Recruiter Chicks

Part 1:  Using Data to Drive Decisions
Part 2: Data vs. Knowledge

As promised, for the final part of this series on elevating or Supersizing your recruiting function, I will step through a past hiring project as a case study on how data and knowledge were used to fund and drive a successful recruiting project.

Let me set the stage.  In consulting, people are your product – so your target headcount number is extremely important to achieve your revenue numbers.  As such, we knew from a recruiting perspective what we needed to hire above our current headcount number to achieve our planned book of business.  However, we also had a group of third party consultants that were being subbed on projects to cover increased demand for services – which offered us an opportunity save $2M YOY in costs that affected our margins – direct $’s to the bottom line — if we replaced them with full time employees.  And of course we still had to cover attrition that had occurred or would likely occur during this process.  Lastly, we didn’t have a lot of time to do it.  Shocker, I know.

Our Exec came fully prepared, and even expecting, to have to pay costly third party fees to achieve this goal – especially a very hard to find skill set — in a very tight time frame.  My job at this point is to tell them if this “project” was doable, what it would take, and what it would cost.  Guessing should not be an option – and it doesn’t need to be.  The data doesn’t lie – and I needed it to not only give me these answers, but to help me tell the story.  This is business – I can’t rely on guesses, my credibility, my charm, or even my good looks (*smile*).

Armed with my “story”, I demonstrated what we needed to invest and where – and where/how our recruiters time should be spent.  I also looked at all types of data, metrics, and measures and derived knowledge around how to make the process better and faster, more effective and efficient, and provide on target, higher quality candidates.  Things like:

• Job profiling workshops with hiring teams to create an agreed upon profile (by all involved) for recruiting as well as the assessment criteria, for which all parties would be held accountable.  No finding out at interview debriefs what they were really seeking (and increasing time to fill)…
• Baseline interview training for all interviewers  (understanding assessment criteria and how to use interview process to make informed decisions)
• Pre-screening questions (knockout, rankings)
• Behavioral assessment testing to gain predictive data and insights into candidates behavioral tendencies and motivations to be used with our profile
• Pre-scheduled and staffed interview dates and debriefs
• Predefined offer approval and delivery process (if certain candidate process scores and salary ranges were met – boom)
• I looked at source data for “quality” candidates (Tech-screened – meaning a manager reviewed/selected –to hired; Performance)

And not just how the “Sources” (Boards, Referrals, Direct Sourcing, Agencies, internals, candidate pools, pipelines, etc.) performed, but what their capabilities were — and what opportunities there were to make them perform better too.

This is business intelligence 101 – its not just a history lesson – it is decision support.  This is how the plan was formulated and sold.  I admit, they were skeptical – our leadership, and frankly, I think even the recruiters — but I had the data to help me tell my story.  I am not going to show you the data as it is lengthy — and proprietary — but the story it told me was:

1. Search our database and push a personalized email out to selected candidates telling them a little bit about our opportunity and why it might be of interest to them – inviting them to read more via a link to the job on our website.
2. Purchase a “national” job posting on our highest performing job board.  We used carefully crafted verbiage based on messaging geared to the profile of people we were seeking and utilizing high performing keywords we extracted from job board vendor data – also based on the “ideal candidate profile”.  The national scope of the posting – while very costly – allowed for our job to appear where appropriate — regardless of location searched by prospective candidates.  It was still about the same, maybe even a touch less, as one agency fee.
3. Hold a special “hot skill” referral contest for this profile/role only

These three things were geared to drive candidates from our top sources for this role – Employee Referrals and yes, Job Boards (or really just one particular job board in this case).  But most importantly, our own database — which represented no one particular source, but was obviously a huge pool of previously identified talent that already had knowledge of or interest in our organization.

To cover ourselves with any particular doubters, we did also open the search with two of our valued vendor partners.  I was fully comfortable that in this case, based on the data we had (historical, market, capabilities, etc.), that it would not make much of an impact on our recruiters, for redundant efforts or candidate duplication.  We had a vendor portal that they could submit their candidates through, which did a dupe check of our database immediately.  If a candidate was already in there, it would not allow the candidate to be submitted – and we would be none the wiser – eliminating any potential conflict over how a candidate was surfaced.  As it turned out, they were not even a factor.

