Want Better Candidates? Tell Your Recruiter These 4 Things
Communication is an important part of any business relationship. When you hire a recruiter to fill an open position, your first instinct may be to let them know more or less what you're looking for and then move on. However, the recruiter will be able to help you much more effectively if you share what you need in detail. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but if you give a recruiter...
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The Art of Effective Feedback: 7 Strategies Every Manager Should Embrace
What separates the best managers from the rest? Our research shows that they coach more and manage less. In other words, they support, teach, and challenge their team members to achieve their goals. One of the key skills of being an effective coach is the ability to deliver helpful feedback. However, giving good feedback at work is a challenging skill to master. Not only do you need to...
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To Win the Recruiting Game, Revamp Your Scorecard
Back in high school and college, we had guidance counselors to help us plot our future educational paths based on the career choices expected of us by parents, teachers, friends, and potential employers. We studied our options and weighed each career opportunity, choosing from a scorecard of checkboxes that were meant to guide us. In the end, however, those checkboxes were only limiting...
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Getting Ghosted by Candidates? Check Your Own Behavior First
Recently, I've read a lot of articles about candidates ghosting employers. These candidates don't show up for interviews. They don't even call to cancel. Sometimes, they don't show up to their scheduled first day on the job! They simple disappear after accepting the offer, leaving employees frustrated. The rising popularity of ghosting would be bad enough, but on top of that, many...
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Don't Wait for Applications: Why Active Sourcing Is Better Recruiting
According to research from Lever, one in every 72 sourced candidates is hired, compared to one in every 152 applicants. That makes sourcing more than twice as efficient as "organic recruiting," by which we mean posting an ad and focusing your recruiting efforts only on the candidates who apply directly to the role. Of course, sourcing requires a more active approach to recruiting. If you...
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3 Things to Do During Your First Few Months on the Job
Starting a new job is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. You have to learn the ropes of a brand new company and position; if you had to relocate for the job, you're also juggling the added stress of unpacking and navigating a brand new community. However, no matter what else is going on, you need to make time for yourself and your career. Here are three things you should be doing...
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What Employers Need to Know About Credit Checks and the FCRA
Hiring quality employees is about collecting quality information. Before you can decide whether a candidate is right for your company, you need to know about their experience, their education, and their aspirations; you need to know about their strengths and weaknesses, their motivations, and the kind of person they are. Most of that information can be learned from applications, resumes,...
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5 Tactics to Help Small Businesses Compete in the Talent Market
In today's competitive talent market, recruitment is a challenge for employers of all sizes. However, small organizations face a particularly difficult uphill battle when it comes to building out their ranks. Small businesses typically have fewer people on staff who can manage the hiring process, as well as less name recognition and visibility among applicants. Because of this, HR...
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The 13 Key Traits of Strong Professional Relationships
Article by YEC Strong relationships are essential to business and career success. It is important to actively nurture relationships with your boss, colleagues, mentors, clients, customers, and others in your professional network, as they can see you through all manner of obstacles and all stages of success. However, relationship-building can be a challenge in the social media era. Our...
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How to Cultivate Workplace Innovation Through Smarter Performance Management
It is easy to see why companies the world over are concerned with cultivating innovation. More innovative workplaces enjoy higher levels of productivity, they are better able to solve even the most daunting problems, and they tend to have an edge over their less innovative competition in terms of market performance. Innovation starts with hiring the right people, but it doesn't end...
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How to Recruit and Retain Ethical Employees
A few months ago, Wells Fargo suspended two senior employees over accusations they colluded with housing developers to lower the price for bids on low-income housing tax credits, a move that ultimately increased the bank's profit margins. This news deals another blow to a company still cleaning up its image after its recent fraudulent accounts scandal, and it also highlights the crucial...
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Are Workplace Drug Tests Still Relevant in the Age of Legal Pot?
Testing employees for marijuana use was once a typical practice among employers, but it has grown less and less commonplace over the last several years. This decline makes sense in light of the current legal landscape in the US: 10 states have legalized recreational marijuana, and 33 have legalized medical marijuana. Of course, companies reserve the right to test employees for marijuana...
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The Right Answer to 'Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?'
