'It Had Turned Into a Camel — and Not a Cute One': Why and How We Revamped Our Hiring Process
Like any fast-growing tech startup looking to recruit smart and motivated team members, we at Formstack have gone through our share of unique interview questions and processes. In an effort to assess whether candidates had the skill sets we desired, we added questions, sample projects, and problem-solving challenges. Eventually, it got to the point that one set of interviews for a single...
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Watch Out! 7 Pitfalls to Avoid When Setting Up a College Internship Program
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: What is one danger to watch for when establishing a college internship program, and what can companies do to avoid that pitfall? The answers below are provided by YEC Next, an invitation-only community for the world's most promising early-stage...
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You Might Think These 8 Behaviors Get You Ahead at Work — But They Are Actually Holding You Back
How often have you felt pressured to behave in ways you're uncomfortable with but feel are necessary to fit in or get ahead in a corporate environment? In our research (analyzing more than 100,000 responses), we have identified four kinds of self-protecting behavior (approval-seeking, easily offended, dependent, avoiding) and four kinds of self-promoting behavior (sarcastic, competitive,...
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Confessions of a Corporate Talent Acquisition Leader: The Burnout Mandate
Corporate mental health benefits used to be little more than a 1-800 number you could call. Now, they are one of the most sought-after perks. It make sense: Modern work culture is very fast-paced and demanding. It requires giving your all in mind, body, and spirit — and that can easily lead to burnout, deemed this year to be an "occupational phenomenon" by the World Health...
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O Canada: US Companies Struggling With Talent Shortages Should Look North for Inspiration
With the country in the midst of an unprecedented streak of full employment, there are more employers looking for talent than there are candidates seeking jobs in the United States. It's a good problem to have if you're a politician, but if you're a recruiter tasked with filling open positions for American companies, the struggle is real. Even if the economy cools down in the coming...
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Resolve to Build a Safer Workplace in 2020: Best Practices for Bystander Intervention Training
Building a positive, inclusive workplace culture can be a competitive advantage in attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent, especially in a tight job market. As part of a comprehensive strategy to improve workplace culture, organizations can benefit from compliance and harassment-prevention training that goes beyond the basic requirements to encompass equally critical topics like...
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The Future Is Here, and It's Remote: Why Companies Can't Afford Not to Go Virtual
Good news, office workers of the world: Your office may be about to close! Yes, that really is a great thing, because it gives you more power. Wouldn't you rather skip your commute, work when you're freshest, and get the job done in a way that best uses your skills? Your boss may soon ask you to do just that. Why? Because the virtual office trend is building. Once a nice-to-have perk,...
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Stop Dreading Your Performance Reviews — Start Preparing for Them
Performance reviews can be stressful, especially if you're new to the workforce. According to a 2017 Adobe survey, one in three millennials have been reduced to tears by a performance review, and 47 percent have even felt compelled to look for another job. Part of the problem could be the way we prepare for these meetings. Being honest with yourself and doing some prep work ahead of time...
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Opportunity Abounds — Grow Your Career by Learning How to Find It
Today, there are more opportunities to grow in your career than at any other time in history. But with so many opportunities available, people can feel overwhelmed. They may not know where to invest their time for the best, most fulfilling results. I've found this to be the case for both people who are just starting their careers and those who are looking to grow their existing ones. When...
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The CEO Mastery Journey: The 7 Practices of Truly Great Leadership
When you combine professional mastery with personal and organizational mastery, you can build a great business full of engaged employees. But you can only enter the domain of personal and organizational mastery by first developing the intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual capacity to connect with and inspire all your stakeholders so they will bring their whole selves to work...
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Recruiting Is Storytelling: To Attract Top Talent, Invest in Your PR Strategy
In the digital age, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before. It's common — and even encouraged — for job seekers to scour the internet for as much insight as they can glean about a company and its employees before they click "apply." It'd be foolish for candidates not to consult Google — and it would be just as foolish for employers to ignore how job seekers...
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Revolutionizing the Employee Experience in 2020: AI, Hybrid Apps, Contextual Experiences, and More
Building the best employee experience has been a priority for companies everywhere in the last few years, and things are unlikely to change in 2020. If anything, thanks to some recent technological advances, the employee experience is likely to become even more of a key concern. Here are a few of the ways in which innovative organizations are poised to bring the employee experience to new...
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Purpose and Passion: 7 Things to Keep in Mind When Drafting a Job Ad for Millennials
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: What is the most important thing to remember when crafting a job ad targeted specifically toward millennial talent? The answers below are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization of the world's most successful young...
