might argue that the turnover rate really does not matter. Think about it like this, would you really lose sleep knowing you lost 10 of your worst employees? In the interim, efficiency might slow a bit, but once the team is reinforced with new bodies, a successful onboarding program will get new recruits hired and ready to start in no time! Check out the eHow article “How to Calculate Turnover” for suggestions on what might be most important for your reports.

Remember:  Discuss your turnover rate with upper management. Find out how these metrics will be used and what the end goal is for your company.

Now, don’t be afraid to do your own research on how to equip your organization for the next hiring wave. But remember, keep it specific and aligned with your company’s mission, vision, and values. If you follow these guidelines, you’ll be celebrating your recruitment success in no time!

It was halfway through spring semester of my junior year and the pressure was on. Everyone I knew was looking for summer internships. I had spruced up my resume, lined up my references and applied to numerous marketing and communication internships. Then I received an email requesting I set up a phone interview, and when that went well, the company brought me in to meet with my prospective team in-person. The next thing I knew, a software company named iCIMS was offering me a marketing internship for the summer.

What happened next took me completely by surprise. I received emails from multiple people welcoming me to the company and I was able to fill out all of my employment paperwork online, before I had even stepped into the office for my first day of work. I was quickly becoming more and more impressed by this process they called “onboarding”.

There is plenty of research regarding the benefits of onboarding. However, having recently gone through the process revealed to me three key elements that are vital for a successful onboarding program:

1. Provide the Technical Tools and Knowledge

• Have a new hire’s work station and all log-ins/user access set up before their arrival.
• Schedule training sessions to educate the new employee on all of the company’s internal systems as well as the roles of the people in their department.

Benefits:

• Reduces time-to-productivity – Employees can start working on small projects even while they are going through training.
• Results in more competent employees and reduces the number of technical questions – New hires will have fewer questions about how the systems work, but will know exactly who can most effectively answer their questions when and if they arise.

2. Make Job Expectations Clear

• Give the new employee clear goals and provide a project plan so they know what is expected of them and understand their role in the bigger picture.

Benefits:

• Reduces “Buyer’s Remorse” – Having a clear understanding of company expectations will ensure new hires are far less likely to regret their acceptance of your job offer.
• Improves Performance – When employees feel like their work matters, they want to perform to the best of their ability. This will ultimately result in targeting company goals and enhance business productivity overall. 

3. Engage and Assimilate

• Making new hires feel welcome is the over-arching goal of the entire onboarding process because it can make or break the employee’s decision to stay with your company.

Benefits:

• Increases Engagement – When new employees feel like they fit in with the company culture, they are more invested in their work.
• Increases Optimistic Environment – Employees who have felt accepted and welcome from day one will work more harmoniously with one another and lead to a positive working atmosphere.

Before iCIMS, onboarding had been a foreign concept to me. However, after experiencing it firsthand, I’ve seen how much of a rewarding and beneficial impact it can have on the culture of an entire company.

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!

According to a Generation Y and Facebook study done by Millennial Branding and Identified, “Owner” is the fifth most popular job title for Gen-Y on their Facebook profiles. Setting aside this subset of individuals who own their own business and focusing on those who enter the broader workforce, this study also showed that Generation Y spends an average of just over 2 years at their first job and job hops multiple times over the course of their career.

For organizations that focus recruitment efforts on the 18-29’ers of Gen Y, this can be a rough stat to digest. Given the translated cost of effort, time, and money that’s put into ramping up new hires, a continuously revolving door can result in a rough ROI and wreak havoc on employee morale.

Interesting enough, the Wynhurst Group stated that 22% of staff turnover is going to happen during the first forty-five days of employment. Fortunately, there is something that can be done to help improve those stats and simultaneously boost future performance of your employee base – implement a formal onboarding process.

When employees are processed through a formal onboarding process, they are more likely to stay with an organization for a longer period of time. Just like anything that’s new, it’s best to ensure that new hires are comfortable and understand their role in the organization and how they can make an impact. While providing the opportunity to deeply understand the bigger picture is important, we all know that there are a ton of tactical tasks and paperwork that go into onboarding a new hire that can make or break their experience with your company.

So, how do you manage all of those tasks?

The good news is that you have plenty of options. There are plenty of tools available to HR organizations that are looking for ways to smooth out the process of executing an onboarding program. Onboarding technology can assist in ensuring processes are followed and provide additional insight into where bottlenecks may consistently be occurring. With a solid onboarding process plan in place, onboarding software can take your results to the next level by formalizing your process and providing the team with a consistent set of steps that can be used to provide new hires with what they need to succeed. It’s consistency that’s going to drive your results.

