Hagi Trinh's Posts - RecruitingBlogs2024-03-28T22:08:17ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinhhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1527012769?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=3ixy81vawbhz1&xn_auth=noCROWDYHOUSE Shares Their Recruitment Process and Tipstag:recruitingblogs.com,2017-01-27:502551:BlogPost:20010462017-01-27T17:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
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<p><span>Every now and then, we join one of our users for lunch to find out more about the way they recruit. This week, we visited </span><a href="http://www.crowdyhouse.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CROWDYHOUSE</a><span>, where Mark and Suzan hold office with their 20+ (and counting) team.</span></p>
<p>CROWDYHOUSE is an Amsterdam-based startup who…</p>
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<p><span>Every now and then, we join one of our users for lunch to find out more about the way they recruit. This week, we visited </span><a href="http://www.crowdyhouse.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">CROWDYHOUSE</a><span>, where Mark and Suzan hold office with their 20+ (and counting) team.</span></p>
<p>CROWDYHOUSE is an Amsterdam-based startup who is quickly finding success and growth with their business. Their online marketplace is one that matches designers with customers to allow for the sale of unique, beautiful creations, even on a small scale. The idea is really taking off because it allows designers to showcase their concepts before they have the ability to actually produce them, and the customers can place pre-orders to help fund the creation. Once the designer is more established, they can continue to sell their products to an established fan base.</p>
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<h3>Please tell us about your recruitment process.</h3>
<p>“We started off doing it ourselves, making sub-divisions to differentiate between the type of open positions. Think: Operations, Marketing, and Development. We would reach out to people that had an active opening in our industry and seemed to be a good fit. We’ve posted job offers on niche job boards with visitors related to our industry. Later on, when the team grew, other people took over some of the scouting and now manage the individual departments.”</p>
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<h3>What are some of the best candidate sources for you?</h3>
<p>“Our own website counts for about 25% of all incoming candidates. I would advise other startups to use the traffic of their own site, as it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t recruit there. Some of the concrete sources for us are Olx.in for people in India (SEO), and Dezeenjobs.com -being a great nice site in our industry. We’ve figured out that niche job boards work best in our industry, as that’s where most talents are passionate about design.”</p>
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<p><em>About 20% of all new candidates come in via their own website. The nice job board Deezenjobs counts for about 30%.</em></p>
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<h3>How will your hiring change if you grow?</h3>
<p>“We will continue to segment departments and give freedom to our employees when it comes to hiring. I think everybody in the company should be able to bring forward new candidates, making every staff member a headhunter for new talent. At the moment, I’m on top of new marketing members, our developer in Bucharest does Technology, and Suzan is on top of new Operation employees. Design scouts actually scout their own interns. We give our new employees a high degree of freedom when it comes to daily tasks, but also when it comes to recruiting. Typically, I join the recruiting team in a late phase for reviewing when most of the selection is already done.”</p>
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<h3>Any hiring tips for other startups?</h3>
<p>“It can be overwhelming when your company takes off and there is a continuous need for new team members. As a founder, your role changes from keeping track of daily operations, to managing team members and recruiting new people. We couldn’t have scaled up this fast without a system like <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. I would advise startups to hire throughout the year (not just when you need new people), and keep all your candidates in an online tool. Give all team members the power to scout new talent, as it’s the future growth of your company. In addition, we aim to create a pleasant work environment. Things like free lunches, Friday afternoon drinks, and party’s from time to time, really help build up a team spirit. Luckily, your efforts will pay off and you’ll find more people finding your site and less need for expensive job promotions.”</p>
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<p>We wish a big thank you to Mark for being this open about the CROWDYHOUSE recruitment strategy and showing me the awesome upcoming new website. We’re proud to help your team grow!</p>
<h3>Want to hire like CROWDYHOUSE? Let our team know </h3>
<p>If you seek help in structuring and optimizing your hiring process, <a href="https://recruitee.com/en/signup/" target="_blank">check Recruitee out</a>! Once you are in the free trial, you can let our team know about your needs in the live chat. During the 18 days of your trial, we will help you get your hiring up and running in no time!</p>
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<p><em>Read the full version of this post on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/recruiterlunch-crowdy-house-shares-their-recruitment-process-and-tips/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>) </p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>Hiring at Tiqets — How to build the team behind the fastest-growing Dutch startuptag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-07-26:502551:BlogPost:19781832016-07-26T15:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
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<div class="main-container"><div class="page-wrapper"><div class="sections-container"><div class="header-style-light" id="page-header"><div class="header-basic style-light"><div class="background-element header-wrapper header-only-text"><div class="header-bg-wrapper"><div class="header-bg"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592693?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592693?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="350"></img></a></div>
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<div class="header-bg">This year Tiqets was…</div>
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<div class="main-container"><div class="page-wrapper"><div class="sections-container"><div id="page-header" class="header-style-light"><div class="header-basic style-light"><div class="background-element header-wrapper header-only-text"><div class="header-bg-wrapper"><div class="header-bg"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592693?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="350" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592693?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="350" class="align-left"/></a></div>
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<div class="header-bg">This year Tiqets was crowned <a href="http://thenextweb.com/eu/2016/04/01/tiqets-tech5-netherlands/" target="_blank">the fastest-growing startup in the Netherlands</a> by The Next Web and Adyen. To those who have kept an eye on this mobile ticketing platform, the news came by with little surprise. Since its starting point, Tiqets has made very conscious and astute choices in business as well as in people. Tiqets’ impressive growth is its biggest validation. From 2014 to 2016, Tiqets has grown more than 3500%. They now operate with 40 FTE (full-time employees), and has a total of $5,5 million funding.</div>
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<div class="post-wrapper"><div class="single-post-view post-body"><div class="post-content"><div class="row-container"><div class="row row-parent style-light limit-width double-top-padding double-bottom-padding"><div class="inner-width"><p>What kind of team in the world can achieve this much growth? In the following interview, Stephanie de Booij, HR Manager at Tiqets, shares with us the secrets of hiring the best people who drive Tiqets’ burgeoning business. Some key points:</p>
<ul>
<li>Having a structured hiring process is key</li>
<li>Happy employees make the best referrals</li>
<li>The importance of being open and honest to candidates</li>
<li>Pinpoint cultural differences via assessment</li>
<li>Two superb hiring advice for fast-growing startups</li>
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<a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/hiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=content&utm_content=tiqetscasestudy&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/IMG_1936-copy.jpg?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a>Stephanie de Booij, HR Manager at Tiqets. Photo: Tiqets.<br/>
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<h1><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Having+a+structured+hiring+process+is+key:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fhiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup%2F+%E2%80%94How+@Tiqets+hires+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Having a structured hiring process is key</a></h1>
<p><strong>We see that you have a lot of job openings now. What is your goal by the end of this year?</strong></p>
<p>"By the end of this year, I think we will have 85 people working for us; but not only in the Netherlands. We have three people in Spain already, one in Paris, one in London, one in Vienna, and one in Rome. So we’re expanding outside the Netherlands."</p>
<p><strong>Could you walk me through your typical hiring process?</strong></p>
<p>"We’re still evaluating our process because we’re quite new. In the beginning, we just used Gmail and pasted them on maps. It doesn’t work like this anymore, of course. Because we’re well-known in the industry, people come to us. If I put out vacancies – it depends on the jobs – sometimes 130 people apply per position. So it doesn’t work with Gmail and maps anymore. We were looking for a tool that was going to help us with processing the candidates. I came out with a few of those tools and tried <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a> by the end. Now we’ve worked with it for eight months.</p>
<p>So what do we do? First, we make up job openings and put them online on several job boards. When people apply, Recruitee helps us with sending general emails like <em>“Thanks for your application. Within two weeks you will receive our feedback.”</em> I used to do that all manually before. Copy-paste, copy-paste. It doesn’t work. I’m happy with tools like Recruitee that helps us with that. When this is ready, we decide per job which people are going to be involved in the recruitment process. With key positions, you want one or two key members to join. Also depending on the jobs we have, we can do recruitment assessment.</p>
<p>Then I have phone conversations with people to see if they could be suitable based on a few points. Then I swipe them to the hiring manager and say: <em>“Hey, these are four candidates. I think they could be suitable.”</em> We then have a phone call via Skype together to see if the candidates really match the profiles. If that’s the case, then nine out of ten times, we invite one or two people to Amsterdam. We book flights for them and arrange if they need a hotel. They’ll have meetings here at the office for the assessment with me, two team members, and one person who comes out of the field.</p>
<p>After that, we decide within the management team if we’re going to hire him or her. If so, I will make sure that the person has a contract according to the law in the different countries they would work in. We really hire them according to the legislation of those countries. It takes a lot of time to establish that, for example, in Spain or France. The process takes about – depending on the vacancy – maximum six weeks from A to Z. Maybe four, or it could be a bit longer. But we want to do it as speedily as possible. Because there are a lot of good people right now on the market and the economy is attracting."</p>
<h1><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Happy+employees+make+the+best+referrals:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fhiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup%2F+%E2%80%94How+@Tiqets+hires+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Happy employees make the best referrals</a></h1>
<p><strong>How many job boards do you normally use when you look for candidates?</strong></p>
<p>"When I look at Recruitee, I always click the free job boards. A lot of times, nine out of ten people we hire via LinkedIn or via our own network. For us, LinkedIn and our network work the best.</p>
<p>If we look at developers, for instance, they used to work with a lot of different developers. They have colleagues. It works best when you have a developer working for you and they could be your ambassador. If the developer is very happy at a company, he’s going to tell his friends and former colleagues about you for sure. A lot of developers know each others already. You have to make sure that your employees are the ambassadors of the company. That’s the first thing I’ve learned. If people are really comfortable and happy with working with us – not only for the salary but just because they find it very nice to work here – and as long as we have that, that could be the nicest referral for our company."</p>
<p><strong>Do you have a program or a detailed plan to make employees happy?</strong></p>
<p>"No. We believe that we can have a whole handbook of <em>“How you can pamper your employees,”</em> but the best thing of how it works is that when people are happy, they’re going to organize it themselves. So we have football matches. We have pizza and beer section. We have Friday evening drinks. We have all that stuff and everything comes out of the employees. We can say from above: <em>“Hey, next week we have to do this and everybody has to join.”</em> But it isn’t always going to work. There are a lot of people who just like to organize things for the company. And if you join, you join. If you don’t, it’s fine as well. And we lunch together. That’s also important. Lunch is paid; we have healthy lunch. I think they just like it to have a talk with each other and it’s open space. <span>CEO, HR, technical people in product and development – everybody sits together. That’s the most important thing."</span></p>
<p><strong>What is the one thing that contributes significantly to your hiring success so far?</strong></p>
<p>"It’s hard to say what it exactly is. We have a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 57 from employees. Really high. Also our customers give the same score of 57. We’re quite successful. I don’t really know what it is. But I have the feeling, and people tell me, that it really feels like a family. It is pretty strange, though, but we really care for each other. We’ve hired a few people outside the Netherlands and they’re staying there. Still they have the feeling that they are really part of the team. Because we take them over to the Netherlands sometimes to meet everybody, we have close contact via Skype. Also, because it’s a flat organization."</p>
<h1><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=The+importance+of+being+open+and+honest+to+candidates:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fhiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup%2F+%E2%80%94How+@Tiqets+hires+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">The importance of being open and honest to candidates</a></h1>
<p><strong>During the phone calls or interviews, how do you already impress the candidates?</strong></p>
<p>"I’m just honest to people. If I have the feeling that they are a fit or they are not honest to me, I will tell. Also I’m not going to tell them fairy tales like: <em>“You can come with us and earn 100k euros and you don’t have to do anything for that.”</em> I’m not going to say that. I’m being honest and normal to them, but not that formal. Then they feel that they can share things with me as well. <span>As long as you’re honest and nice and friendly to people, not just as if you’re friendly, but really friendly, then you will get that back as well.</span> That’s my idea.</p>
<p>There is a time I say: <em>“Ok, we’re a startup company and we’re going to hire you to work in Spain. Here is the letter of employment. This is what you can expect. Maybe a week or two weeks after you start, you will receive your actual contract. But trust me, this is what we agreed on, so it’s going to happen. It’s just not going to happen as a machine immediately.”</em> And people respect that. They’re happy with honesty and they can always email me, WhatsApp me, or send me a message, and I will help us send them a message back. I think it has to do with being really open to people."</p>
<p><strong>Is that something that you already knew since you start, or is that something you’ve learned along the way?</strong></p>
<p>"This is what I feel the most comfortable with. So you will not find me in a formal organization where this is not a standard. But of course, you learn. In the beginning, when I was hiring the first person outside the Netherlands, I had no idea. I thought that I knew what we’re looking for. But you just have to wait and see if that person is going to present Tiqets, for instance, in France. You don’t know. So of course, you can make a mis-hire. That’s possible. But from your mis-hire, you learn. Also with hiring more and more people, we create a certain identity together. It just happens. When you have some people, you know a bit more if the newcomer is going to fit in the organization or not. That becomes more and more important besides the hard skills that people are bringing. Of course, if you can’t program, you can’t work in the development team. But if you can program a bit and it could be better, and you have a nice personality, I believe that is more valuable than the other way around. I really believe that. <span>Because in the end, you can learn a lot. But if you’re not nice to work with, you won’t change that easily."</span></p>
<h1><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Pinpoint+cultural+differences+via+assessment:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fhiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup%2F+%E2%80%94How+@Tiqets+hires+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Pinpoint cultural differences via assessment</a></h1>
<p><strong>Are there any hiring tactics that you use now that you didn’t use before?</strong></p>
<p>"In the beginning, we didn’t use an assessment tool. But when you hire someone outside the Netherlands, there are different cultures coming in place. The Dutch culture is completely different from the Spanish or Italian culture. You have to see things in perspective. For instance, <span>when you say: <em>“I’m a hard worker,”</em> that has such a big difference when you say that in the Netherlands or when you say that in Italy</span>. Therefore, we want to use an assessment tool that says whether somebody is a hard worker, that should already take into consideration all the other people in Italy. It really makes the difference. Also, it’s just what kind of personality we’re dealing with. People can be so friendly and honest and nice, but in the end, that isn’t the case. It also has to do with cultures. The assessment is really helpful for us when we’re hiring people outside the Netherlands. Other things that we’ve learned: Not only trust your own feeling, but really see what other people from the company think. If I and my hiring manager are positive, but some people say: <em>“Oh ok, but this may not be a real fit for Tiqets,”</em> then we can discuss and together we decide if the person is going to be hired or not."</p>
<p><strong>Do you also do trials?</strong></p>
<p>"Yes, it depends on the job. For technical jobs, product and development roles, we do assignments. Also for marketing positions. We’re giving them assignments with data from our company. There is no right or wrong. It’s just to see how they think, how they are going to work on this thesis. Then they are allowed to present it to a few team members in a meeting room to show <em>“Ok, I have chosen this decision for this and this reason.”</em> We just need to see how they think and there is room for discussion. I think it’s really good for the employees and for the new hires."</p>
<h1><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Two+superb+hiring+advice+for+fast-growing+startups:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fhiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup%2F+%E2%80%94How+@Tiqets+hires+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Two superb hiring advice for fast-growing startups</a></h1>
<p><strong>Do you have other tips and advice for hiring, especially in such a fast-growing company?</strong></p>
<p>"<span>Well for sure, use a recruitment tool.</span> I’ve spoken to a lot of startup companies, and they asked: <em>“How did you do this?”</em> Then I said: <em>“It’s not that hard, you know.”</em> If you use a recruitment tool, it’s going to help you a lot. You want to be polite and personal to people, so you want to give a response to everybody. You need a recruitment tool to do that in order to make sure that you have some spare time to focus on some other things. That’s the first step and it’s not that expensive. People always think that it’s expensive to use tools and they’ll just use their Gmail accounts. But it’s not expensive and if you’re on holiday, someone else can take it over from you and they can just use Recruitee. That’s the first advice I’d give.</p>
<p>Second advice is about when you’re a startup company, you might get lost in what you’re really looking for. Because you’re new, nobody knows you, so they can be better working for other established companies. When someone says: <em>“Ah, I want to work for you,”</em> then you are tempted to just hire that person. But you don’t really know if the person is going to fit in your organization. <span>A bad hire in a small company has a huge impact. It’s better to wait than just hiring someone.</span> I’ve spoken to a lot of startups, they just don’t have a clear idea of what they’re standing for, what they’re looking for. They just hire someone because they think: <em>“Oh, I have a friend, he is a smart guy, so he can work for me.”</em> But sometimes it just isn’t the right decision for the company. You need to brainstorm together with a few other people to see what you’re really looking for. That’s important."</p>
<p><strong>Thank you so much Stephanie, for joining us!</strong></p>