"So, where do you see yourself in five years?" It's one of the most dreaded interview questions, and it's one you're likely to come across at some point in your job search. No one really knows where they will be in five years, and even if you do have a plan, there's no way to know for sure it will pan out. Still, interviewers will keep asking the question, so it's your job to learn how...
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8 Ways Technology Is Changing Performance Management
Performance reviews have long been integral to performance management, but recent technological developments have revolutionized the way reviews are handled, how feedback is given, and how employees are engaged. How has HR tech turned outdated review processes into effective performance management? Here is just a small survey of the biggest innovations in this domain: 1. Face-to-Face...
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3 Ways to Make Your Professional Reference's Job Easier
I recently received a phone call asking if I would provide a professional reference for someone named Margaret. I racked my brain, trying to remember a student, client, or someone I worked with in the Marine Corps by that name — but I came up empty. I even tried thinking of a Marge or a Maggie or some other variation of the name, but I had no luck. Therefore, I did not call...
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Job Search Rejection: It's Not Personal, But It Sure Feels Like It Is
The job search is perhaps the most personal impersonal experience there is. As a job seeker, you pour your heart into your cover letter. You customize your resume. You agonize your way through every step of the process, which can drag out for many months. Along the way, you may encounter many tests of your abilities: phone screens, in-person interviews, panel interviews — and perhaps...
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8 Effective Time Management Strategies for Recruiters
As a recruiter, you hold one of the busiest and most in-demand roles in any corporate environment. You likely have multiple projects to juggle at once and a lot of people relying on you for their career needs. To succeed, you have to use every minute of your workweek as efficiently as possible. The good news is there are proven strategies you can implement in your daily life that will...
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For a More Diverse Workforce, Hire Based on Merit
Many factors go into creating a strong workforce, and diversity of perspective is a key one. According to David Rock and Heidi Grant, a more diverse team is a smarter team — and a more successful team. As they write in the Harvard Business Review, "A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35...
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How to Have Difficult Conversations at Work
Are you avoiding a difficult conversation you know you need to have? Ask yourself this question: "What will change if I don't have this conversation?" The answer: nothing. That's right. If you avoid the conversation, nothing changes, and whatever your situation is stays the same. You rob yourself of the ability to solve a nagging problem, or make a change for the better, or even...
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18 Business Books to Read During Your Lunch Break
Bill Gates reads 50 books a year on average. The typical American reads four. See a connection? The fact is, reading is a fundamental part of your growth as a professional. Not only does it educate you, but it also keeps you mentally sharp and can even be a nice way to reduce stress after a long day. Unfortunately, many of us are too pressed for time to pick up a book — or so we...
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Why Business Leaders Should Think More Like Airplane Pilots
If you fire people for making mistakes, no one will ever admit to their mistakes. This is just a fact of life. Self-preservation is a powerful motivator. It's why people are reluctant to expose their mistakes, especially within organizational cultures that reject so-called "weakness." In most organizations, this element of human nature is compounded by the fact that most managerial...
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3 Ways to Tell Whether Your Sales Manager Candidates Have Business Acumen
Good sales managers effectively motivate and advise their sales teams to achieve goals and improve performance. Great sales managers, however, combine the power of their past experiences, expert knowledge, and awareness of their surroundings to make important company decisions for today and the future. Put simply, the best sales managers have business acumen. Business acumen is the...
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14 Quotes to Inspire You to Reach Even Your Most Seemingly Impossible Goals
Article by Megan Nicole O'Neal You may have set some lofty goals for yourself this year. Perhaps you want to run a marathon, or land a promotion, or finally complete a passion project that has been patiently waiting to see the light of day for years. Regardless of the resolutions you've made (and perhaps have already given up), this will be your year — that is, if you choose it to...
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5 Things to Cut From Your Cover Letter Now
If you want recruiters to read your resume, then you'll need an enticing cover letter to convince them. Your cover letter is your introduction to a new recruiter or hiring manager, and it can be the difference between a potential employer opening your resume or clicking "delete." The aim of a cover letter is simple: to persuade a recruiter to give your resume a chance. Unfortunately,...
