5 Hiring Mistakes That May be Hurting Your Employer Brand

/

Throughout 2016, despite some contractions in the labor market, hiring has continued to increase. Within the last 12 months through April, an average of 232,000 new jobs has been added each month. Many companies are focused on expanding, but are finding it difficult to locate enough skilled talent, especially in the executive, managerial and professional job market. In this sector, which is candidate-driven, employers continue to lose great candidates who are accepting other job offers. So as a hiring authority, what key mistakes could you be making that might be damaging your employer brand?

The 2016 Recruiter and Employer Sentiment Study conducted by MRINetwork, reveals that the inability to find quality talent coincides with lengthy hiring practices, lower than expected compensation, and the failure of prospective employers to sell their brand, the role and advancement opportunities. Retention is also challenging, as high performers recognize more jobs are available and feel more confident about pursuing them.

Based on the Study findings, the following mistakes may be hurting employer brands:

Mistake #1: Not recognizing the implications of a candidate-driven market.

According to the survey, 86 percent of recruiters and 62 percent employers agree the professional labor market is candidate-driven in most industry sectors. The best candidates have other job options, so your value proposition must clearly articulate how coming on board would benefit their career. Assuming that candidates should feel lucky to be invited for an interview with your company is probably the biggest mistake of all. Focus on providing a streamlined and positive interview process that keeps applicants informed of where they stand every step of the way. Most importantly, be sure that everyone on the interviewing team provides consistent messaging about the role and clearly articulates why your company culture and values make it an enviable place to work.

Mistake #2: Believing that compensation is the top deciding factor for high performers who are looking to make a job move.

Forty-nine percent of employers believe competitive salary is what’s most attractive to candidates about their organizations. Seventy-two percent of recruiters say the top deciding factor for a job move is advancement opportunities. While compensation is important to candidates, immediate and long-term advancement opportunities are what drive talent to join a new company, as improved compensation is implied with upward mobility. You need to have real examples to share with candidates regarding how your best employees advanced within the company and how upward mobility is a part of the organization’s culture.

Mistake #3: Deciding that a key strategic hire must always be a permanent employee.

More companies are creating blended workforces that include permanent hires and highly-skilled contract employees. The survey indicates that 63 percent of employers are either offering contract engagements, or are giving more thought to them, based on the level and requirements of the role. Knowing how to attract a contract worker is key.  While competitive pay is a starting point, skilled contractors need to be sold on the value their expertise will bring to your project, as well as the potential to be exposed to new technologies, and ways of approaching business that will expand their professional experience.  Your recruiter can help you determine when it makes sense to bring on a contractor, and then help you fill and provide back office support for these engagements.

Mistake #4: Making your employer branding and employee engagement strategies a one-dimensional effort.

Bringing on strategic hires is the top focal point for many employers (39 percent). Recruiting is now going beyond the realm of simply finding talent, by executing a more comprehensive array of strategies -- both proactive and reactive -- that will position companies as employers of choice.  As you begin developing these strategies, be sure to include members from all departments.  Their insight will help deliver a more well-rounded, targeted approach to employer branding and employee engagement initiatives.

Mistake #5:  Requiring that candidates endure at least three interviews.

Fifty percent of employers are frustrated most with the lack of skilled talent in many sectors.  While this is a common challenge, hiring authorities need to be able to act quickly when they come across great candidates. Lengthy hiring practices are the main reason companies are unable to keep top candidates engaged, and ultimately get them to accept a job offer.  Alternative measures like team interviews where companies ask candidates to participate in routine business exercises such as brainstorming or planning sessions, can provide insight on the applicant’s personality and likelihood of fitting in to the company culture, while reducing the interview process from three to two steps.

When you put these 5 hiring mistakes together, it’s clear how they may be impacting your employer brand and your ability to attract top talent in an already tight candidate market.  The hiring landscape and candidate expectations have changed. Companies that want to attract and retain the best talent, will need to revisit their interviewing and talent management approaches, to create a strong employer brand.