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How to Create a Positive Candidate Experience
When it comes to hiring, every company has their own culture and way of doing things. Have you put thought into what your hiring process says about your company? These days, word travels fast. And even if you choose to not hire a candidate, it doesn't necessarily mean they will say that their overall experience was poor. In fact, according to IBM, "Job applicants who do not receive a job...
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No Crystal Ball Necessary: What the HR Trends of 2019 Can Tell Us About the Shape of Work to Come
It has been said that you can't predict the future, but that's not entirely true. The past informs the present, and the present informs the future. If you pay close attention to the trends you see today, they may point you toward what lies ahead. When it comes to the future of work in particular, current trends are shaping up to drive a level of change we haven't seen since the days of...
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From Building Talent Supplies to Shaping Visions: The Top 10 Business Imperatives Strategic Teams Must Fulfill
What's the first thing you, as a business executive, do when you need to tackle big issues like closing the gap on operating margins, creating better operations processes, or identifying the best new path to growth and development? Chances are you put together a strategic team. An integral part of any organization, a strategic team is tasked with making strategy happen. It solves...
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Avoiding Age Discrimination: 4 Ways Employers Can Make Strides Toward Age-Inclusive Hiring
The war for talent is still raging, with unemployment rates at a half-century low and employers bemoaning a dearth of qualified applicants. But you might not know that if you're of a certain age. Although we've all heard rumblings of age bias in hiring, the problem may be more widespread than previously thought. See, for example, employers unwittingly setting age criteria for targeted...
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Level Up Your Side Hustle in 2020: 4 Goals to Set for a More Lucrative Year
Launching a side hustle can be a great way to indulge a passion, earn extra income, or plan for a career change. Because of these benefits, as well as their inherent flexibility, side gigs are extremely popular. If you're one of the many Americans working a side gig, you may be wondering how to make it even more profitable (without it sucking up more of your time). The new year is the...
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Creativity Is a Muscle: 16 Ways to Hone Your Problem-Solving Skills
Article by YEC Strong problem-solving skills are crucial in business. If you don't have the ability to step back, assess the various causes and outcomes of a situation, and identify the right path forward, you and your team will be in a regular state of crisis. To help you better handle the inevitable roadblocks every leader and entrepreneur faces, we asked a panel of Young...
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Managers Are a Prime Cause of Workplace Interference — Here Are 4 Ways They Can Change That
"Interference" is a lot more than a call in a football game — it's anything that gets in the way of progress, whether it be on the field, at home, or at work. And unfortunately, workplace interference is on the rise. My company, InsideOut Development, recently conducted a study on the topic and found that most employees (61 percent) experience interference at work every day, which keeps...
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The Apology Response Plan: 3 Questions to Ask Before Responding to Criticism of Your Company
Whether as an individual or as a corporation, being told you've failed in some way is hard. When we're criticized, we feel an intoxicating blend of anxiety and shame. We're hardwired to avoid alienation, and our survival instincts tell us criticism is the first step on the path to ostracization. It's nature. So it's understandable that people often respond to criticism impulsively. While...
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Confessions of a Corporate Talent Acquisition Leader: Effective Onboarding Starts the Moment a Candidate Meets You
Onboarding is the hottest topic in talent acquisition as we move into 2020. In fact, I've spoken with 10 different HR leaders representing multiple industries within the last three months, and all 10 told me onboarding is their highest priority in the coming year. But why? Onboarding has traditionally been understood as an operational task. Many CHROs view it as nothing more than mundanely...
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Transactional and Transformational: Why Today's Leaders Need to Be Both
Are you working too many hours, neglecting friends, and sacrificing your health in the name of professional success? If so, you're not alone. Many organizational leaders share this experience — even multimillionaires like Arianna Huffington, who once passed out from sheer exhaustion, hit her face on her desk, and woke up in a pool of her own blood. Leadership training today tends to...
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Hiring Decisions Are Human Decisions: When It Comes to AI in Recruiting, Use Your Judgment
Recently, an application of artificial intelligence (AI) in recruiting received some attention, much of it negative. This particular application analyzes video interviews, judging — and rejecting — candidates based on facial movements, speaking voice, choice of words, and other factors. While automation that helps recruiters source and evaluate talent is a welcome development, we...