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The 3 Three Things Generation Z Wants From Your Company
Born between 1995 and 2010, Gen. Z-ers have never known a time without advanced technology and social media. Many of them grew up watching their families struggle through the Great Recession and its aftermath. Taken together, these two facts can explain a lot about Gen. Z's unique position in society and the workplace. With Gen. Z-ers poised to comprise 20 percent of the workforce by...
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3 Ways to Boost Your Candidate Engagement Strategy Today
The "diamond recruiting process," as we call it at IQTalent Partners, is about finding imperfections in your recruiting and sourcing strategies and fixing them. It's about building a recruiting process that enables recruiters to start their searches narrow, expand their searches to fit their target talent pools, and narrow down again to bring only the best candidates to the...
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Where Does Your Resume End and Your LinkedIn Profile Begin?
In today's digital world, it is easy to think platforms like LinkedIn have completely diminished the importance of traditional resumes. However, they both have their purpose. Recruiters and hiring managers will look at both your LinkedIn profile and your resume. There will be some differences and some similarities between these two documents, but used effectively, they can be...
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3 HR Tech Trends to Watch in 2019
From moving to the cloud to the rise of mobile and big data, HR pros have watched the HR tech stack evolve by leaps and bounds over the last few decades. As 2019 gets into full swing, many pros are now asking where HR tech will go next. This is a vital question we should all be trying to answer. People don't work in the same ways as they used to. The business world has changed, and HR...
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4 Keys to Designing an Optimum Benefits Strategy
Five generations of employees coexist in the workplace today. As a result, a one-size-fits-all approach to benefits no longer works. Millennials, baby boomers, Gen. X, Gen. Z, and the traditionalists all value different kinds of benefits, from retirement to well-being support. However, a word of caution is necessary here. While grouping employees' personal goals and concerns based on age...
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This Year, Make a Promise to Submit 100 Job Applications
You're tired. You're worn out. You're disappointed. You didn't get the job you really wanted. You were a great candidate, and you made it pretty far in the process, but you cannot figure out what went wrong. I am with you. Job searching is emotionally and mentally exhausting. Employers will run you through the gauntlet of resumes and cover letters and interviews and assessments and test...
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Self-Organization: The Secret Sauce of Successful Job Candidates and Thriving Organizations
Whether we're hiring candidates for an open position or looking for a jobs ourselves, most of us focus on education and experience. One important ability, however, often goes overlooked by people writing both job descriptions and resumes: self-organization. Self-organization is the ability of a worker to initiate and organize their own work so that it aligns with the higher purpose of the...
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7 Innovative Recruitment Software Solutions to Adopt in 2019
As the technological and cultural landscape has changed, so has the face of recruiting in the employment market. Today's recruiters face many challenges their predecessors never did, from attracting candidates in a global talent pool to harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) without undermining human insight and making sense of complex data sets at scale. Thankfully,...
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Be the Leader Who Inspires by Asking 'Why?'
If you take the time to consider your educational history, you may not remember the grades you earned or most of the knowledge you gained in those years. Instead, you most likely remember the teachers, mentors, and coaches who shared their passions, who nurtured your curiosity and made learning for learning's sake the end goal. Those people helped you define your own learning process....
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5 Things You May Not Know About Working in the Insurance Industry
According to an industry trend report, 63 percent of insurance companies plan to increase their staff sizes in the next 12 months. By 2020, there are projected to be nearly 400,000 open positions in the insurance industry. The high number of openings — coupled with the fact that only about a third of all millennials have any interest in working in the industry — means there has never...
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3 Questions to Ask Before Accepting a Counteroffer
While most career advice professionals will adamantly advise you against ever accepting a counteroffer from your current employer, the honest truth is accepting one can sometimes be a good career decision. It all depends on a few factors. The sad fate of those who do accept counteroffers is often referenced in recruiting circles: 90 percent of them leave or are let go from their company...
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4 Tips to Bring More Wellness Into the Workplace
These days, everyone is looking for ways to bring more fitness and healthier habits into their lives. It can be tough. Whether you're a parent or a pet parent (or both!), work part-time or full-time, or have parents or family members to care for, we are all pretty busy. Wellness is sometimes the last thing on our minds by necessity. However, as an employer at Ollie, a company committed to...
