How Social Recruiting is Changing the Value of Source of Hire

 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

As more and more people move towards social media and employment branding as a method in driving candidates to your open requisitions, it’s becoming harder and harder to track concrete recruiting metrics like source of hire. Companies will have to find different methods to capture candidates through talent networks or touch points to help define the value of recruiting points and sources.

According to a new study put out by CareerXRoads, social recruiting has evolved into a more interdependent role where job applicants are influenced and pruned from a long list of social networks. The study only attributed 2.9% of hires directly to social media, but that doesn’t mean social media didn’t push job applicants to company career sites, job boards, college fairs, or any other source of hire.

It’s important to understand the value and role of social recruiting when it comes to source of hire. With everything going social it’s been difficult for marketing companies, public relations agencies, and now recruiting teams to figure out if going social contains a big enough ROI to continue. The jury has been out for a long time with no companies stepping up to the plate to prove overall ROI effectiveness. Facebook introduced their own analytics, companies have form to track link clicks (bit.ly, etc.) and Pinterest finally got their act together and started (well attempted) to track pins, repins, etc.

For recruiters all of this tracking, analytics, and mounds of big data means the world to them when attempting to prove the value of being online. Besides saying, If we’re not on social media we’re missing out, companies are looking for more concrete correlation between source of hire and social media. While there are ways to prove the value of being online, aside from pure numbers, it’s a recruiter’s job to find solid reasons to keep their social recruiting efforts alive. Here are a couple things that you can present to your manager at your next meeting:

The Social Recruitment Monitor: While this isn’t the most reliable way to present statistics on your social recruiting efforts, a company called Maximum has developed a beta product that will help you keep track of your efforts through what they called the SRM Index. This index takes a look at subscribe content, frequency of content, and social engagement. It’s something you could measure elsewhere through CRMs that provide that type of analytics (Sprout Social, Hootsuite (to some degree, etc.). It might take a little longer to pull these numbers manually and compare them to other types of information, but if you want to keep your social recruiting program alive, it’s worth the effort.

Invest in Simple HR Metrics: If you’re looking at social recruiting from a numbers standpoint, the biggest way that it’s changing the industry is reducing candidate acquisition costs. Since social recruiting is shaking up how candidates funnel through the talent pipeline, it’s important to look numbers associated with the source of hire. Being able to prove that social recruiting is working is one thing, but going one step further in proving it costs less will keep your program alive.

There are currently multiple ways that you are able to tell that social recruiting is changing how many recruiters find and calculate source of hire. How does your company prove a correlation between social recruiting and sources of hiring coming from those networks?

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. 


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Hiring Best Practice Using the Rule of Thirds

 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

A best practice in photography uses the rule of thirds, where a picture, painting or photo is divided into three equal parts and nine boxes to make a visually pleasing and equally horizontal spaced image that is pleasing to the eye. Following this guide allows for the central points not only to be well-balanced and aligned but create more interest and energy that simply centering your subject in the middle of the picture or photography.

Hiring managers can follow the rule of thirds as a best practice when it comes to hiring their employees. To select the most well-rounded employee, managers should hire keeping these rules of thirds in mind during their next open requisition or position opening for a new employee.

Work ethic: 30% Hard workers are a huge asset to any organization. They walk in day in and day out ready to go the extra mile for their team and employer. It’s not a big secret that companies want these people. The benefits of a strong work ethic are numerous and aren’t limited to just the employer. When an employee has a strong work ethic it’s bound to spill over into their work which improves the company’s bottom line in different areas of the business. As a new generation enters the workforce employers are worried that past generation’s work ethic was much higher then those in their early 20s. When given the chance, 20 year olds can be more productive, innovative, and dynamic then their older counterparts.

Competency and Skill: Another important aspect of a new hire is their overall skill and competency levels. The cost of training a new hire is about 14,000 on average and training an employee who doesn’t possess the right competency and skill level is even higher. An important aspect throughout the entire hiring process is to find someone who posses the right skill set for the job. Prevention in this area is easily combated through skills testing and other testing methods. This part of the hiring process is important because it’ll allow an employee to enter their job without an excessive amount of training in the beginning. If a company is struggling to find the perfect fit with a certain skill set, this 30% is more important.

Cultural Fit: Every organization, from small business to large corporations has a culture. A company culture can affect everything from the reputation of a company to important HR metrics such as employee retention and quality of hire. The last 30% is based on how well a candidate or new hire can survive the cultural differences within the workplace. You can have the best employee ever, skill & work ethic wise, but if they don’t fit in the company culture they can really disrupt things. Make sure that those who you hire not only fit the competency level with strong work ethic, but that they mix well within your corporate company culture.

Each of these areas work together to form the perfect candidate, but finding that person can be difficult at times. Looking for a candidate that doesn’t possess all these skills can end up hurting your company in the long run. Finding a candidate that has a strong work ethic, but doesn’t possess the needed skills or finding a candidate that fit perfectly in your company culture, but lacks skills can potentially be a big issue.

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. 


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3 Reasons to Insource Your Executive Recruiting and Hiring Efforts

In a traditional corporate recruiting model, companies often leverage their recruiting teams to hire and recruit for entry level to mid level positions leaving specialty and executive positions to third party recruiters. A new study tells us that this once widely used practice is on the decline. HR and recruiting teams are moving to insource or in house instead of outsource their senior business recruiting efforts.

Brining Your Executive Recruiting In House Instead of Outsource

A now 25 percent of Fortune 500 companies are using in house executive recruiters to fill key positions within their organization which is up 15 percent from a decade ago according to the Association of Executive Search Consultants.  These internal executive recruiting teams seem to be flourishing as companies like Pepsi, Time Warner and Sears look for ways to cut costs while attracting the best talent for their organization and on their own terms.

