The Staffing Strategy Connection
CareerXroads®Update
April 2013
By Gerry Crispin, SPHR and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com
Will you still force-fit your hires into a single category in 2013?
If there is one thing we've learned over the last decade writing our Source of Hire whitepapers, it's that the sources to which employers attribute their hires are no longer independent elements in an increasingly elongated supply chain of prospects and candidates. How these different elements interact needs to be better understood and tracked if more sophisticated employment strategies and tactics are to be efficiently deployed.
In our most recent study of 185,000 hires, SOH 2013: Perception is Reality, we concluded:
- Big Bad Data. Collection methods and the statistics to assess them have not kept up with the explosion of channels and their relationships.
- On-Shoring May be the 2013 Trend of the Year. Employers believe they will hire 17.5% more U.S. full-time employees this year than last.
- The #1 Source of Hire is right under our nose - not employee referrals but current employees who fill 42% of all the openings.
- However, Employee Referrals, which come in at about 25% of the remainder, are as important as ever.
- Social Media and other Source of Hire Categories are NOT independent of each other.
- Job Boards are NOT Dead; they are evolving.
Mobile is 'Off the Radar' for Most of the Fortune 500
Ed Newman (@newmaed), currently at iMomentus, recently published a revised version of how the Fortune 500 is evolving when it comes to adopting mobile recruiting. Focusing on the careers side, he rated factors such as "the existence of a formal mobile-optimized corporate website, a mobile-optimized career section and mobile apply process. Companies were ranked in one of five categories: Front Runner, Early Stage, Treading Water, Toe in the Water and Off the Radar."
According to Ed, progress has been made in the last six months but "very few companies are taking a comprehensive and strategic approach to ensure a consistent brand experience on the mobile web." Key findings in the report include:
- The number of 'Front Runners' has increased from just one company last year (McDonalds) to seven: McDonalds, Macy's, AT&T, Google, Prudential, General Motors and Masco.
- Overall, nearly half of the Fortune 500 (220) are considered 'Off the Radar', lacking any form of mobile-optimized career site or apply process.
- Although the adoption rate of mobile career sites has increased by 157 percent, the number of mobile-optimized corporate sites grew by only 16 percent. This signifies a wider disconnect between corporate sites and career sections.
- Only 39 of the 167 mobile corporate sites among the Fortune 500 link to a career section, and a mere 13 of those career sections are mobile optimized. This indicates that the people responsible for corporate brand and HR personnel lack coordination in their efforts.
- The companies that offer a mobile application process increased just slightly from 2 percent to 3 percent, signifying that the Fortune 500 is still relatively unprepared for the rapid increase of mobile web traffic.
Earlier this year, two CareerXroads' interns used mobile devices to visit each company on the Fortune 500 list. They found similar results noting:
- We could search for jobs on 43.8% of the fortune 500 using a smartphone or tablet.
- We could apply to 50 firms (10%) using a smartphone or tablet (no comment on how much fun that would be).
- We could do none of the above on 53.4% of the Fortune 500.
Read our full report: The Evolving World of Mobile Recruiting
Poor Candidate Experience Declared Illegal
An Executive Order [CR22] of the President of the United States was issued today requiring the end of the candidate Black Hole and Demanding Full Transparency about the Recruiting Process. President Obama, after three years deliberation has ended the so-called black hole for candidates with a sweeping executive order that includes the following:
- Every approved/opened requisition must be filled in 60 days or less.
- All questions and feedback posed by applicants (whether qualified & considered or not), must be responded to in 48 hours or less.
- All military personnel transitioning to private sector must be contacted by a company recruiter to discuss their interest within 48 hours of the time and date they submit their application.
- All job descriptions must be written and readable by high-school graduates.
- All applications must be readable by high-school graduates and completed, on average in 10 minutes or less.
- Applicant pools for every job must include at least 10 qualified and considered applicants.
- No fewer than 10 qualified applicants or 50% of the qualified applicant pool must be designated as Finalists.
- All Finalists must be provided detailed feedback about their candidacy.