By 2025, Generation Y will make up 75% of the workforce. Engage these potential job hoppers at the beginning of their journey with you, and convert them for the long haul. The returns will come in time, and your options for driving these results are endless – providing you with an opportunity to have some fun and showcase what’s so great about your company. A little creativity mixed with a formal process can go a long way, leaving your job hoppers with lots of reasons why they should stay, instead of go. 

In just the first three months of 2010, the world has seen many changes, with some even bigger happenings to come. What should we expect?  Will Google pull out of China?  Will we pass universal health care?  Will this recession ever end?  Signs point to yes.

Back in November, a colleague and friend of mine, Jennifer Sekerka, blogged about the pending recovery.  She listed the stock market, retail sales, and shipping volume as hopeful indicators.  Now, four months later, let's take another look at where we stand:

• The stock market is even stronger.  Holding at 10,000 back then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average now has eyes on the 11,000 mark.  It may be a while before we cross it, but most analysts expect it to happen this year.  Almost 8% gained in 4 months. That is great.
• Retail sales were much higher in November and December than now, but they're supposed to be!  Holiday sales were mostly flat, as expected, but that's better than a decline!  Have we hit the bottom?  Several retail bellwethers seem to think so.
• Shipping volume is harder to get statistics on, but it seems as though, according to UPS, the shipping business is on the mend as well (maybe it's because people are fed up with airline baggage fees?)

I think most people expect that things are going to get better soon.  The question for quite some time has been when, not if.  Here's why I think the time has come: unemployment has held steady  For the past 2 months unemployment has held steady at 9.7% and it is expected to hold steady again in March before beginning a decline.  What's important about this is that unemployment has not held steady or declined for 2 straight months since March of 2007 (click here). If you weren’t preparing for the recovery in November, you might want to start now.

What should you do to prepare?  You're reading the iBlog, so you know that I'm going to suggest that you check out some of our great resources.  Four months ago, Jennifer recommended our "Post-Recession and Seasonal HR Practices" webinar, and that's still a great place to start.  You can find that on our Resource Center.  If you want more, there are plenty of other resources available, including white papers, articles, webcasts and much more.

Many economists say that the worst of the recession is over and unemployment will decline as the recovery takes hold.  Undoubtedly, recruiters will soon find themselves busy with more positions to fill, less time to fill them, and a more aggressive talent landscape to compete in.  Unfortunately, the post-recession rush for talent may not be the worst of what’s to come.  Even now, as companies are rushing to ready their talent acquisition systems for the recovery, they may be ignoring a much larger and more pressing issue: the baby boomer exodus from the workforce.

According to a report by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College, 77 percent of employers have not analyzed projected employee retirement rates or assessed employee career plans.  In other words, employers are largely unaware of the true impact the baby boomer exodus will have.  In 2000, baby boomers were 48% of the US labor force.  By 2010, they’re projected to represent only 37% of the labor force.  This decline would represent a shortage of 10-15 million workers in the next decade alone.

 Maybe it’s time to start analyzing.

The talent gaps created by experienced and skilled baby-boomers leaving the work force will be large.  Even if most of the replacements for those workers come from within the company, many new hires will still be needed to replace the replacements.  There is no way around the problem: new candidates will be needed and in large numbers. 

So how can we prevent a complete catastrophe?

The good news is that great candidates are still out there looking.  Now is the time to start building relationships with candidate pools in order to identify those individuals who truly stand above the rest.  When hiring freezes are lifted and new positions open up, a truly excellent recruiting team will already have candidates in mind.  Remember that the candidates being hired today will be in line for those leadership positions currently held by baby-boomers, make sure to catch some good ones.

As far as Talent Technology is concerned, employers should ensure that they have a proper Workforce Planning and Applicant Tracking System in place.  The worst outcome by far would be for employers to miss out on the best candidates because they were unprepared for the exodus or were inundated with low-quality resumes.

In summary, here are the steps for success:

1.       Identify the potential impact of the baby boomer exodus on your business

2.       Use Succession Planning tools to properly identify replacements from within the company and Workforce Planning to identify the additional staffing levels needed to fill the gaps

3.       Build candidate relationships through career fairs and ongoing interviews. Leveraging Candidate Relationship Management tools (CRM), frequently reach out to your candidates of choice to see how they are doing and update them on positions within your company

4.       Make sure that processes are in place to properly screen out low-quality candidates in order to save recruiters the time they need to properly evaluate good candidates

5.       Get started early and be ready!