To view a summarized overview on hiring mistakes that can be easily distributed to others in your organization responsible for hiring, click here. To view the complete Study, visit MRINetwork.com/Recruiter-Sentiment-Study.

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com 

People Analytics: The Big Data of the Employment World (Video)

/

What if high tech companies knew why top engineers quit and how to build work environments that would get people to stay? What if product companies could analyze the demographic and experiential factors that correlate with high-performing sales people? What if healthcare companies could determine why certain hospitals have higher infection rates and what people issues are behind these problems? Today these outcomes are being achieved through the use of people analytics, providing leaders with keen insight into employee behavior that is needed to make critical workforce decisions.


Click to watch the video.

“People analytics work by gathering workforce data - experience, demographics, work history, etc. - and feeding this information into advanced computer models," says Anne Hayden, vice president of human resources for MRINetwork. “Leaders can leverage this information to help gauge, predict and make decisions about everything from retention probability to what will motivate top sales people in the organization.”

Matching data elements to human capital needs in a way that impacts decision making yields a number of key benefits:

  • Reducing attrition. Identifying top employees who are about to leave the company can save a company millions of dollars in lost talent. Factors such as location, pay scale and personality type can be fed into an analytics system to pinpoint staff who are most likely to exit. From here managers can spark conversations with direct reports about how to evolve their roles, increasing the odds of preserving the best people in the company.
     
  • Anticipating performance. Impressive credentials cannot truly predict a candidate’s on-the-job performance. People analytics addresses this gap by helping to identify candidates who are unlikely to mesh with a company’s corporate culture. Hiring managers can then decide on additional line of questioning that will provide more insight as to whether applicants will be a good fit.
     
  • Enhancing employee morale. Analytics leveraged though simple employee surveys can gauge levels of dissatisfaction, and point to initiatives such as career-development planning and connecting high performers with training programs that will boost employee morale and willingness to stay on board. This type of data can be especially helpful in uncovering company-wide issues that employees may be reluctant to share face-to-face with leadership.

According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 report, 77 percent of all organizations believe people analytics is important; successful implementation, however, depends on getting the process right.

Hayden recommends the following for applying people analytics to your company:

  • Stay focused on business priorities. Start with problems management cares about, such as sales productivity, product quality or customer retention. Spend time where the company makes money, and people analytics projects will pay for themselves.
     
  • Build a people analytics team. Building an analytics model alone will not solve business problems. Companies must recruit the right talent and integrate analytics efforts, involving various business partners and consultants on employee engagement, recruitment analytics, learning analytics, compensation analytics, and workforce planning. A successful analytics team will engage directly with the business and help apply the findings to real interventions or management changes.
     
  • Explore new technologies. Nearly every talent management provider now offers off-the-shelf analytics. Teams need to find the right mix of technologies to look at their data in an integrated way that represents the various domains of the analytics team members.
     
  • Invest in cleaning data. The highest value in analytics comes after the company is running a reliable database. Out-of-date employee records, for example, can provide analysts with less-than-accurate information. Only by establishing best practices for scrubbing, migrating, collecting and analyzing data can valuable business insights be extracted.
     
  • Focus on security, privacy, and anonymity. Leading organizations define security policies as part of their people analytics governance early in the process. They realize the importance of understanding the complex issues surrounding data security, privacy and identity protection up front.

The strategic goals of any organization are enabled by the successful performance of its workforce. “Rich data sources, coupled with analytics capabilities and tools, reveal how people are contributing to the desired outcomes, defining ways to maximize business performance,” adds Hayden. “Analytics are no longer an abstract concept; when you combine them with the human aspect of assessing a candidate or employee’s experience, skills, cultural fit and potential within the organization, you are left with a more well-rounded approach to building and engaging strong teams.”

