By Ben Gotkin

Candidates hate your hiring experience.  Well, maybe not yours specifically, but overall, candidates are not happy campers.  Online applications are lengthy and cumbersome, interviews can be as well.  And the ‘resume black hole’… Don’t get me started…

The truth is that while active job seekers who need your job will jump through rings of fire and are willing to be battered and bruised to be considered for your job, top employed talent isn’t going to waste their time with a crummy experience.  Here’s a few facts:

• Average drop-off rate on corporate career sites between the time a candidate lands on the site and the time they complete an application is 85% or more.
• Customers/candidates who have a bad experience with your organization are 7 times more likely to tell their friends about it than those who had a good experience.
• Candidates are sharing these poor experiences today in significant numbers on sites like Glassdoor, Vault and Twitter.
• A poor candidate experience results in reduced access to top talent, reduced efficiency, increased costs and lowered quality (yes, this is impacting your bottom-line).
• YOU have control over your organization’s candidate experience.

Fortunately, there are a number of companies that are taking their candidate experience seriously, to the point that for the past 2 years, many of those organizations have been recognized for their efforts through The Candidate Experience Awards program.   This award program is open to any organization that wishes to participate, either to compete for an award or to simply benchmark their candidate experience as they search for opportunities to improve.

I’ve been a big fan of this awards program since its inception for a couple reasons.  First, it brings to light the best practices of organizations large and small that have made significant efforts to create the best experience possible for their candidates.  Second, the survey from this program, now going into its 3^rd year, is beginning to provide some very rich quantitative data, which is available for broad analysis across survey participants, and by the participants themselves.  Finally, it helps organizations understand, “How good or bad is my candidate experience?” and “What can I focus on short-term and long-term to improve”.

I was honored to be invited to join The Candidate Experience Awards Council, which is made up of many of the top minds in the Talent Acquisition profession, including my Recruiting Toolbox colleagues, John Vlastelica and Carmen Hudson.   Recruiting Toolbox consultants have had significant experience in their corporate careers, and working with their clients, to help those organizations optimize their technology, their overall process workflow, their strategy and their interviewing and selection techniques, in order to create the best candidate experience possible.

The 2013 Awards program is set to begin and I strongly encourage all organizations to participate in this worthwhile (and potentially rewarding) initiative.  To learn more and to participate, please visit http://www.thecandidateexperienceawards.org.

R U Mobile?  Your candidates certainly are.  In fact, 20-30% of your candidates are trying to access your career website through their mobile device TODAY.  Mobile is quickly becoming the biggest and most impactful technological disrupter to the recruiting industry since the emergence of job boards.  That’s right, even more disruptive than social media.  So if your recruitment experience isn’t mobile optimized yet, the time to make that happen is not in the future, it is NOW.

At 2PM ET/11AM PT on Wednesday, March 27, Recruiting Toolbox Principal Consultant Ben Gotkin will join iMomentous’ Ed Newman for the first of a series of webinars that will introduce you to what you need to know to get on board with mobile recruiting today.  Optimizing your career website for mobile devices is just the first step.  Ed and Ben will discuss not only the case for going mobile, but will also cover the various stages of adoption, the who’s who in the mobile recruitment technology market, and practical examples of what candidates want and what employers can deliver.

For more information on this webinar and to register, please visit:  http://www.imomentous.com/mobile-talent-strategy-workshop/

OR

Scan now to Register:

Today on ERE, Recruiting Toolbox Principal Consultant, Ben Gotkin, takes a critical look at the identity crisis that exists among today’s corporate recruiters.  The corporate recruiting function is often very misunderstood, which can impact the effectiveness of the function as well as the ability to draw new talent with relevant skills and motivations into the function.

The corporate recruiting function as we know it today has matured rapidly over the past two decades.  Now is the time to question and discuss the purpose and value of corporate recruiters, and how we want to grow and develop corporate recruiters going forward.  To read more and join the discussion, click here.

Recruiting Toolbox, Inc. is pleased to welcome Ben Gotkin to the team as a Principal Consultant, based in Washington, DC.

Ben Gotkin has been helping companies develop and deploy recruiting strategies for over 15 years. He’s been a recruiting leader at companies like McGladrey, MITRE, BAE Systems, and – most recently – as a Recruiting Director at Marriott International. He’s also been a featured speaker at ERE, SourceCon, and The Recruiting Trends Conference, and has worked hard to grow the recruiting community in DC through recruitDC, a non-profit, event-oriented professional recruiting organization that he founded three years ago.

