Why Resume Sorting Software is the Root of All Things Evil

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

When a job opens up and resumes start to arrive, human resources professionals have a huge task on their hands. In fact, nearly one-in-four human resources managers said they receive, on average, more than 75 resumes for each open position; 42 percent receive more than 50 resumes. That same survey also revealed that the vast majority of human resources managers (78 percent) reported at least half of the resumes they receive are from unqualified candidates.

These types of situations, which occur every day in thousands of offices across the world, is partially responsible for hiring managers turning to an outside source to help them wade through resumes. I’m not talking about a recruiter or an assistant. I’m talking about what has led the way in coining the term “resume black hole:” resume sorting software.

There are various opinions on the talent management software. On one hand, the software is a huge timesaver because it could be nearly impossible to view every resume that passes your desk if you work for a large company. On the other hand, though, you could be missing out on great employees because you’re weeding out candidates based on what keywords they did or didn’t use or because they didn’t rank high enough compared to other candidates.

It’s generally viewed as a necessary evil. The kicker with any automated system is that it can also automate mistakes. You have hundreds of resumes running through the system and rather than looking at the resume on an evaluation grid where multiple points of interest are evaluated, it’s sorting through them based on a combination of keywords. Some systems are better than others and some systems are set up better than others, with the right types of keywords and reasonable criteria.

Candidates are getting crafty, though. Considering that these systems have been around for years, people are catching on. The automated rejection email also may have tipped them off. Some are finding ways around the software using a few different methods.

National Public Radio tells the story of an IT professional who used keyword-identifying software to generate his resume. (Spoiler alert: it still didn’t land him the job.) There are also a slew of candidates who are creating their own personal marketing campaigns to get them noticed. It sounds a bit over the top, but when your resume is continually falling in that “black hole” and is never seen again, you have to get creative. Just for kicks, there’s this email from a brutally honest student seeking an internship on Wall Street.

The fact is, there are thousands of hiring managers who simply couldn’t do their job without talent management software that weeds out candidates, but there are also millions of qualified candidates receiving rejection emails on a daily basis. There’s got to be a happy medium between requiring that a candidate have 35 keywords on their resume to pass through the first round and hiring managers manually reading through stacks and stacks of resumes.

On some level, I suppose you could say it’s a form of survival of the fittest. Those who make their resumes stand out get noticed. Those whose resumes don’t stand out will continue the “apply and deny” cycle.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 


Photo Credit.

Change Quickly - How Organizations Can Quickly Hire Candidates

By Jessica Miller-Merrell


We live in a fast-paced world. We expect things to happen quickly and often don't have much patience when they don't. We send email, texts, meeting requests and more from one of our many mobile devices and expect to hear back quickly. We are wired to be able to make decisions on a moment's notice and we've gotten quite good at it. But there's one aspect of a hiring manager's job that seems to not want to follow suit: the recruiting process.

From start to finish, recruiting and hiring can take anywhere from just a couple days to more than 100! It's a big job to find a good candidate and start the interview and hiring process and the unfortunate aspect of that is that life goes on. That empty position is probably slowing down business and slowing down your days as you continue to search for the right candidate. So what's the solution? Filling the position before it even opens up.

We know that turnover is inevitable, so it only make sense. If you're constantly recruiting, there's less lag time when you're ready to pull the trigger and hire. It's the secret to success for any HR professional. The key is to seek out passive candidates - they will be your next employees! In 2011, a study by LinkedIn revealed that two-thirds of HR professionals place an emphasis on hiring passive talent and 82 percent use at least one method of staying continually engaged with that group.

The great thing about this is that it's not that difficult. There are so many simple things you can do daily to start building that pipeline of candidates. Check out these four tips to start building your arsenal of potential employees.

Become a networking rockstar - at all the right places
Whether you're a rockstar at recruiting or not, you've got to be doing it in the right places to be successful. Think about the best places for your industry. For instance, a high-tech company in Silicone Valley frequents wine festivals and tastings where many potential candidates often visit. Go to luncheons of professional organizations that are relevant to your business and make contacts there. To recruit the best new talent, don't just go to career fairs at colleges; reach out to professors who know who the top students are. Network everywhere you go - the grocery store, lunch with friends, fundraising events - they're all opportunities to fill that next job opening.

Tweet, post and connect
Social media has become such a valuable tool in the least few years. Use it to your advantage by connecting with potential candidates that you feel meet the criteria of someone you would hire. Looking at profiles now might mean you won't have to sift through resumes later. It can be as simple as commenting on a post, retweeting or adding that person as a connection. This isn't necessarily the time to reach out with a generic message about your website's careers page. Use this opportunity to build a personal connection. It'll be more memorable and will open the door to build a relationship. Think outside the box, too. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren't the only social sites where you can build connections.