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<p><span><em>Read the full version of this post on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/hiring-tiqets-build-team-behind-fastest-growing-dutch-startup/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</span> </p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>
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</div>Hiring @Hotjar—How constant optimizations result in a genius hiring processtag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-06-29:502551:BlogPost:19749022016-06-29T16:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557591751?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557591751?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></span></p>
<p><span>Back in 2014, David Darmanin was frustrated with a lack of an all-in-one, affordable CRO (conversion rate optimization) solution. So he brought a team together to build that dream tool. The result is Hotjar. <span>By now, Hotjar has gained worldwide traction and </span><em>“staked its claim on the future of CRO,”</em><span> …</span></span></p>
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557591751?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557591751?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></span></p>
<p><span>Back in 2014, David Darmanin was frustrated with a lack of an all-in-one, affordable CRO (conversion rate optimization) solution. So he brought a team together to build that dream tool. The result is Hotjar. <span>By now, Hotjar has gained worldwide traction and </span><em>“staked its claim on the future of CRO,”</em><span> </span><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/08/hotjar-launches-to-start-a-conversion-optimization-revolution/" target="_blank">VentureBeat reports</a><span>. Standing behind this remarkable success is a talented team who works 100% remotely. How did they work this out? In the following talk, David shares with us his secret recipe for cooking up the dream team.</span></span></p>
<p><strong>Could you tell us a bit about your team at the moment?</strong></p>
<p>"We’ve just recruited three people. Contractually speaking, we’re around 13 now. W<span>e decided early on that even though the co-founders all live kilometers away from each other, we would be remote</span><span>. Because there is nothing worse than the feeling of some people are together in an office, and the others are not part of that group. We still have a lounge. We have a beautiful office here in Malta where we fly everyone down twice a year. So we have events and enjoy the beautiful weather here. But we only go there as a lounge, so there are no sofas or cliche startup office stuff."</span></p>
<p><strong>We talked to <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/the-art-of-remote-hiring-process-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=content&utm_content=hotjarcasestudy&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">Josh from Baremetrics</a> and he actually has the same; the team from Baremetrics is fully remote as well. What is it difficult for you when you hire remotely? Is there anything that you come across that’s a big challenge?</strong></p>
<p><span>"<span>No challenges which are specific, I’d say, to this experience. Because equally, there are also challenges if we decide to have an office in Europe. The challenge would have been to find people locally or to fly them in. I honestly believe that those challenges are much bigger than the challenges we’re facing with remote [work]. Overall, I think remote [work] is actually easier. But I started off lucky that I had worked for two years remotely with a UK company. They were really good at doing it, so I had this kind of training in it. I’d say </span><span>the biggest challenge is probably making sure people don’t overwork, because you don’t have control of the visibility of them doing that</span><span>. You can get surprised by that. You don’t realize it and all of a sudden, someone says </span><em>“You know, I’m burned out,”</em><span> for example."</span></span></p>
<p><strong>That’s funny that you say that. Because you would have assumed that you need to chase people to actually get things done. I think the fear of most people is that if I hire someone remotely, they don’t do enough.</strong></p>
<p>"<span>That I think is a big misconception. Because it all comes down, at the end of the day, to choosing the right people. </span><span>If you are employing for remote [work], you need to employ self-driven people or people who are very ambitious</span><span>. Or it’s not going to work out. I don’t want to discriminate in any ways, and we don’t actively employ older or younger people. But I think there is this automatic filtration system, which is: if you are really young, you probably don’t want remote jobs. Because you want to be more in an office, having fun, and doing crazy stuff. So we’ve found that most people who are attracted to this type of jobs are probably the more matured people with families. Those make for much more reliable people. If anything, these are the guys like me, right? So I’m having a young kid and another one on the way, spending too much time at home and too much time working. It’s interesting, it’s a very different dynamic.</span>"</p>
<p><strong>Can you describe your typical hiring process?</strong></p>
<p>"Sure! <span>We’re crazy and obsessed with our hiring process.</span> It’s totally way more detailed than it should be for a company of our size. But as I said before, they are probably going to think that we’re crazy. Here is what we do, the flowchart looks something like this: we start always with a survey. The main reason why we use <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a> is because you offer that. That’s one of the main killer features we like that we can configure that. And <span>we like doing really long surveys: 10-12 detailed questions. The reason for that is: <em>“If you don’t really believe in joining us, that’s the perfect kind of filter upfront.”</em> Because the biggest waste of time we’ve had right now is doing too many interviews.</span> We want to eliminate that. So, make a scary survey – step one. This survey is designed in a very intentional way. We have an operations manual that highlights every step of this. It’s like seven-page long. There are standard questions that always need to be included in there. Out of the 12 [questions], there is always, for example, one key question that we say is our key filter question. We start by looking at those answers. If that answer is wrong, you’re automatically disqualified. That makes the process of reviewing very easy. That’s critical when you are, for example, hiring for the VP of Marketing and having 320 applicants. In that case, you need to make sure that there is a quick way of filtering out people. I know this sounds horrible, but the truth is that you need that. <span>It’s all about not whether they’re good or not. It’s all about whether they are a match or not.</span></p>
<p>To take a step back, <span>one thing that we did purely because of employment is that we define our culture by using a lot of details</span>. We have eight culture values and we’ve designed our questions on our own. For example, one of them is always be learning. So we have a specific question about <em>“What have you learned in the last year?”</em> We want to see what is the trajectory, what is the journey you are on, and what you know today. Are you a growth person? Or are you just a person who knows how to do something and that’s it. It starts with the survey, then we have all the email [response] automated from Recruitee. We love that.</p>
<p>At that point, we would request videos. We ask them to record videos and upload them to Dropbox or whatnot. We decided to do this because we’re doing tons of interviews. We’re doing per position 30 interviews. When we calculated the time on that, it was a huge waste. Because we’re constantly reviewing and optimizing how we use our time, we said <span><em>“Ok, what if instead of us 13 doing 30 interviews, we do 30 videos, and out of them we choose five?”</em> That would be a huge optimization.</span> So we created the questions and the flow for that. And when we’re doing that, we love it. We have again, very intentionally, five standard questions and these cannot be changed by a role. They are standard because the video stage is purely culture fit to see <em>“Will they match culturally?”</em> We do this because early on, on the dev side, we’re eliminating people because they didn’t have the dev skills we need. It was a mistake, because <span>if they are a good culture fit and they can learn, then we’ll teach them. That’s much more important.</span></p>
<p>From the videos, we then ask some trick questions. Basically, we invite them to do an interview. At that stage, there is an interview and we bring in three people. We also have roles. There is always a hiring manager and two other people. One of them is always the CEO. Each of the three has the veto power. You can say “No” on a person and that’s it. There is no debate. Then we have a Trello board with a structure. On the left, we have links to the videos, the Recruitee profiles, etc. Then there is the flow: the questions, explaining the role, all this, and we go through that.</p>
<p>If the person makes it through that stage, we go to what’s called the task stage. They’re invited to HipChat. Then onwards everything is done purely via chat. <span>Because our work is remote, we want to evaluate how good they behave in that environment</span>. They’re given a task in a Word doc. There is no video, no audio, so that we can see how they ask questions, how quickly they understand things, if they can communicate with us. They’re given two to three days, which is a paid period of time – we pay them for that work. And the task again – there are a lot of definitions of how the task should be – has to be something that we would actually use. <span>We found out at the beginning that we’re giving fictitious tasks, so we’re like <em>“Yeah, this is good, this is bad.”</em> You don’t really question the work</span>. So it has to be something we’re actually going to use. That’s why we pay for it. At that stage, they have to work with the team and present to the same panel. If we believe in what they’ve done, that’s the stage where we then negotiate.</p>
<p>What’s great is that <span>we always define a salary range upfront, and we do not negotiate outside of that range</span>. The reason is that we don’t want to become a company that employs purely based on salary. There is more than that to it. <span>What’s great is by doing this – as we call it – “performance recruitment,” at the stage when the person decides to join, we literally just change their email and HipChat and they’re ready to start working with us</span>. So everything has been done and ready to go. The moment they accept, we have a Trello board kicking in with an on-boarding process. That is all automated. Some may tell me <em>“Sounds like an overkill.”</em> Probably it is, but what’s great is that at the size of 13 and the size of revenue we’re at, we’ve decided we’re going to focus completely internally on growth and optimization instead of externally. Because we know that once we reach high levels of revenue, we won’t have the time to focus internally. We want everything automated there like a well-oiled machine."</p>
<p><strong>What is the most significant thing you’ve learned and adopted into your hiring process so far?</strong></p>
<p><span><span>"That’s a good question. I’m torn between the video thing, which was great. Because we’re very agile, we’re constantly optimizing our process. </span><span>It was a very big win that we went in, looked at the number, analyzed the data and the hours, and made that change that has such a huge impact on everyone</span><span>. Obviously, you have to calculate when you think about it. If it’s 10 interviews times three people time one hour, and if you don’t like the person – typically if you don’t like the person, you know within five or 10 minutes – the waste is just unbelievable. Comparing that to 10 videos that you look at, maybe for 10 to 15 minutes, and then you know. That’s a huge save. The other one is probably also reviewing the questions. Some of the questions that we’re asking and refining have a quite a big impact. </span><span>What we really like is that we ask people very intentional questions</span><span>, and this has to be done in voice on record. It cannot be done in writing, because certain questions are better asked on the spot than others when you have time to prepare. </span><span>And then, what we do is that we ask that same questions to references and see how much that matches</span><span>. So this thing that we’ve improved on, which is this kind of combining things across stages, is a huge win as well."</span></span></p>
<p><strong>Is this also your advice to startups hiring remotely?</strong></p>
<p>"Absolutely. Cross-referencing is key. And whenever we’re interviewing people for roles that are like customer success or marketing, we actually ask references from customers, not from colleagues only. So you can see what type of experiences they’ve been creating for them. But the biggest advice I’d say is following your gut feeling. That is so important. If it doesn’t really feel like a match, then… We’ve made so many mistakes. If you really need a role, you convince yourself that that person is the right person. Scoreboard systems that eliminate that human choice are also important."</p>
<p><strong>Any tips you want to share with startups regarding hiring?</strong></p>
<p>"I think communication. Hire for communication – people who can really communicate are important. Because with remote [work], communication is key. Second is the ability to learn. That is so important. Once you have those two things together, that’s key. When I think back when I joined some companies before, I knew nothing. But they employed me because they saw the potential of me learning. So be that company that believes in someone’s ability to learn. I think that’s also important."</p>
<p><strong>Great to hear that. Thanks David for joining us!</strong></p>
<p><em>- - -</em></p>
<p><span><em>Read the full version of this post on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/hiring-hotjar-constant-optimizations-result-genius-hiring-process/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</span> </p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>Hiring at Rockstart—The benefits of having a good hiring processtag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-06-23:502551:BlogPost:19739622016-06-23T11:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557595970?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557595970?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p>Dubbed as “World’s Greatest Startup Machine,” Rockstart is home to more than 78 startups joining its accelerator program. After receiving 1000-day mentorship and funding at Rockstart, many of its alumni have kept rocking their records. Among those are big names like 3D Hubs and Peerby.</p>
<ul>
<li>68 startups have graduated from Rockstart</li>
<li>400+ jobs have been…</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557595970?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557595970?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p>Dubbed as “World’s Greatest Startup Machine,” Rockstart is home to more than 78 startups joining its accelerator program. After receiving 1000-day mentorship and funding at Rockstart, many of its alumni have kept rocking their records. Among those are big names like 3D Hubs and Peerby.</p>
<ul>
<li>68 startups have graduated from Rockstart</li>
<li>400+ jobs have been created within Rockstart’s accelerator program</li>
<li>76% of the startups graduating between 2012 and 2015 get funding</li>
<li>€29+ million was raised in total</li>
</ul>
<p>Rockstart also offers office space, plus a dynamic network of mentors, investors, and peers, to fast-growing companies. This melting pot of energy lured us to the space at the center of Amsterdam. We became a tenant at Rockstart right before Recruitee launched. Since then, we have been receiving incredible support and feedback from Rockstart as well as their roster of amazing startups.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>“Companies are compositions of people. It’s all about getting the right people. So we want to add that element to what we do. That’s one of the most important parts to get right in order to become successful as a startup.”</em> <em>– Rune Theill, co-founder and CEO at Rockstart.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>One problem echoes a whole lot in our conversations with all startups is hiring. In order to survive and scale, startups need to hire competent team members consistently. It’s much trickier than it sounds. We’re talking about a team of two, three, or five members. That means every person a startup hires next would add one-third, one-fourth, one-sixth to the growth of the whole team. That’s a lot of space to either go right or go home. No one wants to get the first hires wrong. Investing in a good process helps lower the risk of hiring the wrong person.</p>
<h1>The need for a structure</h1>
<p>However, when they needed to scale, startups just went around asking: “We need someone right now. How do we find them? Do you know anyone?”</p>
<p>Rune Theill, co-founder and CEO at Rockstart, would suggest them to post their job openings on <a href="https://angel.co/" target="_blank">AngelList</a> at that time. “It’s an American platform and there are American candidates looking for jobs. But since most of our companies are European, we realized that there were no good platforms for connecting talent with our startups. And look at the amount of openings there were: more than 300 at some point! All these 78 companies had more than 300 positions open, and many spent six to eight weeks finding the right persons!”</p>
<p>At this point, asking around seemed to yield more results than “post and pray.” Floran van der Harst, HR & Finance at Rockstart, often had someone in mind for the startups. Being a recruiter within Rockstart, Floran got many talent knocking on her door. There were always candidates Floran was very impressed with but couldn’t hire. She tried to keep them in mind for startups in need. But it quickly became too much. “It was not really something scalable and structured. That’s why I was looking for a system to share this kind of information with our startups,” Floran told us.</p>
<p>Rockstart’s search for a solution led it back to <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>, the hiring platform Rockstart is using to expand its own team. Before that, Rockstart used Podio to organize its internal hiring, but the process didn’t work out. “Recruitee gives us way more flexibility to create custom application forms and store candidates in an organized database,” Rockstart team told us. So Don Ritzen, Rockstart’s co-founder, approached Perry Oostdam, Recruitee’s co-founder and CEO, to set up the deal for the startups in the accelerator.</p>
<p>“It turns out to be successful. It’s a good setup,” Rune smiled. The collaboration is called <a href="http://startupjobs.rockstart.com/" target="_blank">Talent Pool</a>. For candidates, it functions as a job board plus pre-screening and applying system. For startups, it functions as an applicant tracking system (ATS) with a simple and efficient workflow. Candidates can apply for the positions they’re interested in within a few clicks. Their information will get imported and organized neatly and efficiently within Recruitee’s ATS for all startups to review and select from.</p>
<h1>Process leads to success</h1>
<p>Within Rockstart itself, the team is continuing using Recruitee every day and is so happy with it. Rune shared his typical hiring process: “What we normally do is that we write the job opening in Google Doc. We make sure that everyone has input and gets to look at it. Then we put it on Recruitee and the moment it’s there, we give the internal employees an opportunity to look at it one more time. Then we put it <a href="http://jobs.rockstart.com/" target="_blank">online</a>.</p>
<p>What I like about Recruitee is that it’s very easy. The flow is very nice with the drag and drop style that we’re used to with Trello. If it’s a position that I have to interview for, I’d like to clean the pipeline up every two days. So I always have an overview of how many good candidates we have, instead of waiting until the end of the process and realized that there are no good candidates. Taking one candidate from one stage to another is simple. I spend 30 seconds to 10 minutes per candidate.</p>
<p>When it comes to internship, we give them an exercise within the field and they have to complete it within a week. Then we look at the result and decide if we want to proceed. When it comes to more senior positions, we have HR recruitment firms to do the assessment. In most cases, we conduct assessments after the second interview.”</p>
<h1>Closing candidates</h1>
<p>Closing candidates nowadays is as hard as attracting good ones. There is a timeline Rune wants to keep in mind for the whole hiring process.</p>
<p>“The goal is two weeks. Within the last eight candidates, we managed that with two. The rest we didn’t manage to get them on the timeline. But the goal is two. Otherwise they lose interest.”</p>
<p>To manage such tight timeline, Rune prioritizes good process above all. “I think if you don’t have a good process from writing the job opening to putting it online, to getting applications, to interviewing, to doing the hiring, everything that would step in there would be weakened and would not give you the optimal outcome.</p>
<p>You should set up the process early on and optimize the process as you go. Because at the beginning, it’s very coincidental with new hires. You might be very optimistic: Somebody comes to you and you hire them. But it’s something you have to become good at.</p>
<p>As a founder, one of your core roles is to hire good people and attract good people. You just need expertise when it’s there, which means you need to practice. Practice to do it right from day one, and not doing it like so and so until you suddenly have to scale when you get the money and that changes the whole setup. I wished we would have done that better and more professionally.</p>
<p>If we had been using Recruitee from the beginning, we would have found an even better flow than what we have right now. Maybe we would have hit a one-week timeline with the hiring process (instead of two weeks). Being the fastest is always something maybe we could do much better from the beginning.”</p>
<p>Thanks Rune and Floran for sharing their hiring experience with us!</p>
