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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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      4 Ways to Use Today’s Global Mobility Trends to Recruit Top Talent 

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      Are you searching far and wide for new talent? Is that search feeling farther and farther afield? There is roughly a one in four chance (27%) that your company is struggling to find qualified employees locally or feels that the Great Resignation significantly impacted relocations in 2022. This comes despite relocation volumes and budgets increasing by 7% from 2021 to 2022 and is expected to increase in 2023 for 58% of companies of various sizes across industries.
      As pressures from the pandemic continue to ease, employees considering relocations also have evolving needs. Below are a few ways organizations can keep up with them:
      Continuously review benefits.
      When was the last time your organization conducted an in-depth review of its benefits? If it was a year ago or more, it is time to review them again. Simply put, organizations must continuously review their job offerings and relocation benefits to ensure they remain competitive and attractive in a dramatically changing environment.
      According to Gartner, just 32% of workers feel that they are being paid fairly due to inflation and recession concerns. Further, Jobvite shares that 52% of American workers across industries believe they could simply make more money by switching jobs. If the grass looks greener everywhere an employee looks, your organization must be equally appealing. Important questions to ask during your benefits review include:

      Does your organization’s compensation meet cost-of-living demands where you are located?
      How do relocation benefits impact general workplace benefits?
      What are our competitors in the region touting?
      Do you have a trusted House-hold Goods Moving provider that can support you and your potential new hire with the relocation process itself?

      Prioritize balance.
      There is far more an employee must consider today when weighing a relocation opportunity than in the past. Develop workplace management policies that take remote work, work/life balance, voluntary relocation, and flexibility into consideration. While many employers want to see their employees back in the office, in January 2023, almost 30% of all work happened at home. This is six times greater than the remote work rate in 2019. How and where we work has changed.
      How does your organization accommodate working from home, and what does that mean for relocating talent? You must have an answer to this question because even if an employee is willing to relocate, it does not necessarily mean they only want to work in the office. What flexibility options are you offering to entice in-office work with the desire to relocate your employee to your headquarters’ hometown?
      Consider family.
      For many families in the U.S., remaining close to home is both practical and personal. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that about three in 10 U.S. citizens live within an hour’s drive of some or all extended family. More adults today are also living in multigenerational households than ever before. One in five adults now lives with parents or grandparents – a rate that has quadrupled since 1971.
      This closeness to family is a preference and value for social and economic benefits, as family members are often available to help working parents, especially in sharing home labor such as childcare. Ensuring your organization’s relocation policies include resources to support the relocation of spouses, children, and residences is vital for prospective employees considering moving away from extended family.
      Offer guidance.
      Moving to a new city or state can be intimidating. New residents want to know where the best schools are located, where the best restaurants are, and what the best commute to take is. These are just a few of the barriers holding back prospective residents without someone on the ground to guide them.
      Workplaces that offer robust resources or partners to help guide employees through the relocation process can help. This can be a go-to individual who can share insider information on the most popular suburbs and best nightlife – complete with parking tips – or it can be through lump sums or flexible policies that allow employees to spend time seeking these answers on their own. Allowing time to tour houses while also paying for temporary housing can make a difference in an employee’s willingness to relocate and their happiness once they do.
      The war for talent is in full swing. When many companies are touting remote-first work policies, enticing new employees to physically relocate to a new city, state, or country can be difficult. Of all the stressors related to starting a new job or relocating to a new area, moving there should be the easiest part.
      Mary Beth Johnson is Vice President of Business Development for Atlas Van Lines. 
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      5 Tips for Managers to Maximize Interviews and Secure the Best Talent 

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      Businesses are currently battling a candidate-driven jobs market when searching for talent. There are more jobs than job seekers, so it’s more important than ever for managers and HR professionals to ensure they’re maximizing interviews to secure the best talent.  And with unemployment rates lowering to 3.7% in Q1 2022, the lowest rate since 1974, but a recession on the horizon now, is the time for businesses to ensure they’re streamlining their hiring processes to ensure they secure the best talent going into unfavorable economic conditions. Below, we outline five top tips for businesses to make the most out of the hiring process.
      1. Don’t get stuck on the must-haves
      It is highly unlikely jobseekers will have every skill and level of experience desired for a job role, so it’s important to remain flexible when reviewing candidates. Having two different lists of candidate requirements on the job advert, one for ‘essential skills’ and another for ‘desirable skills’, ensures the best talent isn’t intimidated out of applying due to a lengthy job requirement list where they may not meet every criterion. It’s important to remember although a professional may not have the level of experience desired, their key skills may be useful within their role and will allow them to be trained to the level required – so keep an open mind.
      2. Take time to prepare
      As much as the candidate needs to prepare for an interview, it’s also important when hiring to go into the conversation with all the facts. Ensure before the interview you have reviewed the candidate’s CV and any other documentation they may have provided to get a well-rounded view of their experience before you meet them in person. It’s also a good idea to look at their LinkedIn profile to see if they have been active in any recent discussions that you may wish to bring up in the interview. This will allow you to really get a feel for their personality and how they will integrate into the culture of your business.
      3. Plan out the interview
      It’s a good idea to plan questions prior to the interview. This ensures the right questions are being asked, allowing you to find out everything essential you need to know about the candidate. To make things fair, it’s important you use the same questions for each person you interview.
      Additionally, planning the interview in advance will help get the information you need quickly, saving time and resources, and reducing the need for second interviews and follow-up calls. Being as efficient as possible and cutting out unnecessary stages in the recruitment process can be a make or break when securing talent in the current market. It’s also important to factor in a relevant task that a professional may be required to complete to ensure the interview process gets a well-rounded view of the candidate and their suitability for the role – this may need to be done at a second interview, and similarly to the questions, to keep things fair the same task should be given to all candidates. Also, think about your interview panel – having a diverse panel can help to ensure you are limiting unconscious biases from the process.
      4. Allow time for questions
      Once you’ve asked all the questions you want to be answered, it may feel as though the interview is now complete. However, not allowing the interviewee to ask questions can mean essential pieces of information slip through the cracks. Not only will the questions asked by the interviewee give you a feel for their level of interest in the role and business, but it will also allow you to gain an understanding from the candidate’s point of view, meaning you can streamline your hiring process by providing the correct information and asking the right questions in the future.
      5. Don’t hang around
      Because of the candidate-driven market, it’s important to act quickly if you are interested in a candidate! While you need to take the time and consider if someone is the best match for your business, as the market is moving so quickly, talent is being snapped up fast, so consider if there are ways your hiring process can be streamlined to reduce the time taken to offer a job. If you’re taking the time to discuss a potential hire with every member of your team, the candidate may have already taken another offer, so always communicate your interest in a timely fashion. This could involve setting a transparent timeframe that you will give the candidate feedback, as this may make them more likely to wait before accepting another offer.
      By Claire Harvey, Managing Director of UK Network, Reed.
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      It’s Time to Ditch Traditional Recruiting and Embrace On-demand Talent

