Quickly Snaring Talent For Open Positions

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A snare is a rudimentary tool that was once popularly used to catch small game. To be successful, it requires two conditions to be met:

  1. It’s well built for the intended target.
  2. It has the ideal placement for the intended target.

If either of the above conditions is not met, the chances of catching anything are dramatically decreased. OK, that’s the extent of my snare knowledge as it relates to small game hunting. Oh, and snaring is now widely regarded as inhumane in many parts of the world.

Now that we have a common understanding of the snare and the conditions necessary for its success, let’s look at how small- to medium-sized businesses can take that simple concept and apply it to “snaring” talent.

Build First? Or Place First?

Ahhh a question as old as time! Do we build a set of recruiting tactics first, and then go find the best place to implement it? Or, do we find the best place to recruit talent and then build a set of tactics to attract and hire the best? Which comes first?

For most organizations, I believe the answer is…neither one. Because while considering the set of tactics and where to deploy them are vital parts of developing a recruiting strategy, neither of these can be considered until the target audience is first identified. In other words, you can have the best snare placed in the best location, but by failing to consider your “intended target,” you might end up with a lot of rabbits when what you really wanted were squirrels.

Here are five questions to help identify your target audience–your ideal candidates:

  1. What is the position type? (exempt or nonexempt, executive or associate, internal or customer-facing)
  2. What hard skills/experience/education are required?
  3. What soft skills should be required, preferred, or ideal?
  4. Can the position be full or part-time remote?
  5. What candidate qualities will lead to a work culture fit?

These questions will help you develop ideal “candidate personas” that can drastically narrow down your target audience for specific positions and guide you in developing an overall recruiting strategy. With these candidate personas created, you can now consider placement and tactics.

Placing and Building The Talent Snare

Successfully executing your talent strategy is important.  However, if you are attempting to execute your strategy using a set of tactics or a placement that doesn’t align with your target audience, then you may catch talent, but it won’t always be the talent you want. Here are two key questions to ask when considering placement and tactics.

Optimal placement maximizes the chances that your ideal candidates will see your job posting. This is in contrast to “posting and praying”, where you spend more effort and resources get a few great candidates  in with dozens of mediocre or sub-par applicants.  A helpful guiding question to ask is:

Where are my ideal candidates geographically, demographically, and in real-time as they find and consider my job posting?

In considering recruiting tactics, the behavior of your target audience will inform you of the best approach. This information may be difficult to uncover, but cross-referencing your candidate personas with existing behavioral data of job seekers can help you answer the question:

How are my ideal candidates searching, considering, and applying as they engage with prospective employers?

Snaring Talent For Your Open Positions

The preceding questions may seem simplistic and obvious, but they are often overlooked by today’s hiring organizations. Often times, the vast array of recruiting tools and communication channels available can lead us to believe that our job posts are visible to everyone, everywhere, all the time. However, the truth is that without targeting our strategy to a specific audience, our job posts are at risk of being lost in the noise.

The placement and build of recruiting tactics are important considerations, but they must  be informed by the target audience. A well-crafted “rabbit snare” located on my urban sidewalk may never catch a rabbit; but nor will the best “rabbit snare” laid in a rural stand of trees stands succeed in catching squirrels. Ensure optimal placement and build by first identifying your target audience, and then develop a recruiting strategy that maximizes your success. Happy hunting!

ExactHire offers hiring and employee onboarding software to growing small- to medium-sized businesses that are looking to efficiently attract, hire, and retain exceptional talent for continued growth. To learn more about ExactHire’s HR solutions, please submit a brief contact form.

Feature Image Credit: White Bunny Up Close and Personal by George Bannister (contact)

Rewrite Your Talent Onboarding Story In 7 Game-Changing Steps

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Once upon a time there was a talented, optimistic marketing professional named Simon. An exciting, fast-growth technology firm was fortunate enough to woo Simon during a flashy interviewing process and he was pleased to accept its offer of employment shortly thereafter. His new position would offer him more responsibility, more pay and a chance to learn some new technologies. Sounds like a storybook ending for Simon, right?

That’s what he thought, too, until he began to experience the firm’s employee onboarding process. While the tech firm had many things going for it, it had a few things to learn when it came to giving its new hires the best opportunity to be successful and productive in their working environment. Let’s see how Simon’s story unfolded and consider what the tech firm might have done differently to make a positive impression on him in the critical early days and months of his employment.

1 – Wait, What’s Pre-Boarding?