Now, as a consultant with Recruiting Toolbox, he will help clients build and deploy the right recruitment strategies and processes, identify and implement the right recruitment technology, and bring his real-world, practitioner focus to make it all work well together – people + process + technology.

“I’ve been in-house my whole career, helping my companies and our people recruit better,” says Gotkin. “As part of the Recruiting Toolbox team, I look forward to helping our clients identify high ROI sourcing strategies, better leverage social media, mobile, the web and old-school recruiting techniques to recruit the best talent, and to get recruiters and hiring managers the tools and training they need to do their best work.”

John Vlastelica, Founder and Managing Director, adds, “We’ve been helping companies recruit better since 2002. With Ben’s expertise, we’ll bring our clients even more value, with an even stronger set of capabilities around recruitment technology, branding, strategy, process, and training. Ben is a fantastic addition to our team. I first met him years ago, at an ERE conference in San Diego, and have been following him ever since. He’s a smart, practical, analytical, can-do recruiting leader who just “gets it”. We are thrilled to welcome Ben to the team.”

Ben is a 3rd generation Washington, DC native with a Degree in Psychology from the University of Maryland. When Ben isn’t learning or evangelizing about recruiting, he spends his free time with his family and pursuing his passions in music and sports (loves his Nationals, Capitals and Redskins and coaches youth lacrosse).

Learn More:
• Ben Gotkin’s Bio: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bengotkin
• How we help companies recruit better: http://www.recruitingtoolbox.com

About Recruiting Toolbox, Inc.
We are consulting company made up of experienced consultants and trainers (all former corporate recruiting leaders) who are 100% focused on helping companies recruit better. We’re not a search firm or contract recruiters. Instead, we help companies with recruiting and sourcing strategy, process improvement, systems selection and implementation, tool development and deployment, and custom-built recruiter and hiring manager training. Our work is leveraged by companies around the world, including Nike, Groupon, World Bank, Expedia, Eddie Bauer, Zumiez, REI, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, Concur, Salesforce.com, Etsy.com, Corbis, Cargill, M&M Mars, Philips Electronics, T-Mobile, Coldwell Banker, Electronic Arts, Rhapsody, CH2M Hill, PNC Bank, Hitachi, and Talisman Energy. Learn more at: www.RecruitingToolbox.com.

Recruiting Toolbox, Inc. is pleased to welcome Chris Havrilla to the team as a Principal Consultant, based in Atlanta.

Chris Havrilla started her career as a software engineer and IT consultant, so yes, she’s a bit of a geek…in a good way!  She quickly found her passion in recruitment and sourcing, and worked her way up from recruiter to recruiting leader at companies like Hitachi and Deloitte.  Since then, she’s been independently consulting with small and large companies, and contributing to the recruitment community as a blogger and speaker.

Now, as a consultant with Recruiting Toolbox, she will help clients identify and implement the right recruiting and sourcing systems and tools, build and deploy the right recruitment strategies and methods, and bring her real-world practitioner focus to make it all work well together – people + process + technology.

“I really enjoy helping recruiting teams get more from their investments in tools and technology – whether it’s a new sourcing tool, a CRM, or an ATS,” says Havrilla. “As part of the Recruiting Toolbox team, we can help companies better compete for talent in the short term, as well as help them with key initiatives that will set them up for long term recruiting success.”

John Vlastelica, Founder and Managing Director, adds, “We’ve been helping companies recruit better since 2002. With Chris’s expertise, we’ll bring our clients even more value, with a stronger presence in the recruitment systems and tools space.  Chris is a fantastic addition to our team. I first met her years ago, at a conference in Atlanta, and have been following her ever since.  She’s smart, generous, and analytical…and does a great job of balancing innovative ideas with the pragmatic, real-world solutions our clients expect. We are thrilled to welcome Chris to the team.”

Learn More:

• Chris Havrilla’s Bio: http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishavrilla

• How we help companies recruit better: http://www.recruitingtoolbox.com

About Recruiting Toolbox, Inc.