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      The record number of vacancies across the country is no secret. The war for talent is creating a difficult hiring environment for organizations across all industries. This has prompted a self-fulfilling prophecy, and in turn a key challenge for all businesses – the power has well and truly been put into the hands of workers (of all kinds).
      The ‘great resignation’ is the result of individuals realizing they can have more control and autonomy over their careers based on their experiences during the pandemic. As a result, most have more demands from prospective employers than ever before.
      Those sourcing workers with digital skills in particular are experiencing some of the starkest shortages. So, if businesses don’t look to overcome them soon and find the talent they need, they’re at significant risk of having to put their digital transformation strategies, which are crucial for their future, on hold.
      Priorities are changing
      A lot of digital transformation has taken place over the past 18 months, but digitizing is an ongoing process with no end game. In fact, most businesses are still playing catch up as they look to overcome the challenges created by the pandemic as many weathered the storm by adopting a reactive business continuity approach to digital development rather than taking a more strategic view on the opportunity. This is in addition to the challenges brought on by Brexit and the subsequent supply chain struggles. However, digital transformation cannot go ahead without the right people driving it.
      This increased demand for a specific set of skilled workers is having a big impact on the way businesses are looking to attract them. Some have turned to increases in salary, for example, but research shows that’s not enough – employees now increasingly value flexibility on par with, if not more than, their salaries, having appreciated the work-life balance afforded to them during national lockdowns.
      With so many businesses hiring from the same pool, organizations might need to think outside the box to get the people they need to drive their futures. After all, this landscape means it is becoming more time-consuming and expensive to recruit in the traditional way.
      Breaking the habits of a lifetime
      Especially when recruiting for digital roles, organizations are usually looking for highly specialized skills, and at short notice. Often these skills are needed for specific and individual projects, which can put HR teams under pressure to fill the gaps quickly. However, the sourcing of permanent, full-time employees typically remains the end goal, for which the traditional recruitment process is too cumbersome, expensive, and limited.
      Instead, when recruiting to make up the personnel shortfall needed to deliver these projects, businesses must embrace more flexible methods beyond the standard recruitment of full-time employees. Away from the world of fixed notice periods and poor scalability, doing so can provide faster access to quality talent that businesses might not have had the pulling power to hire permanently.
      For example, freelancers are playing an increasingly important role in plugging the skills gap faced by businesses. It’s becoming a more attractive career option for many, as individuals realize they can take back control of their own time and prospects. Many furloughed workers who have turned to self-employment simply haven’t gone back. Thankfully, embracing this more flexible talent pool is an important and efficient way of making the recruitment function – and therefore the company’s workflows – more agile.
      Businesses should remember that embracing a more flexible and elastic workforce must be matched by a more flexible way of working. To truly take advantage of the sharing economy for skilled labor, they must have a global mindset, rather than falling into the trap of settling for local candidates, something now possible with most knowledge workers based remotely. After all, the benefits of a flexible and elastic workforce will be largely redundant if the search for said skilled workers is restricted to a comfortable commuting distance.
      It’s time for change
      It’s hard to believe that so many businesses are putting potentially revenue-generating projects on hold because of hiring struggles. The incumbent recruitment strategy feels even more outdated when you consider that many of the skills they need today might be different tomorrow. However, working with skilled freelancers – or building an elastic team– to complement full-time staff, means businesses can use as much or as little resource as they like and scale and recompose depending on demand.
      This doesn’t put recruiters out of a job. Like all industries, it simply demonstrates a need to evolve. As we look to 2022, businesses will need to adopt more flexible approaches to recruitment and talent management. This doesn’t mean simply putting better ‘perks’ in a place like hybrid working – arguably the bare minimum for today’s workforce – but shifting to a new flexible, elastic model that can respond to how the hiring and recruitment landscape is changing.
      By Callum Adamson, Co-Founder & CEO, Distributed.
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