How Hard Should a Hiring Process Be? (Hint: Not Very)
The US unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent in 2019, the lowest it has been in 50 years. In this candidate-driven market, hiring processes need to strike a careful balance. They must be rigorous enough to surface truly qualified talent, but they cannot be so time-consuming or complex that they deter promising candidates from proceeding. With candidates holding all the cards, now is the...
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6 Tips to Ensure Strong Company Culture Despite Working Remotely
Experts are suggesting that physical social distancing will be our primary tool for combatting a dangerous spike in corona cases, but emotional social intimacy just might be the key to thriving through it. With the influx of companies that have moved to be 100% remote, it's only natural that we as individuals, as well as company-wide teams, risk feeling disconnected and potentially isolated...
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Think Like a Decision-Maker: Why Persuasion Is More Powerful Than Selling
Have you ever felt like you were talking to a brick wall when trying to sell someone on a product or idea of yours? No matter what you tried, you simply couldn't get your target to see your point of view. Most, if not all, of us can relate to the frustration and lack of resolution that comes from this type of exchange. But what if you could learn how to consistently persuade others and...
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Everyone Wants a Great Employee Experience — But What Makes an Employee Experience 'Great'?
Most business leaders agree on the importance of great employee experiences in today's talent environment — but do we know what "great" really means in this context? I recently sat down with Dr. David Rodriguez, global chief human resources Officer of Marriott International, to discuss this important topic. You can listen to our entire conversation on my podcast, The Agile World. For a...
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Coronavirus Resource List: What Your Business Needs to Know About Navigating COVID-19
With events being cancelled around the country and companies of all sizes going fully remote, it's clear that COVID-19 will change the way we work for at least the foreseeable future. At Recruiter.com, our hearts go out to everyone who has been affected by the virus. As a business, we want to first ensure the safety of our staff and partners, and then determine how we can best be of...
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Hiring for Growth Mode: How to Find Candidates Who Can Evolve Alongside Your Business
As technological innovations like artificial intelligence continue to change the economic landscape, attracting and retaining skilled talent who can thrive in a company in growth mode is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for business leaders. While forward-thinking business leaders often plan for flux and flexibility in their product and service offerings, they often fail to build...
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4 Ways to Identify Sales Reps Who Prioritize Customer Success
The most effective salespeople are those who focus on customer success. It may sound obvious, but there's a good reason this sales philosophy is currently trending in the industry. Back in 2013, a report from Walker predicted that, by 2020, customer experience would be a more important factor in sales than even price or product. In a 2017 follow-up report, Walker largely confirmed that...
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The 4 Major Challenges Strategic Teams Face — and How to Overcome Them
If your company needs to solve big problems or meet major goals, it's likely you create a strategic team — or a set of strategic teams — tasked with moving the needle on those key issues. Typically speaking, strategic teams are chartered as part of a special program or initiative, such as closing the gap on operating margins or improving market position. Because of their role in...
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No-Code Developers Are the Future of Tech — But How Do You Hire a Good One?
No-code software development, also known as visual programming, is asserting itself as the future of workforce enablement. Forrester predicts the market for low-code development platforms will increase to $27.23 billion by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate of 44.49 percent. Big tech companies are developing or purchasing their own low-code tools (see Google's recent AppSheet...
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Recession? No Sweat. Here's How to Create a Culture to Withstand Economic Downturns:
In 2009, the global economy was reeling from one of the most damaging recessions in history. People were scared, and many faced the prospect of losing jobs and homes. Fast forward a decade or so, and now another recession appears to be looming. The same anxieties are surfacing, and many people have yet to fully recover from the last one. Many companies had to let people go in order to stay...
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Hiring for Hybrid Roles: Look for Competencies, Not Skill Sets
To stay competitive today and into the future, organizations have to be lean and agile. "Lean" often means cutting superfluous positions and trimming salaries, while "agility" usually involves hiring employees who fulfill divergent responsibilities, operate cross-functionally, and move forward without having to cut through layers of corporate bureaucracy. At more and more companies, this...
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Learning for the Jobs of the Future: Is Your Organization Prepared?
According to a report from McKinsey, about 60 percent of all occupations are susceptible to a substantial level of automation, meaning about one-third of their constituent tasks could be automated. Similarly, IDC research found that 50 percent of structured repeatable tasks will be automated by 2024, and 20 percent of knowledge workers will rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and similar...
