The Recruiter's Handbook: A Complete Guide for Sourcing, Selecting, and Engaging the Best Talent
288
The Recruiter's Handbook: A Complete Guide for Sourcing, Selecting, and Engaging the Best Talent
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781586444655 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Society For Human Resource Management |
| Publication date: | 04/13/2018 |
| Edition description: | None |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
What Is Recruiting?
Before we can launch into a conversation about how to be an effective recruiter, it's important to define "recruiting." The way we do business is changing all the time, so common definitions will naturally change along with it.
To make things simple and, since this book is being published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), we'll use its definition for recruiting, which is "the activity of identifying and soliciting individuals — either from within or outside an organization — to fill job vacancies or staff for growth."
Recruiting versus Talent Acquisition
One of the clarifications we need to address is the relationship between recruiting and talent acquisition. I'm guilty of using these terms interchangeably, but there is a difference.
SHRM defines talent acquisition as "the process of attracting and recruiting the best talent available for the organization." The goal of talent acquisition is broader in scope. It's to "ensure the organization has the right people, with the right skills, who are in the right job, and are working against the right requirements."
Using these two definitions, recruiting is a component of talent acquisition. Another way to phrase that is talent acquisition drives recruiting, similar to how marketing drives sales. The other key words to focus on in the definitions are "activity" and "process." Recruiting is an activity, meaning a major piece of work to be completed. Talent acquisition is a process, which involves several activities, including recruiting.
For this book, we're going to talk about both talent acquisition and recruiting. To be an effective recruiter, you need to know a little about talent acquisition, even if you're not regularly involved with talent acquisition strategy. This strategy affects the work of recruiters. And there might be times when you need to push for a change in talent acquisition strategy to deliver results. More on that later.
Recruiting's Place in the Employee Life Cycle
In the preface, we talked about some of the changes that are taking shape with the employee life cycle. While the cycle is changing, recruiting is still firmly ensconced in the process. In fact, if there's a change in the employee life cycle that involves recruiting, we could argue that recruiting has been replaced with talent acquisition.
Regardless of what the unemployment rate looks like, organizations have found that the best way to attract and hire talent is by building relationships with candidates. In this book, we'll talk about the specifics, but the best way to hire premier talent starts before a person becomes an employee.
For recruiters, understanding the role of talent acquisition and recruiting in the employee life cycle is important. The way a candidate becomes an employee sets the stage for the other components of the life cycle. For example, if a candidate is sourced using social media tools, the candidate might logically assume that the organization embraces employees using social media. If the employee started work and discovered the opposite, he or she might become disillusioned with the job and the company. Recruiters should be conscious of their place in the employee experience and strive to complement it — not contradict it.
Recruiting Ethics
We can't talk about a process without discussing the ethics involved. Ethics are the values and standards that drive our behavior. When it comes to talent acquisition and recruiting, we have an ethical obligation to treat candidates with respect throughout the recruitment and selection process. To ensure that we maintain an ethical process, we can refer to two models:
Procedural justice focuses on the fairness of how decisions get made. An example of a question recruiters might ask about an organization's recruiting and hiring process might be, "Are the steps taken to make the hiring decision fair?"
Distributive justice focuses on the perceived fairness of the outcomes. "Is the final hiring decision itself fair?" would be a question recruiters can ask.
Recruiting, like many other business processes, can face challenges. At times recruiters will be asked to accelerate the process. Or cut corners. Organizations don't make these requests to intentionally question the ethics of a recruiting professional. They make these requests so they can get someone hired. Recruiters must understand their ethical obligations and make sure they do not compromise their ethics.
The bottom line: A recruiter's goal is to bring people into the organization quickly and ethically.
Organizations must recruit. There's absolutely no way around it. Successful organizations develop talent acquisition strategies to drive their recruiting efforts. They understand the role that recruiting plays with candidates and employees. Recruiters work with the other business functions to create alignment between hiring and performance management, succession planning, training, etc. All of these activities must be accomplished in an ethical fashion to maintain the credibility of the recruiter, the function, and the organization.
Bringing people into the organization is necessary, almost self-explanatory. But why is recruiting so important? Let's talk about value in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 2Why Is Recruiting Important?
By definition alone, we know that recruiting is important. But outlining the reasons has value because there will be times when we have to convince the organization to recruit, even when no job openings exist. There will also be times when we will ask for resources to support recruiting and need a justification for doing so. Understanding the reasons that recruiting is important to the organization helps recruiters get the job done.
Recruiting Is an Essential Business Competency
Competencies are defined as the ability to do something. Organizations establish competencies as a way of establishing performance expectations and standards. For instance, recruiting is a competency in the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Competency Model. That means, to be a successful HR professional, you need to know recruiting. What's interesting about recruiting in the SHRM Competency Model is how it aligns with the behavioral competencies.