In each of these cases the candidates were directed to our website to apply – which also had brief screening questions – to help aid the recruiters prioritize the candidates to be reviewed and ultimately screened as appropriate…

As active or “motivated” candidates came in from these marketing efforts, our recruiters could focus on screening them.  Then use the searches they set up initially for the ATS  marketing effort, to focus on direct calls to the hottest candidates surfaced.  This process can also be repeated within Linkedin, referrals, and other sourced candidates.  Using the process we outlined above to get the candidates through the process, we knocked this project out of the park — on time and under budget.  We were able to do what we set out to do, achieving the results we predicted the way we predicted being able to do it.  We met our book of business and saved the company $2M YOY direct to the bottom line.

The success of that project, along with many others, demonstrated our ability to go beyond being order-takers, facilitating butts in seats — such as

Hiring projects and programs
Workforce planning
Succession planning and executive hiring
Talent management/career development
Due diligence during M&A projects and merger integration projects
Scouting new office locations – domestic and global (talent market conditions, availability, trends)

…even determining product lines to offshore.  How can Recruiting know what product could be done in a particular location(s)?  By knowing how many we could realistically hire based on our bandwidth, budget — and the availability of talent, at what we were willing to pay, and other outside factors such as brand awareness in the marketplace.  If you want to elevate –  collect the dots, connect the dots — tell stories with your data, your knowledge — and help drive the business forward.

There’s data and there is knowledge.  Data is what it is…facts, numbers, or text, not necessarily yet useful on its own, it’s just data.  But data can be collected and put together such that it provides answers and meaning — this is knowledge.  This is Part 2 of a 3 part series on Supersizing your Recruiting function — it’s a bit lengthy, but I hope it illustrates why and how we can elevate our profession beyond being order-takers, facilitating butts in seats…

Part 1:  Using Data to Drive Decisions
Part 2: Data vs. Knowledge
Part 3: A Case Study

DATA

Before we can have Knowledge we must take the time to identify and collect the Data first — that is before we can connect the dots, we must collect the dots.  Half the battle will be identifying the data we need — and knowing where to find it in our world of disparate systems and data sources.  Ask yourself the following questions to help with this identification process :

What do you need?
What is important to you, your team, and your organization?
What will help you, your team, and your organization make decisions?
What do you need to provide?

There is data we could collect within our own organizations, such as:

* Experience, Expertise
* Education (where, degree, gpa, test scores,… – who knows what can be important)
* Performance & Development
* Engagement
* Time
* Costs
* Retention/Attrition
* Productivity
* Demographics
* Social

Even data that exists outside of organization could be useful, such as

* Job market data/trends
* Job reports
* Social

I remember  last year, Eric Winegardner, from Monster, absolutely astounding an audience at a Recruiting SIG meeting of TAG (Technology Association of Georgia, a large technology based professional association….) with job market data and trends.  Not just data and statistics, but what it meant and how they could help their organizations prepare – and drive better decisions.  I know it probably set some sort of download record that rest of that week at Monster’s site — and if they were smart they got on the email list for the monthly Monster Employment Index reports – or at least some source of regular job market data.

There really could be sources of very valuable data within your vendor partners as described above, where you least expect it.  I was completely blown away at a briefing I did at SHRM National, back in June in Atlanta, as part of the Press team with a company called TALX (now Equifax Workforce Solutions)…a provider of HR, Payroll, and Tax Management Solutions.  What struck me as fascinating when speaking with their President, Dann Adams, is that outside of the valuable services they provide to their customers, the data they are sitting on is off the chain and they get it.  They are actively looking for ways their data can help arm their HR customers with knowledge to drive better business decisions for their organizations.  For instance, we can tell our leaders we need different or better benefits…but what if you could actually show them that if they offer X, the results would be Y.

KNOWLEDGE

Exercise:  First understand your corporate objectives — then outline by each objective, how does what you or your team do match up?  Now you have focus…

Searching the data

You have your collection of data now – hopefully.  How will you search or extract it?  Make sure you understand how your search tool works – all the ins & outs.  If it doesn’t work well – or you don’t know it, get it in a tool that is better or you know better.

Telling Stories

Interpret – What happened?

I love this line from a post done by Jean Paul Isson:  “Business intelligence (BI) has exactly the same objective as the employment selection process: interpreting past data to forecast results and drive business decisions”.  BI is the heart of what we should be providing to elevate our value to the organization — Tell what happened.

Analysis – Why?

Now that you know what happened — you must look for why.   That is where analysis comes in – so you can then figure out what needs to happen to make it better.  This is where you can start to bring in your historical or performance data as well as information such as market trends, job reports, and any other data that will help…

Forecast/Predict — Like…

* Find/target more and better quality candidates
* Improve candidate assessment and recruiting processes
* Make better hiring decisions

More and more organizations are using assessment tools to help gain insights into a person’s personality, behaviors, work style, motivations, energy, etc – all in an effort to predict performance, fit, even the ability to retain.  And no discussion of this nature would be complete without the implications of Big Data and what impact it will have as time moves forward.  That is for another post, but I will leave you with one recent article to reference, courtesy of the
WSJ online called “Meet the New Boss: Big Data” about companies replacing hunch-based hiring with computer modeling — just to whet your appetite.