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Why Is Personal Development So Popular? 4 Factors Behind Its Persistence
Article by Cecilia Meis The term "intuitive eating" has seen a recent surge in popularity, but it was coined in 1995, and the roots of the concept date back to the early '70s. The idea is that fad diets, cleanses, and fasts aren't the answer. Instead, the answer is and always has been within you. According to the principles of intuitive eating, you can relearn how to eat when you're...
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Will Telling Your Coworkers How Much You Earn Lead to Pay Parity? Probably Not.
You don't really think you work for someone else, do you? You might be paid by an organization, even receive benefits, but the truth remains that you work for yourself. As an employee, you work "at the pleasure" of someone who decided to take a chance on you — and, hopefully, that has worked out for both of you. But the bottom line remains: You have to deliver measurable value, or you...
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Coronavirus and Culture: How to Prepare Your Workplace for COVID-19
The first thing that has hit people about the COVID-19 coronavirus isn't the infection itself — it's anxiety from a drastic set of behavior changes we're being told we have to make to protect ourselves and others. No more handshakes. No more hugging. Don't even get near other people — best to stay at least six feet away if you can. Keep your hands away from your face, and stay out...
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14 Keys to a Successful, Targeted Hiring Effort
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: What steps do you take to ensure your hiring efforts are effectively targeted? These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization composed of the world's most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent...
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The Fall of Traditional Recruiting: 5 Trends Reshaping Talent Acquisition as We Know It
The digital age is rewriting the rules of business as we know them. Economic and geopolitical uncertainty are undermining established models, while emerging digital infrastructures are reshaping the forces of production and consumption. Meanwhile, the expectation economy is redefining the relationship between businesses and their customers. What does this all mean for recruiters? How are...
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5 Ways to Create a More Data-Driven HR Organization
In a modern business, every department runs on data, from marketing and sales to operations. HR is no exception, and the way HR handles employee relations data has evolved significantly over the past decade. HR used to track a few key metrics in spreadsheets, but most organizations have now advanced well beyond that. They gather data from multiple sources and use analytics to generate...
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Don't Be Scared — and Don't Be Hasty: How to Nail Your Unlimited PTO Policy
For some workers, unlimited paid time off (PTO) is a reality — and most of those employees who don't have it yet want it. In fact, a recent MetLife study shows that 72 percent workers are interested in unlimited PTO. Yes, "unlimited" here really does mean "without a limit" — "infinite," if you wish. Slowly but surely, more and more HR managers are converting to the unlimited PTO...
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Time to Fill or Time to Candidate: Which Metric Should You Be Tracking?
Filling any type of vacancy requires a combination of art and science. For as much as you want to quickly fill an open position, you must ensure you're filling it with a candidate who has both the requisite skills and the necessary cultural fit. On the other hand, the quest for a great candidate can lead to analysis paralysis, which may cause a company to pass on stellar talent in the...
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Why Your Company Should Maintain Relationships With Former Employees
For years, the thought of an employee returning to a job they had left was almost unthinkable. It wasn't until recently that "boomerang employees" — employees who leave a company only to return again later on down the line — became an object of attention for recruiters and employers. The hiring process has become more competitive, and companies are struggling to attract top talent...
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What American Companies Get Wrong — and Right — About Work/Life Balance
Are you working too hard? If you're a senior-level employee based in the US, the answer is almost certainly yes. That's not a casual observation — it's one of the findings of Doodle's recent report on work/life balance at American companies. Forty percent of the executives Doodle surveyed said they face "tremendous pressure" to put in longer hours to advance their careers, and 99...
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Corporate Social Responsibility in the Age of Gen. Z: Young Workers Expect You to Do More
Last summer, it came out that the online home goods and furniture company Wayfair had sold $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to BCFS, a government contractor running child detention camps near the US-Mexico border. Wayfair employees were outraged and demanded that the company stop doing business with BCFS. Executives responded dispassionately. As CBS reported, company leaders first...
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For a Healthier Pipeline of Future Leaders, Tackle These 5 Succession Threats
Increasing automation and digitalization, the necessity of new skills and competencies, new generations joining and leaving the workforce: Today's organizations face a host of novel challenges as they navigate a rapidly evolving economic environment. In these tumultuous times, a solid bench of leaders and a robust succession management process are more crucial than ever...