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com

Improving Employee Engagement: It Starts with Managers (video)

/

Staff engagement among the U.S. workforce has remained steady at 33 percent over the past few years, according to recent data from Gallup. This is quite low considering that strong employee engagement is the catalyst for company growth and success. Numbers worldwide are even starker, with 87 percent of workers reporting being disengaged at the office.

Click to watch the video.

As managers across the country scramble to increase feelings of ambition, connection and enthusiasm among employees, they should first start by looking within. While a wide range of factors can impact one’s feeling of involvement within his or her company, poor management ranks at the top. Managers are reportedly responsible for 70 percent of feelings of imbalance and discontentment. The good news is that there are a number of simple, effective ways managers can boost employee engagement.

“A great leader understands that the success of a company relies heavily on the dedication, commitment and achievements of the employees,” says Suzanne Rice, director of global franchise development for MRINetwork. “By creating an environment that encourages open communication and fosters trust, managers have the opportunity to empower their employees to not only become engaged, but to go above and beyond.”

Rice provides the following tips for raising employee engagement:

1. Cultivate trust
Cultivating an environment of trust is an important way to ensure that all staff members feel valued, heard and comfortable. Trust is not just about leaders acting in a fair or equitable manner, being accountable, or honoring the agreements that they’ve made with staff. Employees also want to feel their managers will back them up in tough or negative situations, even sharing in the blame when necessary. When an environment of trust is created in this manner, it strengthens relationships with employees, making them more likely to want to work hard and do well. On average, those with supportive supervisors are 67 percent more engaged in the company, based on data from The Energy Group.

2. Promote open communication
Regular meetings, consistent social contact and open channels for communication are key for promoting open and honest dialogue between managers and employees. When managers are empathetic and aware of others, they’re more likely to be in tune with the general consensus among employees. Responding to all questions, concerns and feedback - and taking each one seriously - in an adequate time frame confirms that each employee’s voice is heard and valued.

3. Maintain visibility
Rather than being tucked away in a corner office with the door frequently closed, managers should be accessible and visible throughout the workplace. Doing so makes employees feel more comfortable reaching out and asking questions. It also further enhances open communication. Along the same lines, recognizing the hard work and accomplishments of employees is just as important. Publicly acknowledging the work of staff members encourages a healthy commitment to advancing the organization’s mission.

4. Lead by example
When managers lead by example, not only are employees more likely to remain at the company, they’re also much more engaged. Workers don’t just want their leaders to be accountable, they want managers to provide mentorship and guidance for how to be more effective, based on their own experience. By demonstrating the behaviors and qualities that are expected of staff members, and investing time in developing direct reports, managers can boost engagement and improve work ethic.

“Improving employee engagement should be at the forefront of a manager’s responsibilities, and holding themselves accountable is the most effective way to do that,” adds Rice. “When managers are open, flexible and authentic, employee happiness and engagement will naturally skyrocket.”

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com

Employment Summary for February 2016

/

U.S. employment gains beat expectations in February as the unemployment rate held steady.

Payrolls rise

The country added 242,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in February, far ahead of the January gains and beating economist forecasts. According to Reuters, analysts had predicted that the U.S. would add only 190,000 jobs in February.

January job gains were also revised from 151,000 to 172,000, and December gains were revised from 262,000 to 271,000. The average monthly job gains over the previous three months was 228,000.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged in February, holding at 4.9 percent, an eight-year low, according to Reuters, and 7.8 million people were without jobs during the month. Over the year, the unemployment rate has fallen by 0.6 percentage points.

The news source noted it was significant that the unemployment rate held steady despite more people joining the labor market in February. The labor force participation rate, which measures the number of people who are either employed or searching for a job, increased to 62.9 percent during the month.

Average hourly earnings for private nonfarm payrolls fell by 3 cents to $25.35 in February, however, Reuters attributed the slump to a "calendar quirk."

Healthcare leads sector growth

Healthcare and social assistance, retail trade, food services and drinking places and private educational services registered job growth in February.