Don't let a previously-rejected candidate fall through the cracks
Ok, we all know that some applicants who didn't make the cut will probably never be a good fit. But what about the ones who left you wishing you had two open positions so you could hire them also? Don't forget about them! There are several reasons they may have gotten looked over the first time - maybe their salary requirements were too high, they didn't have enough experience at the time or there was just a slightly more qualified applicant. Keep a conversation going with these candidates and reach out when you have a job opening you think they'd be great for.

Keep a record of potential candidates
As you start to build a pipeline of candidates, you'll probably run into the same problem that most do: it's difficult to keep track of them. This is actually the key to successfully building a pipeline. After all, what good is all that networking if you can't remember anything about that person? Keep a good record of all your potential candidates using a spreadsheet or software made just for this purpose. Note as much as you can so that when it's time to reach out about a job opening, you know their qualifications, motivations and important factors in making a decision. The more you know, the better.

Whether you use just one or all four of these tips, keep the conversation going. Continually engaging candidates is vital to finding the best fit in your talent acquisition search.

What are your secrets for successfully building a talent pipeline?


Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Photo Credit.

Suspects versus Prospects

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Recruiting strategically is different than relying solely on candidates to find you. This is also the fundamental difference between suspects and prospects. These terms are generally marketing terminology not traditionally found in the recruiting world, yet they have a fundamental place in your targeted recruitment strategy. In order to fully understand how these work in recruiting strategies we must first take a look at their definition.

The use of the word 'suspect' in recruiting is one of the least used and least understood. This term has been used frequently in the sales and business development roles, but rarely do you hear it in the recruiting space. A suspect is just a name, title, phone number and/or email address without any proof that the potential candidate is a high performer or a match for a specific position within your company. A recruiter must put emphasis on the high performance of suspects because their main focus is recruiting TOP talent and not just filling positions. A suspect is someone who the recruiter believes to be worth calling without having any proof on if they’re qualified.

Suspects are important parts of the recruiting process, but when it comes to making a recruiting call they tend to be hit or miss. Having a name and number tells the recruiter nothing about the qualifications or success of the individual. Calling suspects is considered cold calling because you have absolutely no idea about who they are or their qualifications. Suspects are a great source of referrals, networking and something producing a few prospects, but the overall ROI is low and recruiters cannot survive on these alone.

Merriam-Webster defines a prospect as “an apparent probability of advancement.” A recruiter can only adequately make some type of determination over the qualifications of a candidate by accessing facts, evidence, or information related to a prospect. Internet searches, Linkedin, social searches, real world verifiable results, and referrals are just a few ways recruiters can source information on a prospect. For a candidate to be upgraded from a suspect to a prospect there must be some type of reliable information present for a recruiter to make an educated guess.

When it comes to recruiting, a prospect is someone with the probability to become a candidate based on the facts a recruiter has found. Being a prospect obviously doesn’t mean that they have any interest in a specific role or company, but that they are actively engaged through conversation and are continuously building a relationship with their recruiter. Suspects and prospects are terms that aren’t used as frequently in the recruiting world, but both have their place. The process of recruitment is all about searching, qualifying, and finding top talent that fits into your organization. Moving a suspect to a prospect and then a prospect to candidate is all in the art of recruiting. It’s often the most difficult, but yields exceptional results. Each step is critical and if followed, you’ll reap the benefits in the end.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 


Photo Credit.

4 Ways to Keep Candidate Data Fresh

Join us for a HCI webinar sponsored by Talent Circles on 3/6 at 12 PM EST "How to Build a Strategic Candidate Pipeline." Register here.
 
By Jessica Miller-Merrell
 
In order to keep up with the job seeker you must make sure the information you have is always up to date and fresh. Outdated information can easily have a significant effect on your decision to hire a certain prospect. Working together and in a talent community will allow recruiters and job seekers to keep a tight reign on the amount of information that is outdated. Here are a few tips for companies that are looking to sharpen their skills in pulling newer, fresh content to make the best hire.

By-Directional Engagement. If you’ve done a good job at building your community and the interactions between recruiters and candidates just talk to them! The easiest way to update outdated and stale information is to ask a candidate to update their profile. If a job seeker is active they will always make sure that all their information in your ATS or CRM is 100% up to date and accurate. Asking for this information shouldn’t be done on a monthly basis, but quarterly would be more appropriate as job skills & experience are updated every so often.

Recruiter Engagement. In a successful Talent Network recruiters will be engagement with suspects and prospects throughout the entire process. Asking how they’re doing at home, updating them on career opportunities, and even discussing sports or current events. When recruiters become personal with candidates it allows them to garner information that the candidate might not put out there on their resume or in their profile. This allows the recruiter to tag certain candidates and categorize them that fits their needs.

If a candidate expresses that they are looking for a 50/50 work/home situation, recruiters are able to put them in a specific category that alerts them when a job to their liking becomes available. Interacting with those in a talent community allow recruiters to build a better culture fit for candidates interested in applying with their company. In doing so, a candidate’s wants and needs are always kept up to date and the data in your system keeps fresh.