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Will VR Become the Key to Effective Employee Training and Development?
Employee training and development have long been top priorities for forward-thinking organizations. As continuously low unemployment rates drive increasingly fierce competition for talent, training and development are only growing even more indispensable. Given that there are more open roles than unemployed workers, chances are your competitors are actively looking to recruit some of...
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Should You Always Take the Promotion?
When we talk about happiness at work, we usually focus on ways to boost your satisfaction and land a position that offers a sense of purpose and fulfillment. One tidbit that rarely makes headlines is that many employees are actually pretty content with their work. In fact, a CNBC/SurveyMonkey survey found that 85 percent of American workers are happy with their jobs. With numbers...
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The Costs of a Poor Work/Life Balance Can Really Add Up
It's no secret workers are stressed. Even when companies push flexible work policies and encourage their employees to disconnect from their jobs outside of business hours, many workers simply can't get away from their workloads. Just take a look at what the studies say about the state of work/life balance — or the lack thereof — today. Only 23 percent of Americans use all of their...
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Here Is the Single Least Productive Thing You Still Make Your Employees Do
Numbers, numbers, everywhere — but one of the best lessons I've learned in my career is to stop reacting to every up and down in a metric. Stop trying to explain every data point that's off the average. Instead, it's more helpful to start looking at the bigger picture: performance over time. When we react less, we can lead better, and we end up improving more. The Virtue of Reacting...
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Appeal to Your Nobler Motives: The Fundamentals of Powerful Goal-Setting
Whether it's for your career, your business, or your life, something magical happens when you set a goal that you really want to achieve. It inspires you to become your best self. It focuses and releases your energy, and it directs your efforts in the direction of your dreams. But remember: It's essential that your goals be authentic. They should reflect your personal history, who you are...
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5 Easy Ways to Improve the Recruiter-Hiring Manager Partnership
A truly effective hiring process has to be more than posting a job opening in as many locations as possible and praying the ideal candidate will see it. Sure, even a broken clock is right twice a day, but posting and praying is never the way to go. A hiring process needs to be consistent, compliant, and carefully targeted — and that's only possible when the hiring manager and the...
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True Profitability and Productivity Come From Striving for a Bigger Social Goal
In 2012, Hancock Lumber CEO Kevin Hancock was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological speaking disorder that made communicating difficult. While Hancock initially considered the partial loss of his voice a hindrance, he eventually learned to see it as a possible gift, an invitation to lead differently and strengthen the voices of others. Hancock traveled the world to...
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Managing Workplace Relationships in the #MeToo Era
In the midst of the #MeToo era, many employers find themselves fretting about all of the what-ifs of workplace romance. For some of these employers, the knee-jerk response has been to adopt rigid policies that simply prohibit all workplace relationships. Given the realities of workplace romance, is that really the best response? How Prevalent Are Workplace...
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What Are You Doing to Keep Culture-Fit Interviews Ethical?
We've all heard that hiring candidates who thrive in your culture can lead to healthier organizations and more sustainable business success. It can also save you a lot of headaches: You can always train an employee to close their skills gaps, but it's much harder to get a new hire to adopt and internalize your values if they don't already share a similar outlook on business. It's...
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The Author of 'StrengthsFinder 2.0' Says Understanding Your Strengths Is Really Just the Start
You probably know Tom Rath as one of the key figures behind eternal best-seller StrengthsFinder 2.0 — so it might surprise you to learn that his latest work is about moving beyond your strengths. Not that understanding your strengths isn't important — it's just not the full story of who you are at work and in life. Moreover, a purely strengths-based approach to careers, hiring,...
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What We've Learned From Putting More Women in Leadership
What characterizes a good hire? The answer is as unique as the position you're trying to fill. A few years ago, ElectrifAi was a very different organization. In fact, we even had a different name. Our team was structured like those of many modern tech companies. We hired based on whoever was the most qualified candidate for the job. At least, that's what it seemed like on the surface....
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Hire a Local or Go Remote? 11 Key Factors to Consider
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: When weighing whether to hire someone local or remote, what factors most influence your decision? The answers below are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization of the world's most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members...