Once Simon accepted his offer, he still had to give his current employer a few weeks’ notice before finishing his job there. While his new employer was hiring frequently, and at such a pace that it often had employees start just days after accepting an offer, Simon was an anomaly in that he had some time to kill before his start date. Unfortunately, his new tech firm was radio silent during this period. Simon actually had to proactively reach out to confirm details like start date and arrival time. He wondered if his new company had forgotten about him.

Rewrite the Story: Simon’s new hiring manager could have called or emailed him to welcome him to the fold and prep him with some housekeeping details prior to his first day. This “pre-boarding” scenario (aka the period before official employee onboarding) is also a golden opportunity for an organization to send a welcome kit to a new hire with goodies like a prepared training schedule, visual organizational chart, fun facts about the company and some branded company swag.

A best practice during pre-boarding is to make sure that your company’s existing employees know about the forthcoming start date of your new employee so they can be ready to make him feel at home. This also gives the onboarding process stakeholders a chance to update recurring meeting requests and email distribution lists to include the new employee. Otherwise, Simon might feel silly if he was the only one that didn’t know to show up to the monthly corporate meeting.

2 – Learning the Unwritten Rules

Simon was an organized guy and liked to be prepared. During his interview, they told him that they had a relaxed dress code, but he still hadn’t seen any evidence of that and didn’t want to be the only guy in jeans on his first day. So, he showed up in business casual to be safe meanwhile contemplating the extent of the company’s flexibility when it came to the “flexible work schedule.” In addition, he was still in limbo with how daycare arrangements would work for his daughter, too. He would continue to feel a little stressed about that until he could adjust her drop-off and pick-up times to accommodate his new schedule. Of course his nerves weren’t helped when a bunch of his new co-workers asked him why he was so dressed up for his first day.

Rewrite the Story: Starting a new job is stressful enough; don’t make it worse by keeping your new hires guessing. At a minimum send new hires a Q&A sheet of commonly asked company culture-related questions before their first day.

  • Go the extra mile by pairing a new employee with a mentor buddy who can give him the real dish, and
  • assembling an attractive book or website full of pictures of your employees enjoying the unique aspects of your culture (for example, hitting the gong to celebrate a goal achievement or modeling work-appropriate attire).

Better yet, create a video office tour in which you interview employees that answer these burning company culture questions. Give employees like Simon the confidence to know when it’s actually okay to play ping-pong during work hours.

3 – You Mean I Don’t Even Get a Red Stapler?

Once Simon was shown to his working space, it was remarkably bare. While thankfully his laptop was awaiting him, there wasn’t much else other than tedious employment paperwork. His cube neighbor said that the supplies he needed were around, and that he could show him the office cabinet. So, Simon grabbed some sticky notes, a pen and a notepad since he wasn’t sure how much was appropriate to take. Back at his desk, he passed the time waiting for further direction (his boss was in a meeting on the morning of his first day) by investigating a new “twiddle your thumbs” finger workout on his smartphone…or at least he felt like that was what he was doing.

Rewrite the Story: Not having supplies ready on a new hire’s first day is frustrating and makes a poor first impression on a new employee. Stock a new hire’s space with all the essentials…have email setup, browsers downloaded and include a handy guide to applications that will be used on a regular basis. Complete the staging with a thoughtful welcome sign with the employee’s name. To make this setup easy on existing employees, too, have a basic onboarding checklist or template in place that can be quickly customized based on departmental needs. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new hire.

Identify additional employee onboarding best practices like implementing software to automate both the workflow-related checklists for existing employees, as well as the actual paperwork completed by new employees. Instead of taking up two hours of a new hire’s first few days on the job with boring, redundant paperwork, give him a web-based portal to enter that data in about fifteen minutes. Make sure your onboarding process brand matches the sleek corporate brand that people have come to expect from a fast-growth tech firm.

4 – Be More Innovative Than Lunch

Simon was pleased to learn that he wouldn’t have to figure out lunch on his first day. His manager, as well as some other members of his department, did take him out to a nice restaurant to get to know him better. There’s nothing wrong with lunch as long as that’s not all you do to learn about new hires.

Rewrite the Story: Use your organization’s industry, resources and/or culture to create a unique experience for your new employees. For example, a technology firm might have a space for all employees to share their favorite mobile app along with comments about why each app was selected. A design firm with graphic artists on staff might choose to commemorate the arrival of newer employees by adding their caricature to a wall of fame after 90 days. An organization of travel buffs could have a giant world map and invite new employees to mark the exotic places to which they have traveled with pushpins. Be imaginative and discover each employee’s passion.