<p>Would you like to learn more about Rockstart and their open positions? Check these out:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://jobs.rockstart.com/" target="_blank">Rockstart’s Careers Site</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rockstart.com/" target="_blank">Rockstart website</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rockstart.com/blog/" target="_blank">Rockstart Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://startupjobs.rockstart.com/" target="_blank">Rockstart’s Talent Pool for startups in the accelerator program</a></li>
<li><a href="https://nl.linkedin.com/in/runetheill" target="_blank">Rune Theill on LinkedIn</a></li>
<li><a href="https://nl.linkedin.com/in/floran-van-der-harst-47062554/en" target="_blank">Floran van der Harst on LinkedIn</a></li>
</ul>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=content&utm_content=rockstartcasestudy&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>How to improve the candidate experiencetag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-06-16:502551:BlogPost:19730792016-06-16T14:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557593535?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557593535?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">“It’s a pain.”</p>
<p>This is what you often hear (from both sides of the hiring equation) about applicant tracking software (ATS).</p>
<p>Candidates <a href="http://blog.capterra.com/10-applicant-tracking-statistics-that-prove-youre-hiring-like-an-atshole/" target="_blank">complain that ATSs</a> are a black…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557593535?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557593535?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">“It’s a pain.”</p>
<p>This is what you often hear (from both sides of the hiring equation) about applicant tracking software (ATS).</p>
<p>Candidates <a href="http://blog.capterra.com/10-applicant-tracking-statistics-that-prove-youre-hiring-like-an-atshole/" target="_blank">complain that ATSs</a> are a black hole, and recruiters use ATSs mostly as a mere keyword search engine.</p>
<p>What started out as a solution has become part of the problem.</p>
<p>You know having a <a href="http://firstround.com/review/a-primer-for-startups-and-job-seekers-to-both-win-the-talent-war/" target="_blank">good, fast hiring process</a> is crucial in landing top talent. You can’t just input everything in spreadsheets or you’ll wonder why you have so little time at the end of the day.</p>
<p>An ATS can come to the rescue and save you time, yet most mistake their ATS for a silver bullet. It’s easy with software to just step back and forget to add the human touch all together. You can easily approach candidates as just another piece of data to collect. But this is where your candidate experience begins to fail, hard.</p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/img-1.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/img-1.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>The infamous chart above gets so many nods from job applicants because it’s so accurate. A negative candidate experience like the above is common but generally ignored by employers. Its cost may not be straightforward, but by no means should you underestimate it. Candidates with negative experiences are <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/3028111/hiring/why-your-ats-may-be-killing-your-recruiting-efforts.html" target="_blank">less likely to complete the application</a> or hiring process. They will also tell their competent friends to avoid you at all costs.</p>
<p>And if they’re a customer or potential customer? Forget it, gaining (back) that customer-brand relationship is nearly impossible.</p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/img-2.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/img-2.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>What you need to do to avoid this is keep a balance: <a href="http://blog.capterra.com/applicant-tracking-video-why-not-having-an-ats-is-killing-your-recruiting-company/" target="_blank">use your ATS for productivity gains</a> while also retaining the human side of your hiring process. Below, we’ll look at how to do that by examining what most often damages the candidate experience, and the tools and methods you can use to fix it.</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.capterra.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/top-reasons.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://blog.capterra.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/top-reasons.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h2><b>1 – Writing detailed job descriptions</b></h2>
<p><b>Mistakes: </b><span>Job description lacks detail. No salary info. No benefits info. No info on hiring/interview process. No contact person’s info.</span></p>
<p><b>Why you should act: </b><span>If candidates are unaware of your company, a job description is their very first touchpoint. You don’t want to make a bad first impression. Sadly, most job descriptions are laundry lists of skills that simply don’t work.</span></p>
<p><span>Lou Adler suggests a better way of writing job descriptions: make it </span><a href="http://louadlergroup.com/hire-more-diverse-talent-rethinking-job-description/" target="_blank"><span>performance-based</span></a><span>. Describe what a candidate has to accomplish during a certain period on the job. Adler gives two examples: “Complete the detailed project plan for the new automated warehouse in 120 days,” versus “Must have 5+ years of logistics and supply chain management experience in high-volume consumer durables, plus 3 years of supervisory experience.” Any candidate would tell you the former is much more helpful in describing the actual job.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.addisongroup.com/news/mismanaged-survey-reveals-dim-prospects-for-future-of-management-and-workpl" target="_blank"><span>Research has consistently shown</span></a><span> that regardless of age, candidates care most about benefits and salary. This may not be the first thing on their mind when they browse your job opening, but it could be the last thing they recall when weighing opportunities. If you aren’t sure about the exact number, or want to leave room for negotiation, presenting a salary range is the perfect middle way.</span></p>
<p><span>Finally, to ensure candidates don’t feel they are throwing their applications into a black hole, your job description should state clearly what the hiring process looks like. The name and contact details of the person in charge should also be present. This assures candidates that they aren’t just a cog in the system.</span></p>
<p><b>Checklist:</b></p>
<p><span>– Describe the challenges and goals in the first six months or one year on the job.</span></p>
<p><span>– Describe the application process as clearly as possible: how candidates will be evaluated, how many stages there will be. Even better: how long each stage should take, who will be in charge of each stage.</span></p>
<p><span>– Not sure if the job description is clear enough? Put it in a Google Doc so other members of the hiring team can comment/co-edit.</span></p>
<p><span>– State the benefits and salary range.</span></p>
<p><span>– Include contact details and the name of the contact person.</span></p>
<p><span>– Use an ATS that can import all candidate resume info straight into the database. Don’t force candidates to fill in everything they’ve just uploaded.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://blog.capterra.com/are-you-blaming-your-ats-for-your-bad-candidate-experience/" target="_blank">Continue reading →</a></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>Hiring at EV-Box—Growing an international team in a brand-new industrytag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-06-07:502551:BlogPost:19715962016-06-07T15:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592050?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592050?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p>In case you haven’t heard: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-crisis/" target="_blank">Electric Vehicles (EVs) is the future</a>. Spearhead this green revolution is EV-Box – the international market leader in EV charging solutions and related cloud-based services. EV-Box has more than 38,000 charging points worldwide ready to serve wherever you go:…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592050?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592050?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p>In case you haven’t heard: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-crisis/" target="_blank">Electric Vehicles (EVs) is the future</a>. Spearhead this green revolution is EV-Box – the international market leader in EV charging solutions and related cloud-based services. EV-Box has more than 38,000 charging points worldwide ready to serve wherever you go: from public charging booths to simpler home chargers. Besides the hardware, you also get the cloud-based services that facilitate the operation and maintenance of your chargers.</p>
<h1>Hiring in a young market</h1>
<p>This innovative setup was founded by Bram van de Leur in 2010 in the Netherlands. By the end of last year, EV-Box opened its first offices outside the Netherlands. Now over 50 people are working with EV-Box on a sustainable future. Together with the growth of EVs around the world, EV-Box team sees its own rapid expansion. So we visited EV-Box to find out more about their amazing growth story. “In 2014, we were about 20 people. We’ve grown now to a bit over 50 people and we expect to keep growing over the next few years, especially in our international teams,” Winny van der Sleet, Human Resources Manager at EV-Box, told us.</p>
<p>The global growth also comes with its own challenges: “For example, with our UK vacancy, it’s really hard to find people because the market is so new. You cannot find people who have the right experience. Sometimes the experience is not needed, but at least they do need to have experience in similar companies or affinity with our product,” Winny shared.</p>
<h1>Enhance the candidate experience</h1>
<p>EV-Box solves its growth challenge by using <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a> – the first and only hiring platform that EV-Box implements to organize its hiring process. Other than boosting her hiring efficiency, Winny uses Recruitee to leverage the candidate experience. “I use the search function a lot. Today I have this guy and I’m like ‘Hey, didn’t he already apply?’ Then I searched for his name and saw that he had applied three times. It’s really nice because I can see the history and it makes the communication more personal. At least I can say: ‘It was before my time, but I see that you already applied.’ Sometimes people also applied and later on, there is a role that fits them, and I can say: ‘Ok, we’re considering you now.’ The big picture helps and makes the whole thing personal.”</p>
<h1>Scaling globally </h1>
<p>Want to scale a dynamic team internationally? Winny has three advice for you.</p>
<p>First is team spirit.</p>
<p>“To be honest, I don’t think it’s really our package which I can resell because it’s quite basic at the moment. We’re working on that. I’d say: Try to (it works for us at least) get people to come to see the office, even if they’ll be working in another country, to meet the team in person to feel the vibe. It’s important to get people feel enthusiastic. We did that with the UK candidate and got him here. When people come here, they’re already impressed by the office. They love the car, and the open atmosphere, and the view (although it’s not in the city center), and being part of a hard-working and inspiring team,” Winny confirmed. “I think there is a real team spirit here. Lots of companies say they have it. But I do feel that here.”</p>
<p>Second is referrals.</p>
<p>“If you talk about referrals, it works for us. It’s always one of the best sources for me to find people. Here we do work with that a lot. Very recently we’ve hired two front-end developers and two back-end developers. We’re really happy that we found them because that’s really difficult. We’re lucky because we did it through our network. One of the guys who is working here used to work at this company and they decided to move to the US; so the hub here was closed. The people there could go to the US, but most didn’t want to. He contacted these former colleagues and we found two people from this one company, which is great.</p>
<p>We also have a €1000 referral bonus. But I have the impression that it’s not only the incentive. People are really enthusiastic and are into finding the right people for the company. If you work with a lot of young people, they have a big network and they have a lot of ambitious friends.” Referrals also work exceptionally well for EV-Box’s international recruitment, as Winny recalled. “Another thing we’re trying to think about is the local situation. Like with the UK vacancy: How is the situation there? What do we need there? How is the market there? Here again, it’s mostly networking. And the products. For the technical guys, EV-Box is a very interesting product. They have a lot of independence and they can really think with the company.”</p>
<p>Third is marketing.</p>
<p>“We have a very strong marketing department. We’re very good in branding the company and our image. The marketing on social media attracts both local and international candidates. When I applied here, I looked at the website and other social media channels, and I thought: ‘This is really attractive.’ That’s also what I get back from applicants. That’s often what you do: you see a vacancy and you go to the website and Facebook, and you can say: ‘I’m really interested. Sounds like a dynamic company.’,” Winny shared. “Internally, we’ve developed a referral program that empowers our team members to find the best talent in their networks. The marketing department is very active in creating content. They dynamically share the vacancies on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/company/ev-box" target="_blank">our LinkedIn</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/evboxbv" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, and let potential job seekers know that… ‘Hey, we’re hiring!’ Then we put the pictures and videos of the team on <a href="https://evbox.recruitee.com/" target="_blank">our Careers Site</a>, which is really nice. That’s what we do through Recruitee.”</p>
<p>Thanks Winny so much for sharing your hiring experience with us!</p>
<p>Would you like to learn more about EV-Box and their open positions? Check these links out:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ev-box.com/" target="_blank">EV-Box website</a></li>
<li><a href="https://evbox.recruitee.com/" target="_blank">EV-Box Careers Site</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.ev-box.com/" target="_blank">EV-Box blog</a></li>
<li><a href="https://nl.linkedin.com/in/winnyvandersleet" target="_blank">Winny van der Sleet on LinkedIn</a></li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>How To Avoid Gender Bias In The Hiring Process With Technologytag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-06-03:502551:BlogPost:19716162016-06-03T10:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><em><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592259?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592259?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></em></p>
<p><em>Make a game about time travel and talking lizards, nobody objects. Make a game about the gender gap, “This is unrealistic!”</em> — <a href="https://twitter.com/maurovanetti/status/701223141549412352" target="_blank">Mauro Vanetti</a></p>
<p>The amount of hate Mauro Vanetti received for his two-minute game was insane. Mauro made …</p>
<p><em><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592259?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592259?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></em></p>
<p><em>Make a game about time travel and talking lizards, nobody objects. Make a game about the gender gap, “This is unrealistic!”</em> — <a href="https://twitter.com/maurovanetti/status/701223141549412352" target="_blank">Mauro Vanetti</a></p>
<p>The amount of hate Mauro Vanetti received for his two-minute game was insane. Mauro made <a href="https://maurovanetti.itch.io/2i" target="_blank">“Two Interviewees”</a> as a tiny gaming experiment with the anti-sexist theme. And the Internet exploded with haters calling him from <a href="https://twitter.com/maurovanetti/status/701571618729021440" target="_blank">sexist</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/maurovanetti/status/703758510799110144" target="_blank">ISIS</a>.</p>
<p>“I must have struck a chord,” Mauro <a href="https://twitter.com/maurovanetti/status/700119166192324608" target="_blank">tweeted</a>. Gender gap in employment has been that giant <a href="http://elephantinthevalley.com/" target="_blank">elephant in the room</a>. Since the research into orchestras’ “blind” audition process revealing unconscious gender bias in the 1970s ’till this very moment, the problem still exists. It’s a touchy, tricky one.</p>
<p>In Mauro’s game, you play as two characters: Martin and Irene. Both have the same professional background, and are going to have an interview for the same company with the same “HR Recruiter” — Mr. White. They got the same questions and give the same answers. The only difference here is the shocking biased mind of the interviewer.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592650?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592650?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p><span>If you answer the question “how would you describe yourself?” with “as a competent, ambitious professional,” Martin will get a plus for being “resolute” and Irene will get a minus for being “arrogant.”</span></p>
<p><span>If you answer the question “how do you see yourself in 20 years?” with “with an established career and a family,” Martin will get a plus for “work ethic” and Irene will get a minus for “pregnancy alert.”</span></p>
<p><span>If you choose 30k over 20k for salary, Martin will get a plus for being acceptable and Irene will get a minus for asking too much.</span></p>
<p>No matter which answers you choose, Irene won’t get hired. Many players were pissed off and wondered if they did it “right.” In two minutes, they feel the frustration that many women have to face in their entire lives.</p>
<p>Mauro may exaggerate “Two Interviewees” to make a point, but it’s not far from the truth. At no certain stage of the hiring process would somebody say “Let’s disqualify women.” For the most part, we make decisions based on our experience, impression, hunch, and unconscious bias — the gestalt formed from the societies we live in, that sadly are in favor of the male population at large.</p>
<p>Our stance here is not about hiring women because of their gender. It’s about not passing on talented women just because of existing bias and implicit stereotypes.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/avoidinggenderbiasrecruitmentselectionprocess.pdf" target="_blank">Studies show that</a> we form unconscious bias against women when: 1) the number of women in an applicant pool is small, 2) evaluators are under time pressure, fatigued, or need a quick decision, and 3) when performance criteria are ambiguous.</p>
<p>The good news is that we can prevent all three nowadays by establishing a good process, with the help of technology.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.eremedia.com/ere/how-to-avoid-gender-bias-in-the-hiring-process-with-technology/" target="_blank">Continue reading →</a></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>How to adjust your recruitment strategy to remote workerstag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-05-24:502551:BlogPost:19696442016-05-24T13:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/remotehiring-header.png" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/remotehiring-header.png?width=300" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="https://people.stanford.edu/nbloom/sites/default/files/wfh.pdf" target="_blank">A research by Stanford University</a> did a study with 503 call center employees of travel agency CTrip. They were divided in half: one group worked from home four days out of five per week, and the other half worked…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/remotehiring-header.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/remotehiring-header.png?width=300" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="https://people.stanford.edu/nbloom/sites/default/files/wfh.pdf" target="_blank">A research by Stanford University</a> did a study with 503 call center employees of travel agency CTrip. They were divided in half: one group worked from home four days out of five per week, and the other half worked full-time at the office. After nine months, the remote working group saw an increase of 13% in performance and 9% in their overall work calling time compared to the office group. A big part of the reason was that the former group needed less breaks and had less sick days.</p>
<p>How about the employers’ side? An informal research by <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a> amongst our users sees a struggle in attracting candidates locally. Often companies locate at hot spots where many other companies also locate. Hiring quickly becomes a tug of war within a tiny pool of candidates. Many start considering remote workers as a legit choice. It doesn’t only erase geographical limit, but also underlines the truth that the best is not always the closest.</p>
<p>Undeniably, remote working becomes the first choice for any employees and employers who can afford it. If you’re thinking about hiring remote workers, take the below advice into account. These nuggets come from the trial and error of some of the most successful companies with the most remote workforce out there.</p>
<h1>Remote job promotion:</h1>
<blockquote><p>“I think job boards can be pretty useful, but not the really big ones like <a href="http://monster.com/" target="_blank">monster.com</a> or <a href="http://indeed.com/" target="_blank">Indeed</a>. Usually the quality of applicants coming from those is pretty low. Even job boards from <a href="http://careers.stackoverflow.com/" target="_blank">Stack Overflow</a> and <a href="https://jobs.github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a> have typically not worked out that well. But I think that’s got a lot to do with our focus on hiring people who are good at working remotely. Basecamp has their own job board <a href="http://weworkremotely.com/" target="_blank">weworkremotely.com</a> and it’s great. The quality is pretty high there, and it’s from people who are familiar with remote working. It’s a skill set. You have to know how to work remotely.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>—<span>Josh Pigford</span>, Founder and CEO of <a href="https://baremetrics.com/" target="_blank">Baremetrics</a>, in <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/the-art-of-remote-hiring-process-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks/" target="_blank">“Hiring @Baremetrics – A talk with founder Josh Pigford”</a></p>