Recruiting Toolbox is a recruitment management consulting and training company. Our experienced consultants and trainers (all former corporate recruiting leaders) are 100% focused on helping companies recruit better. We’re not a search firm or contract recruiters. Instead, we help companies with recruiting and sourcing strategy, process improvement, systems selection and implementation, tool development and deployment, and custom-built recruiter and hiring manager training. Our work is leveraged by companies around the world, including Nike, Groupon, World Bank, Expedia, Eddie Bauer, Zumiez, REI, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, Concur, Salesforce.com, Etsy.com, Corbis, Cargill, M&M Mars, Philips Electronics, T-Mobile, Coldwell Banker, Electronic Arts, Rhapsody, CH2M Hill, PNC Bank, and Talisman Energy. Learn more at: www.RecruitingToolbox.com or contact us at info@recruitingtoolbox.com.

Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2012Time: 11am-Noon PT
Location: Webinar
Session: How To Avoid The 10 Biggest Mistakes Corporate Recruiters Make with John Vlastelica, Managing Director, Recruiting Toolbox
Session Overview and Registration: Link to ERE site

As a consultant and trainer to corporate recruiting teams, John Vlastelica gets to see what many of the best recruiters do differently. In this fun, sometimes irreverent webinar, John will share 10 of the biggest mistakes corporate recruiters make, and what you can do to avoid them. We’ll discuss…

• poor assumptions recruiters make about sourcing, technology, and hiring managers,
• things that can be career-killers when you’re looking to interview for your next recruiting job,
• and some tactics to help you recruit better today.

I hope you can join us for this free webinar.

I was interviewed for an article on Fortune.com called “Looking to Hire?  Don’t ask for the impossible”  The reporter who called had seen some earlier work I’d written for the recruiter audience, with a focus on the role of a recruiter as a consultative partner, not a yes-man/woman, customer service rep, who simply carried out hiring manager requests and managed the “paperwork” part of the process. (More on that in another post…)

Finally, an article FOR hiring managers

However, for this article, her goal was to write to hiring managers - not recruiters – to help them understand how to better partner with recruiters.  A sort of “reality check” for frustrated hiring managers who often think hiring – especially in this economy – is easy! I. Love. It!  Rarely do we see good articles written for hiring managers. Check it out here: Fortune.com

Hiring Managers are our secret weapon!

One of my favorite focus areas as a speaker is around this very topic – how can we, as recruiting professionals, help our hiring managers succeed as hiring managers? This article is really timely, as I’m in the middle of building some custom training for a company that’s hell bent (in a great way!) on leveraging internal and external best practices to help their hiring managers attract, interview, and sell candidates really, really well.  They compete  for talent with better known, better resourced companies, and – as they’ll hear me say in a few weeks in the workshop – I believe their secret weapon is their hiring managers.

Here’s some content that didn’t make it into the article, that captures a few of the common denominator characteristics of the best hiring managers I’ve worked with in the last ~18 years.  It really boils down to this: Ownership.  Hiring managers who really own recruitment – like Nimrod at Ooyala (who leverages social media and old-school tech talks to find engineers) or Tom at Marchex (who built out a micro career site) – get the best hires.  As recruiters, we play a critical role in enabling that behavior, and those of us that do our jobs really well often find, screen and close the person they ultimately hire – but it’s those active, engaged hiring managers who  are true magnets for top talent.

Would love to hear what you think separates the good from the great hiring managers.  Sound off in the comments, please!

The key is ownership!

• Hiring Managers who are successful are NOT passive, “wait for my recruiter to hire me someone good” types. They own recruiting for their opening. Recruiters are critical partners, but the hiring managers who hire the best talent are actively engaged in networking, soliciting quality referrals from inside and outside (think LinkedIn, alumni sites, associations) their companies, communicating the hiring standards/bar for the interviewers they select to help them hire, and uncovering – and selling to – a top candidate’s core motivators throughout the process.

• In today’s economy, too many Hiring Managers believe there are a lot of A-player candidates dying to work for their company, in the role they have open, on their team, right now. “They should be lining up to work here!” – NOT! The reality is that A-players have a ton of options – in this or any economy – and they’re often not actively looking for a new job. They have to be recruited! And even though a great recruiter can get an A-player on the hook, it’s the hiring manager who must be able to ‘reel them in’. A-players need to experience the investment a hiring manager makes in them as a candidate, as it tells them volumes about how good – or how bad – it may be to work for that same manager once hired.