5 – My Brain is Only So Spongy

Once his first few days had passed, Simon had to admit that his training schedule did become quite rigorous…full of people to meet all day everyday. He was hustled from one office to another, desperately trying to absorb all the information he heard like the latest chamois cloth mop from QVC. Alas, cramming isn’t generally effective; however, sometimes employers still feel compelled to fill all the gaps in the first few week’s of an employee’s training schedule. While the firm did gain some points for doing its best to expose Simon to a number of areas in the hopes that he’d be more productive sooner, they should have allowed some time for his early foundational knowledge to soak in and then solidify.

Rewrite the Story: Consider a shortened training schedule for the early days of a new hire’s employment. By empowering an individual to train and shadow with others for just part of the day, you enable him to take the rest of the day to reflect and absorb the information gleaned. He can form questions, review the most recent lessons and be better prepared to be a true participant in the rest of his training activities. Incorporate gamification elements into the training and orientation phase by creating company- and/or department-specific quizzes to assess the employee’s learning while also providing entertaining education.

6 – That’s the End?

A month into his employment experience, Simon was starting to feel like a member of the team. Especially when he was thrown into the training mix for three newer hires that were starting the coming week. That’s right, Simon’s fifteen minutes of new hire fame were already up. And while it’s not a bad idea to help new hires hit the ground running by involving them in improving the onboarding process for future hires, you also don’t want to let your hair down too early with your newer employees. The firm was riding on its own cultural coat tails too aggressively. Keeping employees for the long-term requires a learning and development culture that doesn’t end after a new employee’s first three weeks on the job.

Rewrite the Story: Chart an onboarding course for the long haul and remember that the good stuff happens at milestones you intentionally plan for new hires along their entire employment journey…whether it is three weeks or one year into employment. Beyond new hire paperwork and software login credentials, build in triggers for activities like

  • more advanced learning “courses” once initial onboarding prerequisites are met,
  • exposure to other departments to better learn how one’s own job impacts others,
  • individual assessment in order to uncover opportunities for synergy between the newer employee, his hiring manager and/or other department members,
  • succession planning conversations, and
  • personal achievement recognition at notable anniversary dates.

7 – Get What You Expect

Being organized and self-motivated, Simon already had his own ideas about what he wanted to accomplish in his career with the tech firm. He certainly knew his own job responsibilities and had a vague idea of the potential career path available; however, he was foggy on his firm’s expectations when it came to targeting dates for specific skills mastery and project completions. He was looking forward to really producing now that he had a few months behind him, but he would have appreciated more detail about what success had meant for other top performers in the past.

Rewrite the Story: Having a culture of performance management doesn’t mean forcing a performance review every 90 days, or perhaps ever. But, it does mean having candid, personalized conversations with employees about their passions, developmental goals and the organization’s expectations for achievement. Create a job success factors document for all positions so that new and existing employees alike have a benchmark for comparing their own performance to the model for success for their role. Include details about initial job priorities, expected time frames for project completion and resources available from the organization to support the employee. Then, work with employees to align their strengths and passions with opportunities for increasing responsibility and rewards. Providing a map to success will set employees up to have a true sense of accomplishment once they’ve reached important job milestones.

Where Will Simon’s Story Take Him?

Is your organization guilty of any of the onboarding oversights that befell Simon in his new position? If so, take action now so that when your newer employees get a recruiter InMail message after seven months on the job they politely decline the chance to learn more about the next exciting, fast-growth tech firm.

This blog originally appeared on elementthree.com/blog.

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Ready to Improve Your Onboarding Process – Where Do You Start?

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Congratulations! You’ve successfully made a business case to get the resources to improve your onboarding process. And, as a result of demonstrating its compelling potential ROI, you even received upper management’s blessing to implement onboarding software to infuse technology into your new hire experience. So, you’re ready to get started…but where should you start?

In this blog, I’ll outline four key strategies for ensuring that your onboarding process change effort will result in marked improvement for your organization’s business outcomes.

1 – Get stakeholder buy-in

If it has been some time since you’ve examined your onboarding process and enacted changes, then now is the time to invite others to participate…those who haven’t previously been involved in the design of this critical new hire process. Modern onboarding calls for the inclusion and engagement of a wide variety of stakeholders, and by involving them from the early stages of process re-engineering, the probability of them carrying out onboarding tasks willingly and successfully later greatly increases.

Demonstrate how an improved framework for welcoming and acclimating new employees will benefit stakeholders. While you’ve already shown senior management how your planned key performance indicators will be positively influenced by the change, and therefore have a positive impact on business outcomes, your peers (other hiring managers and administrative employees) may not have heard your case yet. Show them the numbers…especially how they impact their respective department areas, if possible.