Making Decisions

To illustrate this point, I will use a story…

Let’s look at Starbucks – is it the best coffee?  I don’t know… it’s pretty darn good… But have I had better?  Sure.  Have I had worse?  Oh hell yes.  The point is there will always be someone who can take what you have done — product or service — and do as good, maybe better.  But what makes them different?

Their people — you usually have a consistent experience by knowledgeable, well-trained baristas.   I know there are always exceptions, but for the most part their people seem happy, my order never gets screwed up, they have never been out of what I wanted, etc.  Why is that?  Their ability to manage information.  They don’t hold their data and analytics up in their IT depts — or in their C-suites, making unilateral, top down decisions.  No — they push that information down into their cafes, so that their managers can make informed decisions on hiring, staffing, ordering/stocking, etc. based on their unique locations and needs.

Making Improvements

Another example to illustrate this point — Talent shortages are kind of a hot button for me.  But to address, first we have to improve on how we define and target talent.  We can’t make more people magically appear where there are few to be found — especially for most of us who may not have the biggest name, salaries, benefits, etc to compete for that talent against those that do.  To address those shortages or shortfalls — we need to open ourselves to what talent we should be seeking.  This new type of talent may be from a tier 2 or tier 3 school, and they may not have any experience in your industry, or in some cases, any experience at all. If you are trying to grow your  team, use the knowledge you have amassed to create your own definition of talent, identify the traits that they need, and hire and maybe even develop people who fit the bill.

Next Tuesday in Part 3, in the final part of the series, I will actually step through a past hiring project as a case study on how these concepts were used to fund and drive a successful recruiting project.  See you then…

It is not a product or service that can guarantee an organization’s success – at least for the long term – because your competition will catch up.  It is your organization’s talent and their ability to manage and utilize data/information that can give the ultimate competitive advantage.  Last month at SourceCon in Dallas, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on how Sourcing and Recruiting can and should differentiate themselves as a critical business function based on these same concepts.  This is part 1 of a 3-part series based on what I presented at SourceCon12.

Driving Better Decisions

Sourcing and Recruiting are vital to the success of an organization, yet the function is often undervalued and underfunded — probably because we have not mastered the art of capturing and/or analyzing the right data to help us or our organizations make better decisions around talent. If we learn how to do this right we can have influence and demonstrate value by

• Finding/targeting more and better quality candidates
• Improving candidate assessment and recruiting processes
• Making better hiring decisions
• Building better business cases (budget, headcount, …)
• Providing decision support for the function AND the organization

Those first four bullets are a bit more obvious — and I think you will find, once you have started to really conquer those areas, your Recruiting function will likely have the kind of credibility to use the data/information we can tap into to help drive other critical business decisions across your company. Like what?  Here is an example of other areas where my past teams have had success…

• Workforce planning
• Succession planning and executive hiring
• Talent management/Career development
• Due diligence during M&A projects and merger integration projects
• Scouting locations for a new development center – domestic and global (think talent market conditions, availability, trends)
• Off-shoring product(s)

Yes — even decisions on what products should be considered during off-shoring discussions.  After working with the head of product development to understand how many developers it would take for each product, I used data to demonstrate what we could realistically hire based on our bandwidth, budget, and most importantly the availability of talent — at what we were willing to pay, and  brand awareness in the marketplace.  As a result, informed decisions were made on what products could realistically be transitioned to off-shore location and when.

Without data, you can’t have knowledge — so next Tuesday in Part 2, I will explore both data and knowledge a bit deeper.  On the following Tuesday, in the final part of the series, I will actually step through a past hiring project as a case study on how these concepts were used to fund and drive a successful recruiting project.

I would love to hear from anyone that has other example of business decisions you were able to impact or influence!!

The Recruiter Chicks had the pleasure of attending the HR Technology Conference last week in Chicago.  It is truly a great conference chock-full of the best and brightest in the HR & Recruiting space as well as fun tools, trinkets, and loads of HR tech service provider folk – duh!

I was asked more than once why I was attending this technology centered conference.  I found it rude for people to continuously ask me this question.  For Pete’s sake, I work for an organization that uses technology to fuel the engine…just like you.  I enjoyed the conference more because it was not the run of the mill recruiting focused conference and I was not running with my typical recruiter crew.  I threw myself into the world of technology savvy, code writing, software, platform and suite carrying ninjas – people like the other half of Recruiter Chicks – Chris Havrilla.