- All Applicants (qualified & considered or not) must be informed when a position is closed.
Somewhat controversial in the early versions of the executive order (and not included in the final document) was a $5 fine for job seekers who waste company time applying for jobs they obviously are unqualified to consider. It was thought this rule would apply to most of the candidates running for office and so was quickly dropped.
Millions of celebrating job seekers filled the streets when the EO was published on April 1.
Thousands of Corporate flacks immediately protested that the onerous and costly restrictions would reduce America's ability to compete globally. Several firms went so far as to cite examples of abusive behavior regarding candidates - specifically ignoring their requests for status as "Customary and Expected." These firms offered Glassdoor and TalentFunction's Candidate Experience Awards as proof that the US is far from ready to handle a positive Candidate Experience. A lobby of companies was formed to protect recruiting rights of employers and demanded that at least 10 years - not 6 months - was necessary to comply with the Executive Order. Idaho and Texas floated secession petitions through their employer councils but were having trouble getting actual employees to sign them.
The NRA issued this statement: "We are pleased to note that the executive order does NOT appear to infringe on the right of every job seeker to carry his/her personal weapon-of-choice into any interview." "However," they continued, "we will continue to monitor for any attack of the 2nd amendment rights of our citizens."
April fool! (sort of)
On May 11, 2010 it is worth noting that Barak Obama did indeed, sign an executive order for the Federal Government. John Zappe wrote about it in this ERE article suggesting the EO was an effort to end the 'Black Hole.
Surprisingly, in the three years the Executive Order has been in effect, some progress has been made. We are actually surprised at the extent and thrilled to see the demise of the dreaded (and useless) essay on government applications. The website that is attempting to keep the public apprised about the Federal Government's Hiring Reforms notes honestly (and openly) that the lack of competent HR people and continuing resistance from hiring managers are still serious challenges.
However some metrics appear to be in place (even if they are sometimes ignored) and the Federal Government now routinely reports:
- The percent of employees hired within 80 days;
- The percent of applicants who were able to obtain information on the current status of their application;
- The percent of new employees reporting regular communications throughout the entire process (re: expectations for the hiring process);
- The percent of managers reporting that they were referred applicants with the talent needed to perform the job; and
- The percent of new hires reporting satisfaction with the hiring process.
Candidate Experience Update
The long form version (whitepaper) of the Candidate Experience Awards and the data collected by the TalentBoard is available at www.thecandes.org. A summary slide-deck of the CandEs was recently posted on Slideshare.net.
The non-profit TalentBoard that runs the Candidate Experience initiative announced the start of the 2013 Candidate Experience Awards on April 16 (companies will have all of May and most of June to register and complete the initial survey).
Thirty-seven North American firms were honored last year (10 in the UK this year). It is hoped that 50 or more firms will be able to demonstrate they meet or exceed basic requirements for the treatment of candidates. It is also expected that analysis by several firms will begin to demonstrate the links between candidate practices and company and recruiting performance measures.
If Experience is a business driver, then Candidate Experience is - ?
Joe Murphy, Shaker Consulting Group, has archived and posted an excellent interview with James Gilmore, author of The Experience Economy, an award-winning business tome that explores the nature of experience as a driver and differentiator in business. The book has interesting connections to recruiting and the Candidate Experience and in this column they explore the experience stages and more, that Gilmore built in his book: Attracting, Entering, During, Exiting and Extending.
Fun Fact Quiz #1
Student debt stands at 1 trillion dollars. What % of today's younger households are paying off student debt (and is this an interesting retention bonus opportunity)?
a) 10% b) 25% c) 40% d) 60%
[Answers at the end]
Balancing Privacy with the Need for Quality Tools
According to this HRExaminer article by Heather Bussing, employers who supply mobile tablets and/or smartphones to their recruiters - and perhaps even those who subsidize them - can "ask for your [social media] passwords and look at any data on the device."
We're guessing that if we were working in recruiting, we would not be accepting this perk.