Department heads, in particular, should appreciate the new plan’s aim to reduce turnover and shorten time to productivity, as it should prevent them from spending as much time interviewing replacements in the future. Additionally, the use of employee onboarding software will automate reminder notifications so important process milestones aren’t forgotten (i.e. periodic progress meeting reminders, benefit enrollment meetings, alerts to request future training sessions). Take it a step further and build in opportunities to have conversations with new employees that further set expectations with them about job responsibilities and performance expectations.

Having a system in place that alleviates any concern about forgetting tasks removes the urgency for managers to tell a new employee every little thing in the first week. Avoid forcing new hires to “drink from the water hose” the first few days. As a result, realize the benefit of improved knowledge retention due to more digestible information sessions being spread out over a longer period of time. Allocate the time saved by automatic software notifications toward strategic elements of the onboarding process that make a new hire comfortable and more likely to stay with your business for years to come.

2 – Make it easy for upper management to support the effort

The hard part (that is, getting the blessing of senior directors) is behind you. However, to maximize the potential success of your new plan you still need their ongoing support. Make it easy for them to give that support by telling them how they can be helpful, and giving them the information they need to convey success. In doing so, make sure their public involvement in supporting your objectives is done in such a way that aligns your improved onboarding process with the company’s image and culture. For example, if your organization is somewhat transparent and regularly shares certain aspects of financial information and goal progress with employees, then share a dashboard of your onboarding process metrics with staff members, as well. Or, if your smaller business prides itself on personalized service (including thank you notes to new customers), then ask your CEO to send hand-written notes to new employees before their first day on the job.

Other ideas for visible senior management support include:

  • public recognition of new employees via social media
  • an email to the entire company from the president welcoming a new hire
  • a 1-on-1 lunch with a new teammate during the first week on the job
  • public acknowledgment of newly-hired employees during the next company meeting

3 – Note the importance of sound documentation

The greatest plans will fail to deliver if they aren’t recorded properly…particularly employee onboarding process checklists which have multiple moving parts. Start by researching and confirming the required paperwork that should be presented to a new employee. This will most certainly vary by country, state and even municipality if you operate in a number of different geographic locations. If you’re unsure of requirements, it’s always a good idea to involve a trusted employment law attorney.

Along with the required tax and employment eligibility paperwork based on your location and industry, document which other forms and policy acknowledgments should be included in your new hire packet(s), and how it will vary based by role, division and/or location of employee. Effective onboarding software should allow you to create many different new hire packets, and then automatically present the appropriate packet to a new employee within the onboarding dashboard based on his/her employment characteristics (again…role, division and location).

Next, assign stakeholders to responsibilities for each step of the onboarding process. Have conversations with these individuals so they have an opportunity to volunteer, consent, ask questions and/or decline based on their understanding of the assignment. During this exercise, map out how stakeholders’ assignment to different tasks within the onboarding process could affect a new employee’s onboarding experience. For example, don’t accidentally assign an individual in your corporate office to be the Form I-9 approver for new hires in your production plant two states away. If possible, have more than one individual available to handle certain types of onboarding roles so that each geographic area has an appointed person in all of the critical roles. However, if for example, new employee equipment orders are centralized in your corporate office, it’s okay to have a single person in that equipment provisioning role regardless of new employee location.

Brainstorm other onboarding tasks that could add value with your stakeholders. If they’ve not previously been involved in this group effort, you may be surprised about the innovative ideas they bring to the table. As you vet other tasks for potential inclusion, determine where they should fall in the process, and whether any other tasks should happen as prerequisites beforehand. Assign owners to each of these tasks, as well.

4 – Create an onboarding roadmap to communicate expectations

Take your documentation efforts a step further by creating a visual resource for both your process stakeholders, as well as your other teammates. Share this roadmap with your new hires before their first day on the job, as well. It is okay to have a pared down version of your regular roadmap for your newest employees.

Make a detailed version of this resource available as a handout for stakeholders, and if possible, have an attractive summary version posted as a banner on a wall inside your offices and/or on your intranet, as well. Its prominent appearance will be a constant reminder for all employees to support the onboarding process in order to make it successful.

Your roadmap might be as simple as a flowchart showing the order of tasks and time during which they are executed; or, it may be a chance to get more creative and literally illustrate the “road” to new hire success…complete with pit stops and task milestone markers along the way. What works for you will depend on the culture and resources available within your organization.

This visual representation sets expectations for all stakeholders and clearly depicts assigned responsibilities by person. It is a mechanism to document minimum accepted timeframes for task completion and therefore helps to bring context to the dashboard on which you track onboarding-related KPIs. In fact, consider including a roadmap milestone that documents how frequently you conduct lessons learned sessions with stakeholders, and check on KPIs.

The roadmap helps to make clear which employee onboarding tasks need to be addressed at what time, and this frequent familiarity with the onboarding process and KPI dashboard is key in demonstrating how process improvement does in fact drive business outcomes.

If you’re ready to include employee onboarding software as a critical driver in your organization’s process change efforts, please contact ExactHire to schedule a live demo today.

 
Image credit: Harvard University by Tim Green aka atoach (contact)

Common Problems With The Pre-Employment Screening Process

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You’re in the homestretch of filling a vacant position within your organization. You have at least one candidate you are confident will help meet, or possibly exceed, your organization’s goals and objectives in this vacant role.

The last item before crossing the finish line: pre-employment screening.

Sometimes, pre-employment screening can feel like you have hit “the wall” over the course of a marathon instead of feeling the elation of crossing the finish line. There are plenty of problems that can present themselves as obstacles to a smooth pre-employment screening process. However, there are ways to overcome these issues. In this blog, I’ll review some ways to ensure you finish the course with a win…but first let me offer my definition of what the screening process includes.

What Is Pre-Employment Screening?

Pre-employment screening is the process of researching and investigating a potential hire’s background for possible red-lights that could affect: 1) employee performance; and/or, 2) the organization’s safety and/or reputation if this person was hired. Pre-employment screening can include conducting a criminal history background check, drug test, employment assessments and/or contacting reference information submitted by the potential hire to acquire additional information about the person.

Contacting references is a key component of pre-employment screening in the vast majority of professional fields. Communicating with a candidate’s references can give the hiring manager and/or selection committee valuable insight on the potential hire’s past behaviors. Some of those behaviors may be ideal and complement your organization’s culture…while other behaviors may not. Unfortunately, there is no crystal ball to predict how a new hire will acclimate to your organization’s culture, but getting perspectives from references can help provide some insight. According to a 2013 CareerBuilder survey, hiring the wrong individual could cost approximately $50,000 to an organization. If there is a cycle of hiring poorly fitting individuals, the negative financial impact will continue in a downward spiral.

The Reference Chasing Game

When a candidate provides references during the interview process, the following information is often included: Reference Name and Title; Reference Email; Reference Contact Phone Number; and, possibly Number of Years Known and/or the Relationship to the Potential Hire. With this information, the hiring manager can start the communication contact process.

Does this sound familiar?

Pick up the phone and call the reference…
Leave a Message…
Wait patiently for a return call…
Send an email…
Wait patiently for a return email…
Attempt to contact the reference again via both methods if too much time passes…
Tick Tock Tick Tock.

Time is of the essence! There is a job to fill! “Tick tock tick tock” are the sounds that the hiring manager might be hearing. The “tick tock” is not just for the waiting game of collecting reference data. It is also reflective of the downtime that is occurring within the organization since that job opening is still vacant. Most likely, another person is trying to cover that role in addition to fulfilling to his/her own role, too. And, it’s not just “tick tock” being heard; it’s the sound of a cash register getting depleted during this waiting game, too. Vacant positions cost money, especially when keeping downtime and other co-workers’ overtime costs in mind.

Issues With Reference Feedback

So you’ve made contact with a reference–great news! It’s time to ask questions relating to the performance and job duties of the potential hire, and to learn more about the duration and type of work relationship between the potential hire and the reference contact. Acquiring this information might not be as easy as it sounds. Some references are hesitant to give meaningful feedback in fear of legal liability or hurting the candidate’s feelings.

Additionally, if reference questions are not phrased to ask for specific information and examples, the reference provider might give general statements that are too subjective and not helpful in providing a clear view of the potential hire. It is important for the reference checker to be consistent with the questions (s)he asks and the manner in which the feedback is documented. If the feedback is documented inconsistently, the feedback can be skewed and hard to interpret by the hiring manager and/or others on the selection team.

Automated Pre-Employment Screening Solutions

Paperless reference checking software provides organizations with an efficient means to collect reference information. Organizations can ask a potential hire to provide contact information for individuals willing to serve as the potential hire’s references. The references would be asked to provide anonymous feedback regarding the potential hire on a variety of competencies selected by the hiring organization. By submitting anonymous feedback, individuals serving as references are more comfortable providing constructive criticism and testimonials.

References click the link in an email invitation and are informed that their feedback will not be shared with the potential hire and that their responses will be aggregated with other references. This promotes a stronger feeling of anonymity and leads to more honest feedback. Reference check software provides a consistent means to collect and evaluate information provided by the potential hires’ references.

Criminal history background checks and drug tests are additional ways for an organization to screen potential hires. It is crucial that Pre-Employment Screening checks, especially criminal history and drug test results, are kept confidential and secure. ExactHire offers confidential, paperless methods that can be integrated within our HireCentric applicant tracking system to collect highly sensitive, key information that you need to make that crucial hiring decision with more confidence.

Behavioral and cognitive employee assessments can also yield tremendous insight into the skills and abilities of a potential hire. Also, role-specific assessments, such as Microsoft Excel testing for financial roles, can provide tangible results to see how well a potential hire can use a specific tool that is a key resource for daily use in that particular job role. When choosing any type of assessment, thoroughly research the platform to learn how the assessment data is collected and measured.

Having access to these types of pre-employment screening tools can help an organization overcome problems that frequent the traditional pre-employment screening process. Filling a vacant role can lead to some apprehension, but with the different data collection options that exist through ExactHire, we can help alleviate that apprehension. When you conduct pre-employment screening using these tools, know that the confidential and secure information you acquire is based on the neutral objective you have–hiring the right fit for the role and the organization as a whole.

For more information about any of our hiring software tools, please visit our resources section or contact ExactHire today!

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Preboarding Employees for the Long-Haul

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Fighting to attract and keep good employees is a challenge for all companies; but it appears to become more relevant in smaller to medium sized businesses. Companies not only want to find and keep good employees to avoid high turnover rates, they need to create a partnership with employees. In doing so, smaller businesses provide a layer of protection to their own entrepreneurial success.

First Impressions

Pre-boarding begins the instant job seekers land on your job opening and begin evaluating your company’s ability to provide a stable, fulfilling workplace. It’s a part of the hiring process that is often overlooked and regarded as being unimportant. But this train of thought couldn’t be more wrong, and it is a frame-of-mind that could potentially result in the loss of good employees.

Whether you are actively recruiting for your open positions or simply using an ATS to find employees, the way you present your job is important. Make sure that the position is clearly defined and presented without typographical or grammatical errors. Provide the information that a potential employee will want to have to make an informed decision about working with your company. Many ATS providers offer ways to enhance the look and feel of your advertisement with HTML, images, videos, and links to company information. Don’t overlook these little items when searching for a team member.

Face to Face

During the interview process your company should provide a clear timeline with regards to future communication and the next steps that will take place. This includes responding to every applicant that has applied to let them know their application was successfully submitted. It may not seem important, but it really does help build that relationship early on with the right candidate.

Once an offer has been made and accepted, the race is really on to make that new employee comfortable that the correct decision was made to work for your business. Letting the new hire know what is expected and communicating employee information before the first day is imperative to creating a lasting relationship. Think about accepting an offer for employment and then having your new employer go ghost until you show up at the office in 2-4 weeks. It is unsettling, at best.

Take the Work Out of Paperwork

If you use electronic onboarding, you can set the new hire up and let them know what information is available to them. This would likely include the benefits information, policies and procedures for their role, an employee handbook, and other paperwork that takes time to review and complete. Of course we aren’t lawyers, but you might want to check with yours on what is okay to release before the first day on the job. We suggest offering the employee the opportunity to complete the paperwork before their first day but make it very clear that it is not required to start anything before they are on the clock. Another side note would be that state and federal identification and tax forms, including the I-9, should not be done until the employee is in the office with the proper representative to sign off on those items.

Be Prepared

Finally, in order to round out preboarding and the first impression of your new hire, make sure that the first day is structured and that the company is prepared to impress your employee. Nobody wants to start a new job and arrive to find out that nobody has prepped anything for their arrival.

Designate the new hire’s office space, phone, computer, and any other equipment that is needed for the job. Creating your new hire’s email account and setting up their printer before their arrival are added steps that show you care about your new hire’s first day.  If you are planning a pitch-in or taking the team out for lunch to welcome your employee, he or she should be aware before they walk into the office on the first day. Creating an outline for the first day or even the first week can give your new employee that warm feeling that your company is excited to have them on the team.

Getting the employees engaged before the first day can create a bond and some excitement for the new recruit. Additionally, the manager can gauge the employee’s drive to jump right into business. All of this is vital to ensuring that your hiring decision will hold up for the long haul.

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How to Engage Hiring Managers During Hiring Process – Whiteboard [VIDEO]

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In this video, pick up some tips on how to better engage hiring managers to effectively participate in your small- to medium-sized business hiring process. Learn how technology can help automate the hiring process and facilitate manager participation, especially when an organization is decentralized.

