Hunt Scanlon Media recently reported that employers will face increasing challenges to find and retain employees. These challenges begin with the hiring process: “75% of employer responses stated that their hiring process, from initial interview to offer, takes more than 3 weeks, while the vast majority of professionals surveyed felt it should take two weeks at most.” Many employers and candidates feel the process is not much better than a crapshoot. Generally, résumés are only 2% predictive of a candidate's future job performance, and not even an interview can tell how successful a candidate will be. Therefore, it is no surprise that the hiring process often feels like playing a game of darts. With those kinds of numbers work [...]
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4 Must-Have Social Media Recruiting Strategies How much time do you spend on social media looking for the perfect candidate? While LinkedIn has become a traditional way of recruiting, a little innovation never hurt anybody. You need to be present on all social media platforms, especially on the less common ones. Here is why diversifying your social media recruiting strategy can have a positive impact on your organization. According to a study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 84% of recruiters use social media for recruiting. This number has been increasing steadily for the last 6 years. In 2011, 56% of companies were recruiting via social media, but in the last year, millennials have caused a shift in social me [...]
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I guess the first thing we need to ask is “Does the war for talent really exist?” My answer is “yes”, but it requires some definitions. People ask how can there be a war for talent when so many people are unemployed, though unemployment in the US is down to 4.9% or so. The answer is in the definition of talent. What is talent? A review of dictionaries shows a common definition of talent as “a natural aptitude or skill” or “a marked innate ability.” It is, for the most part, something special. Unfortunately in the talent acquisition world we have come to use that term almost interchangeably with “labor”, or at least some people have. You can see that in the change from using the term “recruiting” to the newer te [...]
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Over the past few years, technology has disrupted virtually every industry. One after another, tech-driven solutions, such as Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber, have shaken up industries as varied as retail, hospitality, and transportation. But what about HR? How are trends such as HR datafication, automation, artificial intelligence, and even robots impacting our industry? And what happens when you start taking the “human” out of human resources? Here’s a look at some of the biggest tech trends reshaping our profession. Robots and automation Don’t worry—HR jobs are unlikely to be taken over by robots any time soon. However, the trend towards bots and automation could see many HR roles change dramatically. The good news is that H [...]
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HR professionals have many responsibilities, from recruiting to hiring to retaining talent. Although recruitment traditionally gets a lot of attention, retention is just as important, if not more important. HR professionals need to focus on finding ways to increase employee retention. This is where skills testing comes in. Incorporating skills testing into the recruitment process is a proven way to help companies make better hiring decisions and increase employee retention. Employee retention is usually talked about in terms of companies working to prevent their employees from leaving for greener pastures. However, this is only one side of the retention coin. Retention also depends on the ability of employees to succeed on the job. Mor [...]
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If you ask most workers if annual performance reviews are necessary, generations of cubicle-dwelling corporate workers would respond with a resounding "no!" Annual performance reviews create anxiety, are often highly inaccurate, and rarely represent an employee's body of work comprehensively. Although some sort of evaluation process is essential to maintain a workforce that consistently meets goals and standards, no one really likes the current way of conducting these reviews. The current performance-review system is expensive in time and resources, it forces managers to rank employees arbitrarily, and it often prompts employees to feel degraded. How can we improve this situation? An End to the Performance Review Unfortunately, n [...]
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Pre-employment skills testing is an effective, flexible, and reliable recruiting tool. Assessments that offer insight into a candidate’s skill sets can help managers be more effective in choosing the right candidates. These are flexible instruments, since tests can be administered at any point in the recruiting process: companies can have candidates complete a skills test when they first submit their applications, or they can test a few chosen candidates to make better, more informed decisions. Skills testing offers a more reliable way to pinpoint the best candidates, by increasing hiring accuracy and validating hiring decisions. Companies can opt for tests by subject, or create their own tests that incorporate disparate abilities tied [...]
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For many companies, the holiday season is a time of high demand and increased workload. Near the end of October, companies begin looking for temporary workers to meet this demand. The positions available to seasonal workers span retail positions, marketing and design, photography, and tourism. These seasonal workers are hired to help companies reach more people and to serve them better during the holiday spending boom. Currently, most seasonal hiring is for behind-the-scenes positions. According to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, "it used to be that the bulk of holiday hires would be in customer-facing positions on the sales floor and behind the cash register. These extra workers would also help pick up the slack in the [...]
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