Killing Them Softly : Keeping (All) Candidates in the Loop

Talk to any respected recruiter and they’ll share discouraging narratives about how lousy recruiters tarnish their profession and its process. Although there aren’t any formalized recruiter ethics and standards that are universally followed, this doesn’t mean it's beyond anyone to provide candidates with honesty, integrity, and open communication during every interaction.

Poor choices by bad recruiters impact every party involved. Crucial objectives behind the entire trade such as improving candidate experience, fostering a great company reputation, and building an honorable brand can be easily compromised.

This post focuses on a series of problems related to applicant rejection and provides humble solutions to bad communication practices occurring from post application dialogues all the way to final hiring decisions.

4 Recruitment Software Domains Under The Microscope

Jessica Miller-Merrell, president and CEO of Xceptional HR, made an insightful point concerning the nature of recruiting in “Innovative Staffing Practices: A Look Back at Recruiting & Our Love Affair with Technology.”

“Recruiting has its roots in processes and workflow management…Technology has been revolutionary in increasing the effectiveness of processing, particularly the recruiting industry. Technology and recruitment is a match made in heaven. They are soul mates, and I really can’t imagine an effective recruitment department driven by hiring and workplace analytics without the technology to justify our success and business needs.”

Jessica, in the end of the article, emphasizes the valuable role traditional practices like collaboration and relationship recruiting will play in the future of recruiting—regardless of technological developments.

Recruitment technology is here to stay (and so is the love affair). The tools now available are becoming more specialized, and there are plenty of choices in different domains: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS); Video-based Job Boards; Neurocognitive Testers; and Hiring Marketplaces.

While reviewing companies within these distinct categories, we’ll keep one question in mind: How will these tech solutions influence or augment essential, and long-established, recruitment strategies and methods?

Spicing Up Job Ads: Dull Posts Yield Dull Candidates

Lou Adler made a wonderfully salient point: “Stop writing boring ads!”

Writing an effective job post lowers barriers-to-entry so you can reach more top performers. Treat the post like a sales opportunity; you’re selling more than just a frenzy of skill sets—you’re selling an opportunity to fulfill a person’s needs.

The Adler Group offers some solid examples of job ad work they’ve done for clients: JOATs Wizard & “Oscar Winning Controller.”

“Modify the job to fit the person, rather than find a perfect person to fit an imperfect job. A subjective list of skills and experiences is neither objective nor predictive of performance.”

Below is a much abbreviated outline of some simple guidelines that may help. For more guidelines on how to craft tech-based posts check out Github’s “How to write a great job post.”

5 Best HR Blogs: Entelo’s Required Reading List

The recruiting landscape is a wonderfully off-kilter world. Its peaks and valleys are shaped by both predictive—and utterly surprising—changes.

If you want to keep up with both dynamics, effectively navigating this gripping cosmos, you’ll need to follow trusted sources for news, information, communities, and metrics.

We want recruiters, sourcers, and hiring managers to keep their knowledge up-to-date by embracing forums with rich dialogues, and blogs teaming with informative articles.

Top 10 Job Titles That Didn’t Exist 5 Years Ago

LinkedIn Talent Solutions posted an awesome infographic on their blog to highlight some fascinating job title, and workplace, changes since 2008.

“We examined the data of over 259 million members’ profiles to determine the top 10 most popular job titles that were nowhere to be found in 2008.”

This evolution of the workplace is fueled by the growth of new expertise roles in domains like technology and fitness. What do we find interesting about the changes? Growth in technology job titles presents both opportunities and challenges for tech recruiters.

State of Sourcing 2013

The people at SourceCon were curious. They were curious about things like what sourcers and recruiters make, how they hired, how many hours they work a week, and their education level. So they kicked off a State of Sourcing survey that was distributed online during August & September of 2013.

The data came from recruiters and sourcers working in talent acquisition departments of sizable companies, third party staffing firms, and other outsourcing providers.

Twitter Reacts to #sfbeta: The Future of HR

#sfbeta, a startup mixer launched in September 2006 by Christian Perry, is steadily growing—bringing together thought leaders, founders, tech talent, and investors to focus on emerging themes in the tech industry.

Last night SmartRecruiters hosted a jam-packed event on “The Future of HR” at their headquarters in San Francisco. Entelo had a great setup for the event, and we enjoyed the lively discussions on the informative panel.

6 Awesome Company Culture Videos

Your company culture is the lifeblood of your business and brand. Talent is attracted to a great culture, and a great culture lets your talent thrive.Incredibly resourceful companies understand this. They put in the extra effort necessary to create a prosperous culture they’ll love so each person within the company sees the purpose and value of their hard work.Attracting top-notch talent, and creating universal core values, requires an imaginative approach that’s less ritualistic and more organic.

Google’s Hiring Process: A Peek Under the Hood with Laszlo Bock

Between his interview with the New York Times’ Adam Bryant, and a talk at The Economist’s Ideas Economy: Innovation Forum, Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations at Google, revealed some game-changing ideas about Google’s hiring process.

The insights and solutions he offers are off-kilter and exciting.

5 Predictions for HR Technology in 2014

While we certainly don't pretend to have a crystal ball, there's enough information available for us to make this solid claim: 2014 is going to be the year of Social HR.

John Naisbitt made this futurist statement in his 1982 text Megatrends: “We are drowning in information, but we are starved for knowledge.”

From our perspective at Entelo, we created our SaaS Company to do exactly that—furnish knowledge about tech candidates from a sea of information.

Lou Adler’s Performance-Based Hiring

Lou Adler is a hiring-related guru with four decades of experience in training and educating job-seekers, hiring managers, and recruiters. A prolific writer and influencer, Lou crafted the concept and practice of Performance-Based Hiring.

How does he define Performance-Based Hiring?

Spotting Resume Fraud & Fake CV Claims

Has the thought of embellishing your CV, resume, or portfolio crossed your mind before? Perhaps someone close to you recommended it, passing off the act as merely an outdated taboo?

Think twice about using even seemingly inconsequential white lies—no matter how tough the job market is.

Here are a few examples of terrible fraudulent tactics that now haunt the culprits:

How Does HR Use Social Media?

After covering how recruiters use social media in their sourcing efforts, here's an infographic from BLR highlighting social media uses for HR.

Hire MacGyver, Not MacGruber?

There are a lot of opinions out there on how to hire great recruiters. Instead of getting lost in the hodgepodge of concepts, we’ll start by looking at a couple colorful approaches—and then cut right to chase.

Here are some of my favorite quips: “Look for MacGyverisms”; Enlist the help of an Industrial Psychologist; Motivation is king; Value candidates with empathy and emotional intelligence, so bring out the Voight-Kampff test from the sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Maybe this last one is a stretch: we shouldn't expect android recruiters for at least a few more years).

Company Culture: Creating Diverse Core Values

Your company is going to have a unique culture regardless of what you do—so why not take the time to cultivate it, creating something everyone can appreciate?

After perusing sources for insights into creating company culture, these companies and people stand out: Salesforce, HubSpot, Netflix, HuffPost, Richard Branson, and Todd McKinnon.

HubSpot offers an extensive view of their beliefs, check out “The HubSpot Culture Code: Creating a Company We Love.” Here’s a great quote from the pioneering inbound marketing company (and, no, it’s not related to taking naps):

—Culture is to recruiting as product is to market.