Video Transcript:

Hi, welcome to another edition of ExactHire Whiteboard Video Chat. I’m Jeff Hallam and today we’re going to talk about how can I engage hiring managers in my recruiting and hiring process.

This comes up a lot, and as you can imagine it’s something that most everyone is trying to get to, but it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to get buy-in from folks who don’t hire for a living. When they have positions open they want them filled, they want good people in them, and a lot of times they’re trying to get through that as quickly as they can as opposed to maybe following your process that you’ve laid out as an HR professional or as a recruiter.

So these four steps are really designed, or these tips I should say, are really designed just to give you some ideas on how you can better engage these folks and hopefully get both what you want, and they want, out of this cycle.

So the first piece is, maybe trying to look at it through their eyes. And anytime you can walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes I think it can certainly benefit the experience. And so you have to think of it from their standpoint, this can often times be seen as a bother. Why do I want to do this? What’s in it for me? I don’t want to take the time. I don’t want to learn another system. And all those things are valid when they are busy…as we all are. So one of the things you can do is as you see it from that perspective, really think hard about what is in it for them. Think about how their needs and what they’re trying to get done can align with what you’re trying to get done. And when you can do that, that’s definitely a great first step. And that kind of transitions over here to point two in terms of making it easy.

By making it easy, what we mean is, if you can really see it through their eyes, it will help you understand what would in fact make this easier for them. So things like not requiring them to quote/unquote learn another system. Not requiring them to put in pages and pages of notes. So the more structure and input and things of that nature you can give them the better. And likewise, if you can create an environment from their perspective, where they can actually very quickly give you their feedback, and it’s always in a consistent format, all the better. And that kind of bleeds over into point three here.

If you can create a template, a form, a document…whatever it might be that can collect this feedback, that’s almost always going to universally go over a little bit better than just the free-form notes. Again, it will take a little getting used to up front for folks, but once they get that, they’re going to understand that from their perspective, it’s quick…they’re putting in their feedback, they can see other peoples’ feedback. It’s easy, they can access it from anywhere, it’s easy to get to, it’s constant. And, then as that starts becoming a little bit more baked in, a little more consistent, then you get to a point very quickly where you can start making sure that there is follow through.

You can hold these folks accountable and let them know that you are going to be checking into this. And when they’re not doing it, this is a good opportunity for you to go back and hold them accountable, and help them understand and reinforce these other points of why it is important, why it’s just as good for them as it is for the organization. And, as you start doing these things, particularly if they’re in the right technological platform, you should really be able to bring a lot of automation to this, get that feedback very consistently, have it always in a consistent format…and as you go through that process, if you’re like a lot of other folks we work with on a regular basis, you should actually see your hiring results not only speed up, but just as importantly the results should improve.

How to Overcome Employment Screening Challenges in Small Business

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I know from experience: being part of a small human resources department often creates a close-knit team, but the workload can make you long to clone yourself a few doppelgangers. Small business HR professionals are often slowed down with manual processes, like ordering background checks and chasing down references. Moreover, they are often pulled away to put out unexpected “fires”; thus, making it difficult to get to every to-do on time. That’s why more small- and medium-sized companies are looking for ways to accomplish more without adding expensive overhead in the form of extra HR staff members.

Our ExactHire e-book, The SMB Guide to Superhero Pre-Employment Screening, reviews best practices in pre-employment screening; including, application review, assessments, background checking and reference checking. In chapter six (embedded below) the challenges of traditional reference checking are reviewed. This chapter comments on how automated reference checking software can gather objective feedback more quickly and with little effort.

For the complete resource to help guide you in fighting potential inefficiencies within your organization, download ExactHire’s complete superhero-themed e-book. Think of automating the candidate screening process as a means to arm yourself with enhanced senses and special, super equipment. After all, what would Wonder Woman be without her lasso; or, Spiderman without his webbing?

SMB Pre-Employment Screening Guide Ebook
Image credit: Thunder of Hooves by JD Hancock (contact)

Template for a Consistent, Effective Hiring Process – Whiteboard [VIDEO]

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A consistent, effective hiring process is a critical factor when selecting and onboarding employees for your organization. In this whiteboard video, Jeff Hallam of ExactHire discusses how to create a template for a successful process, including the use of tools such as background checking and reference checking.