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How to Create a Website That Drives Business to Your Recruiting Agency
Imagine you want to find a design agency that can help you design a logo for your company. What's one of the first things you'll do? Look a few agencies up online, of course. Let's say that, as you are researching possible agencies, you find one website that sticks out — but for all the wrong reasons. The fonts are dated, the copy doesn't make sense, and the design is sloppy. After...
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New Dad? Here's Why You Should Take Paternity Leave
Soon-to-be dads need little reminding that their lives are about to be full of all sorts of new sights, sounds, and even smells. Yet one new experience they might not be expecting is a nudge from their employer to take advantage of paternity leave. Some new dads wryly regard paternity leave as some sort of consolation prize, while others may worry they are being taken out of the...
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As Candidate Sourcing Evolves, We Need to Hold Onto the Human Touch
Over the years, candidate sourcing tactics have evolved dramatically. We've transitioned from the old-school brute-force methods of manually identifying candidates to smarter, more technologically driven processes. However, while artificial intelligence (AI) and automation can speed up many of the tasks on a recruiter's to-do list, sourcing seems to remain as taxing as ever. This is...
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Learning a Trade? You May Still Want to Earn a Bachelor's Degree
The trades industry is hot. According to Tradesmen International, some of the most common jobs for craftsmen are projected to experience double-digit growth by 2024. For example, openings for millwrights are expected to rise by 15.2 percent, openings for electrician helpers by 18 percent, and openings for solar photovoltaic installers by a whopping 24.3 percent! It's no wonder many...
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5 Steps to Building an Onboarding Process That Wins Over New Hires
Hiring is a two-way street. To land a job, a candidate must woo their future employer; to keep the candidate, the employer has to woo its new hire. This is why onboarding is so critical: 31 percent of employees have quit a job within six months of being hired, and 33 percent of employees know whether they are going to stay for the long term within a week of starting their...
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Why Recruiting Agencies Need to Work With Freelance Writers
You're a small recruiting agency, and you're looking to attract more attention. You have a marketing budget, but you don't have a big enough one to hire your own marketing team yet. What's an up-and-coming agency to do? Hire a freelance copywriter. The right freelancer can do pretty much anything a marketing team can do, but on a case-by-case basis, allowing you to control costs much...
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Why Job Seekers Should Focus More on Their Skills Than Their Experiences
When you're creating a resume or professional profile to showcase your value to potential employers, you have a choice to make: Should you emphasize your skill set or your previous job experiences? Hiring managers certainly want to see relevant professional experience, but the fact is they often value skills over work history. To understand why, we should talk about how these two...
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Cutting the Cord: Why Are So Many Parents Trying to Run Their Childrens' Careers?
If you're a parent with an adult child, this article is for you. Before I go too far, let me say this: I know you love your child. I know you want them to do well. I know that when your child is struggling, you want to help. But I also know this: When it comes to your child's job search, what you think is helping them is very likely hurting them instead. From time to time, I receive...
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4 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Recruiting Company
If you're in the process of hiring a recruiting agency to help you fill some difficult roles, you might not know where to start. Are all recruiting organizations the same? Does it really matter which one you hire? How can you tell which ones really have your best interests at heart? These aren't the easiest questions in the world to answer, but this article will give you a few...
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3 Ways to Build the Best Talent Pools
To find out what's keeping employers awake at night, talent acquisition software solution iCIMS recently surveyed its clients. What it found: 72 percent of employers say building talent pools is their No. 1 priority in 2019. This employment report makes complete sense. Given that nearly every employer faces labor shortages, investing in a pipeline of candidates who have already...
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Support Older Workers to Support Your Bottom Line
Consider this scenario: An employee of yours is reaching 65. They have been with the company for decades. You could always count on them through thick and thin, and now they're going to walk out the door, because as far as they know, that's the only option they have. This situation is quite common, but it's more damaging to organizations than you might think. If you were to do some...
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The Evolution of Employee Engagement
It's no secret that organizations with high levels of engagement consistently outperform the competition. According to a meta-analysis conducted by Gallup, "business or work units that score in the top quartile of their organization for employee engagement nearly double the odds of success" in comparison with those in the bottom quartile. In practice, that increased success looks like a 41...
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