As someone who has worked with a number of third party recruiters for executive and specialty positions, I can attest to the expense that they sometimes bring. For large organizations that work on a global scale, the cost can be staggering. It’s not uncommon for third party recruiters to expect 15-40 percent of a placement’s first year salary for their efforts. A number like that can really add up. 

• ·      Executive Recruiting is Strategic. Internal recruiting teams are viewing their recruiting efforts as long term focusing on relationships with key players building a candidate pipeline for these executive positions before they become vacant.

• ·      Executive Information is More Easily Available Online. With the growth of social networking sites and an increased focused of sourcing within large organizations, more and more senior business leaders can be found online. This practice will surely continue as business leaders focus more on building their personal brand and persona with the support of the Internet.

• ·      Substantial Cost Savings. Recruiting and HR senior business leaders are focusing more on looking at bigger picture metrics and how human capital practices impact the entire organization versus just their department’s individual bottom line. These cost savings can be tied back not only to cost per hire but productivity of an entire team or division making a stronger business case for the practice of insourcing your executive hiring within HR.

Recruiting regardless of the position level within the organization takes strategy, skill and effort. Moving these senior level recruitment and hiring activities in house can be effective but only if a company creates a long term candidate engagement strategy and pipeline to facilitate these relationships focused on results. 

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. 

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The Secret To Candidate Engagement is You

 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

The Secret To Candidate Engagement is You When dealing with an employee or workplace situation, the best way to get to the heart of the matter is to sit down, ask questions and have an old fashioned conversation. That can be a challenge when recruiting on social media or the Internet. Recruiters always are concerned about how much information, resources and personal insights they should share. Candidates want to feel like they’re important and that the recruiters listen to whatever they have to say. At the same time, recruiters feel like they aren’t able to share detailed information. So how do balance secrets and giving candidates information? Don’t worry. We’ll tell you what to do.

Develop a Social Recruiting Policy. In order to protect yourself and your activities on social networks, encouraging your company to develop a policy that outlines what is acceptable and what’s not will help balancing giving sharing information, but increase good forms of communication with candidates. When dealing with multiple channels it can sometimes be overwhelming and information sharing could happen without a second thought. Encourage your company to create a policy that clearly lists the do/donts of sharing information with candidates.

Invest in Talent Communities. Candidate engagement cannot happen without a talent community. There’s absolutely no way that a recruiter can routinely communicate with a candidate pool efficiently unless here is one centralized location. You can capture this type of information in any medium that works best for you, but it’s something that all recruiters should be doing. If you are able to build a community of great content you have a great chance of driving great candidates off the sidelines and into your company.

Have a Strategy. As the social landscape changes on almost a daily basis recruiters must be able to go where the candidates are. No longer can recruiters rely on the “post and pray” method. Each candidate enters the funnel at different states and it’s up to the recruiter to find them and make sure they’re captured. The Candidate Experience Survey asked candidates at what stage they entered the relationship with a potential employer. The majority of those responding indicated that they had some level of relationship with the employer at a later stage, which shows they are ultimately the employers to lose.

As the title of the blog states, “The Secret To Candidate Engagement is You.” No matter what route you take in your recruiting practices, know that everything is dependent on the effort that you put into each interaction with candidates. Having a strategy in place so you aren’t randomly posting, building a talent community to act as the central hub of information and engagement and creating policies to protect yourself and develop your program in one unified manner will all help make you successful in your recruiting endeavors.

What have you done to increase candidate engagement in your field?

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. 

The Benefit of Stay Interviews

 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Sometimes in the world of HR and recruiting we get bogged down in the process making things harder than they actually should be. Most Human Resources departments use the exit interviews to get the departing opinions of their experiences with the company, but why bother? Why not focus on what matters: Stay Interviews.

Stay interviews are designed to engage and work with the employee before they become an active job seeker outside your organization. At the 63rd Annual SHRM Conference, Richard Finnegan spoke on the importance of stay interviews. He stated that conducting stay interviews isn’t for the faint at heart. His reasoning behind this statement was that stay interviews allow HR to uncover employee and retention issues that might be hidden.

Stay Interviews are one of the hardest obstacles for a manager to overcome. Although simple in nature, they require a management staff that is fluent in the art of following up with their employees. Engagement and retention programs are only as strong as the leaders within your organization. The looming fear of an employee giving them the ultimatum of a pay raise vs. leaving the company is unfounded. No matter the situation a manager must be willing to field the hard questions. The limitations of each company can only bend so far. If there’s no money in the budget, the employee leaves. According to an interview conducted by Monster.com, they stated that few stay interviews come in with pay being the thing that makes them want to stay or leave.

The benefits of a stay interview are numerous. Not only do they give the employer a chance to fix a problem that a employee might be experiencing, but even in the event of an employee leaving, they gain valuable insights into the problems that might exist. On average one standard deviation improvement in engagement increases revenue $4,675 per year. This means that if one process can be fixed due to an employee leaving, that departure won’t be in total vain. Information gained in stay interviews are usually very real and truth telling. Most employees who are leaving a company are willing to speak out more because repercussions are very limited.

If stay interviews help fix and improve just one process per year, in the long run, it’s worth it. Most companies are afraid to invest in stay interviews because they’ve seen the long list of data and information out there surrounding other types of strategies to fix their company from within. In order to boost your bottom line and increase employee retention it’s important to invest in new strategies and techniques that encourage growth. If exit interviews and engagement surveys aren’t moving the needle on your organization’s employee attrition numbers, what do you have to lose?

Does your company participate in stay interviews? Why or why not?

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. 


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