Data Aggregation. Compiling several hundreds of GBs worth of data is important to find the best fit for a specific job. Using different social technologies to pull data from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are essential practices for keeping your data fresh. A candidate is more likely to update their LinkedIn when they add new certifications or specific accolades before they would re-upload their resume into a talent community. Being able to pull data when it becomes relevant will keep everything up to date. A candidate that wasn’t hirable 3 months ago based on a resume they uploaded, but not they are because of new certifications is important. Being able to pull this data from other sources is critical to keep fresh.

Analytics. The last piece of information to keep things fresh is marketing analytics. Have you sent them emails that they have responded to better than others? Do they click on certain things in blogs or on your website? Pulling analytics on a candidate’s history will allow some deeper insight into where they go and why they go there. This will help you gain a deeper level of understand into what your candidate is doing online and their purpose for being in your community.

More employers are actively recruiting employees from other companies. Almost 20 percent of employees in the survey reported having been approached by a potential employer in 2012 even though they hadn’t applied for a job at that company.

Enacting different practices to keep information fresh can be time consuming, but the downfall of outdated information is recruiting less strategically. Each company wants the brightest talent for their organization and those who get to them early might have a better shot at having them sign on the dotted line. Don’t take shortcuts when finding perfect talent because they will save you in the long run.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Join us for a HCI webinar sponsored by Talent Circles on 3/6 at 12 PM EST "How to Build a Strategic Candidate Pipeline." Register here. 

Photo Credit.

Social Sign On Makes Applying Online Easier for Job Seekers

Join us for a HCI webinar sponsored by Talent Circles on 3/6 at 12 PM EST "How to Build a Strategic Candidate Pipeline." Register here. 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

If I have to remember one more password for yet another website or social network, I think I’m going to implode. Passwords and pin codes were created for our protection against theft but they prove to be an annoyance. Most people, once they are on Facebook or LinkedIn, don’t generally log out including myself which is why the social sign on as part of the hiring and job application process is so convenient.

The Social Sign On Improves Candidate Experience  

Job seekers who are registered on social networks have their details all ready to go, and now, recruiters are making it easy to find those people by allowing them to apply for jobs using their social log-in information. It’s a super-simple way to create accounts using your network by tying into their network. In fact, just yesterday, I used my Facebook account to access a client blog on Typepad, where I write.  No need to create or try to remember new complex passwords. This makes my life – and job seekers’ lives – a lot easier.

Job seekers already spend an average of 45 minutes completing an online application and employers who add the social sign on to their ATS can shave off 10-20 minutes.  When it comes to the candidate experience, I believe that is money well spent. 

Gigya, the makers of SaaS technology, did a study recently that showed that sites that incorporate Facebook Connect, LinkedIn and Twitter sign saw users spending 50 percent more time on that site when they logged in through a social network. Except for the candidate experience, this works in reverse. We want job seekers to apply online quickly and seamlessly especially since an application is a candidate buying decision.

We want job seekers to spend time not on the application but researching and learning about their prospective place of work. That means we encourage the casual Internet surfing of videos, joining our talent network, blogs, and our company culture page instead of spending copious amounts of time completing an application online. 

Is the social sign on mainstream just yet? Not quite, but it’s a trend I seen differentiating employers as job seekers weigh their employment options. Here’s the breakdown based on all websites that offer social sign on not just employers and their online applications.

• ·      Facebook is the most popular origin of social logins with 61 percent

• ·      Yahoo is 15 percent

• ·      Google is 12 percent

• ·      Twitter is 10 percent

• ·      LinkedIn is 2 percent

While I see LinkedIn being higher for employment applications because it is a professional social network, employers will also offer several options when it comes to the social sign on as not everyone has a profile on every social network or uses them the same way. 

Mobile Job Search Lends to the Social Sign On

Imagine spending 45 minutes applying for a job posting on a company's ATS or applicant tracking system. Yikes. Now, imagine doing the same thing from your mobile device. As screens get smaller, the social sign on becomes more important not just from a time stand point for the candidate but in the job seeker's user experience.  We are relying on our mobile devices, tablets and smartphones more than ever before including the hiring and employment process. In January 2013, 6 million people searched for jobs using their mobile device, a figure that more than doubled from a year ago according to recent report from ComScore. I find that recruitment and workplace trends normally follow suit of how consumers are using tools and technology in their personal lives. 

The downside is that social media privacy issues involving employent may pop up. Giving a social network access to data and information like social security numbers and your job history is enough to give anyone the willies. Employers will have to work hard to communicate to their candidates, that the social sign in process is used to make the hiring and login process easier.  Given the recent media attention and legislation making it illegal for employers to request social network access and password, companies will have to make sure and communicate and educate how the social sign on process works.  And that using the sign on does not give employers access to candidate social network passwords and information.

Did you know that Talent Circles incorporates the social sign on into their talent network?  This features makes it easy for candidates to join instantly.  Click here to learn more. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs.