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    Using Data-driven Hiring to Edge out the Competition

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    When times are good, and business is booming, companies can afford to make a few mistakes and sweep a few imperfections “under the rug.” And that’s okay. No process is perfect. However, when business slows down and it’s time for spring cleaning, what was swept under the rug comes to light.
    In other words, during periods of quick growth, companies tend to sacrifice quality of hire for speed. The effects of these decisions surface most clearly when the pace slows down. That can be a sobering moment for companies that stop and take stock of the decisions that worked for them and the ones that worked against them. Recruiting efficiency is an area that is quickly and clearly exposed when this happens. The inefficiencies and the lack — or absence — of sound hiring practices can be seen in cost per hire, turnover, and retraining costs.
    To find improvements in any process, businesses look at data.
    Data, data, everywhere
    We’re not talking about boiling the ocean, but there is meaningful information that can be gathered and put to use everywhere in the recruiting process. Hiring leaders who do not operate with this mindset leave money on the table, which again, is easy to measure in terms of increased cost per hire, decreasing retention, or unsustainable retraining costs.
    Without data measurement, organizations cannot optimize for “all-weather” efficiency.
    Smashfly CMO Lori Sylvia goes all in on the importance of measuring talent data when she says, “If you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen.”
    This is not a call to recruiters to build sophisticated data models, but rather to critically think about how data can help determine who they should be hiring for and how they can best appeal to them.
    Knowing that data is all around us, the question needed to make use of it is: “What data points are the most meaningful to me for this process?” Here are a few tips for recruiters — of all levels — to make leveraging data easy, impactful, and second nature.
    Ask yourself who fits into the talent pool for your business
    The last part is important here. Someone may check all the boxes for the job description and still not succeed at your organization. It can come down to various factors, like culture, level of training, the ability to multitask, or teamwork. Whatever the reason is, hiring success depends on going a level deeper into the candidate profile than the resume.
    Let’s go over an example where the goal was to reduce the number of conversations and increase the quality of conversations with candidates. Brendan Browne, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at LinkedIn, was looking for candidates to fill an engineering role. They took a quality-affinity approach that measured the candidate’s qualifications (their quality) and how highly they thought of the company (their affinity). The criteria for affinity included asking three yes/no questions:

    Do they follow the company?
    Do they share relevant content on their profile?
    Do they have a meaningful first-degree connection?

    Upon reaching out to candidates who ranked higher in affinity, the team experienced a 57% increase in the response rate.
    There was nothing highly technical about the process. It just came down to the team figuring out what data points from each candidate were meaningful to collect. It’s an easy exercise that can be applied across companies and roles.
    Take a microscope to your outreach
    Keep track of your messages. Recruiters shouldn’t shy away from testing new copy, subject lines, and time of day for their candidate outreach. It’s the most obvious yet overlooked metric to gauge the effectiveness of your outreach. Doing this enough will give you a sense of what tone is resonating most with your candidate pool.
    To have reliable data, one cardinal rule is to test one thing at a time. For example, measure how two different groups react to a different subject line or call-to-action alone rather than changing both at the same time.
    If your message has reached a point where you feel it is well and truly optimized and it’s still not meeting your goals, shift your focus to identify weak spots in the candidate journey. There may be moments where engagement is dropping off for enough candidates, signaling a trend to address with an alternative approach — and then measure the success of.
    Think about who else is talking to your dream candidate
    Chances are, the competition is also talking to the same candidates as you. Keeping tabs on competitor hiring activity can help inform your hiring strategy. Think about what the hiring experience is like for the candidate when they talk to you, versus the competition. Check out competitors’ job descriptions and ask yourself:

    How do they communicate the employer value proposition to prospective candidates?
    How candid are they about the salary and benefits they’re offering?
    How much of the company culture and company values shine through in the description?
    How easy or intuitive is the application process?
    Do they show the prospect genuine gratitude for their consideration?
    What would I look to improve in this experience?

    Doing this, even once in a while, helps make sure you’re not falling behind the competition and gives you an opportunity to raise the bar by brainstorming and implementing improvements to your candidate experience.
    Being data-savvy is simply knowing how to answer your biggest questions
    For recruiters, useful information is everywhere. The easiest way to benefit from a data-driven mindset is not to overthink it. Simply start asking questions about any aspect of your recruiting process, and then take measurements to uncover answers.
    The more confident you are about the data you have on talent, their affinity for your company, and your competition’s practices, the better your process will be in finding and appealing to the best candidates.
    Shannon Pritchett is Head of Community at both hireEZ and Evry1 (which she co-founded in 2021). As a talent acquisition leader, she remains passionate about connecting companies with their most valuable asset — people.
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      in Talent Acquisition

      How to Recruit in a Recession — From Someone Who Knows

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      As some industries make headlines for layoffs or hiring freezes over fears of a slowing economy (and potential recession), talent acquisition teams feeling market shifts firsthand may think their only option is to slow down with it.
      Many may even be looking positively at the opportunity for rest after the frenzied, white-knuckle pace of hiring over the last year has had recruiters burning the candle at both ends. While the space to take a momentary breather is much deserved, waiting out macroeconomic trends is not a safe strategy — for business or for job security as a TA pro.
      Hiring teams that have become too comfortable with a reactive, offer-letter-after-one-interview environment should be wary of waiting for the next shoe to drop. If you drift for too long, you risk being too far behind to catch up when it does.
      In short: The threat of a recession is not a reason to pause executing your talent strategy. Instead, think of it as permission to reset it, by resetting your mindset — from one that is reactive to one that is proactive.
      First, take that long weekend or vacation you’ve been putting off. When you’re back and refreshed, let’s look at what a proactive recruiting mindset can look like.
      10,000-foot view
      There are two important truths that come with a recession and its impact on hiring. Those of us who were here in 2008 can attest:

      No matter what, some companies will panic and eliminate headcount — this is normal.
      Because the market is more vulnerable, candidates will be more hesitant to switch jobs.

      By embracing these two truths, we can determine how a strategy may need to shift. For example, If your organization has removed all job posts, it’s time to refocus energy on bolstering your talent pipeline.
      And knowing that talent is going to be less laissez-faire about making a job switch, recruiters must prioritize creating and nurturing relationships — with confidence and trust — over dangling shiny objects.
      At a high level, this means recruiters will need to kick the habit of endless sourcing and get outside of their comfort zone to stay relevant with candidates. That’s a big change for at least 55% of recruiters, who say they spend the majority of their time sourcing, according to the recent State of Outbound Recruiting in 2022 report by hireEZ.
      3,000-foot view
      Change is tough, and easier said than done. As a former recruiter, I know how busy each day is. When you’re busy, you tend to stick to what you know: LinkedIn, job boards, copying and pasting the same email outreach that worked that one time. It’s hard to be productive when you’re buried under requisitions.
      Fortunately, a slowdown in hiring will provide the opportunity to make some changes — to become more proactive. To make it easier, here are a few ways to get started:
      Be more selective
      You likely now have more time to identify the best candidate — so take it. It will be key to look for opportunities to maximize the value brought to the job level as well as to broader business goals.
      At the job level, work with hiring managers to become familiar with the minutiae of any given role. What are the skills within the skills that are required? What kinds of tasks will the individual need to complete each day, each week, each month, each quarter? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current team dynamic? What capabilities or traits are desired outside of skills and knowledge? Are there any organizational changes coming that would impact whoever is in the role?
      At the business level, understanding how the best candidate fits can forward strategic objectives. Is the company focused on creating more leaders? Are there goals to improve company diversity by hiring more talent from underrepresented communities? Is the company interested in expanding its global footprint? What benefits or perks do you see competitors offering for similar roles?
      When you are ingrained in the needs for the role, beyond the job description, you can bring a much more nuanced set of requirements to the table when looking for the perfect match. And when you understand how the role will impact the business strategy deeply, you can ensure that the match will help drive the company forward.
      These proactive steps will help you choose candidates with such an increased level of detail that you’ll naturally improve engagement and retention for every hire.
      Nurture with more meaning
      In a recession, recruiters need to keep all candidates engaged so that they are always thinking about their company. Now is the time to get creative with how you nurture.
      Take the time to work on your craft and research your talent: Test new message styles, their length, and timing, and work at making your outreach personal. Ask yourself, what are they into? How do they like to communicate? Try to develop a message that is so customized for that individual that it wouldn’t work for anyone else. Think about how you can stand out from the other recruiters blowing them up.
      Consider adopting new technology that can help you maximize your existing databases. For example, test recruiting software that can clean up and enrich profiles in your ATS, so you can regain attention and interest from previous candidates and build a pipeline that’s prepared for the next busy season.
      Look for recruiting platforms that have engagement features built in, such as email sequencing and scheduling, so that you can reach highly qualified candidates directly, and plan your hyper-personalized outreach in advance.
      Scientists test hypotheses so that they can proactively set up an experiment to succeed. Be a scientist — test and experiment to set yourself up for success.
      Understand what works
      Sometimes data tells a very different story than what we tell ourselves. But it can be hard to find the time to take a look back at the information we have. Now’s the time for recruiters to look at what worked, what didn’t, and what questions you don’t have good answers for.
      Take a deep database dive to review past hires; see what trends surface that can help you reevaluate candidates for the future, and reassess KPIs. Did time to hire improve with candidates who had to go through fewer interviews? What changes to the hiring process impacted retention? Do you have an easier time getting responses when recruiting for more senior roles? What commonalities can you find about candidates who ghosted you?
      A solid talent strategy should also take into account what broader industry and competitive trends can reveal. Certain recruiting platforms now provide the ability to compare your company’s performance against competitors. Having insight into data like average salaries by functional area, popular geos for specific roles, or at what time talent might be more willing to make a change, can help you proactively optimize your approach for the future.
      1,000-foot view
      Breaking habits can be hard, but what better time to make changes in your approach to recruiting — to improve your game — than when the market is changing.
      When it comes to adopting a proactive mindset, the worst-case scenario is you increase your expertise and expand your capabilities. The best-case scenario is you have people ready to join your organization even before you’ve even sent out offer letters. Take it from someone who recruited in the last recession.
      Shannon Pritchett is Head of Community at both hireEZ and Evry1 (which she co-founded in 2021). Prior to joining hireEZ, she served in a variety of recruiting roles and later leveraged her industry experience and expertise to hold leadership positions at Moxy, SourceCon, CareerXroads, and beyond. As a talent acquisition leader, she remains passionate about connecting companies with their most valuable asset — people.
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      in Talent Acquisition

      Why AI Recruiting is Key to Growth in 2022

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      Business priorities in 2022 have all shifted to center around talent. Primarily, finding it. The Great Resignation, or the Great Reshuffle, or the Big Quit — whatever you want to call it — continues to dominate headlines and highlight the ongoing shortage of labor. But companies need to understand that the skewed supply and demand ratio for talent is here to stay. One study even predicts a global human talent shortage of 85 million workers by 2030.
      Despite this trend seeming to look like old news at this point, many organizations’ hiring programs were still completely caught off guard over the last year. In a report by Hiretual, 61% of recruiters said sourcing talent was their biggest challenge in 2021. At the end of 2020, when asked about their biggest anticipated concern, sourcing talent didn’t even make it to the top three.
      That same report found the second and third biggest challenges for recruiters surveyed went to candidate engagement and employer competition, respectively. Again, when recruiters were asked the same question the year before, neither of these obstacles was high on the list.
      What these responses signal is a shift in priority from inbound to outbound recruiting. That is, rather than relying on workers to go out and find jobs, companies are now having to sell available jobs to workers — and doing so at scale is proving difficult. While companies and recruiters may be beginning to understand this, the amount of LinkedIn posts we’re still seeing from leaders exclaiming, “We’re Hiring!” — expecting qualified prospects to go out of their way and click through to a boring careers page — shows not many have adapted to compete.
      As organizations around the world refine strategies for the future, now is the time to commit to growth, and adapt to achieve it. Companies that do will stand to benefit from a final post-pandemic jolt to productivity, setting themselves up for a more sustainable future. But with more jobs available than there are workers to do them, those that fail to change their recruiting strategy will see their workforce — and success — atrophy.
      Getting More Human With AI
      The pressure is on for talent acquisition, but changing priorities brought on by the pandemic will require recruiters to do more than fill jobs. Going forward, recruiters must offer opportunities that meet heightened needs from talent (such as more inclusive cultures and more flexible work schedules) and align with refined company objectives (like scaling skill sets and leading product innovation).
      To do that effectively, recruiters need to be able to spend more time doing the more human aspects of the job, to provide a better experience to candidates, and better qualify talent for the needs of the business — now and for the future.
      If 2021 investment data is any indication, talent acquisition tech stacks are getting reevaluated. In fact, 62% of companies increased their investment in talent acquisition technology last year, according to Aptitude Research. Because something has to give, more companies than ever before will look to AI recruitment technologies to give themselves a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways AI will help companies address key recruiting challenges in 2022.
      Revealing Blind Spots
      Not all talent is accessible in the same places, and many recruiters are looking for candidates with too narrow of a view into the available talent pool. Usually limited by a handful of disparate job boards, with limited search functionality or candidate profile visibility, talent acquisition pros end up missing access to a large share of qualified talent.
      AI recruiting tools will broaden the scope of available talent. By pulling candidate profile data from multiple talent pools, hiring teams can access significantly more of the total talent population and search from a single source. Some platforms are approaching access to almost a billion candidates. Companies that need to scale growth will have more options, and more opportunities to hire.
      In addition, AI will help recruiting teams remove limitations to how they find talent by mitigating unconscious bias from the process to make more equitable hiring decisions. This works by automatically matching candidates based on the skills relevancy of what a recruiter is looking for, rather than focusing on any other candidate’s features. For example, blind searches can be conducted to remove attributes like gender or race, or even education, to help remove bias and lack of diversity in the hiring process.
      By managing diversity in the outbound phase of the recruiting process — as opposed to scrubbing data in ATSs or CRMs — organizations can take a more proactive approach to make equitable hiring decisions.
      Meeting the Need for Speed
      To reach goals for scale, hiring teams need to shorten the time it takes to bring the right jobs to the right people. With AI, organizations will begin to automate more of the transactional and respective aspects of the hiring process. This will give recruiters more time to focus on building relationships by engaging prospective talent in meaningful ways.
      Without the right technology, recruiters will spend less time adding value to the process. Automation will free up the time it takes for recruiters to facilitate communication by removing manual tasks like bulk outreach, scheduling, and managing candidate pipeline data, so they can spend more time consulting with talent to place them in roles that best fit their interests, ambitions, and experience.
      Teams leveraging AI will encounter fewer obstacles with potential candidates in misaligned job expectations and broken feedback loops, resulting in faster time to hire and smoother onboarding experiences.
      Establishing a Foundation for Growth
      For many candidates, contact with a recruiter is the first moment of exposure they have with an organization. That first impression has the potential to create interest by offering the candidate valuable and relevant experience. It also has the potential to diminish the brand in the eye of prospects and their peers.
      With the help of AI, organizations will set up hiring teams to showcase their brand to candidates in the best light and build a workforce that better supports company objectives for the long run. By engaging talent with a more inclusive approach, increasing the speed and ease of the hiring process, and broadening the scope of talent they see and consider, only organizations leaning on AI will overcome today’s hiring challenges to build workforces that grow.
      Shannon Pritchett is Head of Community at both Hiretual and Evry1 (which she co-founded in 2021). 
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