AI in Hiring, Artificial Intelligence, ATS, Candidate Experience, Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Company Updates, Data Analytics & Reporting, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DE&I), Hiring Assessments, Hiring Manager Engagement, Job Descriptions, Leadership, Managing Costs, Resumes, Talent Acquisition Problems
Talent acquisition teams have many priorities, and it’s hard to balance them all. What’s interesting is that many of the same priorities show up on the top initiatives list year-after-year.
If you are looking to make significant progress in any or all of these areas, then you need a solution that can PROVE they address all of these initiatives with practical examples.
With SmartRank:
Productivity – you could give your recruiters back 30% – 70% of their time back in their day
DE&I – you could have zero unconscious bias in your screening process
Hiring Manager Engagement – simply give them applicants that are EXACTLY what they want
Compliance & Legal – no bias data + 100% inclusive and objective screening = no calls from the EEOC and/or OFCCP
Data Analytics – remove assumption and opinion driven anecdotal conversations with data driven conversations
Applicant Experience – something actually new, different, better, and ultimately benefits the applicant
We can show how we specifically address each of these initiatives in less than 5 minutes each. If you are curious, schedule time with us to learn more (https://lnkd.in/gpyUcDF2)!
AI in Hiring, Artificial Intelligence, Candidate Experience, Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Hiring Assessments, Leadership, Resumes, Talent Acquisition Problems
“92% of companies view skills-based hiring as more effective than using a traditional CV (curriculum vitae), another word for résumé.” YOU THINK? Of course skills-based is more effective, but there are nuances to getting skills-based hiring right.
Are we finally at a point where we can stop using résumés to screen talent? We all hope so, because it’s highly inefficient, ineffective, and biased. You can find tons of research to back this up, or just go to LinkedIn and read the posts and comments from job applicants, recruiters, and even hiring managers lamenting about how bad the current hiring process is working today. I would argue the root causes for that dysfunction are the tools (e.g., résumés, job descriptions, legacy ATSs, etc.) we use in recruiting, and the processes those tools dictate we use.
There is so much talk in companies about “Skills Gaps” and “Improving Retention” and “Improving Productivity.” You fix those problems by hiring the best possible people you can. And you are NOT going to hire the best possible people you can by using résumés. In the same way there is so much talk within talent acquisition about “Improving Efficiency” and “Quality-of-Hire” and “Improving DE&I.” Guess what? You are NOT going to solve those problems by using a résumé either. In fact, you are likely to only exacerbate them.
There are smart, practical, highly-effective, and easy solutions that completely automate the screening process without using/needing a résumé, and I’m not talking about some ineffective biased AI algorithm. I know these solutions exist because I’m a founder of one of them!
AI in Hiring, Artificial Intelligence, ATS, Candidate Experience, Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Hiring Assessments, Hiring Manager Engagement, Leadership, Resumes, Talent Acquisition Problems
Almost exactly one year ago I posted about a coming tsunami of applicants hitting the market (link in comments). Since that post, tech companies alone have laid off over 244,000 people (link in comments), and that’s not including smaller startups. To put that number in perspective, those same tech companies “only” laid off 80,000 at the height of the COVID pandemic from March – December of 2020, and only 15,000 layoffs total in 2021.
And that is just the tech industry. According to a recent Randstad Risesmart study (link in comments), 96% of companies took some sort of downsizing action over the past 12 months, and 94% anticipate taking further action in 2024.
You can see this tsunami of applicants playing out by just looking at some of the jobs posted on LinkedIn. They’ll be posted for hours and get hundreds of applicants.
In my post a year ago, I wrote about how talent acquisition (TA) teams were going to get downsized. With a lack of innovative tools, recruiters (or even TA leaders) would find themselves drowning in a wave of applicants. Unfortunately that is exactly what is playing out.
I probably don’t need to enumerate all the challenges that come as a result of having too many applicants and no way of efficiently and effectively screening all of them.
What does all this have to do with a lion and gazelle running?
Well, unfortunately many TA teams didn’t fundamentally change their tools or processes to handle this wave of applicants, and as a result they are dealing with those consequences.
In 2024 TA teams are either going to be hiring, albeit with an even smaller team, which means an even higher ratio of applicants to recruiters. Or, they are not going to hire in hopes the market returns in 2025.
Whether you are hiring (i.e., lion) in 2024 or not (i.e., gazelle), you should be implementing innovative technology NOW (i.e., running) as opposed to waiting until the problem is out of control, as I wrote about in a different post (link in comments).
