Month: March 2022

We had the opportunity to host Greg Savage on our podcast, who is one of the most influential and well-known individuals in the recruitment space. 

Boasting a wealth of experience, multiple accolades, high-quality content and a book, we picked apart a ton of topics in the recruitment space, and wanted to share some key takeaways with you in the blog below!

What’s your advice around how to attract candidates, how to build a pool of them and get their full engagement from the beginning?

“It’s a heady cocktail of things. There are no passive candidates, all candidates are active, it’s just a matter of timing. Right? There’s no one listening to this podcast who is not going to change jobs at some point. 

Maybe it’s tomorrow, maybe it’s in two years. But, at some point, pretty much everyone’s going to change jobs. So, recruiters need to take a longer-term view pool, which is not in our ethos.

That means building a brand on LinkedIn. They need to build their brand through a strategic approach to content. And then that can be a step to engagement.”

How can you measure success?

“So, I’m a great believer that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And, of course, KPIs have got a bad name in recruitment. 

Nobody becomes good at anything without measuring. Do you think people who play sport don’t measure? A great KPI system should be part of someone’s job.

Additionally, you need to help that person with tactics and activities that lead to the outcome. Some of that might be, of course, candidates you have to get from the database. By the way, that’s another thing that recruitment companies have to do a lot better! There are candidate graveyards, and by that, I mean that full of people that aren’t being contacted or engaged with.” 

What are you seeing in terms of how those motivations have changed over the last few years?

“I wrote a blog on this, and I said, the skill of understanding a candidate’s motivations is now the skill for 2022. Because it’s so wildly changed, and so many recruiters were making assumptions about that. 

I was the worst when I was recruiting, I’d see a person and go, ‘oh, two years since your Charter Academy? Yep, I’ve got four jobs for you.’ That was me as a brash, 25-year-old. 

I think in this industry, we’ve got to be slow to understand. Purposefully slow to understand. Ask a lot of questions, build up rapport and trust and really understand their motivations, but, also how to rank them. 

You’ve got to dig deeper because what I’m finding is candidates are increasingly interested in the culture of the organisation, and that sounds a little clichéd. 

But, another thing I’d be counselling my clients on is, can you answer the question, particularly authentically? 

People are finding that candidates are much more interested in a company’s employers. What’s their attitude to climate change? And how did they treat people during the COVID lay-off period? And, how diverse is the organisation? 

People want to really have visibility to their learning path, what training and development they’re going to get, too.” 

Maybe this is a good time to talk through the valley of death, and how it should be effectively managed to avoid dropouts and disappointments?

So, the ‘valley of death’ is that time, between the moment your candidate accepts the job and the moment they put their derrière in the client’s seat, figuratively speaking, because most of them may not go to the client. 

First, when you get an offer and the candidate accepts, support and reinforce the decision, and do it with passion.

Then, I would go through the offer document with the candidate. So, that might be a letter of offer or contract. I’ve seen things go wrong with candidates plenty of times; so try and manage and control the process. If possible, like the old days – and by that, I mean two years ago, I would like to make offers face to face. I know it’s not always possible, particularly now, but certainly, do it if you can. 

Why would you make an offer by telephone when you can actually make it by video where you can see the person’s body language, you can see the eyes, you can see the hesitation? So, have that conversation face to face, and soothe any jitters. 

Once you confirm the start date with the candidate, get the documents signed. Coach, your clients on the key steps also for a seamless process from both sides.

To listen to the full episode, click here. 

On Talent & Growth we speak to talent leaders about the challenges they face and their solutions for attraction and retention. If you’re interested in hearing about how companies are building a more diverse talent pool, how you can attract top people from the big players, ways to create a more inclusive interview process or learn about the latest and greatest automation software to make your life easier, then this is the podcast for you.
 

In one of our recent episodes of Talent & Growth, we sat down with Lou Adler, CEO and Founder of the Adler Group – whom you may know as an influential voice on LinkedIn!  

With his extensive experience in recruiting, thought leadership, and helping brands build world-class teams, we were so excited to host him and pick his brains about hiring leaders (as well as a ton of other valuable content which we know you’ll love!). 

We’ve highlighted some of our key takeaways in the blog below. 

Do you think that often we treat the hiring of leaders the same as we do other talent, when really, it’s different? 

Well, here’s the issue… Let me define what I perceive to be a leader first. A leader can be an entry-level person, somebody in a call centre, who goes out of his or her way to do a better job to learn more, to help to mentor others etc.  

But, it’s harder to find a leader at entry-level. After two or three years, a good person demonstrates they’re in the top 25% because of their leadership skills.  

Now, when you talk to these people, you discover that their aspirations of why they’ll switch jobs are not just to avoid pain, not just to get more money, not just to have a shorter drive; it’s to become better long term.  

So, these people are much more discriminating. And, if you don’t tailor your marketing to that customer, and let’s say marketing and recruiting, interviewing, every step of the way, they’re going to opt out of your process very, very quickly.  

Most companies focus on what’s in it for them a company, they don’t focus on what it’s in for the person. I don’t think companies build processes around the top 25%, I think they build processes around “hey, we’ve got to fill the job with someone who’s got all these skills, and supposedly has the competencies listed on our job description”. But that’s not the way to do it – and I think that’s where the big disconnect is. 

So, how do we attract the best? And how is the process different than other hires? 

“Let’s just take the three or four ideas of getting candidates… Number one is a job posting. Number two could be an email that you send to somebody you found on LinkedIn. It could be a voicemail or text or message (so many, but it’s all marketing).  

So, in my mind, how do you attract someone using those three means and maybe habits, maybe social media? I mean, it’s all of these things combined, but I call it a marketing campaign overall.”  

What should our metrics of success be when we’re hiring for leaders? 

“I think that’s a great one. So, let me give you the minor one and the major one. The minor one is when I had a recruiting team of about 15 or 20 recruiters, we use send outs per hire or interviews per hire, or candidates delivered to the hiring manager per hire. And we always felt that three or four was the correct number.  

But, a sub metric of that was the first two candidates who we’d present to the hiring manager. If one of those isn’t considered a serious finalist, there’s something wrong. 

The bigger metric would be something I call “quality of hire”. How do you actually measure the quality of a hire? Nobody really knows how to do that. It’s always a subjective metric after the hire. But, I actually do measure it. We know the 10 factors that define the job success and do a very good job of predicting it to 80 to 90%, accuracy!” 

To listen to the full episode, click here.  

On Talent & Growth we speak to talent leaders about the challenges they face and their solutions for attraction and retention. If you’re interested in hearing about how companies are building a more diverse talent pool, how you can attract top people from the big players, ways to create a more inclusive interview process or learn about the latest and greatest automation software to make your life easier, then this is the podcast for you.