<h1>Remote job assessment:</h1>
<blockquote><p>“Let’s say a candidate has breezed through the basic tests, has an amazing portfolio, is an excellent cultural fit, and also passed the phone screen with flying colors. Time to get them in for a face-to-face interview, right?</p>
<p>I’ve seen candidates nail all of the above, join the company, and utterly fail to get things done once they’re in the role. Judging work ethic and commitment is incredibly hard, even if you’re meeting with someone in person.</p>
<p>If you want to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt whether someone’s going to be a great hire, give them an audition project — even before having them speak to other employees on your team. I’m not talking about a generic, abstract problem. I’m talking about a real world, honest-to-God unit of work that you need done right now today on your actual product. It should be something you would give to a current employee, if they weren’t all so busy.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>—<span>Jeff Atwood</span>, Founder of <a href="http://stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">Stack Exchange</a> and <a href="https://www.discourse.org/" target="_blank">Discourse</a>, in <a href="http://firstround.com/review/Heres-Why-Youre-Not-Hiring-the-Best-and-the-Brightest/" target="_blank">“Here’s Why You’re Not Hiring the Best and the Brightest”</a></p>
<blockquote><p>“The most significant shift we’ve made is requiring every final candidate to work with us for three to eight weeks on a contract basis. Candidates do real tasks alongside the people they would actually be working with if they had the job. They can work at night or on weekends, so they don’t have to leave their current jobs; most spend 10 to 20 hours a week working with Automattic, although that’s flexible. (Some people take a week’s vacation in order to focus on the tryout, which is another viable option.) The goal is not to have them finish a product or do a set amount of work; it’s to allow us to quickly and efficiently assess whether this would be a mutually beneficial relationship. They can size up Automattic while we evaluate them.</p>
<p>Paying them for their efforts is important; this isn’t about getting work done free. Originally we tried to set hourly pay rates based on what they might earn if they were hired, but that became too complicated. We were almost negotiating what we would pay someone who hadn’t yet received an offer, which didn’t make any sense. To keep it simple, we decided to pay a standard $25 an hour, whether the candidate was hoping to be an engineer or the chief financial officer.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>—<span>Matt Mullenweg</span>, Founder and CEO of <a href="https://automattic.com/" target="_blank">Automattic</a>, in <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/04/the-ceo-of-automattic-on-holding-auditions-to-build-a-strong-team" target="_blank">“The CEO of Automatic on Holding “Auditions” to Build a Strong Team”</a></p>
<h1>Remote job interview questions:</h1>
<blockquote><p>What did you do when a manager was absent and you had to make a decision?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: Virtual employees must be independent to handle the remote work environment.)</em></p>
<p>What three things have you done within the last 12 months to improve yourself?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: This speaks to a required drive toward continuous, professional development.)</em></p>
<p>If you have a problem and don’t know the solution, what do you do?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: This should reveal potential for independent research and resourcefulness.)</em></p>
<p>How do you manage working for more than one supervisor?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: Virtual professionals often must deliver for more than one leader.)</em></p>
<p>How do you stay in touch with co-workers, supervisors?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: Constant contact and providing frequent project updates eliminate dangers of the “MIA” remote employee.)</em></p>
<p>Describe your remote office, and virtual workday.<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: Work environment and routines should align with those of your department and an overall professional existence.)</em></p>
<p>If you had enough money to retire right now, would you?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: A strong remote-office candidate isn’t the type who counts the days to retirement.)</em></p>
<p>How do you prioritize projects?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: Remote employees must effectively assess the importance of tasks along with availability of resources to meet multiple deadlines.)</em></p>
<p>How do you stay current?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: A virtual work arrangement shouldn’t translate to decreased awareness and command of industry trends.)</em></p>
<p>Tell me when you chose NOT to do a particular task?<br/> <em>(Why it’s important: There is nothing wrong with saying “no.” But were the reasons beneficial to the organization, or self-serving?)</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>—<span>Kevin Sheridan</span>, Author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Virtual-Manager-Cutting-Edge-Motivating/dp/1601631855" target="_blank">“The Virtual Manager: Cutting Edge Solutions for Hiring, Managing, Motivating, and Engaging Mobile Employees”</a></p>
<h1>Remote worker characteristics:</h1>
<blockquote><p>“There are definitely a few things that stand out to me as being key for anyone to be effective as a remote employee:<br/> <span>• Written communication.</span> The importance of this cannot be overstated. When you’re remote, a majority of the way you interface with the world will be through written word, so it’s critical that you can articulate complex concepts and subtleties. Giant walls of text aren’t fun either, so it’s important to keep things concise.<br/> <span>• Discipline.</span> Some people work best with lots of structure and external pressure, but working well autonomously is a big part of our culture at GitHub. We need people to be self-motivated enough to stay productive without someone looking over their shoulder and checking up on them all the time.<br/> <span>• Decisiveness.</span> Timezones are tricky, and it’s often necessary for remote employees to make decisions with imperfect information, even if the right person isn’t around in the moment to make the decision themselves. Most decisions are temporary, especially in a growing company with a rapidly evolving product, so what’s important is that a reasonably sound decision gets made so that work can move forward.<br/> <span>• Interests outside work.</span> If someone is going to be working from home, then it’s really important that they have hobbies, friendships, and things to do outside of work. Without something else to help them switch off and decompress, it’s much easier to end up burning out.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>—<span>Coby Chapple</span>, Product Designer at <a href="https://github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a>, in <a href="https://remote.co/company/github-inc/" target="_blank">an interview with Remote.co</a>, the remote resource founded by Sara Sutton Fell.</p>
<p>Got more tips on remote hiring? Feel free to comment below, <a href="https://twitter.com/" target="_blank">tweet</a>, or <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">email us</a>!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>9 Buzzwords You Don’t Want to Ruin Your Job Descriptionstag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-05-10:502551:BlogPost:19677982016-05-10T13:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="graf--p graf-after--h3"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557596694?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557596694?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--h3" id="747d">You need to hire someone. It’s time to sit down and write that job description!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf-after--p" id="f76f"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“Let’s make it really special,” </em>you think.<em class="markup--em markup--p-em"> “Can’t just call it a…</em></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--h3"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557596694?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557596694?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p id="747d" class="graf--p graf-after--h3">You need to hire someone. It’s time to sit down and write that job description!</p>
<p id="f76f" class="graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">“Let’s make it really special,” </em>you think.<em class="markup--em markup--p-em"> “Can’t just call it a plain, old marketer, developer, or sales position. Let’s add awesome adjectives and nouns! Like ninja marketer, rockstar developer, and sales guru!”</em></p>
<p id="da87" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Sure.</p>
<p id="ab47" class="graf--p graf-after--p">There you have it: what others call “buzzwords.” They may sound cool, but they don’t really capture candidates’ attention in a good way. They mostly raise eyebrows.</p>
<p id="529c" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Let’s take a look at nine of the most common buzzwords we’ve seen flying around in job descriptions, plus what candidates think when each one buzzes by.</p>
<h1>1—Black Belt</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><img class="graf-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*e49_jtD4k7b7QPnevTaKhw.gif"/></div>
<p></p>
<p id="e562" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition: </em>A person qualified to wear a black belt (which is worn by an expert in judo, karate, and other martial arts).</p>
<p id="7737" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think</em>: “Probably the oldest buzzword in the business world. I don’t care whether you’re into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow">Six Sigma</a> management strategy. I just see that you’re really outdated.”</p>
<h1>2—Guru</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><div class="progressiveMedia js-progressiveMedia graf-image is-canvasLoaded is-imageLoaded"><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*T_9_By4rJeRmtIZRoMtyiw.png"/></div>
</div>
<p></p>
<p id="2048" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition: </em>A spiritual teacher, especially in Hinduism and Buddhism.</p>
<p id="63af" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think</em>: “Probably the oldest buzzword in the tech world. Alex Schliker, CureCRM’s founder, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303410404575151843265692682" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow">deemed it ‘Web 1.0.’</a> So it’s not only irrelevant but also outdated.”</p>
<h1>3—Ninja</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><div class="progressiveMedia js-progressiveMedia graf-image is-canvasLoaded is-imageLoaded"><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*hsoJSEsOsTnFQHlPXxgwzw.jpeg"/></div>
</div>
<p></p>
<p><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition: </em>A person who is skilled in ninjutsu, the traditional Japanese art of stealth, camouflage, and sabotage, developed in feudal times for espionage purposes.</p>
<p id="c8ae" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think</em>: “Here comes the sexier successor of ‘guru.’ But I know what you’re up to. As <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303410404575151843265692682" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow">Valerie Frederickson said</a>: 'Ninja panders either to the young or the young at heart. It is designed to make them work harder but feel good about it.'”</p>
<h1>4—Jedi<img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*ORJWRxyUNpHMjIKhJiu2lg.png" style="font-size: 13px;"/></h1>
<p id="0267" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition:</em> A member of the mystical knightly order from the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Star Wars</em>films, trained to guard peace and justice in the universe.</p>
<p id="34e8" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think:</em> “Are you speaking to the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Star Wars</em> fandom? I still know what you’re up to — it’s just ‘ninja’ all over again.”</p>
<h1>5—Rockstar</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><img class="graf-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*DfJz2_EoDQofHwDg-MAPWg.gif"/></div>
<p></p>
<p id="25c9" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition:</em> A famous and successful singer or performer of rock music.</p>
<p id="f84c" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think:</em> “Oh, right. If I were that famous and awesome, do you really think I would still want to apply to your job?”</p>
<h1>6—Wizard</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><img class="graf-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*0t5Os19dvKml2fcvkwWQTA.gif"/></div>
<p></p>
<p id="5faf" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition:</em> A man who has magical powers, especially in legends and fairy tales.</p>
<p id="5173" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think: </em>“Sorry, but if I had that kind of magic, I would have just turned you into a frog and taken all your money.”</p>
<h1>7—Evangelist</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder-fill"><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*GoNfuBDkY287GlIkiiWwVw.jpeg"/></div>
</div>
<p></p>
<p id="26fb" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition:</em> A person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching.</p>
<p id="b13d" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think:</em> “Right. As if everybody were Christian. As if everybody knows what an evangelist is.”</p>
<h1>8—Prophet</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><img class="graf-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*1CaXIx9fbVp58j0ZT3sh0w.gif"/></div>
<p></p>
<p id="2d0a" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition: </em>A person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.</p>
<p id="40a6" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think:</em> “Heck, I’d just start my own fortune-telling company and be on top of the Fortune 500. Who are you again?”</p>
<h1>9—Entrepreneurial</h1>
<p></p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder-fill"><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*VWpBWHh2QTiEuCRGp709mA.jpeg"/></div>
</div>
<p></p>
<p id="45f0" class="graf--p graf-after--figure"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Definition: </em>Characterized by the taking of financial risks in the hope of profit; enterprising.</p>
<p id="6d30" class="graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Candidates Think: </em>“If I’m entrepreneurial at all, I’ll found my own company and get funded by five VCs per day (at least). Why should I bother applying to work for someone else?”</p>
<p id="bfc0" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Ok.</p>
<p id="e75f" class="graf--p graf-after--p">At this point, you may want to say: “<em class="markup--em markup--p-em">But, but, but — those words make the job sound much better and more impressive!”</em></p>
<p id="5477" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Consider this: Your job description may sound important and exciting, but if it doesn’t show up in the search result of candidates, it’s worthless.</p>
<p id="a32d" class="graf--p graf-after--p">The majority of job seekers and candidates, especially the sensible ones, only search for functional job titles or specific job descriptions. For example: “<a href="https://recruitee.com/academy/software-developer-job-description/" target="_self">software engineer</a>,” “<a href="https://recruitee.com/academy/marketing-manager-job-description/" target="_self">marketing manager</a>,” or “<a href="https://recruitee.com/academy/sales-assistant-job-description/" target="_self">sales assistant</a>.” Google and other search engines will show the results with those keywords — but not results that use buzzwords instead of job titles. Those hot buzzwords that you love actually make it harder for job seekers to find your jobs!</p>
<p id="f765" class="graf--p graf-after--p">So, delete those buzzwords and save your recruiting process from the get-go. Job descriptions don’t need to be impressive. They just need to connect to the right candidates. The first step? Let the candidates find your job descriptions via <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">sensible</em> keywords.</p>
<p id="ef7c" class="graf--p graf-after--p graf--last">P.S.: If your colleagues are still using buzzwords, you can still save them by sending them <a href="http://www.codehesive.com/ninjarockstars/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow">this letter</a>. May the sense be with them.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/i/9-buzzwords-you-dont-want-to-ruin-your-job-descriptions/" target="_blank">Recruiter.com</a> </em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out, follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>, and subscribe to our </em>newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a></p>How we recruit millennial candidates via social mediatag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-05-03:502551:BlogPost:19654592016-05-03T16:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
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<p class="lead-capital-letter">We recently started hiring again at Recruitee. Regardless of the fact that we build recruiting software, we discovered that getting the word out about our vacancies was not as easy as we would expect. We tried some popular job boards but weren’t satisfied with the results. So we looked for ways to solve…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589200?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589200?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">We recently started hiring again at Recruitee. Regardless of the fact that we build recruiting software, we discovered that getting the word out about our vacancies was not as easy as we would expect. We tried some popular job boards but weren’t satisfied with the results. So we looked for ways to solve it.</p>
<p>Our target group is recent graduates who’d like to join a startup to learn as much as possible. We’re asking them to join a hectic but extremely satisfying working environment. Since work experience of most of these candidates is short or nonexistent, it’s hard to pinpoint the ideal candidates.</p>
<p>While setting up our own marketing ads, we had an idea: why don’t we treat our recruitment process like a conversion funnel?</p>
<p>Instead of trying to reach millennials on job boards where they probably don’t visit, we decided to put our budget into the channels where our target group spends every potentially dull moment of their lives: <span>Facebook and Instagram.</span></p>
<p>Here’s a little step-by-step guide on how you can do the same, while making the whole process as frictionless as possible:</p>
<h1>Instagram – Reach people where they are</h1>
<h2>1 — Use an Instagram-proof graphic</h2>
<p>Start with thinking of an ad which is relevant to the medium you’re promoting, and sparks initial interest in working with you.</p>
<p>As famous entrepreneur <a href="http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/" target="_blank">Gary Vaynerchuk</a> said about social media:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Today, getting people to hear your story on social media, and then act on it, requires using a platform’s native language, paying attention to context, understanding the nuances and subtle differences that make each platform unique, and adapting your content to match.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pasted-image-0.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pasted-image-0.png?width=605" width="605" class="align-center"/></a>Blatantly promoting our most instagram-worthy asset: the view of the canals in Amsterdam. #officegoals?</p>
<p></p>
<h2>2 — Optimize the copy</h2>
<p>Use a short-but-sweet call to action with your ad. Remember: This is not the place to state meaningless buzzwords as qualifications. So keep “independent team workers,” “no 9-to-5 mentality” and “entrepreneurial spirits” to yourself for now. Just be honest about what you’re offering to draw the right people to your ad.</p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pasted-image-0-1.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pasted-image-0-1.png?width=488" width="488" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>To set a proper expectation, we decided to start with narrowing down the amount of experience required: <em>“graduated”</em></p>
<p>then ignited some interest: <em>“fast-growing startup” and “motivated people”</em></p>
<p>and finally introduced the position we’re offering: <em>“Customer Success Openings”</em></p>
<h1>Facebook – Find your target audience</h1>
<h2>1 — Decide on your niche</h2>
<p>Facebook targeting is steadily becoming the 8th wonder of the world. Whoever you’re trying to find from the current 1.39 billion users, you can target <span>anyone</span> using the right criteria.</p>
<p>In general, there are three categories: demographics, interests, and behaviors. Out of all three, demographics are the safest choice, as this data is available for a large number of users. Interests are dependent on someone’s facebook usage, so you don’t want to rely too much on them. Behaviors can venture into very specific details which could come in handy.</p>
<p>Use this knowledge to your advantage for setting up some hyper-targeted messages. Your imagination (or very specific image) is the only limit.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/bloggif.gif" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/bloggif.gif?width=497" width="497" class="align-center"/></a>We decided to focus mostly on the field of education, and selected some extra indicators to ensure tech-savviness.</p>
<p></p>
<h2>2 — Run a test budget first</h2>
<p>Finding the right audience can be tricky, so make sure to run a short test (probably a few days, just enough to get a feeling for what you can expect.) Look at the complete funnel from your daily reach to the number of clicks to the applications you are receiving. Are you reaching lots of people, but they are not converting to your website? Critically review your targeting criteria. Do you receive a lot of clicks, but no applications? Maybe your copy is a bit misleading. Either way, it’s worth your time (and budget) to run a few tests.</p>
<h1>Careers site – Where all the roads lead to</h1>