SMB Pre-Employment Screening Guide Ebook

Video Transcript:

Hi there, and welcome to another edition of ExactHire Whiteboard Video Chat. I’m Jeff Hallam and today we’re going to talk about how to create a template for a consistent and effective hiring process. And this predominantly applies to small- to mid-sized organizations, and that’s who we work with for the most part. And this is something that when you’re working for a Fortune 500 organization, a lot of these things are already set in stone and you don’t really have much of an opportunity to change those nor debate them. But for many of these organizations that aren’t at that level, the issue of how do we hire, what does it look like and how do we make sure it’s consistent time after time…can be a little elusive because there may not be a person who spearheads that, and/or that person may not have communicated things very effectively up to that point. And so following a handful of very simple things and making sure that there are a few items in place can really help you in your endeavors to make things much better from a hiring perspective.

So the first one is, as you understand what it is that you want to do, make sure that everybody internally who is going to be involved in that process understands what it is, what the steps are, who is going to be involved and what that is going to look like over time. And once everybody understands that, it really sets a groundwork for everything that is going to happen from there. And I know that seems simple, but that miscommunication or lack of communication is usually the number one culprit for why things don’t work the way folks might like in today’s world.

Likewise, once that’s been set, it becomes very easy for people who are involved in the cycle…and I’ve been guilty of this myself in prior worlds…to want to shortcut the process. This is a really hot candidate, this is a really important job…we have to fill it very quickly. We don’t have time to do these things that we have normally done…and as tempting as that is, and understand you have to have some flexibility, understand there will be exceptions. But as much as you can, try to take this process that’s been communicated and defined and avoid that temptation. Try to keep it in place as much as you can…it can really avoid the notion of everybody thinking their job is the exception.

So once you have that platform, and you understand this is kind of what we want it to look like, there are some elements that most everybody agrees should be part of any best practice that you would consider for hiring. And we’ve just listed those here, and very briefly, they start in order of beginning of the process on forward at the front of the train with relevant job descriptions. Unfortunately, a lot of people still use job descriptions the way they did twenty-five, thirty, forty years ago. Very long, very detailed, very lengthy lists of things that somebody has to have, must do, etc. And frankly those are things that candidates just aren’t paying much attention to. What they want is a quick, little bulleted list of: what is this job; what do I need to have to be qualified for it; so that they can make a good quick decision as to whether they are even interested in learning more.

Once you’ve gotten them past that, the next step becomes how can you make it simple for them to let you know they’re interested in the job? When we were in the throes of the recession, employers could ask for a full online application, multiple sets of references, everything except somebody’s first born child it seemed and they would get plenty of applicants. And that’s because people were desperate for work. But now that that’s reversed and is nearly 180 degrees the other way, applicants are very much the ones setting that tone. And they’re not going to, in most cases, be willing to give you a full online application, let alone a full written application, just for the privilege of being considered for your opening. So really give some thought to what you can do to automate that number one, and number two, to only get what you need initially and then perhaps get the rest later. That’s very much a trend we’re seeing and there are a lot of ways that you can do that. So it’s definitely something worth considering.

One of the biggest issues that we see for most organizations is this inability to keep candidates apprised of where they are in the process. Having them know where they are, what the next step is, are they moving forward, if not, make them aware of it, if so, what does that next step look like and what is the timing for it… I cannot stress how important that is. It’s the number one complaint from most candidates and that the easiest way to protect your employment brand is to not let them feel like their resume or application fell into a black hole. Let them know where they are, keep them posted as they go through your cycle.

Something that’s been around for a long time and people sometimes will almost just treat this as a, “yes, I’m done” type of endeavor is checking references. This is another item that’s even become automated now. There are lots of ways that you can make this much more quick, simple, much less laborious. The key to that is making sure that there is consistency there. Much like everything else we are talking about here…make sure the same questions are asked, make sure the feedback is recorded in the same format. Not just for ease of access, but also to give you a point to go back to over time to find out where things might have been missed. Understanding what somebody has done in prior environments can be an invaluable way to get a better feel for how well they are likely to do in your environment.

And finally, performing background checks. As funny is this might be, initially, this is the thought for a lot of people…”I hope they don’t see this,” “I hope they don’t find out I did that,” etc. People have a lot of skeletons in their closet for better or worse, and certainly not everyone, but a much higher percentage of the population than you might think. So dependent upon your organization and what your needs are, making sure that you understand how they’ve done before, and is there anything that could potentially create exposure for your organization if you hire this person, again, are very necessary pieces that have to be in there.

So when think about this notion of, how do I create this template, how do I make my process consistent and more effective, following these three steps…get everybody on board, make sure there is something that keeps everybody from short-cutting what you’ve put in place, and then making sure that some of these key best practices are there as part of that cycle will definitely help you and your organization, not only make the process more consistent, but overall help you hire better.