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The Lowest Vibration in the Room: How Negative Energy Costs You Money and Morale
We all know them, have worked with them, and at some point have probably been them: the lowest vibrations in the room, otherwise known as "energy vampires." These people can suck inspiration, hope, enthusiasm, and peace right out of the room. And they're expensive. Negative energy in the workplace is a huge contributor to — and byproduct of — low productivity. Actively disengaged...
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5 Ways to Optimize Candidate UX, a Chronically Overlooked Aspect of Recruiting
When it comes to designing the recruiting process, employers tend to focus mostly on their own needs, less so on the candidate's. While the hiring process must help a company attract top talent, a truly great recruitment process is one that also works for the candidate. For a recruiting process to really deliver powerful results, the candidate's user experience (UX) must be optimized. If...
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Steer Into the Future: 4 Ways Analytics Will Change HR in 2020
While HR has evolved considerably in the last decade, it continues to lag behind in several critical areas. However, complacency is no longer an option. To stake out a place as key strategists in the organization, HR must be prepared to take hold of the reins and steer into the future. In 2020, forward-thinking HR leaders will be turning to analytics to address these changes head-on....
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There Is a Benefits Disparity Between Single and Married Employees. What Are Employers Doing About It?
According to the US census, more than 110 million Americans over the age of 18 are currently unmarried. That's 45 percent of the adult US population. And yet, many employers have been slow to adjust their benefits to support modern lifestyles. As a result, a significant value gap has emerged between the benefits offered to married employees and those offered to their single...
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It's Time to Embrace AI as an Integral Part of Your Company's Future
With the US unemployment rate currently sitting around 3.5 percent, identifying and securing high-quality talent is one of the main challenges the recruiting industry faces. In a market with more job openings than unemployed job seekers, there is no time to waste when it comes to filling positions. And yet, nearly half of employers say filling a job today takes longer than it ever has in...
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How the Top Talent Acquisition Trends of 2019 Will Shape the Future of Recruiting
The talent acquisition (TA) realm has seen significant changes over the past year. In the face of new technologies and the constantly evolving demands of employees, the TA industry has had to be innovative to stay abreast of the latest trends. Below, I take a look at how some of the hottest developments of 2019 have shaped TA best practices and streamlined processes leading into the...
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The HR Innovator's Mandate: Invest in People Analytics to Deliver Data-Led Strategy
According to a report from Mercer, 98 percent of organizations have started down the road toward digital transformation of HR — and not a moment too soon. From the platforms they use to get work done to those they use to engage with their employers, technology pervades the life of the modern worker. For organizations, the proliferation of workplace tech means more access to more...
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Keep It Simple: The 4 Secrets to Building a Winning HR App
Mobile apps are on the rise. The global market value of mobile apps stood at around $106.7 billion in 2018, and that figure may rise to $407.31 billion by 2026. Apps have become integral to the way we manage our daily lives, and the world of HR is no exception. Over the past few years, there has been a noticeable surge in the number of apps designed to support the activities of HR...
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ReHuman: How Corporate America Is Reconnecting With Humanity to Drive Growth
In a single joint statement this August, 181 CEOs of the world's largest companies threw a century of corporate thinking under the bus by declaring shareholder value was no longer their main objective. What's noteworthy isn't that these powerful CEOs agreed there's more to a company than shareholder return — it's that they're being forced to acknowledge a new corporate reality: Corporations...
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Ho, Ho, Hold on — I Can't Do That? Avoiding Liability in the Workplace This Holiday Season
Between all the parties, the gifts, the scrumptious food, and the laughter, who doesn't love the holidays? But is this jubilation all that jolly in the workplace? Employers can get so caught up in the hoopla they may unknowingly set themselves up for serious legal issues. Here are some tips to help your reduce your risk of employment-related liability this holiday season: To Pay...
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Culture Quake: 4 Things That Will Shake Up the Work World in the 2020s
If you thought the 2010s were a disruptive decade for workplace culture, wait until the 2020s arrive. In the next 10 years, you can expect the trends that rocked workplace culture — like the proliferation of remote and flexible work options, social activism, and millennial job hopping — to keep on rocking it. Alongside these, however, we'll also see more seismic changes that will...
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Mixed Tables: How to Create Breakthrough Solutions Through Surprising Collaborations
If you were asked to help soldiers detect roadside bombs, where would you start? I'm guessing it wouldn't be Hollywood. This was my exact dilemma in the mid-2000s, when the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) asked me to do just that. At the time, roadside bombs were a prime cause of casualties for US Army soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Something had to be...