<h2>1 — Set up a good-looking, mobile-friendly careers site</h2>
<p>Since you’re advertising on social media, your potential candidates should be able to check out the full job description immediately. Social is a short-term attention game: You do not want to waste that attention by redirecting to a desktop-only site.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Bestand-10-02-16-16-15-15-e1455195571126.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Bestand-10-02-16-16-15-15-e1455195571126.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a>This wasn’t too hard for us: Our own platform Recruitee lets you create career sites which are fully responsive and updated from the start.</p>
<p></p>
<h2>2 — Make sure people can apply directly</h2>
<p>You can’t expect people to have their resume ready and saved on their phones. Make sure people can apply with their LinkedIn profile on your page when they run into your ad. Just like the other steps, it’s important to make the process from start to finish as smooth as possible.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pasted-image-0-2.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pasted-image-0-2.png?width=387" width="387" class="align-center"/></a>LinkedIn has all the data you need on a candidate, and will allow them to apply immediately. Recruitee includes it automatically for every job opening.</p>
<p></p>
<p>And there you have it. So far we’ve gathered a nice pool of candidates, and will start with interviews this week.</p>
<p>Willing to try it yourself, or do you have tips on how we can improve ours? Feel free to tweet us your story to <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a> or shoot us an email at <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">hello@recruitee.com</a>.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>Avoiding a toxic worker provides more benefit than finding and retaining a superstartag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-04-19:502551:BlogPost:19617582016-04-19T09:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
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<p class="lead-capital-letter">You want to hire the best people. Always.</p>
<p>But the next time you try to project a “superstar” in your job description, think again.</p>
<p>In a Harvard Business School publication called “Toxic Workers,” Michael Housman and Dylan Minor point out that avoiding candidates with ‘toxic’ behavior provides much…</p>
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<p class="lead-capital-letter">You want to hire the best people. Always.</p>
<p>But the next time you try to project a “superstar” in your job description, think again.</p>
<p>In a Harvard Business School publication called “Toxic Workers,” Michael Housman and Dylan Minor point out that avoiding candidates with ‘toxic’ behavior provides much more benefits than trying to catch one of those rare “superstars.”</p>
<blockquote><p><em><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=%E2%80%9CRoughly+1+in+20+workers+is+ultimately+terminated+as+a+toxic+worker.%E2%80%9D+https://recruitee.com/blog/avoiding-a-toxic-worker-provides-more-benefit-than-finding-and-retaining-a-superstar/+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">“Roughly 1 in 20 workers is ultimately terminated as a toxic worker.”</a></em> — Michael Housman and Dylan Minor</p>
</blockquote>
<h1>What do you mean by “toxic”?</h1>
<p>Housman and Minor identify toxic workers as those who engage in behavior that is harmful to organizations.</p>
<p>The most harmless things they can do are being a bad fit and would cost the search and training for replacements. And. The most harmful things they can do range from falsifying documents, sexual harassment, <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/the-london-whale" target="_blank">costing billions of dollars legal fees</a>, to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/virginia-wdbj-station-shooting-alleged-gunman-posted-video-of-shooting-on-social-media/" target="_blank">threatening the lives of their colleagues</a>.</p>
<p>No sensible manager would want these workers on board. Elon Musk <a href="http://www.oninnovation.com/videos/detail.aspx?video=1256&title=Hiring%20The%20Right%20People" target="_blank">makes it very clear</a>: <em>“We have a strict “no-assholes policy” at SpaceX. And we fire people if they are.”</em></p>
<p>Preventing them from entering the organization would be even better.</p>
<p>Housman and Minor explore a novel dataset of the actual performance and characteristics of many workers in different organizations. They track down three prominent signals that are associated with toxic behaviors to watch out for.</p>
<h1>The 3 characteristics of a toxic worker.</h1>
<ul>
<li><span><strong>Self-regard</strong>.</span> Researchers have long found out that <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/523f28fce4b0f99c83f055f2/t/52821b15e4b012bf9e769ab9/1384258325976/VanLangeKuhlmanJPSP1994.pdf" target="_blank">the people who regard others less should be more inclined to toxicity.</a> Because they don’t fully understand the cost that their behavior inflicts on others. Housman and Minor put it as <em>“those that show little concern for another’s interests are less likely to refrain from damaging others and their property.”</em></li>
<li><span><strong>Overconfidence</strong>.</span> These often overestimate their own abilities. Housman and Minor found out that <em>“those who appear overconfident by over-reporting their skill level before they start the job are more likely to be terminated for toxic behavior across all time.”</em></li>
<li><span><strong>Profess to follow the rules</strong>.</span> The toxic worker often claims to follow the rules, but actually does not. <em>“Subjects are highly incentivized to respond to a rule following question in a job application in whichever way they believe will secure them a job.”</em>Housman and Minor conclude that this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellianism" target="_blank">Machiavellian</a> nature is likely to lead to toxic behavior. They also calculate that if a worker says that she believes to always follow the rules, she has about 25% greater hazard of being terminated for actually breaking the rules.</li>
</ul>
<p>The things is, even if a candidate shows all three traits, many recruiters / interviewers will still let them off the hook. Because they themselves are hooked by the candidate’s performance record.</p>
<h1>The one characteristic that a toxic worker possesses to get away with.</h1>
<p><em>“Specifically, we find that toxic workers are much more productive than the average worker.”</em> Housman and Minor discern.</p>
<p>However, if you look at the quality of the work, toxic workers may be faster, but not necessarily be more productive than the average worker. <em>“Almost 50% more workers that produce high quality work quickly (32.4% of workers) than those that produce low quality work quickly (23% of workers).”</em></p>
<p>Housman and Minor conclude that in the long run, toxic workers are not likely to improve the overall performance of an organization, despite their productivity.</p>
<p>Yet. Are you willing to make the trade-off? A risk that excels in performance?</p>
<h1>The value of hiring a superstar versus the value of avoiding a toxic worker.</h1>
<p>A superstar is someone who adds outstanding value to an organization. Without her, they have to hire more workers, or pay the existing employees extra hours to achieve the same level of work produced by that single superstar.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a toxic worker costs the expense of replacing her: $12,489. That doesn’t include other incurred costs like litigation, regulatory penalty, and reduced employee morale.</p>
<p>Housman and Minor did the math for you.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/www.hbs_.edu-faculty-Publication-Files-16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/www.hbs_.edu-faculty-Publication-Files-16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a>The column “Hire a Superstar” reports the cost saving based on the top 1%, 5%, 10%, and 25% performers.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Judging from the table, it’s a no-brainer which one to choose.</p>
<p>Housman and Minor draw the conclusion: <em>“Even if a firm could replace an average worker with one who performs in the top 1%, it would still be better off by replacing a toxic worker with an average worker by more than two-to-one.”</em></p>
<blockquote><p><em>"Avoiding toxic workers is still better for the firm in terms of net profitability, despite losing out on a highly productive worker." — Michael Housman and Dylan Minor</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h1>Final thoughts from Housman and Minor. And what you can do to avoid onboarding toxic workers.</h1>
<blockquote><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><i>“Avoiding a toxic worker (or converting them to an average worker) provides more benefit than finding and retaining a superstar.”</i></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="p1"></p>
<blockquote><p class="p1"><i>“Those who seem overconfident in their abilities, who are self-regarding, and who claim rules should be followed, are more likely to become toxic workers and break company and legal rules.”</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="p1"></p>
<blockquote><p class="p1"><i>“Managers should consider toxic and productivity outcomes together rather than relying on productivity alone as the criterion of a good hire.”</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="p1"></p>
<blockquote><p class="p1"><i>“Spending more time limiting negative impacts on an organization might improve everyone’s outcome to a greater extent than only focusing on increasing positive impacts.”</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf" target="_blank">Click here</a> to read the original paper “Toxic Workers” by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor.</p>
<p>What do you think about this finding? What is your experience with screening unfavorable behavior of candidates? Tell us below, <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">send us an email</a>, or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">tweet to us</a>!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>
<p></p>Hiring @Baremetrics – A talk with founder Josh Pigfordtag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-04-12:502551:BlogPost:19590922016-04-12T15:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590591?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590591?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">Below is the transcript of the talk between Perry Oostdam, Co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>, and Josh Pigford, Founder of <a href="https://baremetrics.com/" target="_blank">Baremetrics</a>, about the art of hiring remotely.</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">You…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590591?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590591?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">Below is the transcript of the talk between Perry Oostdam, Co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>, and Josh Pigford, Founder of <a href="https://baremetrics.com/" target="_blank">Baremetrics</a>, about the art of hiring remotely.</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">You can listen to the original talk <a href="https://soundcloud.com/recruitee/josh-pigford-the-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>Some quick facts about Baremetrics:</p>
<ul>
<li>8 days, was how long it took Josh to build and launch the first version of Baremetrics. Team: 1 person. Revenue: $0.</li>
<li>8 weeks later, the first version became profitable. Team: 1 person. Revenue: $2,000/month.</li>
<li>6 months later, Baremetrics turned into a full-fledged Saas business. Team: 2 persons. Revenue: $14,000/month.</li>
<li>Last year, <a href="https://baremetrics.com/blog/stripe-500000-baremetrics" target="_blank">the Stripe Fund invested $500k</a> in Baremetrics. Team: 3 persons. Revenue: $20,000/month.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The Transcript: <em>(You can click each header to tweet it)</em></h3>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=The%20Art%20of%20Hiring%20When%20Your%20Team%20Is%20All%20Over%20The%20Place,%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F" target="_blank">The Art of Hiring When Your Team Is All Over The Place</a></h1>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Alright, we’ve got Josh Pigford from Baremetrics over here in Recruitee’s Founders’ Talks. Thanks a lot Josh Pigford for your time.</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Thanks for having me.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: We’re a big fan of Baremetrics. We’ve been using it for quite some time now. I think it’s gaining quite some traction in Europe, right?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Yeah, we’ve got customers all over the place.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: We’d like to zoom in a bit about your hiring process, how you grow the team. I think it’s a particular story because you work remotely all over the country.</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: We have four in the US, one in Canada, one in the UK. We’re hiring a couple more.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: You’re always a remote team from the start, right?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Yeah, we’re totally remote.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: How do you work? What is your structure? Do you use <a href="https://trello.com/" target="_blank">Trello</a> or <a href="https://slack.com/" target="_blank">Slack</a>?</p>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Sometimes%20Email%20Is%20Not%20Simple%20Enough%20For%20Remote%20Team%20Communication:%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Sometimes Email Is Not Simple Enough For Remote Team Communication</a></h1>
<p>Josh Pigford: Our tools set around remote working. I would say it’s pretty vanilla. Yes, as you mention, we use Trello, we use Slack, we use various doc sharing tools like Google Docs and <a href="http://dropbox.com/" target="_blank">Dropbox</a>. That is the one thing that we haven’t ever totally agreed on. Something has better integrations with things like Slack or Trello than others, while Google Docs is kind of clunky. So there is a little bit of a mix there. But that’s about it: docs sharing, Slack, and Trello. We don’t use email, at all.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Ok. And <a href="http://pivotal.io/" target="_blank">Pivotal</a> for back-end developers, I guess? Or do you also use Trello for that?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: We use some of the comment in <a href="https://github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a>. But for the most part, even all of that exists in Trello.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Your remote team is not that big, right? Just six, seven people at the moment?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Six right now and I’m hiring a couple more.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: How do you hire? Is there any source you find interesting?</p>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Know%20Your%20Hiring%20Niche%20And%20Go%20Look%20For%20It:%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Know Your Hiring Niche And Go Look For It</a></h1>
<p>Josh Pigford: It depends on the job or the position. I think job boards can be pretty useful, but not the really big ones like <a href="http://www.monster.com/" target="_blank">monster.com</a> or <a href="http://www.indeed.com/" target="_blank">indeed</a>. Usually the quality of applicants coming from those is pretty low. Even job boards from <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/" target="_blank">Stack Overflow</a> and GitHub have typically not worked out that well. But I think that’s got a lot to do with our focus on hiring people who are good at working remotely. <a href="https://basecamp.com/" target="_blank">Basecamp</a> has their own job board <a href="https://weworkremotely.com/" target="_blank">weworkremotely.com</a> and it’s great. The quality is pretty high there, and it’s from people who are familiar with remote working. It’s a skill set. You have to know how to work remotely.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Yeah, totally agree.</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: So I think posting to industry or position’s specific job boards is pretty important there. The big, generic ones typically don’t pan out.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Can you share a bit about posting actively to job boards versus sourcing passive candidates? Do you often scout for talent?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: We don’t use any kind of service for that and we don’t do on-going job postings other than our own job board <a href="https://baremetrics.com/jobs" target="_blank">baremetrics.com/jobs</a>. Unless we’re actively hiring, we don’t do job boards posting. I haven’t had a lot with actually scouting out specific engineers. But doing that with designers can work pretty well, like looking at portfolios and reaching out and that kind of stuff.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: I guess <a href="https://dribbble.com/" target="_blank">Dribbble</a>, for instance, is a great source for designers.</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Sure.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Interesting. We see more remote teams coming by and we notice that candidates sourcing, as we’d like to call it, is used sometimes from 80% to 90% of the time.</p>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=The%20Importance%20of%20Hiring%20People%20Who%20Already%20Know%20You:%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">The Importance of Hiring People Who Already Know You</a></h1>
<p>Josh Pigford: Well, I think another piece of the pie is that we do a lot of work from the marketing side. We write a ton on our blog. A lot of people know Baremetrics through the blog. That is a source of people knowing about Baremetrics and knowing about our job openings. So it’s not like we’re a company that nobody knows about. When we try to find people to work for us, there are people who know about us. It’s a lot easier to find people that way.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: So the blog is not only for marketing but also a good source for candidates as well?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Right. We don’t even post job openings on the blog. It’s just people following and being on the mailing list. And just being aware of Baremetrics in general makes it a lot easier to hire. We have hires who found out about us because they had followed Baremetrics before. I think that plays a big role, at least for us.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: You said earlier that an important skill is being able to work remotely. It requires a certain attitude, a certain commitment, I guess. Is there an example that it didn’t work out?</p>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Know%20Your%20Deal-Breaker%20in%20Hiring:%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Know Your Deal-Breaker in Hiring</a></h1>
<p>Josh Pigford: We have to let people go when working remotely wasn’t a good fit for them. If you have not worked remotely, we’re not in the position or in the state to say:<em>“I want Baremetrics to be where you learn how to work remotely.”</em> Just because that’s not a good fit for them. It’s not a negative thing, but that’s just not their back. They need to be around people, that’s how they keep moving forward on the project. So I haven’t had somebody who has not experienced working remotely and contributed majorly.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: The blog is an important source for you guys. What about tips for companies that are not there yet, that don’t have the inbound traffic that you have? Is there anything you could advise in term of how you grow a team? What are the things to look out for?</p>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=In%20The%20End,%20It%E2%80%99s%20The%20Relationship%20That%20Counts:%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">In The End, It’s The Relationship That Counts</a></h1>
<p>Josh Pigford: I think a lot of it can come down to the relationship. The very first hire that I made was a guy that I had met at a conference a couple of years before we stayed in touch. And again, other people that we’ve hired have known about us, have known about me. I think it’s important to realize that it’s a long play. It’s nothing like you could really do more than getting to know people. Maybe that’s going to conferences, maybe not a lot of times because it’s kind of a waste of time. Just that: You can’t hire in a silo. You have to know people and I mean, business in general revolves around knowing people. Not necessarily knowing really popular whatever people, it’s just having relationships with people. Because that pays off in the long run.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: I see that you also pay attention to how you come across – your branding part. A little fun element around the team, a little playful design. Is this something you look for in a candidate as well?</p>
<h1><a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Cultural%20Fit%20Is%20Not%20Checking%20Boxes:%20http%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-art-of-hiring-when-your-team-is-all-over-the-place-with-josh-pigford-baremetrics-recruitee-founders-talks%2F%20by%20@Shpigford%20@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Cultural Fit Is Not Checking Boxes</a></h1>
<p>Josh Pigford: Sure. It sort of falls under culture, but I think the people who tend to gravitate towards us maybe share the same sense of humor. At least for this one time, everyone in our team, like I would say, was pretty funny. That’s not like I’m trying to hire people that are funny, but it’s just a common thing that we happen to be really drawn to each other. So there is a lot in common around whether the things that we like, or things that we find funny, or stuff that we like to do. I think a lot of those stuff is subconscious because I’m not actively saying: “Do they check off all these boxes?” But I think it’s a natural output of either my personality or the team’s personality, or just the way that we’ve built the company up to this point that pulls in those kinds of people.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Thanks a lot. Just one last question. Do you on purpose keep the team small? Or is it that you don’t want to have 20, 30 people all over the place? What is your plan for the future?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: We do plan on growing. Probably in the next 12 to 18 months we will double in tiers. So we’ve got a ton of stuff in the pipeline about the next 12 months.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: And it’s gonna be all remotely? Or are you finding an office space?</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Yes. And no. Right now there is no plan of having any office space.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: We love you stay how you are. We love what you guys are doing. Congratulations on having such a great software. We enjoy using it, so we’re definitely your ambassadors.</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Cool, I appreciate it.</p>
