Articles

Facing a shortage of applicants? Use these passive sources and attraction factors to solve that problem. Yes, the pandemic with its accompanying record-high unemployment rate has caused a dramatic and painful reduction in the number of applications for open jobs.

It’s a first in modern times, with record unemployment, attracting applicants will still be extremely hard. My research indicates that this is the first time that most companies will struggle to attract sufficient applicants during times of record high unemployment rates. If your organization needs to ramp up business quickly as this pandemic fades, start by fully understanding each factor …

Interviews are the highest impact assessment step, and interview effectiveness may improve by 33% with video recording.

Not getting great hires? Look no further than letting your recruiters/managers develop their own whimsical resume screening process. In many cases, these unstructured and undocumented resume screening processes produce the most damage to your hiring results of any screening step. That resulting hiring damage is so severe because there are no “do-overs” in resume screening. Once an applicant is rejected, …

Few managers are prepared for the overload of post-COVID vacation requests to become their #1 operational problem soon Alert: Expect a high volume of pent-up and overlapping employee vacation requests this summer. Because one survey showed that 92% of Americans didn’t take or postponed a vacation last year due to the pandemic. This built-up demand is guaranteed to overwhelm any …

Unnecessary stress hurts interviewee performance. However, increasing transparency reduces most candidate stress.  Stop Treating Interviewees Like Adversaries By Increasing Interview Transparency Let me be blunt. Most recruiting organizations seem to enjoy making their interviews highly stressful. In fact, throughout recruitment history, job interviews have been highly adversarial and exclusively one-sided. Historically, candidates came into their interviews mostly blind about the …

“What is it going to take to get you into this job?” is recruiting’s most revealing but seldom asked question.  Yes, there is a recruiting variation of this common car salesperson’s “what’s it going take” pitch. It reveals the importance of the recruiting function knowing which factors or job elements must be present to attract top candidates. Yet, in my …

With few face-to-face meetings, remote workers still need feedback, so provide it through performance metrics. Yes, those working remotely no longer have the multiple opportunities to discuss any progress on their work with coworkers and managers. Fortunately, there is an alternative approach for providing feedback that may be more effective in some cases—adding personalized performance metrics for each remote worker. …

The SEC now requires listed firms to report their human capital metrics publicly, so this topic should be our #1 HR issue. However, few in HR seem even to be aware of these new requirements. No less the tremendous impact that these new public reporting requirements will have. Already in effect, the new SEC reporting rules will force HR to focus on identifying, quantifying the impact, and then publicly reporting each of its major human capital initiatives.

Individual recruiters must have the courage to occasionally confront managers with “See I told you so data” that unambiguously reveals that the ratings, advice, and recommendations from their recruiter are often superior to their own.