When you are feeling rushed, harried and otherwise stressed out while performing your duties as a human resources professional, it's not hard to see how your actions or even inaction can be interpreted as rudeness.
Many business professionals keep in mind the adage about being nice to the people you meet on your way up, because it's always possible that one day you'll be encountering them on your way down. This is not exactly the Golden Rule, but it's a good rule of thumb when doing business.
It's important to remember to be empathetic to all applicants who cross your threshold, even those you don't wind up hiring.
Job applicants are finding themselves having to produce more material than they may be accustomed to during the tryout phase of the recruitment process. Then, after they generate a stack of documents in a brutally short timeframe, they are dismayed because the employer takes months to respond. It's perfectly reasonable to request materials to get an idea of what the recruit has to offer, but you have to treat them with the same respect you would give a hired consultant or an existing member of your team.
Avoid asking potential employees to rush with unexpectedly fast turnaround times on sample materials, proposals, advises Anne Kreamer in a recent post at the Harvard Business Review. Instead, allocate a reasonable time for deliverables, and make the timing of such requests transparent from the beginning.
Have you ever prolonged an interview with an applicant because you knew he or she was just not going to be a good fit, but you didn't have the courage to say so from the outset?
This is an example of being discourteous, noted a recent report by Roberta Matuson at Forbes. You don't want unsuitable applicants to take up too much of your time and resources. Consider then, that applicants don't want you to take up their time with a pointless interview just because you are afraid of hurting their feelings.
When you engage with a recruit over the course of weeks or months and then let things trail off without giving them a response about the status of the position they interviewed for, it can leave a sour taste in applicants' mouths.
Set aside sufficient time in your schedule so you can give everyone a response, and customize your message instead of sending out boilerplate whenever possible.
If you think there is a chance that you may not have been as empathetic as you'd prefer when dealing with job applicants recently, you have the upper hand over other HR professionals in that you are sensitive to the issue and are interested in making a change. Putting yourself in other people's shoes while evaluating whether they might be a good fit in your organization will make a big difference.
Join the leading provider of applicant tracking software for a free online Bootcamp on November 18th and explore the myths, hype and opportunities of big data for recruiting.
The Newton Bootcamp Program is a FREE online educational series designed to help corporate recruiters achieve maximum results with Newton's corporate recruiting platform and to share innovative ways to improve the recruiting process in general with experts from the industry.
Hiring software engineers? Get ready to pay big salaries as demand continues to soar.
In addition to exploring trends in salaries for different programming languages, Gigaom also examined data comparing software engineer salaries across major cities in the US. It's no surprise that the Bay Area ranked #1 in salaries. The nearest competitor to Bay Area was Seattle which still trails the Bay by nearly 15% comparatively. The most surprising find in the survey likely opened some old wounds for the tech community in New York City where software engineer salaries are nearly 25% less than in the Bay Area. Sorry Gotham. Or, should I say congratulations?
For folks that are interest in exploring more on software engineer salaries, visit https://tech-salaries.silk.co/. On this site, they've created a dataset made possible with salary survey data from Payscale. A selection of skills were compared for mean, average and top salaries.
Is the Online Job Application Experience Improving for Job Seekers?
It's always a good idea to periodically assess the state of any technology or system that your organization relies on to function efficiently. Widespread access to broadband has revolutionized how companies present job offerings as well as how individuals discover new jobs and apply to them.
HR professionals have found that applicant tracking systems make their workflow much easier. However, does this convenience come at a cost?
One often overlooked question is whether the online job application experience has been improving for job seekers.
Consider that many industries have taken to using online intake forms to make things easier for their clients and customers. It's worth noting, then, that 60 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by Kelton Global and Jibe indicated that online job applications are harder to complete than other typical online applications, including health insurance as well as student loans and mortgages, according to a recent post at the Fox Small Business Center. About 80 percent of those surveyed also said that their job search was stressful and took too much time.
You should take those sentiments to heart and make sure that you go with an online job application system that is easy and fast for your applicants to fill out. Completing an application shouldn't have to amount to a technology test when you are trying to fill some vital positions in your organization. This will not only improve the quality of the incoming candidates, but will also ensure that those that are turned down for the job don't leave with a sour taste about your brand.
New cutting-edge ATS solutions such as Newton Software's Cloud Apply, help small-to-medium sized businesses offer applicants a convenient way to upload their CVs, storing their resumes in a secure cloud site, while letting the data auto-populate into an online job application when the time comes to fill it out. Most applicants will be quite satisfied when they learn that they don't need to fill out another long application, especially after they've already answered all the pertinent questions in their resume. The addition of support for mobile devices, such as with Newton's ZenApp, gives applicants even more flexibility, enabling them to apply for positions while they're on the go.