Healthcare and social assistance gained 57,000 jobs during the month, with healthcare employment growing by 38,000 positions, ambulatory jobs rising by 24,000 and hospital positions increasing by 11,000. Over the year, hospitals have gained 181,000 jobs. Social assistance positions grew by 19,000, with the bulk of the jobs in individual and family services.

Employment in food services and drinking places grew by 40,000 in February, with the sector adding 359,000 jobs over the year.

Private educational services employment bounced back after losing 20,000 jobs in January to add 28,000 in February.

Construction employment continued to rise, gaining 19,000 jobs in February. Most of the jobs were in residential specialty trade contractors, which accounted for half of the 253,000 job gains the industry has seen over the last year.

Industries that remained virtually unchanged throughout the month included manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, professional and business services, and government.

Rate hikes reconsidered

Turbulent financial markets had made it unlikely that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates. Reuters reported, however, that the positive February employment figures and growth forecasts may put rate hikes back on the table at the Fed meeting in June.

>> Click here to get a copy of the full Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com

Insightful Hiring: Looking Beyond the Obvious to Uncover Right-Fit Candidates (video)

/

A hiring manager posts an opening, describes the ideal candidate, and resumes come flooding in. After doing some interviews, the manager has to decide who the best person is for the job. Research shows that more often than not, managers pick someone whose qualifications most closely match the exact criteria for the job or whose background is similar to theirs. Using this process, frequently poor hires are made, and competent and qualified people don't get the job - or sometimes even an interview - because they do not fit the preconceived notion of the right fit. This reality presents a great opportunity for companies to reconsider and potentially improve how they view, screen, interview and engage with talent.

Click to watch the video.

“People with responsibility for hiring have a tendency to see what they’re looking for, especially when they are primed and ready to look for specific things,” says Nancy Halverson, vice president of global operations for MRINetwork. “Focusing too much on set criteria for the ideal candidate or being blind to red flags can lead to serious hiring mistakes, especially when everybody on the hiring team is looking at applicants through the same lens.”

Cultivating the ability to identify and recognize the right people for the job, even individuals with non-traditional backgrounds or with skills outside the exact criteria, can be a tremendous advantage for a business. “You get multiple perspectives for problems or challenges, and fresh perspectives in your day-to-day operations,” Halverson observes. “Although there are instances when hiring candidates who don’t fit the exact profile isn’t feasible, that is less of an issue than many hiring managers may think.”

However, there’s a reason many companies don’t take risks when hiring new talent. Employees with traditional backgrounds and similar skill sets yield predictable results. The tricky part about expanding the hiring horizon is finding the right fit even if the candidate’s background falls outside the range of the safe, defined criteria.

Halverson suggests several ways to avoid mistakes while widening the candidate pool:

Focus on the candidate's potential. Pay close attention to the personality of the prospective new hire. While having the right skill set may seem essential, skills can be acquired, but personalities cannot. Social intelligence - being able to navigate social situations and work well with others - should be under scrutiny during the interview. Don't become pigeonholed into thinking the person with the exact necessary experience is the right person for the role. Give equal consideration to communication skills, thought processes and emotional intelligence.

Ask the right kinds of questions. While your interview format should retain some standard questions, you can uncover good candidates by adding non-traditional questions into the mix. Asking candidates what they see as the most effective approaches for managing them, for example, can provide insight on both cultural fit and working style - whether they’re low-maintenance and function best with minimal guidance, or perform well under detailed direction and support. Depending on the existing managerial style at your organization, the response may signal an ideal fit or a potential problem aligning with your leadership.

Provide personal insight about the company culture. To help both the organization and prospective candidates determine if they are right for your company and the particular position, it's important to discuss the company's work environment. Be open and honest about what it's like to work at the organization, and talk about the positive aspects or even perks that have personally made your job more enjoyable. Replacing canned corporate responses with insight about your individual experience allows you to connect better with candidates, and both parties can more clearly ascertain if the applicant will thrive in the company culture.

