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Interviewing and Selecting the Best

Focus on recruiting and selecting top talent


  • Create a Culture of Engagement

    Did you know?

    ...The companies on Fortune's list of the "Best 100 Companies to Work For" increased their stock price by 14% per year between 1998 and 2005. 

    ...Highly engaged employees outperform disengaged colleagues by 20-28% according to the Conference Board.

    ...Towers Perrin found over a three year period of time companies increased their operating margins by 5.75% when their employees were engaged.

    The current economic climate has caused many companies to just stick to their core business.  However, what companies cannot forget to do is still look for talent that will embrace the culture of their organization ...

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  • Is Talent Getting Away?

    Authors frequently share tips on how HR professionals can attract talented candidates.  Yet, over the past 15 years, I have talked to hundreds of individuals who were currently looking for work or who had recently been seeking work.  All too often they shared their discontent with the job seeking process.  Every one of them shared how poorly they were treated and how, more often than not, they never heard back from the employer after they applied for a position. 

    Many of these individuals I knew personally.  Furthermore, I had extensive knowledge about their work history and ethics.  These individuals were ...

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  • The Rage to Engage in This Challenging Economic Climate

    What can you do differently to engage and keep talent?  Take these steps:
     
    1.  Develop a formal succession plan.
    2.  Let applicants know that your organization cares enough about retention to develop and implement a succession plan.
    3.  Be honest, people are not afraid of what they know.  However, they are afraid of what they do not know.
     
     
  • 3 Traits that Define Good Candidates

     
    Throughout my career I have always felt that if someone was willing I could teach him or her how to be a superior recruiter, compensation specialist, or benefits administrator.  As a matter of fact, I had a reputation for hiring people with little to no experience in HR and turning them into top producers.  What was my secret?
    I looked for three traits in individuals. 
     
    * If they were HUNGRY.  Did they have heart? Did they want it bad enough? Did they have the passion for victory?
    * If they were HUMBLE.  Where they willing to admit when they made a mistake ...

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  • Consultants: Are they worth what you pay them?

    On any given day over the last few years, human resource professionals probably have read multiple articles about how important it is to match the candidate to the culture of the organization.  This is not an easy task.  Therefore, many HR professionals have engaged consultants that profess how much experience they have in recruitment marketing strategies and attracting the right talent to any given organization. 

    In good faith, HR professionals have paid these consultants to help them conduct national employment campaigns based on the assurance that the advertising/marketing strategies will attract the right talent to their organization.  What many ...

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  • Establish the Person-Organization Fit

    Individuals and organizations are most successful when they possess similar values, goals, and interests.  Similar attributes between individuals tend to improve communication and liking, which affects an employee�??s morale and organizational outcomes.  Recruiters and managers frequently hire based on skills and education, and terminate employees for their poor behavior.  Therefore, it is imperative that a recruiter focus on hiring employment candidates that want to embrace the culture of the organization. 

    Tips for conducting an effective interview:

    ·         Obtain facts about a person�??s life and work history

    o   Conduct background checks, credit checks, and references

    ·         Predict whether  the individual will ...

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  • Why Organizations Need to Develop a Talent Pipeline

    The economic climate, globalization, technological developments, and fierce competition are all reasons that organizations need to develop a talent pipeline.  Key positions in an organization cannot remain vacant nor can an organization afford to take a replacement mentality.  More importantly, organizations cannot afford to hire someone that will not work in the best interest of the organization. 
     
    Finding talent is not easy; therefore, organizations cannot afford to lose talent.  They must cultivate and groom key players to take future leadership positions.  Of more significance, they must continually seek talented job candidates and recognize those that will have the emotional fortitude ...

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  • Conducting an Effective Behavioral Interview

    It is important to set goals and clearly identify what needs to be accomplished during the interview process.  First, the interviewer should attempt to accurately measure whether the candidae has the skills, education and technical experience to perform the job.  Second, it is important to sell the positive features of the job and the organization.  Third, to help the candidate make an appropriate choice, it is necessary to provide a balanced view of the challenges and the rewards of the job.  To manage the interview with any degree of success, the interviewer needs to accomplish all of these goals.
     
    The ...

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  • Hire the Best: Use Behavioral Interviewing

    The premise of behavioral interviewing is that past behavior predicts future behavior.  Behavioral interviewing is well supported in all the literature.  However, recently, I asked a recruiter how she rated the answers to the questions she asked.  She said, "I don't."  Behavioral interviewing as a process is good, but just asking an open-ended question and not knowing how to rate the answer is a problem. 
     
    Organizations should consider doing content validity studies to determine if their behavioral interviewing process is working.  Are you really hiring better candidates as a result of the behavioral interview?
     
    If you want to know ...

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  • Does Your Applicant Tracking System Really Work?: 5 Tips to Recruiting Top Talent

    Today, employers from every industry face a major challenge finding and retaining employees who will be effective within their organization.  The types and combination of skills needed in the work place contribute to the challenge of finding and keeping good employees.  In an effort to streamline the sourcing and selection process, most organizations moved to an automated applicant tracking system which is used to identify job candidates who are a good match for open positions.