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Transferable Skills: What They Are, How to Market Them, and Why Recruiters Should Care
You've spent a considerable amount of time in the same industry, and now you'd like to make a change. You want to move into another field — but you're not sure if any employer in this new industry would see you as qualified and relevant. It's a genuine concern, but the good news is a career change can be made. The key is identifying and marketing your transferable skills. A Note...
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This Is Why You Can't Hold On to Your Top Tech Talent
Many think hiring the right employee is the hardest part of tech recruiting. In reality, that's only the first hurdle. If you want your new tech employee to stick around for the long haul, you'll also need to provide plenty of support, motivation, and development. Retention is a challenge for companies in all industries, but when it comes to tech talent, keeping turnover down can be...
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The Upside of Ethics: An Ethical Workplace Is a Creative One
Discussions about ethics at work tend to focus on the negative. Notoriously unscrupulous companies like Enron and Theranos often come up. Researchers survey rates of bribery, sexual harassment, theft, and other misconduct. Rarely do we discuss how ethics can inspire beautiful, transformative behavior. I'd like to change that. Creating an "ethical workplace" isn't just about minimizing...
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Revolutionizing the Industry: 3 New HR and Workplace Practices to Watch
Client-facing innovation is an important focus for companies of all types, but comparatively little time and energy are directed toward approaching internal activities with the same eye for improvement. However, in this robust job market, it's more important than ever to take a hard look at your company's internal HR and workplace practices. Any organization that falls behind will find it...
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Beware of Your Bias: 4 Key Steps to Attracting a Diverse Workforce
In today's globalized world, businesses face diverse obstacles and challenges. To overcome those hurdles, companies need equally diverse workforces of problem-solvers. However, building diversity in an organization can itself be a challenge if recruiters fail to follow certain essential steps in the hiring process. With the help of the following fundamentals, companies can mitigate...
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Should Employers Still Be Testing for Marijuana Use?
For many organizations, drug screening is a critical component of hiring and talent management. Drug screening can happen in a variety of situations: before hire, on a random basis, after a workplace accident, or when there is suspicion of abuse. Until recently, drug screening seemed a clear-cut process: Testing positive for illegal substances, including marijuana, was typically grounds...
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How I Wake Up Every Morning Excited to Go to Work
Article by Malte Kramer In the past year, my real estate tech startup, Luxury Presence, has grown from nine employees to a staff of 38 and more than 800 clients, including some of the biggest agents and brokerages in the industry. To tell you the truth, it has not been an easy experience. The responsibility of managing a large team and sustaining hypergrowth while delivering results for...
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First Impressions Are a Matter of Style: 5 Tips on Controlling the Conversation and Getting the Job You Deserve
Within the opening moments of a job interview, your first impression is made. Controlling that impression is often a matter of personal style. Let's talk about that one question we ask ourselves everyday: What am I going to wear? This question is never more important than it is on the day of a job interview. Yes, yes — your personality and skills matter, too. However, if we're...
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More Than a Catchphrase: Why Ethical Recruiting Matters
What are ethics? According to one common definition, they are "moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity." In this light, we can understand ethics to be a way of governing yourself properly. To be ethical, then, you need to be mindful of how you conduct yourself at all times. That leads me to another common definition of ethics: "the branch of...
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Great Hiring Tech for Less: 4 WordPress Plugins to Simplify Recruiting
What makes recruiting and hiring difficult? Simply sourcing qualified candidates can be a huge hurdle in this tight talent market — as can moving fast enough to assess, interview, and hire those candidates before competitors reach them. But often, businesses find their most insidious pain points emerge from the seemingly simple matter of logistics. For example, planning...
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Wellness Benefits Are a Key Differentiator — Here Are 5 Ways to Make Your Program Stand Out to Candidates
As Americans have become more health conscious, wellness programs have become a must-have benefit for any company looking to attract and retain quality talent. In fact, 87 percent of job seekers say health and wellness packages play into their employment decisions. For a little more than a third of millennials and Gen. Z-ers, wellness programs are a top priority in the job search. In...
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Alarming Results From Workplace Drinking Survey: Leaders Need a Better Solution for Team-Building Than Afterwork Happy Hours
The 4-6 p.m. happy hour is no coincidence: Going out for drinks after work has become an American pastime — and an expensive one at that. According to a new study from American Addiction Centers and Alcohol.org, the average American worker spends more than $3,000 a year on post-workday drinks. That's enough to buy 650 beers, and in some states, we're spending even more. Take West...
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