Let me step back for a minute and give you a quick overview of the model. It's composed of eight behavioral competencies and one technical competency. The one technical competency is HR Knowledge, which includes the areas you would expect such as recruiting, compensation, labor law, training, and performance management. The eight behavioral competencies are the following:
1. Business Acumen is understanding the organization's operation, functions, and external environment. Recruiting is always looking at the needs of the business as well as the availability of resources to make good recommendations and decisions.
2. Communication involves crafting and delivering information. This isn't simply delivering presentations. Communication is about listening, responding, and effectively transferring information to others. Recruiters use their communication skills to tell stories about the company. They listen to candidates and new employees. And they are responsible for both written and verbal communications at every level of the organization.
3. Consultation is the ability to work with internal stakeholders to evaluate business challenges and develop solutions to address those challenges. Recruiting involves a tremendous amount of strategy (see number 1), and consultation skills are necessary to get everyone to recognize and buy into programs.
4. Critical Evaluation is the ability to collect and analyze data. There's a science to recruiting. It's true that recruiting involves a significant people component, but the data are what drive strategy. Recruiters must be able to read the numbers so they can make informed business decisions.
5. Ethical Practice means maintaining high levels of personal and professional integrity, as well as acting as an ethical agent for the organization. Recruiters must make sure they use proper processes to source and hire talent. They must also educate hiring managers on proper hiring and selection.
6. Global & Cultural Effectiveness recognizes that we are borderless when it comes to attracting, engaging, and retaining talent. Recruiters are responsible for making sure bias doesn't enter the selection process. They are expected to understand the importance of diversity and inclusion and encourage it throughout the organization.
7. Leadership & Navigation is the ability to navigate the organization and accomplish HR goals. From a recruiting perspective, that means finding the best talent and bringing it into the organization.
8. Relationship Management is the ability to create and maintain a network of professional contacts both within and outside the organization. This is obviously a huge component of recruiting. Building relationships is essential to developing a talent pipeline.
Recruiting is an important part of the human resource function and the business. Years ago, when I first started my career, I thought recruiting was one of the most boring activities in HR. Then, one day, the vice president of HR asked me to lead the company's recruiting efforts. For a split second, I thought it was some form of punishment.
Then I learned what recruiting was all about. I learned it was hard, and it involved lots of planning, strategy, and metrics. It might be tempting to think of recruiting as simply the interviewing part. Recruiting is so much more. It's a process that needs to be respected, because it has an impact on the entire organization.
The Impact of Recruiting on Other HR Functions
We know recruiting has an impact on the business. Good hires are good for business, and bad hires are, well, not good for the business. Since recruiting is the first step in the employee life cycle, recruiting has an impact on other HR functions. You can see it in looking at the competency models for other HR functions like training and performance management.
The Association for Talent Development (ATD) has developed a competency model, similar to the SHRM Competency Model, for talent development specialists. It includes competencies that crossover into recruiting. For example:
Change Management is focused on applying a systematic process to shift individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to the desired state. Recruiters and learning professionals might work together to develop a new onboarding process.
Knowledge Management is the activity used to capture, distribute, and archive intellectual capital for collaboration. Not only will learning professionals want to capture the knowledge of recruiters, but they will partner with recruiters to make sure knowledge management is covered in onboarding.
Training Delivery allows recruiters and learning professionals to partner in delivering formal and informal training to new employees — in orientation, onboarding, and new-hire training programs like ethics, anti-harassment, and technical skills.
Coaching applies a systematic process to improving others' ability to set goals, take action, and maximize strengths. Sometimes organizations hire individuals with great potential with the plan to develop them internally. Recruiters look to their colleagues in learning to help new hires who need initial training and development.
Performance Improvement focuses on analyzing employee performance gaps and closing them. Let's face it; sometimes hires don't work out. Recruiters may be asked to conduct confidential searches while learning professionals are working on performance improvement plans.
Another functional area that aligns with recruiting is total rewards. WorldatWork is a nonprofit human resource association focused on compensation, benefits, and work-life effectiveness. Its model connects external influences like the economy, labor market, and regulations to the competencies necessary to attract, motivate, engage, and retain employees:
Compensation must be both internally fair and externally competitive to attract candidates and keep employees.
Benefits provide security for employees and their families. They are also a powerful recruiting and retention tool.
Work-Life Effectiveness encompasses practices, policies, and programs that encourage employees to achieve success at work and home.
Using both models, it's clear that recruiting cannot operate in a silo. Recruiting is not just about filling the job requisition or opening. Recruiting is important because it drives what happens in other functions:
• If recruiters can't fill open positions because compensation is too low, they need to involve other stakeholders.
• If a hiring manager wants to extend an offer to a candidate knowing the candidate will need immediate training to learn a new computer software, then training needs to be involved.
