ATS, Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Hiring Assessments, Hiring Manager Engagement, Leadership, Managing Costs, Talent Acquisition Problems
“What in the hell is going on in recruiting” is the subtitle of a blog post put out by Visier. The actual title is “6 Reasons Recruiting Doesn’t Measure New Hire Failure Rates (But Should)” and calls out a very disturbing statistic that has been floating around for about a decade.
Think about it…what if your software only worked with 50% of the clicks. What if your product was only delivered to your customers 50% of the time. Would that be acceptable? Then why do we accept almost a 50% failure rate with new hires?
When you look up employee retention rates and turnover statistics you’ll find all kinds of data from various sources. A 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics report found the overall turnover rate is 57.3%. Another study found that ⅓ of new employees quit after about 6 months.
Whichever statistic you want to pick, they all tell a similar story…turnover in the early stages is way higher than it should be. The only statistic that matters is what turnover percentage your company has, percentage for 0 – 18 month new hires, and the cost of that turnover. Not tracking that data is a mistake.
We all know there could be a million reasons why turnover is high. But who is to blame for these high turnover numbers? Talent acquisition will many times say it’s the hiring managers. Hiring managers will turn around and say it’s talent acquisition. They are both right, and they are both wrong, because it’s not one or the other, but rather the combined dysfunction that leads to high turnover.
So what can we do about it? Identifying the specific requirements of each role, backed by data, is one major step in the right direction.
We hire within the confines of a legacy system where we don’t identify these very specific requirements. We “think” we do, but we don’t. Instead, 90% of the applicants that get passed to hiring managers are based on keyword matching, and that ultimately contributes to the turnover problem. Hiring managers are then forced to pick the best of the 3 candidates they interviewed, based on the 20 résumés they reviewed. Does that mean those were the 20 most qualified applicants to look at? Most certainly not.
In the same Visier blog post, it mentions that “a majority of managers believe that less than half of all candidates that they interviewed were qualified.” Does this data support the problem mentioned in the paragraph above? Absolutely.
If companies have a turnover problem, they should start by digging into the beginning of the process and understanding how candidates are selected for interviews.
ATS, Candidate Experience, Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Hiring Assessments, Talent Acquisition Problems
If you look at labor force statistics, they are confusing. Supposedly we’re sitting at 3.5% unemployment, 62.5% labor force participation rate, 225k jobs cut in the tech sector alone over the past 15 months, and inflation has made everything from gas to groceries way more expensive.
Anecdotally we saw talent acquisition (TA) teams struggling to find talent just 6 months ago, and now we see posts about having too many applicants.
One could argue that managing job applicants has never been more challenging than it is right now. With the ease of applying to jobs online, the bipolar hiring environment, high expectations from applicants and hiring managers, it’s made the process downright miserable. No wonder TA has one of the highest turnover rates of any department in a company.
We expect technology to help us with this management, but in many cases the technology TA teams use acts more like a band-aid rather than a cure. But that could be fixed if companies upgrade their technology.
It’s very likely applicant volume will continue to increase. If you’re still on that old fashioned train of “we’re going to stick to reviewing applicant résumés one-by-one in our ATS,” then the higher volume is only going to exacerbate the problem.
If there is one area that should be automated in TA, it’s the reviewing/screening of applicants. And I’m NOT talking about using a machine (i.e., “AI”) to do the same process a human does of scanning résumés for keywords. I’m talking about ACTUALLY screening 100% of the applicants faster, easier, better, less biased, and giving the hiring managers exactly what they are looking for in a candidate.
There is a way to stop going through every haystack to find the needle, because as that haystack gets bigger, so do your problems. But you will NOT solve any of these problems if you can’t shake the “this is how I’ve been taught and how we’ve always done it” mentality.
AI in Hiring, Artificial Intelligence, Candidate Qualification Screening, Data Analytics & Reporting, Hiring Manager Engagement, Talent Acquisition Problems
We’ve posted about this subject before…but why not do it again!!
Most recruiters and hiring managers know there is a disconnect when it comes to communicating job role qualifications. But do those two groups actually know how wide the separation really is?
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say we’re hiring for a Full-Stack Rails Developer. A typical job description would say things like:
– Proficiency in Ruby on Rails
– Ability to write clean ruby code
– Good understanding of front-end technologies like Javascript
– Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, OR RELATED FIELD (this last part is always hilarious)
These ambiguous and undefined terms will not qualify any applicants in or out, and the role of screening the applicants will rest solely on the hiring manager.
Below are just 3 simple examples (which would probably be just 3 out of 12 total) of how SmartRank would screen and qualify these applicants:
Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Hiring Assessments, Leadership, Resumes, Talent Acquisition Problems
There are multiple methods for getting to the root cause of a problem.
One method is called “5 Whys” and it’s just how it sounds. You take a problem and keep asking “why” until you get to the root cause.
Another method I developed many years ago is called the TPPO method. The TPPO stands for Tools, Processes, Problems, and Outcomes. It’s pretty easy and it goes like this…whatever tools you use will dictate a certain process. That process will inevitably create certain problems. Those problems will either keep you from achieving positive business outcomes or create negative business outcomes. Last but not least…those business outcomes will almost certainly drive your personal outcomes (e.g., stress, work-life balance, promotions, demotions, etc.).
For example, if we look at talent acquisition teams using résumés, job descriptions, and traditional ATSs to screen job applicants, those tools will dictate a process of manually reviewing each applicant. This inefficient process creates problems such as wasted time and biased screening. These problems create negative business outcomes like reduced productivity and limiting DE&I progress. Ultimately the personal outcomes are higher stress, lower morale, etc.
Another example is looking at why 65% of recruiters have a tenure of 2 years or less. Why are recruiters turning over at this rate? One explanation is that they have a rough job. Why? Because they have SO MANY manual, tedious, and time-consuming tasks. Why? Because their processes like manually screening each applicant, chasing hiring managers down for feedback, etc. are very inefficient. Why? Their tools like résumés, job descriptions, and traditional ATSs dictate that process.
If you had a tool that automated job applicant screening without using a résumé, while giving hiring managers EXACTLY what they’re looking for, then you significantly improve your process. That process improvement mitigates the problems of wasted time and biased screening, which improves productivity and DE&I progress. And ultimately, provides personal outcomes like lower stress and higher morale.
In short, fix your tools and you can ultimately provide some significant business and personal outcomes!
Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Leadership, Resumes, Talent Acquisition Problems
How many of you have landlines? Maybe I should have first asked how many of you remember landlines?
At one point, it was all we had. You had to hope someone was home when you called them or you left a message on their answering machine (separate device). Sometimes you had to wait at home if you were expecting a call. You had to fight with your sibling or parent about using the one phone line in the house…unless you had a fancy household with multiple lines.
From the time the telephone was invented to when we finally forced it into retirement the foundational technology evolved very slowly and only with small incremental changes.
Then we started down this path of “mobile phones” but they were the briefcase car phones or “Zach Morris phone” (bonus points if you understand that reference). But it wasn’t until the late 1990s that mobile phones became mainstream. Since then, the technology has evolved quickly and with unbelievable innovation.
We’re at an inflection point in the talent acquisition world where we desperately need to make this move from reviewing résumés (old fashioned corded phones) for screening talent to automated applicant screening technology like SmartRank. It’s more efficient, more effective, less biased, more applicant-friendly, and makes the hiring managers happier.
The old fashioned telephone was a great tool and helped us for many decades. Resumes were our best tool for screening talent for many decades, but it’s time to embrace the newer and better way of screening talent. It’s time we bring job applicant screening into the 21st century!