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Take Your Time — Even Under Pressure: The 4 Secrets of Successful High-Growth Hiring
So business is booming, and you need to expand your team to keep up? Congratulations! And be careful. You should make all hiring decisions with care, but this is especially true for hiring decisions during periods of high growth. Bringing new employees into your growing startup is a momentous and somewhat intimidating process. Your employees are your greatest asset; they decide the...
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5 Key Reasons HR Pros Need to Understand Data Analytics
We have more employee information available to us today than ever before, and that's a great thing. Data analytics is vital to performance management, leadership development, and finding talent. No wonder 71 percent of companies see people analytics as a high priority, according to Deloitte. I have been in leadership and management roles for more than 15 years. I've worked with...
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Your Employees Are Crying at Work Because They Feel Unappreciated
If you've ever cried at work, it turns out you're not alone. In fact, you're in the majority. According to Monster, 80 percent of us have cried at work. But why are so many of us shedding secret tears? According to a new survey from my company, enterprise gifting platform Snappy, a lack of appreciation may be to blame. Employees should feel good where they spend nearly half their lives,...
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Recruitment 2020: 5 Ways the Field Will Change Next Year
It's that time of year again, when trend lists flood the internet. For recruiters and talent acquisition pros, this is a necessary ritual. So much can change in the span of a year, and keeping up with the latest developments can be a daunting task. Sometimes, however, the changes are not as extreme as people would have you believe, and the coverage, frankly, is unoriginal. You've...
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4 Not-So-Obvious Signs of a Successful Sales Candidate
Five years of experience or more, a top earner in their last role, outstanding recommendations from previous supervisors — yes, these seemingly perfect sales candidates really do exist. However, a candidate is not guaranteed to excel on your team just because their resume ticks all the boxes. Perfect on paper does not necessarily mean perfect in real life. When looking for new sales...
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Rushing to Fill Seasonal Roles, Companies Risk Low Morale, Bad Customer Service, and Even Theft
Retailers rejoice: It's shaping up to be a stellar holiday shopping season. According to the National Retail Federation, 2019 holiday sales may rise by as much as 4.2 percent over 2018, possibly reaching a total of $730.7 billion. Making the most of this revenue boom requires beefing up the sales-floor workforce, and the retail sector may need as many as 590,000 seasonal workers this...
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No Non-Compete, No Problem? Always Proceed With Caution When Recruiting From Competitors
Recruiting quality candidates in any market is not easy — let alone in a market as tight as this, with its 3.6 percent unemployment rate. And hiring is made even harder by the seeming omnipresence of the dreaded non-compete agreement, a common contract or clause designed to prevent an employee from working for a firm that competes with their current employer. By some estimates, as...
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Toot Your Culture Horn — But Don't Lay on It
When leaders ask me why and how a "cohesion culture" is important to talent acquisition and retention, I refer to the advice my Grandma Goldie once told me: "If you don't honk your own horn, don't expect someone else to do it for you. Just don't lay on it." This sage advice is a perfect reminder that it is appropriate and acceptable to tell people about what we do and why it is special....
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Success Starts With Self-Love: How to Appreciate Yourself
Article by Michael Pietrzak John was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1954, but for him, life wasn't much to be thankful for. A birth defect caused John to wear painful leg braces, and his first-grade teacher told his parents he would never read, write, or amount to anything in life. (Dyslexia and speech impediments, both of which John had, weren't well understood in the '50s.) Accepting...
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Feeling Alone and Undervalued, Almost Half of Managers Are Heading for the Exit
We all know it's a tight talent market out there, but retention conversations often revolve around employees. HR pros and organizational leaders are pouring a lot of time and energy into keeping top performers engaged and on board. That's an important initiative, but it often overlooks the company's managers — the very people responsible for keeping talented workers happy. As it turns...
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What Candidates Really Want: 3 Ways to Improve Your Talent Acquisition Strategy for 2020
In the face of historically low unemployment rates and changing workforce demographics, companies are clambering to update their talent acquisition tactics to entice candidates in a tight talent market. A survey from Kronos and the Human Capital Institute, released earlier this year, found that 53 percent of organizations "plan to make major changes to their talent acquisition strategy in...
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What Are You Willing to Be Fired For?
When we work hard on something we believe in, it's called passion. When we work hard on something we don't believe in, it's called stress. - Simon Sinek When searching for the next dream job, we often consider factors like the type of work we will be doing, compensation, and title. Too often, we fail to dig deeper and learn what it would truly be like to work in that organization, what...
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