<p>Perry Oostdam: Thanks a lot for your time.</p>
<p>Josh Pigford: Thanks.</p>
<h1>Final thought</h1>
<p>I would like to thank Josh for bringing up many key factors in hiring for a remote team. You must absolutely, undoubtedly know your work style and what you’re looking for. Only then can you find the “cultural fit.” Still you should not treat this as a personality checklist, but more of a foundation to build strong relationships.</p>
<p>Thank you for listening to (and reading) Recruitee’s Founders’ Talks. Did you find something useful from the talk? Do you wish to learn the hiring practice of some certain names? Leave a comment below, <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">tweet</a>, or <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">send us an email</a>!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>How to inject employer branding in careers sitestag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-04-05:502551:BlogPost:19566342016-04-05T12:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590412?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590412?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">It’s not only for job listing. Careers site is one of the most crucial tools that empower employer brand and define the future of your team. Nothing is worse than this:</p>
<p>The perfect candidate comes to your company’s website, sees no careers site or job section, assumes that you have a ‘special’ policy in…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590412?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557590412?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">It’s not only for job listing. Careers site is one of the most crucial tools that empower employer brand and define the future of your team. Nothing is worse than this:</p>
<p>The perfect candidate comes to your company’s website, sees no careers site or job section, assumes that you have a ‘special’ policy in hiring, and decides to leave.</p>
<p>Ok. It can be worse:</p>
<p>The perfect candidate comes to your company’s website, goes to the career site, sees that the design is lame, the information is outdated, and the three cold words “No job openings.”</p>
<p>Is that it? Shouldn’t you make more effort to secure talents for your team? For your future?</p>
<p>No matter what you say in the job descriptions, what you do with your careers site speaks way louder. The candidate experience starts the moment prospects find you. Sweep them off their feet today. Don’t just list your job vacancies. Convert visitors into your brand’s believers and prospective candidates.</p>
<p>How? Below is the ten practical takeaways you can implement right away. I’ve picked them from the best practices out there. Let’s learn from the best.</p>
<h1>1 – Enforce that brand identity.</h1>
<p>Why do you have that brand identity so thoroughly applied across all channels to “communicate the message” to your customers, but not to your own future employees?</p>
<p>Before showing any job vacancies, make it very clear to prospective candidates that they’re at your territory. Pay attention to colors, fonts, the use of images. Make prospects feel the value of your brand before they actually start reading.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/corporate.html" target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/corporate.html</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/corporate.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-15.29.40-copy.jpg?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>2 – Talk about career opportunities to prospective candidates.</h1>
<p>Chances are that you’re not the only one hiring for that role. There are other companies in the same sector. Your competitors. What does a candidate take into account while weighing up job openings? Career growth. So stop talking about how great of a company you are. Focus on what your future employees can do if they choose your side.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="http://www.spacex.com/careers" target="_blank">http://www.spacex.com/careers</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.spacex.com/careers" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-16.10.46.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>3 – Get creative with media.</h1>
<p>Team photos are a good start to show the real faces behind the brand. But don’t limit yourself to just that. Make videos, generate GIFs, throw emoticons, and everything that fits the culture of your company. In this way, candidates get the most feel about a company’s culture. They can decide for themselves whether they’re going to fit in.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="http://pebblecode.com/careers/" target="_blank">http://pebblecode.com/careers/</a></p>
<p><a href="http://pebblecode.com/careers/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/4HyngltMRD.gif?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>4 – Add a personal touch.</h1>
<p>Strong call-to-action messages are always a good start. Don’t forget that you’re talking to a person. Not just any person. Your future colleague. Make it personal and engaging.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="https://www.spotify.com/us/jobs/" target="_blank">https://www.spotify.com/us/jobs/</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.spotify.com/us/jobs/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-17.13.58.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>5 – Let your employees be the ambassadors. Wholeheartedly.</h1>
<p>Who doesn’t want to read about their future colleagues and how they’re doing at their company? Get testimonials from current employees, do short Q&A’s, or, map out their entire career growth since they’re on board.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/" target="_blank">http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-16.58.42.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>6 – Make it as easy as possible for prospective candidates to access, navigate, and do research about your company.</h1>
<p>The faster prospects get the image of your company, the faster you receive their applications. Make the career site clean, simple, intuitive. Put the company’s social media channels there if available. That saves prospects a trip to Google, and markets your employer brand at the same time.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="http://jobs.usabilla.com/" target="_blank">http://jobs.usabilla.com/</a></p>
<p><a href="http://jobs.usabilla.com/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-16.57.22.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>7 – Get some love from search engines.</h1>
<p>Create a separate page for each job listed with the job title in the URL. It’s perfect for Google and search engines to index and give the job vacancy more exposure, much more than one-pager careers site with popup job vacancy.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="https://usabilla.recruitee.com/o/business-acquisition-executive-nyc-based" target="_blank">https://usabilla.recruitee.com/o/business-acquisition-executive-nyc-based</a></p>
<p><a href="https://usabilla.recruitee.com/o/business-acquisition-executive-nyc-based" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-07-at-16.29.30.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>8 – Give concise, specific reasons why any talent would want to work for you.</h1>
<p>Be extremely to the point here. Skip great location or free lunch. Get straight to the impact. This is the only way to capture the attention of candidates who actually care about their work. Do it well, and you can easily get people from point A – random visitors to point B – your brand’s believers and prospective candidates.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="https://www.uber.com/jobs" target="_blank">https://www.uber.com/jobs</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.uber.com/jobs" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-17.57.21.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>9 – Recruitment video done right.</h1>
<p>It’s common to see recruitment videos with overly positive employees and fancy offices. Go the extra mile, show the personalities of your company. Smiles and fanciness might waver, but personalities pull through.</p>
<p>Best practice: <a href="http://www.medallia.com/careers/" target="_blank">http://www.medallia.com/careers/</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.medallia.com/careers/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-12-01-at-10.59.14.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>10 – Shorten the distance between your company and prospective candidates.</h1>
<p>It shows your initiative to establish connection, to offer a handshake. There are currently two ways to do it: via human connection and via physical location. For the former: Integrating LinkedIn onsite would help prospects see how many degrees of connection they’re away. For the later: Detect a prospect location and suggest the available jobs around their neighborhood.</p>
<p>Best practices: <a href="https://workingatbooking.com/" target="_blank">https://workingatbooking.com/</a></p>
<p><a href="https://workingatbooking.com/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screen-Shot-2015-11-24-at-18.27.13.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Here is a recap of the 10 takeaways to inject employer branding in careers sites:</p>
<blockquote><p>1 – Enforce that brand identity.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>2 – Talk about career opportunities to prospective candidates.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>3 – Get creative with all kinds of media.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>4 – Add a personal touch.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>5 – Let your employees be the ambassadors. Wholeheartedly.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>6 – Make it as easy as possible for prospective candidates to access, navigate, and do research about your company.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>7 – Get some love from search engines by having a separate page for each job listed with the job title in the URL.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>8 – Give concise, specific reasons why any talent would want to work for you.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>9 – Recruitment video should show the personalities of your company.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>10 – Shorten the distance between your company and prospective candidates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><span>Final thought:</span> Give the careers site as much thought as the landing page. It helps you land the people who help grow your company after all.</p>
<p>Have you seen great practices in employer branding careers sites that I miss here? Comment, <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">email</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a Tweet</a>!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>How to Adapt to IT Recruiting Trends in 2016tag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-03-30:502551:BlogPost:19549142016-03-30T08:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><em><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587302?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587302?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></em></p>
<blockquote><p class="lead-capital-letter"><em>“In this market, where engineering supply is severely out of whack with demand, where good people are rarely actively looking for jobs, and where contingency recruiters get at least $25,000 per hire, the biggest problem isn’t filtering through a bunch of engaged job seekers. The problem…</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><em><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587302?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587302?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></em></p>
<blockquote><p class="lead-capital-letter"><em>“In this market, where engineering supply is severely out of whack with demand, where good people are rarely actively looking for jobs, and where contingency recruiters get at least $25,000 per hire, the biggest problem isn’t filtering through a bunch of engaged job seekers. The problem is engaging them in the first place.”</em> – <a href="http://blog.alinelerner.com/building-a-product-in-the-technical-recruiting-space-read-this-first/" target="_blank">Aline Lerner</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Aline published <a href="http://blog.alinelerner.com/building-a-product-in-the-technical-recruiting-space-read-this-first/" target="_blank">this</a> 10 months ago, yet the words have never been truer.</p>
<p>People working in the IT sector are in higher and higher demand. People recruiting them are in shorter and shorter supply. If you’re not one of the big guys, don’t do this:</p>
<p>Expect capable developers to send in CV with keywords such as “HTML.” Filter the system by searching for keywords such as “HTML” to put their names on top of some list. Ask them to go back and forth for six interviews with six different persons. Expect them to wait for another few weeks before the decision is made.</p>
<p>This “standard” recruiting process doesn’t apply anymore.</p>
<p>To get that top talent, you have to go out of your way, off the beaten path.</p>
<p>Guess what, some brave folks already did. More and more are following their tactics. Let’s go through them.</p>
<p>(you can click on each trend below to tweet it)</p>
<h1>Sourcing stage</h1>
<h2>1 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Referral+becomes+your+highest+chance+of+getting+high-quality+candidates:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Referral becomes your highest chance of getting high-quality candidates.</a></h2>
<p><span>Referral becomes your highest chance of getting high-quality candidates.</span></p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Offer a clear referral recruiting bonus, from $2,000 and above is market rate for good developers. Sit down with all your employees one by one. Leave the potential candidates’ availability behind, and only focus on your hiring standards. Have around three of those up your sleeve, for example: be smart, get things done, collaborate well. Go through all your employees’ networks with the standards in mind and a spreadsheet. Save time for everybody, just input the referrer’s name and link to the potential candidate’s profile. The name and contact info you can figure out later on your own. Keep the employees in the loop when you reach out, because they can help pitch in too. Together, you prove to the potential candidates that you are not just another CV-monger.</p>
<h2>2 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=The+first+contact+is+to+establish+mutual+interest.+Job+advertising+comes+second:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">The first contact is to establish mutual interests. Job advertising comes second.</a></h2>
<p>The first contact is to establish mutual interests. Job advertising comes second.</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Comment on their work. Most developers share it on their GitHub’s accounts. Pinpoint the things the potential candidates do well and tell them that. You appreciate their expertise, so, you want to have their service. Your email will rise above the mediocre cold ones. Good developers like that. Good developers reply to that.</p>
<h2>3 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=The+entire+application+process+should+be+completed+on+mobile:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">The entire application process should be completed on mobile.</a></h2>
<p>Why? Let’s say you are selling an ideal place – the ideal place – to an IT expert, but you force them to apply via a bureaucratic, outdated system with buttons and forms clearly designed for desktops in the 90s. Talk about the irony.</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Make all communication and application accessible and doable on mobile.</p>
<h1>Screening Stage</h1>
<h2>4 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Big+brands+don%27t+always+fit+your+hiring+need:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Big brands don’t always fit your hiring need.</a></h2>
<p>You’d feel impressed if the candidates used to work for Google, Facebook, and the likes. But hold yourself for a moment there. Look more into what the candidates have actually done. Ask yourself again and again: Is that really a match to what I need?</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Get the candidates on the phone and ask them about their latest project. What is it? Why did they choose to do it? What is its impact on the company? Only very passionate people know every nook and cranny of their project. Proceed with them right away. If by any chance you have doubts about the candidate’s honesty, get references from those who have worked directly with them.</p>
<h1>Interviewing Stage</h1>
<h2>5 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Hire+the+person,+not+the+role:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Hire the person, not the role.</a></h2>
<p>Looking at the speed of IT development, the role you craft so carefully now could very well be in the trash bin in the next 2 years. You don’t need subject matter expert. You need someone who is an expert at learning and picking up new subject matters over and over again.</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Ask if the person has been trying a variety of tools and programming languages in the past. What did they make out of that? Which one are they most proud of? And why?</p>
<p>For more judging criteria of general good coding practice, you can use the <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html" target="_blank">Joel Test</a> by<a href="https://twitter.com/spolsky" target="_blank">Joel Spolsky</a> (co-founder of <a href="http://trello.com/" target="_blank">Trello</a> and <a href="http://fogcreek.com/" target="_blank">Fog Creek Software</a>, and CEO of <a href="http://stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">Stack Exchange</a>).</p>
<ol>
<li>Do you use source control?</li>
<li>Can you make a build in one step?</li>
<li>Do you make daily builds?</li>
<li>Do you have a bug database?</li>
<li>Do you fix bugs before writing new code?</li>
<li>Do you have an up-to-date schedule?</li>
<li>Do you have a spec?</li>
<li>Do programmers have quiet working conditions?</li>
<li>Do you use the best tools money can buy?</li>
<li>Do you have testers?</li>
<li>Do new candidates write code during their interview?</li>
<li>Do you do hallway usability testing?</li>
</ol>
<p>Make sure you read <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html" target="_blank">his elaboration</a> on each question. Then you’ll have a pretty good idea about the candidate’s ability to keep things in control through ups and downs.</p>
<h2>6 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=Build+your+own+trial+test+to+get+your+own+fit+candidates:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">Build your own trial test to get your own fit candidates.</a></h2>
<p>There are more and more platforms offering tests and ranking developers, so why bother? If you use ready-made tests, the candidates learn nothing from your context, and you learn nothing from what the candidates can offer to solve your own problems. Offering an opportunity for both sides to get to know each other is well worth the hassle.</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Extract a part of the current workload that needs to be done. Write a brief with background information, the resources the candidates can use, and the deliverables for each stage of the trial process (for examples: evaluation, concept, prototype, code). If the trial test needs more than an hour of work, play fair and square: offer to pay the candidates. A standard rate from <a href="https://automattic.com/" target="_blank">Automattic</a> is $25 per hour.</p>
<h2>7 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=What+you+sell+is+interesting+challenges+and+recognition,+in+the+form+of+employer+brand:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">What you sell is interesting challenges and recognition, in the form of an employer brand.</a></h2>
<p>Foosball and free lunch are nice, but they just aren’t the things good developers go after.</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em> Communicate the company’s vision and culture through and through. But don’t paint an unreal picture or set up unreal expectations. Provide concrete examples of current or past employees that you walk the talk.</p>
<h1>Offering Stage</h1>
<h2>8 — <a href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?source=webclient&text=The+need+for+speed+is+crucial+when+it+comes+to+offering+jobs:+https%3A%2F%2Frecruitee.com%2Fblog%2Fit-recruiting-trends-and-how-to-adapt%2F+via+@recruiteeHR" target="_blank">The need for speed is crucial when it comes to offering jobs.</a></h2>
<p>Yes, good developers are in high demand, as you’ve been aware of all along. It would be hopelessly naive if you think they would just sit and wait for your decision. Every day waiting is an open invitation for them to choose other companies.</p>
<p><em><span>What to do:</span></em></p>
<blockquote><p><em>“If you have conviction about a candidate at the end of interview day, you spend the next day closing.”</em> – <a href="http://firstround.com/review/this-is-how-coursera-competes-against-google-and-facebook-for-the-best-talent/" target="_blank">John Ciancutti</a></p>
</blockquote>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>Every point listed above is so counter-intuitive compared to the old way. They require you to put in more effort, more attention, more time.</p>
<p>But if you don’t, you will have to spend even more effort, even more attention, even more time to fix a bad hire.</p>
<p>Even if you can only apply one point to your recruiting process for now, start anyway. You’ll be surprised how much of a difference it’ll make.</p>