My key highlights from the show:

1.  It’s all about the people PEOPLE! 

My recruiting friend and fellow member of the #ATLDelegation, Eric Jaquith has always told me that conferences are about networking.  Well, HR Tech was no disappointment.  There were so many HR professionals who were ready to meet, greet, connect, learn and share in one location and over a three day period.  There was a crowd of about  4,000 in attendance.

2. Shiny Objects

I wish I had an aerial view picture of the Expo Hall at the Conference.  It would seriously look like Willy Wonka designed and built a conference expo hall.  There were all sorts of goodies, pictures, t-shirts, iPhone cases, candy, games and human targets luring you to their booths.  The companies that were represented spanned from Interviewing software, Social Engagement platforms, Performance Management suites, Mobile Recruiting platforms and Reference Check technology tools.  This Expo Hall was a great place for those that are looking to upgrade/change, just upgraded/changed or will upgrade/change a system or component thereof.  It was interesting and disturbing to see HR pros acting like grown kids who happen to have budgets around these shiny objects.

3.  Limos 

Who knew the best way to get to know others at this conference and Very Important People (by the way) is to take a ride in a killer stretch Cadillac Escalade limo?  Seriously.  This limo was packed with Who’s Who in HR and many recipients of the Candidate Experience Award that were awarded during the conference.  Big thanks to Monster.com for the opportunity to speed network and get close and cozy with a few industry leaders and frankly those that lead by example when it comes to Candidate Experience.  It was great for speed networking, celebrating and party hopping!

4.  Parties

There’s 3-4 dinners/parties a night during this wonderful conference and this is when the real playas play!  Many lifelong connections and business deals begin at these dinners/parties whether you’re bonding while eating beets on a stick, listening to Gangnam Style and attempting the dance or watching your friends blow the roof off the joint singing karaoke to “Ice Ice Baby.”

Overall, this was another solid conference experience.  I would be remiss not to mention the sessions, one in particular blew my mind away.  It was the ‘Marsh Transforms itself with Social Technology’ session delivered by Laurie Ledford and Ben Brooks of Marsh & McLellan.  They delivered this session from the 100,000 foot view and shared how social impacted their overall business, not just HR or Recruiting.  If you haven’t already, take the time to learn about their business and how they completely transformed their culture in a way that is rewarding both intrinsically and extrinsically.

I am often asked why I’m involved in SHRM-Atlanta and how I find the time to balance family, work and community involvement.  My answer: It’s easy when you have a strong commitment to the community and your own professional growth.  I grew up watching my Mom advise a business fraternity and earn the title of Person of the Year from the Nashville Chamber of Commerce for her countless contributions to the community.  She always talked about how those contributions and the community involvement benefited the community but also helped her grow professionally.

I am writing this post in hopes that more people will take charge of their career and professional growth through involvement in the community.

I work for an amazing executive search firm and I love my job!  After being with the firm for a little over three years, I needed to grow professionally so I started taking on more at work but I still had a desire to give back to the community in a more substantial way.  About five years ago, I initiated meetings with two prominent HR leaders in Atlanta to let them know of my desire to step it up and take on a more significant volunteer leadership role within SHRM-Atlanta for professional growth.  I was looking to supplement the professional development at work and step outside of my comfort zone by stepping up the level at which I was contributing to the HR community.  Our firm’s founder, Tom Darrow frequently speaks to job seekers and one key takeaway is around owning your own career growth and development by investing in yourself.  The world of work has changed and YOU are in charge of YOUR career growth.

Through involvement and countless hours of personal time, I have had the opportunity to lead meaningful initiatives and projects, the most significant of which was co-leading 800 volunteers at the 2012 SHRM Annual Conference.  It was one of the most gratifying, fulfilling, demanding, exhausting, exhilarating, fun and exciting initiatives that I had the privilege of being a part of.  It was a two year volunteer commitment and a way to give back in a grand way with the support of my company.  Most professionals working in small to mid-size organizations would never have this opportunity to stretch themselves in such a significant and visible way.  And that folks is what it’s all about!

The one two punch of a busy and awesome job coupled with volunteer leadership in SHRM-Atlanta have been professionally electrifying.  Thus helping me be a more balanced person to my family, co-workers, colleagues and friends.  I challenge you to take charge of YOUR career growth.  The moment you start taking charge of your own professional growth and development will be the start of some abundantly fulfilling moments in your life.