It's clear that you need to select the best online job application system for your budget while also taking into account the fact that job seekers are growing weary at the amount of time they sometimes have to spend submitting their details over and over. The more efficient your online application process is, the better chance you have of recruiting promising new talent and promoting a positive image for your company's brand.
As a busy hiring manager who needs to be able to quickly assess the capabilities of applicants and determine how well they might fit in your organization, how does the age of potential recruits figure into your decision making process?
Issues of talent, enthusiasm, expertise, wisdom, judgment and working habits all come into play as you consider each potential recruit. Of course, you don't want to get into trouble by favoring one applicant over another based just on his or her apparent age. However, there are some pros and cons of hiring old versus young employees that you will want to keep in mind.
With youth comes excitement and exuberance, and enthusiastic new employees are revved up, looking for challenges and a chance to prove themselves, noted a recent post at Fast Company.
Younger workers typically are more accustomed to working with technology, having used it all their adult lives, often becoming adept during their formative youthful years. This means you may not have to spend as much time training them compared to more seasoned workers.
When you hire younger workers, you also have an opportunity mold them from the start instead of taking time to weed out the bad habits that some older employees develop.
However, younger workers may seem to be less vested overall with their jobs, wanting to leave once they have put in their hours for the day, compared to older workers who have more experience staying later to finish something because they are motivated by a sense of pride, according to a recent article posted at Entrepreneur.
It's very likely that older employees will behave more responsibly, having learned through hard work and experience what happens when you fail to show up on time, as well as the consequences of being careless when checking details on a project.
One negative aspect to hiring older workers is that they will often expect higher salaries than younger workers because of their experience and expertise. While the cost is often justified, your organization may prefer to hire greener workers for less and then spend more time in training.
The maturity and (hopefully) wisdom that comes with older workers is beneficial not just because of what they do themselves each day to boost your bottom line, but also the examples they can set for younger workers on your payroll, noted Entrepreneur. The magazine also cited the fact that older workers are typically better at communicating (and knowing when not to speak) because of their advanced understanding of office politics.
As long as you continue to be honest in your assessments of candidates and steer clear of discriminating against potential hires for being "too young" or "too old," you can help build a better workforce at your organization when you pay attention to the pros and cons of hiring old versus young employees.
Do. Or Do Not. There Is No Try in Hiring. Or Is There?
It's not always possible to determine whether a candidate will be a good fit for a job in your organization, no matter how rigorous your screening procedures are. This is why human resources directors are turning to bringing in candidates on a trial basis, to see how they will fit into the company culture.
If you're not already doing so, you might find it beneficial to begin arranging for contracted work on trial basis to help you evaluate potential employees, using a temporary-to-permanent status hiring process.
This tactic is appropriate for organizations that have particularly high turnover, especially those with smaller workforces, such as a 15-person shop where a single bad hire can be disastrous for team morale, according to a recent post by Sarah Max at the New York Times.
One important thing to keep in mind when considering offering contract work is to make sure it doesn't interfere with candidates' current jobs, assuming they are already working. In such cases, you could let them work on a specific project on a trial basis over the weekend or for a set amount of evenings.
A single project that lasts a week or two will give you a better idea of how a recruit will fit in with your team. When you offer them work on a contract basis, you'll want to set specific goals, so that candidates can only advance to permanent status after they pass a series of milestones.
Max cited the case of website hosting firm Weebly, where nearly every one of the 150 employees went through a trial workweek before getting hired permanently. Approximately 75 percent of candidates who go through a trial period at Weebly wind up getting hired, according to company CEO David Rusenko, who told the New York Times that the remaining 25 percent of people would have either been fired or damaged team morale if they had been hired.
If you grew up watching the Star Wars film franchise, you're undoubtedly familiar with the diminutive master Yoda telling his trainee Luke Skywalker to "Do. Or do not. There is no try," when learning the ways of the Jedi and how to control the Force.
The idea behind Yoda's characteristic clipped expression is to trust yourself and to listen to your instincts when encountering obstacles and difficult situations. However, in the world of human resources, relying on your gut instincts alone is not always going to be sufficient when evaluating possible job candidates.
For example, whatever you hear during the initial interviews with a promising candidate, you won't always be able to determine his or her organizational capabilities, noted Adriana Gardella in a recent New York Times piece about hiring on a trial basis.
She pointed out that HR professional Jennifer Blumin of the corporate events planning company Skylight Group doesn't search for people with event planning experience. Instead, she keeps an eye out for intelligent candidates who solve problems creatively without getting stressed out under deadline pressure.
So, it seems clear that focusing on "doing" rather than "trying" can be detrimental to your organization. Hiring more or all of your future employees on a trial basis may be just what you need to improve efficiency and keep your teams stable and happy going forward.