<p>Have you discovered other interesting trends in recruiting IT talent? Tell us in the comment below, <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">tweet</a>, or <a href="mailto:pr@recruitee.com" target="_blank">email us</a>!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>5 Hacks to Succeed in Talent Sourcingtag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-03-22:502551:BlogPost:19537982016-03-22T09:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589820?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589820?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">Talent sourcing is crucial to growing your talent pool. It’s very common to source like-minded people, and these can turn into ideal candidates. They are likely to be a cultural fit and are willing to stick with your company through thick and thin. The earlier you start keeping an eye out for them, the better.…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589820?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589820?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">Talent sourcing is crucial to growing your talent pool. It’s very common to source like-minded people, and these can turn into ideal candidates. They are likely to be a cultural fit and are willing to stick with your company through thick and thin. The earlier you start keeping an eye out for them, the better. Here are five hacks to help you along the way.</p>
<h1>1—Start where you are</h1>
<p>Hit home. Hit home hard. There is a high chance that candidates already discovered you before you discovered them. Show them that they’re welcome. Give them the idea that they want to work with you. Some notable practices we’ve seen around:</p>
<div style="margin-left: 2em;"><ul>
<li>Add a <strong>“We’re hiring”</strong> widget to your homepage.</li>
<li>Highlight <strong>“Jobs”</strong> or <strong>“Careers”</strong> as an unread notification. Feel the itch to click right away, right?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Screen-Shot-2015-11-22-at-09.21.36.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Screen-Shot-2015-11-22-at-09.21.36.jpg?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<div style="margin-left: 2em;"><ul>
<li>In the team section: Add an anonymous profile with the tagline <strong>“Could this be you?”</strong> Or add a simple sticker <strong>“Want to see your photo here?”</strong></li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/fsafdf.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/fsafdf.jpg?width=600" width="600" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<div style="margin-left: 2em;"><ul>
<li>Show your company culture in your <strong>“About”</strong> page or blogs. Then ask <strong>“Would you join us?”</strong></li>
<li>When you don’t have any job openings, show that you’re willing to build a talent pool:</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Screen-Shot-2015-11-22-at-11.03.58.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Screen-Shot-2015-11-22-at-11.03.58.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<h1>2. Tell everyone about the job openings</h1>
<p>The message you send out is important. Everybody can see and share it. It can reach the right candidates, or convert a bystander into one. Make it straightforward, everywhere. Use the power of word of mouth.</p>
<div style="margin-left: 2em;"><ul>
<li>Put <strong>“We’re hiring”</strong> message in your company’s email signatures and newsletters.</li>
<li>Add a <strong>“We’re hiring”</strong> message to your company’s social media profiles, pages, and descriptions. Don’t shy away from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, or any other platforms. Because, hey, you’ll never know.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Screen-Shot-2015-11-22-at-11.53.16.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Screen-Shot-2015-11-22-at-11.53.16.png?width=608" width="608" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<div style="margin-left: 2em;"><ul>
<li>Answer relevant questions on Quora with a <strong>“We’re hiring”</strong> message at the end. Make it less of a pitch and more of a thought leadership. Potential candidates can see your vision and decide to find out more.</li>
<li>Go offline. Go old-school. The message done right will find its way back online and spread like wildfire. Like this classic one:</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/565x399xPuzzle-Recruitment-Ad.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.duqiwnpd_W.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/565x399xPuzzle-Recruitment-Ad.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.duqiwnpd_W.jpg?width=565" width="565" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>3—If you don’t knock, they won’t open</h1>
<p>Passive candidates are everywhere. Reach out for them. They’ll take your hand as the moment comes. Here is how you do it.</p>
<ul>
<li>Google x-ray sites for relevant resumes. <a href="http://www.twitter.com/willemwijnans" target="_blank">Willem Wijnans</a> shared this awesome string. Just edit (Location), (Study), and (Keywords) as you want. Then the right resumes come to you in no time.<br/><blockquote><p>intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR inurl:CV -job -jobs -sample -samples -template -”resume service” -“resume writers” -“resume writing” (Location) AND (Study) AND (Keywords)</p>
</blockquote>
</li>
<li>Build a Google Custom Search Engine to x-ray any sites effortlessly. This comes in handy for sites with a user base, from LinkedIn, to About.me, to even TripAdvisor. Here is <a href="http://www.sourcinghacks.com/creating-a-custom-search-engine-with-google/" target="_blank">how Jennifer Bowen did it</a>.</li>
<li>lf the above is too complicated, you can use <a href="http://recruitin.net/" target="_blank">Recruitin</a> to x-ray 6 major social sites immediately.</li>
<li>Collect information like emails, phone numbers, and social media pages of sourced candidates with <a href="http://connectifier.com/" target="_blank">Connectifier</a>.</li>
<li>GitHub’s open API let you find anyone’s email address: <a href="https://api.github.com/users/XYZ/events/public" target="_blank">https://api.github.com/users/XYZ/events/public</a>. Just replace “XYZ” with the username of the potential candidate. Ctrl + F or Cmd + F for “email” and it’s there.</li>
</ul>
<h1>4—Collaborative talent sourcing</h1>
<p>Who knows what your company is doing the most? Who knows the prominent players of a specific field the most? Your employees. They’re the best of both worlds. We can’t stress enough how critical this is. Let them be your ambassadors. Brief them regularly about the opportunities. Then let them run wild with “the search for colleagues” in their own niche groups. Developers scout Github and StackOverflow. Designers scout Dribbble and Behance.</p>
<h1>5—Stay sane, stay organized</h1>
<p>You and your team have now discovered a handful of potential candidates – opened across 50-ish tabs. Now what? We have a solution. Import your candidates via Recruitee’s <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recruitee/nhhfoaoafpdjengjbndbdojlnfjlafpc" target="_blank">Chrome extension</a> or <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recruitee/" target="_blank">Firefox extension</a>. Once imported, everything is in one place, ready for you to make the next move.</p>
<h2>A quick recap</h2>
<blockquote><p>1 – Start from home. Make sure every potential candidate who visits want to stay.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>2 – Send clear messages across all channels.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>3 – Get your hands dirty. Reach out. Reach often.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>4 – Let your employees be the company’s ambassadors.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>5 – Put all valuable leads in order. Follow them when the opportunity arises.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Do you still feel stumped by some aspect of sourcing candidates? Comment, <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">email us</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a tweet</a>. One of our experts will get you on track in no time!</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>Top Recruitment Stories mid Marchtag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-03-16:502551:BlogPost:19532342016-03-16T09:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<h1><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589204?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589204?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></h1>
<h1>Best practices</h1>
<p><strong><a href="https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-hire-34f4ded5f176#.ehytq9fnp" target="_blank">How to Hire</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/henrysward" target="_blank">Henry Ward</a>, CEO at <a href="https://esharesinc.com/" target="_blank">eShares</a>, gives common hiring misconceptions a reality check: Don’t be afraid of…</p>
<h1><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589204?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589204?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></h1>
<h1>Best practices</h1>
<p><strong><a href="https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-hire-34f4ded5f176#.ehytq9fnp" target="_blank">How to Hire</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/henrysward" target="_blank">Henry Ward</a>, CEO at <a href="https://esharesinc.com/" target="_blank">eShares</a>, gives common hiring misconceptions a reality check: Don’t be afraid of hiring someone who doesn’t work out, but be afraid of passing on someone who would have been great. Hiring culture-contributors is better than hiring culture-fitters. Don’t hire for experience, hire for trajectory.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-hire-34f4ded5f176#.ehytq9fnp" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/0-DPAYobrTqD1c8pYv.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://firstround.com/review/this-company-retains-95-percent-of-its-employees-heres-its-secret/" target="_blank">This Company Retains 95% of Its Employees — Here’s Its Secret</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/kivieg" target="_blank">Joel Grossman</a>, COO at <a href="http://locationlabs.com/" target="_blank">Location Labs</a>, points out the bedrock of the equation <em>“you must recruit well to retain well”</em>: brutal honesty. <em>“Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Know your true culture. And then make sure you communicate it all upfront.”</em></p>
<p><a href="http://firstround.com/review/this-company-retains-95-percent-of-its-employees-heres-its-secret/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/4pJXhebBT1WDPOrErN1c_our-attraction-to-extremes.jpg?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Recruiting as Marketing</h1>
<p><strong><a href="http://recruitingsocial.com/2015/07/recruitment-marketing-jennifer-hasche/" target="_blank">How Marketing Talent Transformed The Way We Recruit: Intuit’s Jennifer Hasche</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/JenniferINTUIT" target="_blank">Jennifer Hasche</a>, talent acquisition manager at software company <a href="http://www.intuit.com/" target="_blank">Intuit</a>, explained the importance of bringing the marketing mentality into recruiting: <em>“Care about content. Less is more, and personalization is critical.”</em></p>
<p><a href="http://recruitingsocial.com/2015/07/recruitment-marketing-jennifer-hasche/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/jennifer-hasche-feature2.jpg?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.recruiter.co.uk/analysis/2016/01/adidas-where-talent-rules/" target="_blank">Adidas: Where talent rules</a></strong></p>
<p>An analysis of how Adidas’ talent acquisition team going from claiming <em>“relentless seekers of the world’s best talent”</em> to grabbing headlines over the last year for poaching a team of key designers from arch rival Nike. Adidas is further stepping up its recruitment game with real-time analytics, cutting its average candidate response time from 17 to three days, and evolving job profiles that better reflect 21st century skills.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.recruiter.co.uk/analysis/2016/01/adidas-where-talent-rules/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/photo-1414705683077-de1af723db6d.jpeg?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Recruiting Tips</h1>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.eremedia.com/ere/how-to-create-behavioral-interview-questions-that-dont-give-away-the-answer/" target="_blank">How To Create Behavioral Interview Questions That Don’t Give Away The Answer</a></strong></p>
<p>John Boring, CEO at <a href="http://www.talentron.com/" target="_blank">Accelerate Mobile Apps, Inc.</a>, gives one of the coolest tips ever to help you raise the bar of your behavioral interview questions.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.eremedia.com/ere/how-to-create-behavioral-interview-questions-that-dont-give-away-the-answer/" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/photo-1450101499163-c8848c66ca85.jpeg?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Recruiting Remote Workers</h1>
<p><strong><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/how-to-adjust-your-recruitment-strategy-to-hiring-remote-workers/" target="_blank">How to adjust your recruitment strategy to hiring remote workers</a></strong></p>
<p>The hiring wisdom from the trial and error of some of the most successful companies with the most remote workforce out there, including Automattic, GitHub, Baremetrics.</p>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/how-to-adjust-your-recruitment-strategy-to-hiring-remote-workers/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=content&utm_content=recap005&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/remotehiring-header1.png?width=750" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Podcast</h1>
<p><strong><a href="https://soundcloud.com/hbrideacast/426-how-google-manages-talent" target="_blank">How Google Manages Talent</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ericschmidt" target="_blank">Eric Schmidt</a>, executive chairman, and <a href="https://twitter.com/jjrosenberg" target="_blank">Jonathan Rosenberg</a>, former SVP of products, explain how the company manages their smart, creative team.</p>
<p><a href="https://soundcloud.com/hbrideacast/426-how-google-manages-talent" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589249?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Fun</h1>
<p><strong><a href="https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/recruiting-humor-and-fun/2016/philadelphia-police-blew-up-social-media-with-its-most-viral-job-ad" target="_blank">Philadelphia Police Blew Up Social Media with Its Most Viral Job Ad Ever</a></strong></p>
<p>The Philadelphia Police Department needed to hire new patrolmen, just around the time Kanye West announced his <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/kanye-west-53-million-dollar-debt-explained" target="_blank">$53-million debt</a>. The department seized the opportunity and got really creative. The rest is history:</p>
<p><a href="https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/recruiting-humor-and-fun/2016/philadelphia-police-blew-up-social-media-with-its-most-viral-job-ad" target="_blank"><img src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PH-police-post-2.jpg?width=650" width="650" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>5 Proven Methods to Improve Talent Sourcingtag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-03-08:502551:BlogPost:19521452016-03-08T10:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557588071?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557588071?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">It can be quite a nightmare trying to find the perfect candidate for that new job opening at your company, and sometimes the person you want simply doesn’t exist. We can’t do anything about that (and we’re sorry).</p>
<p>But, we can give you some tips that will help you improve your searching!</p>
<p>There are a…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557588071?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557588071?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter">It can be quite a nightmare trying to find the perfect candidate for that new job opening at your company, and sometimes the person you want simply doesn’t exist. We can’t do anything about that (and we’re sorry).</p>
<p>But, we can give you some tips that will help you improve your searching!</p>
<p>There are a number of strategic checkpoints which you can constantly work on, and they can help ensure that you have a quality talent pool at your fingertips as soon as you’re ready to hire.</p>
<h1>Start Talent Sourcing Before You’re Ready</h1>
<p>Hiring takes a long time, and that’s unlikely to change. In fact, it’s a safe bet to assume that the waiting period is going to increase as technology enables hiring managers to become pickier. In June of 2015, <a href="http://dhihiringindicators.com/" target="_blank">DHI Hiring Indicators</a> found that the average time to hire a new employee takes more than 27 days. However, this is across many industries, and more specific roles often take significantly longer.</p>
<p>One of the best ways to avoid this delay is to anticipate growth. That way, you’ll you have some candidates ready when you get the investment or make the change. You may not be able to have them start working the specific day you want, but the gap will be much shorter.</p>
<p>But, don’t take our word for it. Listen to this advice from the team at <a href="https://recruitee.com/recruiterlunch-impraise-gives-insights-on-their-hiring-practices/" target="_blank">Impraise</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Start recruiting even if you don’t have open spots! It can take a great deal of time to find the right candidates once you need them, so make sure you start looking for new talent way ahead.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h1>Keep a Watch List</h1>
<p>Even if you don’t need to hire someone, start keeping a list of potential employees. This is especially useful for very specific roles. For example, if you come into contact with a talented mobile developer but don’t yet need an app, save their contact information for when you do.</p>
<p>Keeping this list will save time when you actually do need to hire. Instead of starting from scratch, you already have a short-list of candidates, and you can start moving forward with them.</p>
<p>You don’t have to contact these people when you find them, but sometimes that can save time. If you have an informational interview, you will now be on the candidate’s radar, and they might already have an internal desire to work for your company by the time there’s an opening.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/long-interview-process/" target="_blank">Glassdoor did some research</a>, and they found that phone interviews lengthen the hiring process by about 8 days, one-on-one interviews by about 5 days, and presentations by about 3 days. So, pre-screening a watch list can really, really work to speed things up.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for an easier, more organized way to create a hiring watch list, then check out this new feature in <a href="https://recruitee.com/en/job-marketing" target="_blank">Recruitee recruitment software</a>.</p>
<h1>Every Employee is a Recruiter</h1>
<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/eremedia/raising-your-employee-referral-program-results-to-50-of-all-hires" target="_blank">Studies routinely</a> find that referrals have the highest interview to hire ratio of any hiring strategy.</p>
<p>Knowing this, don’t forget to empower your most valuable recruiters: your employees.</p>
<p>After all, with the exception of your HR department, it’s unlikely that the new hire will be working closely with the recruiter. So, isn’t it logical that the people who will actually be interacting everyday have a say? Friends of current employees are often a natural fit for the company culture, and they might even already have good relationships with their future co-workers.</p>
<p>Also, if you make an effort to work on your employer branding, potential hires get the impression that you care. <a href="http://employers.glassdoor.com/statistical-citations/" target="_blank">Glassdoor found</a> that 94% of people are likely to apply to a job if the company regularly updates their online image, such as responding to reviews or creating videos about employee life.</p>
<p>But, before you let your employees loose, set some ground rules. Tell them what they are (and aren’t) allow to say to potential hires. Plus, be very clear about any incentives they’re going to receive for recommending friends.</p>
<p><em>Warning: There can be some risks involved with employee referrals. For example, if you don’t hire the friend of one of your loyal workers, this person could resent you or the new hire. Or, while trying to prevent this scenario, you may feel obligated to hire the candidate who isn’t your first choice.</em></p>
<h1>Maintain a Career Site on Your Website</h1>
<p><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/8-tips-improve-career-site-with-employer-branding-on-your-company-website/" target="_blank">Having a career site on your company website</a> is an extremely valuable hiring tool. Many people looking at it are already interested in your company, so it takes less convincing work on your part. Plus, you have complete control over your image.</p>
<p>If you do this correctly, it will save your time. All you have to do is to let people know about your company culture, and they won’t apply if they don’t fit it.</p>
<p>For example, Rapid7 has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5U_wtAT36I&list=PL7F4393F5D2231918" target="_blank">a whole YouTube channel of homemade videos</a> that show the fun, goofy culture of their company. If you don’t like those, you wouldn’t be happy working there, and time is saved on all sides by not applying.</p>
<h1>Source Outside the Box</h1>
<p>Like all other areas of running your business, don’t be afraid to do some innovative thinking about candidate sourcing.</p>
<p>Willem Wijnans <a href="http://www.sourcingmonk.com/7-awesome-talent-hacks/" target="_blank">(Sourcing Monk / Improbable)</a> has highlighted some really clever methods that companies have used to attract talent. One company advertised inside online video games, another put a hiring notice on a billboard (in ASCII code) next to a competitor’s office, and it’s not unheard of to advertise hiring on the name of a WiFi network.</p>
<p>While most of these ideas are pretty specific (and tech related), using creativity can really put you ahead of your competitors.</p>
<h1>Talent Sourcing Checklist</h1>