Cover all the bases. Probably the most important step in deciding to extend an offer to a candidate who has a different type of experience or education from the set criteria, is making sure the company has covered all its bases. This includes determining the business rationale behind the hire, what skills and qualifications the candidate has to offer the company, and if the decision will ultimately produce the desired result.

“In today’s competitive world of business, no organization can risk the expense and productivity drain that a bad hire brings, and yet bad hires are surprisingly common,” adds Halverson. “Being open-minded to looking outside of your defined criteria or even your industry can yield a more diverse but equally qualified short list, and may result in a better fit between the successful candidate and your organization.”

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com 

Video: Tips for Attracting Candidates by Appealing to What They Value Most

/

Click to watch the video.

For more information, view the full "Tips for Attracting Candidates by Appealing to What They Value Most" article by clicking here. - See more at: http://www.thetrevigroup.com/new-blog/2016/2/1/tips-for-attracting-candidates-by-appealing-to-what-they-value-most-video

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com

Tips for Attracting Candidates by Appealing to What They Value Most (+video)

/

The recruitment landscape in the executive, managerial and professional sector remains a candidate-driven market in 2016, and moving forward, companies need to ask not what candidates can do for them, but what they can do for potential hires. To attract the best candidates, companies should broaden their perspectives beyond salaries and benefits and think about what makes their organizations not only great places to work, but enviable ones.

Click to watch the video.

As trends change, highly qualified candidates have the resources necessary to be more discerning about the companies to which they apply, and the offers they ultimately accept. Now more than ever, these candidates are thinking about a company's culture and values. They're weighing whether the company fosters a positive environment and whether its values align with their own.

"Highly qualified candidates are prioritizing a positive and inspiring company culture over pay or benefits," says Suzanne Rice, director, global franchise development for MRINetwork. "They want to work somewhere that helps them grow not only professionally but personally."

Rice recommends the following tips for revealing the company traits that job seekers value most:

Define your values. Think about your company's mission and values, and how you can effectively convey these attributes during your next candidate interview. Go beyond financial or strategic goals and reflect on community impacts such as ways your company benefits society, makes people's lives easier or demonstrates goodwill in the world.

The modern, highly qualified job seeker is more altruistic-minded than his predecessors, and wants to work somewhere where he or she can contribute to a larger effort that transcends simply making money. An interviewer who can confidently share with a candidate the company's higher purpose and the concrete ways it's contributing to the common good will make a job offer that is much more attractive.

Put employees first. Top candidates are prioritizing company culture, and how it's created by the employees to get an idea of the people with whom they will be working. To effectively discuss your company's culture with applicants, analyze the positive qualities that are shared by employees across your organization and spend extra time looking at the specific traits of your top-performing employees. Spend time talking with workers to gain a better understanding of the personal qualities and attitudes that they bring to their work.

Also observe the overall atmosphere of your office. Are socialization and bonding activities in and outside of work encouraged? Or is the atmosphere stressed, negative or draining? If that's the case, improving your company's culture should be a priority.

Size up the organizational structure. Examine how work is being accomplished across the company. Today's job seekers are looking for alternatives to the top-down organizational structures of the past. Instead, they want to work at a company with a more collaborative organizational structure that not only welcomes and encourages opinions and suggestions from all employee levels, but also responds and takes action on these ideas.

Ethics in the workplace and sound business practices are also very important to candidates today. They want to work at a company where leadership is held responsible for their actions. Consider whether your company has an open organizational structure, accountability measures in place and ways you can improve them.

"Spending time reflecting on these important traits of your company, and prioritizing them in your discussions with candidates, helps ensure that your hiring practices respond to the unique needs and attitudes of today's job seekers," adds Rice. "A modern, self-aware company is one in which most qualified top performers will want to work."

The Trevi Group
www.TheTreviGroup.com