Date: March 29, 2012
Location: San Diego, CA
Session: 2012 Recruiting Excellence Awards Panel Session, with session leader John Vlastelica, Managing Director, Recruiting Toolbox

I’m excited to return to ERE to host the 2012 Recruiting Excellence Awards in San Diego.  As I judge, I get the opportunity – along with folks like Kevin Wheeler, John Sullivan, Lou Adler, Ed Newman and a bunch of prior winners – to review applications from some of the best recruiting functions in the world.

If you and your teams have done some amazing things in 2011, please apply for one of the awards. Here’s info on the categories: http://www.ereawards.com/categories-and-criteria/

I hope to see you there!  Contact us if you plan to attend and would like a special registration discount.

If you can’t make it, watch ERE.net for information on live streaming.  Last year’s session, which included an award to Cisco, accepted by Greg Stock (now part of our team here at Recruiting Toolbox), is hosted here if you’d like to view it.

I rather enjoy sourcing software architects, designers and developers.  Sorting through their blogs reveals what’s new in software languages, design styles and technical functionality.  Software engineering blogs are often quite personal; these guys and gals don’t seem to mind sharing their passions: vintage animation, science fiction, improvisational theatre, container gardening.

Resumes of top candidates — from top companies, with top Computer Science degrees — are publicly available, with complete contact info.  ”Contact me.  I dare you,” they seem to say.

As for the poor suckers recruiters responsible for hiring software engineers,  good luck with that.  A Google Android engineer posted this note to recruiters:

This Google Engineer likes his job. A lot.

These folks are sharp.  They are talented. They know their worth.  They know what they want to do.  They will only work on projects or in languages that interest them. More often than not, they can afford to work for the sheer pleasure of producing beautiful software. Their companies do everything possible to keep them.  Fully understanding the recruiting process, they flaunt their talent on the internet, making themselves even more desirable. They demand “green room’ perks.  No commute. Top-of-the-line equipment. Free food. The ability to work on side projects.

For this kind of “talent” there is a “war”.  In many organizations, software developers are the key to the most important business priorities.  Their work produces innovation, increases productivity or helps to streamline operating costs.

For almost all other non-technical workers without highly specialized and in-demand skills, there is no war. Companies will continue to seek productivity gains, operating efficiencies and growth-driving innovation.  Productivity gains, once achieved, result in a smaller work force.  The same goes for reduction in operating costs.  Only growth drives the need for workforce expansion, and even that can be contained.

So the “War for Talent” takes a slightly different turn than what McKinsey & Company predicted back in 1997 (yes, the “war” is 14 years old).  The war is on — but not for all talent.  With a few exceptions, recruiting and sourcing for most positions will not experience much salary pressure or talent shortages.  Finding good people is — and always will be — a critical core competency for successful companies.  But in the U.S., there is an ample supply of good people for ordinary jobs.

So the recommendations McKinsey made 14 years ago, such as “recruit great talent continuously” or “create an Employee Value Proposition that attracts scarce talent”  still resonate.  But applying even-handed strategies no longer makes sense.  McKinsey advised organizations to differentiate investment in top performers and low performers.  That’s exactly what they’re doing in the executive suites.  In recruiter row, we should take a page from that book and differentiate our investment in recruiting and sourcing resources and tools according to talent scarcity.  The biggest investment should go to the most in-demand, scarcest talent.

Even if that means investing in improv theatre festivals or unlimited supplies of M&Ms.

How are people in China using Social Media?

Mashable published a great article recently, leveraging this G+ infographic (click here, or on the image itself, to enlarge), which highlights how people in China are using Social Media.  500 million Chinese people are online, and one quarter of the world’s social network users are Chinese.

We did a project for a client recently (hiring manager sourcing training for people in Asia, EMEA, and US), and learned about many of their “copycat platforms” (alternatives to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, which are all blocked in China by their government).

So, what’s so different? Here’s a few highlights:

• Internet users spend MORE TIME ONLINE than people in the US (2.7 hours/day vs 2.3 in the US)
• 95% of Chinese citizens say brands that microblog are more trustworthy
• 87% of Chinese use instant messaging (38% in US), while only 53% use email regularly (91% in US)

This has big implications for recruiting in China, and from China.  Are you using social media/networks to recruit outside the US, in China specifically?  What have you learned?  Please share.