You can’t control the market. You can’t control the hiring your company wants to do. But you CAN control the technology you use to manage those hiring peaks and valleys. If you don’t plan to put solutions in place in early 2024 to solve the coming problems in 2025, by the time you realize you have a problem…it’s going to be too late!
Candidate Qualification Screening, Change Management, Hiring Assessments, Hiring Manager Engagement, Job Descriptions, Resumes, Talent Acquisition Problems
Do recruiters and hiring managers align on what qualifications are needed for job roles? Usually not. What is considered “alignment” usually amounts to updating a job description and a high-level conversation. Inevitably the hiring process breaks down and both parties end up blaming the other. Who’s fault is it? Well both of course, but let’s examine both positions.
Recruiter arguments:
* I’m not a SME (Subject Matter Expert) for your role, to think otherwise is an unfair and unrealistic expectation. This is totally valid and anyone that thinks differently is living in a fantasy world. One of the disconnects here is that being a “SME” is a subjective term. The only thing more dangerous than a non-SME, is someone that thinks they are a SME, but are not even close to being one.
* Hiring managers don’t know exactly what they want or need. This can be true or false depending on the people involved, but I would argue that the real problem here are that these detailed conversations are NOT happening, and even if they were, what would the recruiter do with all that detailed information? As the recruiter, if you let hiring managers off the hook by providing you with vague qualifications, then you don’t have what you need to do your job, it will likely not end up well, and the hiring manager will probably blame you in the end.
Hiring manager arguments:
* These job descriptions and intake meetings are a waste of time, and aren’t even scratching the surface of what qualifications are needed for this role. But I don’t have enough time to make the recruiter a SME, and even if I spent the time, chances are that I’ll be working with a new recruiter and will have to start all over again. This is true. Getting “years of experience” in something or a list of all the things they need “experience” or “familiarity” with is a start, but not even close to a destination. That’s like asking, “where should I meet you?” and the other person says, “West.”
* I’m busy and you (the recruiter) are supposed to be the expert, so I’ll give you what you ask for, but that’s it. If you ask for an updated JD and a 30-minute surface-level conversation about what is needed for this role, then that’s what I’ll give you. This happens, but it’s not good. Hiring managers have been trained to give surface-level answers to surface-level questions. As long as that remains acceptable, nothing will change.
Great Keith, most of us already knew this…so what is the solution?
Simple, you just need a way to generate extremely detailed questions & answer options that are at a SME level, have the hiring manager verify that information, then have a system that automates the task of asking 100% of the applicants those SME-related questions, score all their answers, and then stack-rank and filter those applicants based on those scores.
Yeah right, all of that does not sound simple! But it is. Send me a message and I’ll show you!
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.
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!
Hiring Assessments
At this point you probably guessed the lie. In truth, vending machines are 2.5x more likely to kill you than a shark. I can’t wait to see that horror movie about killer vending machines comes out!!
It’s a common misperception that applicants just want the quickest and easiest applicant experience. Yet study after study disproves this assumption.
Does the application process need to be a reasonable time to complete, absolutely. Studies show that any applicant experience over 15 minutes will result in losing more than half of your applicants. I would suggest making it 10 minutes or less on average. When is the last time you personally took and timed your own applicant experience, both on desktop and mobile?
In this article (link in the comments below) data suggests that job applicants overwhelmingly see value in assessments. 94% of respondents said they felt assessments demonstrate their potential to succeed in a job either “very well” or “somewhat well.” Résumés just don’t tell the whole story!
74% of job applicants agree that assessments are a great way to highlight their full potential to employers, with 45% “strongly agreeing” and 29% “somewhat agreeing,” while only 6% “somewhat disagree” and 3% “strongly disagree.”
In addition, non-white job applicants were more likely to “strongly agree” that assessments demonstrate their potential beyond their experience and better their chances of getting noticed. Only 31% of white applicants “strongly agree” while 60% of Asian applicants, 47% of Black applicants, and 42% of Hispanic applicants “strongly agree.”
This disparity also holds true with younger applicants. 53% of applicants under the age of 25 “strongly agreed” that assessments demonstrate their abilities, while only 26% of applicants 55 and older felt the same way.
This is all great information, but here’s the conundrum…how do we have a reasonable (10 min. or less) applicant experience time-to-complete, that is easy, mobile friendly, and assesses qualifications for 100% of applicants equally?