    In the beginning, the move to the online process seemed like the right thing to do.  After all, everyone was talking about �??going paperless.�??   However ...

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  • Fact or Fiction: Great candidates get lost in cyber space - Part II

    If you read the blog I posted on 7/19/08, and want to know the answer to the question: "Fact or Fiction."  The answer is fact.  The persistent applicant that made several attempts to apply for a position because the employer had set up road blocks was a great candidate that the employer will never talk to again.  The candidate was highly educated, experienced, and had great references.  More importantly, the candidate was a perfect fit for the position. 
     
    If we really want to capture talented individuals, then why do we make it so hard for them to apply ...

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  • Fact or Fiction:Great candidates get lost in cyber space.

    Is there really a shortage of talent or do organizations make it so hard for applicants to apply for a job that they just give up?  How can we select the best if we never talk to the best?

    Picture this:  The job candidate finds a job online that is a perfect match to his skill set.  The applicant follows the online instructions to apply for the position only to receive an error message indicating that the transaction cannot be completed.  The candidate refuses to give up and several clicks later the applicant finds the phone number, fax number and ...

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  • Recruiting the Older Worker - Part IV Retention

    In summary, hiring older workers and placing them in positions that will be of value to the organization is just the beginning.  Motivating and retaining them is the next step.  What we have to remember is that a key factor in perpetuating an organization's succcess is providing an employment climate that ignites an employee's intrinsic motivation. However, an organization's employment climate is important to all generations, not just the older worker.  So, what does everyone want? Here is one recipe that works for all generations.
     
     -Necessary tools that will enable them to be successful on the job ...

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  • Recruiting the Older Worker - Part III

    How Does a Company Best Utilize the Older Worker?s Skill Level?

     

    During the past few years the stock market has taken a downward turn several times.  The baby boomers that have been approaching retirement during this period of time are now looking at their investments and saying, ?I cannot retire.?  More importantly, many of them do not want to retire.  Why?  Well this is the generation that invented the 60-hour work week, found identity in what they did for a living, and vowed never to get old. The question is, ?What type of jobs will make these individuals flourish ...

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  • Recruiting the Older Worker Part II

    Should companies actively recruit the older worker?

     

    From where I sit, the answer is a resounding ?yes?, for a number of reasons.

     

    First and foremost is the fact that as the ?baby boomer? generation reaches retirement, there will simply not be enough workers to replace them; the resulting labor shortage will be huge and must be filled.

     

    Increasingly, this problem is being addressed by the United States as well as other countries in the world including Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. In many cases, the solution is to recruit and/or retain these baby boomers who invented the ...

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  • Recruiting the Older Worker - Part 1

    When I think of the word ?recruitment," I immediately envision a soon to be college graduate attending a career fair on campus and being courted by a number of corporate recruiters

     

    What about the ?older? worker, and by that I mean the baby boomer, who 1) was forced to take an early retirement; 2) has had his/her pension wiped out by a corporate scandal; or 3) wants and needs to work past retirement age because his/her retirement income is insufficient.  These individuals have already worked 30-40 years, possess a wealth of knowledge, have proven themselves in the work ...

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  • "Engagement" & Recruitment

    In the May 28, 2008 issue of TIME magazine, an article was published about employee engagement. The basic premise is that if you work toward ?engaging?  employees by   welcoming them, letting them know they are valued, asking their opinions, and generally making them feel they are an integral part of the company, they will be happier and more productive which will affect the bottom-line.

     

    This has proven to be the case as multitudes of companies are now utilizing on-boarding to promote employee engagement and reduce turnover.  However, when does this ?engagement? start? 

     

    I believe it begins with the recruitment of ...

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  • Hiring Diverse Candidates

    The workforce of today is comprised of business people from multiple generations, various ethnic backgrounds, and different abilities. These individuals are all important to the bottom-line. The question arises: "What can a company do to proactively seek and retain diverse candidates?"

     

    The answer lies in the organization taking steps to provide a diverse culture for their employees. Because you hire people from different age groups, different ethnicities, and different backgrounds does not mean you are embracing diversity.

     

    A few suggestions:

     

    o       Encourage  open communication

     

    o       Examine growth opportunities for equality

     

    o       Reduce bias in performance standards

     

    o       Ensure upper management ...

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  • Finding the Right Candidate

    Attracting the right people to your organization is done by being certain that the message you are telling job candidates is consistent with what they will find as an employee. An organization?s culture, a system of shared meaning held by employees that differentiates the organization from other organizations, is the first point in which there should be a match between the candidate and the employer.   
     

    The one thing that is imperative is to be certain that your recruitment brand reflects your culture.  A recruitment brand succinctly identifies your employment value proposition; ?Who are you? What are your values? What ...

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  • Hiring the Best and the Brightest

    Turnover continues to increase costs and reduce productivity.  One way to reduce costs associated with replacing employees is to hire the right employee the first time around. To make this happen you need to know what you want in an applicant before you start recruiting. Here is how to hire an MVP:

     

          Research continues to identify the need for employers and employees to share common values.  If the employee cannot buy-in to an organization?s corporate culture the first red flag should be raised.

     

          What a candidate is looking for in a job needs to match what is being offered ...

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