• If the organization is worried that a significant portion of its workforce is of retirement age and the loss of historical knowledge could hurt future product development, recruiters need to understand.
These are just a few of the examples. Recruiting is important because it touches the business. It also touches people.
First Impressions Matter
Of course, businesses are made up of people, so by association recruiting impacts them both. Independent of that fact, recruiting affects individuals and their actions. We'll talk in a later chapter about the candidate experience, but for a moment, let's think about the three groups of people the recruiting process affects.
Candidates are the first and most obvious group. According to Glassdoor.com, the majority of job seekers read at least six reviews before forming an opinion of a company. Sixty-one percent of Glassdoor users report that they seek company reviews and ratings before making the decision to apply for a job, and 69 percent of active job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand (that is, has an online presence, maintains it, and is responsive.)
What takes place in recruiting helps form that opinion about the organization. Recruiters shouldn't be surprised if the organization wants a say in the recruiting process because recruiting impacts the company reputation. The reverse is also true. How the organization conducts itself on social media can affect recruiting, and recruiters might want to offer some feedback.
Employees are the second group affected by the recruiting function. The goal is to turn candidates into employees. How well recruiters and hiring managers do their job has an impact on employees. Maren Hogan, founder of Red Branch Media, wrote in an article for TLNT.com that one-third of new hires quit their job after about six months and that referred employees have a 45 percent retention rate after two years.
How recruiters find candidates and bring them into the organization matters. It has an impact on the employee's future with the organization. Organizations aren't looking to hire employees so they can quit in six months. Rather, they want employees who will stay and grow with the company. Recruiters should expect the entire organization to be involved.
Customers are the final group. Organizations never want to lose a candidate and a customer at the same time. In a survey from Recruiting Daily, 23.8 percent of survey respondents stated that a positive candidate experience with an employer made them more likely to increase their relationships with employers' respective "brand alliances, product purchases or networking." Conversely, 11 percent had poor enough candidate experiences to cut all ties with a company.
Recruiters impact how people feel about the organization, which drives whether individuals recommend and purchase products and services from the company. What recruiters and hiring managers do affects the bottom line.
A Weak Recruiting Function Impacts the Entire Business
There's a well-worn saying that "people are a company's greatest asset." It's true. Don't let the fact that it's old and a cliché water down the message. Even with the talk of robots and artificial intelligence replacing humans, executives realize that talent is the ultimate competitive differentiator in the modern economy. Organizations need people to think up the ideas, build the products, sell the products, service the customers, and keep the operation going. The only way they're going to get people to do all that is by recruiting.
Over the past decade, we've seen rising and falling levels of unemployment. The one thing that's remained constant? Recruiting and retaining talent continues to be a top challenge for businesses. And the stakes are high. In an article in Harvard Business Review, 83 executives were asked to put a price tag on how much money they lost each day on a variety of issues. Guess what the top issue was. Yep, hiring the wrong employee was ranked number one with survey respondents, saying their companies waste approximately $9,000 a day.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Recruiter's Handbook"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Sharlyn Lauby.
Excerpted by permission of Society For Human Resource Management.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword: Dan Schawbel xiii
Foreword: Paul Falcone xv
Preface 01
Section I Recruiting Responsibilities 05
Chapter 1 What is Recruiting? 07
Recruiting versus Talent Acquisition 07
Recruiting's Place in the Employee Life Cycle 08
Recruiting Ethics 08
Chapter 2 Why Is Recruiting important? 11
Recruiting Is an Essential Business Competency 11
The Impact of Recruiting on Other HR Functions 12
First Impressions Matter 14
A Weak Recruiting Function Impacts the Entire Business 15
Section II Candidate Strategies 17
Chapter 3 Employment Branding 19
Case Study: CapTech Aligns Career and Consumer Branding 19
What Is Employment Branding and Why Is It Important? 20
How to Create, Establish, and Monitor Your Employment Brand 23
Benefits as a Brand Differentiator 26
Use Stories to Share Your Brand 28
Conveying Your Employment Brand During the Recruitment Process 29