Not the Usual Candidate Experience
The Worst Job Interview Ever: Brought to you by Heineken sets up an interview you would remember for a life time - and you'd probably need a beer every time you recalled the experience. We would love to visit the winner of this 'test', who was hired by Heineken, a year from now to see if there was any regret on either side.
Fun Fact Quiz #2
What % of new hires, according to DDI's 2012 forecast, experience "Buyer's [Candidate's] Remorse" within 6 months of accepting a new job - essentially regretting the decision?
a) 15% b) 30% c) 50% d) 65%
[Answers at the end]
Setting Expectations: Not Job but Career Preview
This YouTube Ernst & Young video, Maria's story: the exceptional Ernst & Young experience, is admittedly, a bit long but we're guessing the response from MBAs looking for more than a job and wondering what a career in a firm like E&Y might look like is so exceptional that the time passes quickly.
CPH Calculator
Yes, Cost per Hire, by itself, is a small part of the overall measure of a recruiting function. It would highlight efficiency without knowing if what you're doing is worth being efficient about. Still, Aspen Advisors, working with the SHRM/ANSI (American National Standards Institute) has taken last year's standard definition of CPH and built a free online CPH template to calculate your Cost per Hire.
Does the recovery have a gender bias?
This New York Times article, Business Recovery has Brought More Jobs for Men than Women, offers the fact that fewer women are in jobs in ages 20-25 and 45-49 than would be expected but the explanations are weak. The author seems to imply there are women's jobs that haven't come back.
Email: Evolution as Social Communication
This new IDC whitepaper: Future of Mail is Social, developed with funding from IBM, describes in detail what the future of business communication will look like. The paper's core thesis is that social email is "both a powerful accelerator for social adoption and the backdrop for relief from email fatigue." Email is evolving from:
- strings to managed conversations that integrated with online forums, microblogs, etc.
- static email file attachments to integrated social file sharing.
- standalone email contact lists to dynamic social profiles and networks where people maintain rich profile data.
- managing a separate schedule to group and social calendaring.
- multiple standalone communication and collaboration environments to integrated environments that include IM, online meetings, real-time collaboration, public social networks, RSS, content sharing, voice and video.
- an inconsistent user experience to ubiquitous access to calendars, mail, content, etc.
- excessive and disruptive switching between complex communication activities to seamless transitions between multiple tools across multiple devices.
- un-integrated task and work management to integrated workflow and collaborative task execution. reactive analytics to predictive analytics based on social modeling and analysis.
- the risk of uncontrolled sharing of corporate intellectual property over open public social networks to the security and policy protection of socially integrated enterprise-grade messaging platforms.
Recruiting functions in some ways lead the transitions noted above. (But that last item, if accurate suggests an interesting challenge for LinkedIn's future.)
Fun Fact Quiz #3
What % of US Students has a Smartphone today?
a) 35% b) 59% c) 73% d) 91%
[Answers at the end]
Employment Branding the Targets the Competition
If you are Smith and Wollensky and you need to attract high-quality financial interns for your business but are directly competing with the more obvious NY financial houses, what can you do?
John Sumser's description in HRExaminer of what S&W actually did, Dear XXX if they won't hire you, we will, was both entertaining and eye-opening in how they publicly contrasted their respective employment brands. At the bottom of this piece is a slide-deck John uses in presentations on employment branding that includes several useful strategy insights.
Prospective Candidates Are Living Within Their Smartphone
Smartphone owners are supposedly spending 127 minutes a day connecting to - what? Business Insider summarized several mobile trends from its longer-form BI Intelligence report (that requires a $500 subscription for 'in-depth' info). BI suggests the most important trends include:
- Mobile gaming. The biggest 'time bucket' of the mobile app era with 43% of the population.
- Monetization of Social/mobile usage is on the rise.
- Weather, video, email, and search are increasingly popular mobile activities.
All of these studies suggest that the opportunity to develop new recruiting channels continues to expand. It is too bad that our method of tracking the influence of these channels (at various points in the recruiting supply chain) is so poorly developed.