Career Portals Are a Candidate's First Impression of the Company Brand 34
Chapter 4 Candidate Experience 39
Case Study: Virgin Media Loses Candidates and Customers 39
Creating the Candidate Experience 40
4 Ways to Improve the Candidate Experience 42
Recruiting Bots Get Hiring Conversations Started 44
The Candidate Experience Sets the Bar 45
Section III Organizational Recruiting Strategies 49
Chapter 5 Workforce Planning 51
Case Study: Peter Cappelli Explains Dynamism and the Labor Market 51
Workforce Planning and Workforce Development Are Not the Same Thing 52
How to Create a Workforce Plan 52
Bridging the STEM Skills Gap 55
Using Apprenticeships to Close Skills Gaps 56
Internships Are Valuable When Implemented Properly (and Legally) 57
The Middle Skills Gap Impacts Everyone 58
How to Successfully Address Skills Gaps 59
Chapter 6 Creating a Recruiting Strategy 63
Case Study: AT&T Faces a Talent Overhaul 63
3 Recruiting Strategies: Buy, Build, and Borrow 64
Recruiting Global Talent 67
Succession Planning 68
Creating Organizational Talent Pools 69
7 Steps to Developing a Replacement Plan 71
Talent Networks and Communities 72
Section IV Sourcing Strategies 79
Chapter 7 Sourcing 81
Case Study: Adidas Group Focuses on a Proactive Recruitment Process 81
Creating a Sourcing Strategy 81
Executive, Safes, and Industry Recruitment 83
Military Recruitment 87
Recruiting Older Workers and Pre-Retirees 87
Ex-Offender Employment 87
Employing Individuals with Disabilities 88
Employees as a Referral Source 88
Job Posting and Job Bidding 91
How to Get Your Job Postings in Front of Job-Seekers 92
Using Third-Party Sources to Recruit 94
Active versus Passive Candidates 97
Find the Sources that Bring the Best Results 97
Section V Selecting the Best Candidate 103
Chapter 8 Interview Experience 105
Case Study: Candidate Nightmares! 107
The Screening interview (and How to Handle a Bad One!) 107
Applicant Tracking Systems 108
The In-Depth Interview Experience 110
Panel Interviews, Collaborative Hiring, and Video interviews 110
Preparing Hiring Managers for interviews 112
Asking Candidates about Salary History 115
The Realistic Job Preview and Conducting an Inbox Activity 117
Chapter 9 Selection 123
Case Study: Kronos Provides Interns More Than an Opportunity 123
Establishing Selection Criteria 126
Values and Competency Match 128
Recruiting "Moderators" 129
Assessments 129
References 131
Section VI Extending the Offer 137
Chapter 10 Background Checks 139
Case Study: Gonzaga University Integrates Background Checks with ATS 139
Types of Background Screening 141
Marijuana 101 141
Social Media Background Checks 144
Creating a Background Screening Partnership 147
Chapter 11 Extending the Job Offer 153
Case Study: Job Offers Have Consequences 153
Offer Letters and Employment Contracts 154
The Essential Elements of an Offer Letter 156
Non-Compete Agreements 157
Handling Rejection 158
Rescinding the Job Offer 160
Section VII Onboarding 165
Chapter 12 Before a New Hire's First Day 167
Case Study: McLeod Health Improves the New-Hire Experience and Saves Money 167
Pre-Boarding: Bringing High Tech and High Touch Together 169
Pre-Boarding Checklists 170
Pre-Boarding Sets Employees Up for Success 171
Chapter 13 Orientation 175
Case Study: Savvis Uses Orientation to Accelerate New-Hire Productivity 175
Recruiters Should Learn Talent Development 179
Steps to Creating a New-Hire Orientation Program 175
Social Recruiting Creates an Expectation for Social Training 181
Telling Isn't Training. It's Not Orientation, Either 182
Recruiting and Training Are Responsible for a Smooth Transition 183
Chapter 14 Onboarding 187
Case Study: AMRESCO Improves Employee Retention with Better Onboarding 187
The Purpose of Onboarding 188
The First Rule of Onboarding: Always Explain the WIIFM 189
The Second Rule of Onboarding: Don't Overwhelm 190
The Third Rule of Onboarding: Maintenance Matters 191
Sample Onboarding Checklists for Creative Inspiration 191
Use Talent Centers to Reinforce Onboarding 192
Chapter 15 Post-Hire Activities 197
Case Study: Cirrus Logic Lets Employees Tell Them Why the Company Culture is Great 197
Building a Successful Mentoring Program 199
Survey New Hires for Feedback 200
Tell Employees Why They Were Hired 201
Use Stay Interviews to Identify New-Hire Dissatisfaction 202
People Are "New Hires" for a Long Time 204
Section VIII Evaluation 209
Chapter 16 Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Recruiting Program 211
Case Study: SmashFly Conducts an Experiment, to Measure Advertising 211
Auditing the Candidate Experience 212
Gather Feedback from More Than Just New Hires 213
Kirkpatrick's Levels of Training Evaluation 214
5 Talent Metrics Every Recruiter Needs to Know 215
Measuring the Quality of Your Web Traffic and Earned Media Value 218
Quality of Hires 220
3 Key Metrics in HR Predictive Analytics 221
Chapter 17 Next Steps in Recruiting 225
It's Cheaper to Train than Recruit 225
Create a Process and Follow It 226
Test New Ideas Then Incorporate Them into the Process 227
Measure Results and Adjust Accordingly 230
The Candidate Is Interviewing You 231
References and Resources 233
About the Author 245
Index 247
Additional SHRM-Published Books 261
SHRMStore Books Approved for Recertification Credit 263