<p>As you can tell from all of the ideas listed above, candidate sourcing isn’t something you do when you have an open position and then stop. It’s an ongoing and constantly evolving practice, but it can save your company significant time and money if done right.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pxmtpvv7uwj2jrk/sourcing_recruitee.pdf?dl=1" target="_blank">Click here</a> to download our talent sourcing checklist for some brief tips, and use them to help you remember to keep this activity a priority.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-45134 size-full" src="https://recruitee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sourcing_recruitee-1.jpg" alt="recruitee talent sourcing checklist" width="800" height="1132"/></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>The Most Stripped-down Guideline for the Perfect Job Descriptiontag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-03-01:502551:BlogPost:19505182016-03-01T14:30:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--figure"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557583615?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557583615?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p class="graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--figure" id="f8d3">Over the last few months, we’ve posted countless job ads to various job boards, and their variety has ranged from engineering jobs to office positions. We’ve noticed that some jobs perform well, while others get…</p>
<p class="graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--figure"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557583615?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557583615?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p id="f8d3" class="graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--figure">Over the last few months, we’ve posted countless job ads to various job boards, and their variety has ranged from engineering jobs to office positions. We’ve noticed that some jobs perform well, while others get close to zero candidates submitting applications. Should you find yourself out of inspiration, here are some elements of job descriptions that perform well.</p>
<h1 id="510c" class="graf--h4 graf-after--p">Title</h1>
<p id="487f" class="graf--p graf-after--h4">Make sure the job title is concrete and fits the day-to-day activities of the position. Drop “Full Stack Developer,” in favor of something more specific, like “Senior Ruby on Rails Developer.”</p>
<p id="7683" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Keep it short, as most job boards cut off long titles. Also, it’s critical to note that your first sentence is often used to index your job in a site’s search, so make it fit the actual description.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p"><a href="http://jobs.impraise.com/o/sr-backend-developer-ruby" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557583730?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1 id="348a" class="graf--h4 graf-after--p">Start: The role</h1>
<p id="8f5e" class="graf--p graf-after--h4">Start off by telling a bit about the role within the company. What’s the goal of this new job vacancy? What’s expected from your new hire, and what will he or she be doing within the team?</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--h4"><a href="http://jobs.impraise.com/o/sr-backend-developer-ruby" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557583918?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1 id="7836" class="graf--h4 graf-after--p">Mid: Responsibilities</h1>
<p id="69d7" class="graf--p graf-after--h4">Second, you could make a list of the concrete responsibilities of the new hire, and don’t stress out about the length! 6–12 items in a bullet-point list is fine. Try to show as much as you can about the weekly responsibilities that the new hire will be facing. The more accurate you make this list, the better the quality of your candidates will be.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--h4"><a href="http://jobs.impraise.com/o/sr-backend-developer-ruby" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557584080?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1 id="8778" class="graf--h4 graf-after--p">Mid: Your offer</h1>
<p id="7e3e" class="graf--p graf-after--h4">Then, what can be expected from you? What’s it like to work for you? Tell a bit about the company or team that the new hire will join. Again, a bullet-point list of benefits works well.</p>
<p id="3592" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Imagine for a moment that it’s not about the money, why should a candidate then decide to work for you? If the company’s culture is important to you, a team picture is highly recommended.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p"><a href="http://jobs.impraise.com/o/sr-backend-developer-ruby" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587399?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1 id="7c45" class="graf--h4 graf-after--p">Last: Requirements</h1>
<p id="2995" class="graf--p graf-after--h4">In order to narrow down your search and end up with a selection of the best-suited candidates, you can list the specific requirements that have to be met. Think about ‘hard’ requirements and ‘soft’ requirements. Be very careful not to make a laundry list of skills.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--h4"><a href="http://jobs.impraise.com/o/sr-backend-developer-ruby" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587884?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1 id="cdae" class="graf--h4 graf-after--p">Ending: Procedure</h1>
<p id="d159" class="graf--p graf-after--h4">Something that’s often forgotten by recruiters is some background information about the selection procedure. Will there be multiple screening rounds? If so, what do they look like (e.g. call, meeting, test)? When is the application closing date? Do you appreciate a call from someone that’s eager to work for you, or does it have to be online?</p>
<p id="4117" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Our research suggests that well-written job descriptions — carefully drafted to showcase the company and team — perform best. This is true not only in terms of the amount of applications, but also in terms of candidates that fit the job profile. Additionally, this can save you a whole lot of time going through candidates.</p>
<p id="e111" class="graf--p graf-after--p">Custom careers sites, where you show the company with pictures, typically receive an even higher amount of applications by around 20%. Take a look <a href="https://crowdyhouse.recruitee.com/" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow">here</a> or <a href="https://evbox.recruitee.com/o/sales-executive-nl" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow">here</a> for a few live examples.</p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p"><a href="http://jobs.impraise.com/o/sr-backend-developer-ruby" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557591443?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p class="graf--p graf-after--p">- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> (newsletter: <a class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" rel="nofollow me" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><br/></span></p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.<br/></em></p>Keep the Human in Human Resources – An Interview with the Evil HR Ladytag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-02-23:502551:BlogPost:19495232016-02-23T11:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<h3><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557581025?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557581025?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></h3>
<h3>The Evil HR Lady is Actually Very Polite</h3>
<p>We contacted Suzanne Lucas, also known as the <a href="http://evilhrlady.org/" target="_blank">Evil HR Lady</a>, and asked if we could interview her about the topic of technology in the HR world. She agreed, and during the very first question, we mentioned that we didn’t know if she’d have an opinion on this matter.…</p>
<h3><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557581025?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557581025?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></h3>
<h3>The Evil HR Lady is Actually Very Polite</h3>
<p>We contacted Suzanne Lucas, also known as the <a href="http://evilhrlady.org/" target="_blank">Evil HR Lady</a>, and asked if we could interview her about the topic of technology in the HR world. She agreed, and during the very first question, we mentioned that we didn’t know if she’d have an opinion on this matter. “I have opinions on everything,” she assured us, and we knew it was off to a good start.</p>
<p>HR technology is an area in which she is fairly comfortable. Six months into her career, she ended up in an HRIS department, and she stayed connected to that segment for a very long time. She even ended up becoming a trainer for integrating SAP systems. Now, she spends her time writing about the HR and recruitment industry, and she was happy to answer plenty of our questions. <span><br/></span></p>
<p><span>Connect With Suzanne:</span> She has a decade of experience in corporate human resources, and she hired, fired, managed the numbers, and double-checked with the lawyers while she was there. Follow her on <a href="https://twitter.com/RealEvilHRLady" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, connect with her at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannemlucas" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>, read her <a href="http://evilhrlady.org/" target="_blank">blog</a>, or send her <a href="http://EvilHRLady@gmail.com/" target="_blank">an email</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557581375?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557581375?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p><strong>When you hear the phrase HR Technology, what comes to your mind? Is this topic a buzzword that will disappear in a few years, or is it something that we better get used to talking about?</strong></p>
<p>“Whatever we call it, it’s definitely here to stay. We’re not going to go backwards, and we’re not going to go back to the time where we kept everyone’s salary on index cards in a shoebox. Which, actually, in the very first HR job I ever had, that’s how they kept all of their employee records. This was in 1999, I’m not that old! One of the problems that I know they had was that sometimes the salary that was written on that little notecard didn’t match the salary that payroll had, and which one is correct? Because, there’s no communication between shoeboxes. So, that’s one of the advantages of a system: if I give someone a raise, I put it into the system and it automatically feeds to payroll and there are no mistakes going on between them.</p>
<p>It allows other things, as well, to be on the same page. For instance, with SAP and many other systems, there’s an employee relations module. So, if I’m investigating a case, I can type it all up in the system, and if I quit, my new coworker who takes over all of my files has all of my notes. In the past, all of that would’ve been on paper, and it would’ve been there, but it was a lot more difficult to access. On the other hand, easier to access means sometimes more difficult to control privacy. If I need to know A, B, and C about all the employees, but I don’t need to know D, you need to make sure you set up the security so I can see all of this information, but not that information. It’s not necessarily technological error, but human error doesn’t go away just because we have technology.”</p>
<p><strong>Do you predict that technological advances will cause the personnel size of HR departments to shrink, grow, or remain the same?</strong></p>
<p>“Well, technology is one thing, but the other thing is government regulation. If I’m the recruiter, I enter your information in once, I click the hire button, and it automatically transfers all that information I’ve typed in on the applicant on to you as the new employee, and that triggers payroll and all these other things. All that is done at one time with one data entry person, so you don’t have to have all these different data entry clerks. But, when you have government requirements for something like Affirmative Action filings, they are now easier to do because you can press a button and run the report, but then the government says they know it’s easier, so they need more reports and more of this and that.</p>
<p>The other thing is, have you ever met anyone who has said, “My biggest hope is to shrink my level of power.”? No! So, what head of HR is going to be asking how they can cut their staff? But, one thing you’ve seen (and you will see more of) is the outsourcing of HR, and that is directly related to technology. Nowadays, a person with knowledge can create a computer program, and someone right out of high school with a part-time job can click on their screen to answer a question about your benefits. So, that can be done by outsourcing to someone for a lower paying job than with someone who has obtained a high level of knowledge over the years.”</p>
<p><strong>Throughout your time in the HR and recruitment industry, what are the biggest, most influential technological changes that you’ve seen?</strong></p>
<p><span><span>“I saw the shoebox system in 1999, and 6 months later I landed my first exempt-level, professional HR job. My job title was “HR Metrics Specialist,” and that meant I was doing the data analysis on the HR data. They hired me because I could do statistics and had six months of HR temp experience. But, that was so new, that I with a year of HR experience and six months of HR data experience was presenting at the state society for human resources management convention on HR metrics. My session was packed, because nobody was doing this – it was all brand new. I was showing them how to do graphs, and they had never seen this, and this was only 15 years ago. And now, everybody is doing that, but I was literally an expert with six months of experience. It was largely because, until you implemented an HRIS, you didn’t have any of that data without going through tons of paperwork and checking it off. Who has time for that? No one. So, as we’ve increased our technology into HR, the reporting capabilities have just exploded, and then you see the advent of the applicant tracking systems which has completely changed how we hire.”</span></span></p>
<p><strong>Should companies embrace HR technology and move towards it as much as possible, or should it only be used when there is a critical need for it?</strong></p>
<p>“I’m a big fan of technology, and I’m a big fan of data, but you need to keep that “human” in human resources. As soon as you start trying to replace everything with technology, you forget that the people are the company’s greatest asset.”</p>
<p><strong>What are the biggest mistakes you’ve seen that companies make with regards to HR technology?</strong></p>
<p>“The biggest mistake I’ve seen comes with the applicant tracking systems. It’s unfortunate that they were developed and became popular at the same time we were in a recession, because that meant there were a lot of applicants for every job. Suddenly, instead of having a stack of resumes on your desk, it was all in a computer and you did things by keywords. While pulling out people who fit those keywords might seem like a really great idea, it also gave us this idea that we should be able to find perfection. Before that, you had 20 resumes on your desk, and you’d better hire one of them. And now, you reject someone who only has 14 of your 15 key words. You can end up in a situation where you literally have 10,000 applicants, and your system says none of those fit. So, instead of thinking that we could pull 10,000 people out of the phonebook and several of them could do this job, we tend to trust the computer. When you apply for a job, you feel like you’re putting your resume into a black hole (you really are), and if you don’t have every “I” dotted and “T” crossed, you’re going to be rejected by the system. That’s where I see a huge downfall in the adoption of HR technology – we’ve replaced our brains with the computer’s brain.”</p>
<p><strong>Do you often see companies that are hesitant to invest in new technologies for their HR department? If so, do you have any helpful suggestions for those HR managers to get the larger budgets they’d like?</strong></p>
<p>“I think so because the financial decisions are made by the CEO, the finance person, etc. HR doesn’t bring in any money. We are a cost center. Why should I take money that I could be spending on my sales force (who bring in money), and spend it on an HR system? It is an expense, and if you can’t see the return on your investment, it’s going to be hard to convince your people with the checkbooks (does anybody have a checkbook anymore?). One of the main things you need to be able to emphasize is <em><strong>how this will benefit the business</strong></em>. For one thing, when talking about government regulation, the government’s not going to exclude you from reporting requirements because you don’t have a system that’s good enough to handle that. Also, for lawsuits, you have your data all at hand if you have your system set up properly. Use things like that to make a business case.”</p>
<p><strong>Should HR professionals (especially recruiters) use mobile apps to be connected around the clock?</strong></p>
<p>“There are lots of arguments both ways on this. When you go back to talking about the human side of human resources, if your employees never get any time off, or feel like they have to be available all of the time, that’s not an environment that’s conducive to employee happiness. Without employee happiness, you’re going to have a hard time having good, long-term productivity.”</p>
<p><strong>Should HR professionals use outside technological systems (such as LinkedIn) to communicate with employees and candidates, or should all correspondence be done through official company channels?</strong></p>
<p>“One of my big things that I say all the time is that companies need to allow their employees to have their own lives. When you start using outside systems like LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, and start getting involved with your employees that way, you take over their entire lives. You end up with situations where people feel like they’re being monitored all of the time. LinkedIn is business focused, and if you’re going to interview me for a job, I’m probably going to send you an invitation anyway, and we’ll already be connected when you hire me. I’ve had questions from bosses who noticed employees were updating their LinkedIn profiles, and they wanted to know if they should fire them now. I can see a boss being concerned because if they’re going to quit, they need to be replaced, but a lot of bosses take things so personally. But, the other employees will see how that one is treated, and don’t think they’ll be treated any better.</p>
<p>On the other hand, tools like LinkedIn and Facebook are excellent for hiring. I wrote <a href="http://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/hard-rock-cafe-hired-120-people-in-30-days-using-facebook-and-you-can-too.html" target="_blank">an article</a> a while back about Hard Rock Café in Venice, Italy. They opened a new store, and they did 100% of their hiring through Facebook. That worked extremely well for them, even though Facebook isn’t a traditional hiring platform.”</p>
<p><strong>Do you know any examples of resistance/hesitance to change where companies ended up being much more successful because they went through with it?</strong></p>
<p>“I don’t have any good, specific examples, but as a general rule, change is really hard for everybody. Even if you technically know that this system will be better than what we had before, the new system is different and it’s hard. You have to learn new things, and people say they like to learn new things, but they really don’t like to.”</p>
<p><strong>Will robots replace people to handle HR issues, and will you change your blog to become the Evil HR Robot?</strong></p>
<p>“What makes you think I’m human? I don’t think we’re in any danger of robots taking over. But, in all seriousness, there are some places where the human should be taken out of it. HR people, like all people, are fallible and have petty grievances. The computer won’t be offended by things that humans are offended by, and computers don’t pick favorites.”</p>
<p><em>Do you have any other questions for Suzanne (<a href="https://twitter.com/RealEvilHRLady" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannemlucas" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="http://evilhrlady.org/" target="_blank">blog</a>, or <a href="http://EvilHRLady@gmail.com/" target="_blank">email</a>)? Or, are there any other topics that you’d like us to seek out expert advice on? We’ll have more recruitment industry interviews coming soon, so write a comment, <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a tweet</a>, or <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">email us</a> if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions!</em></p>
<p><em>- - -</em></p>
<p><span><em>This post originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</span> </p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>The Secret of Sourcing Candidates from Your Own Websitetag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-02-16:502551:BlogPost:19489412016-02-16T16:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582445?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582445?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></span></p>
<p><span>You probably pay to post job ads to every corner of the Internet, but do you realize how many people you can get from your own website? Are you overlooking one of your most valuable hiring sources? You might be, without even realizing it.</span></p>
<p>At <span>Recruitee, we found that nearly <strong>one in four</strong> job applicants can be…</span></p>
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582445?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582445?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></span></p>
<p><span>You probably pay to post job ads to every corner of the Internet, but do you realize how many people you can get from your own website? Are you overlooking one of your most valuable hiring sources? You might be, without even realizing it.</span></p>
<p>At <span>Recruitee, we found that nearly <strong>one in four</strong> job applicants can be sourced from your company website.</span></p>
<p><span><span>We recently talked about ways to </span><a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/8-tips-improve-career-site-with-employer-branding-on-your-company-website/" target="_blank">improve your careers site</a><span> on your company website, but we did a little more research into the reasons why this is such a successful channel to use.</span></span></p>
<h1>Talent Sourcing from Company Website</h1>
<p>Amsterdam-based startup <a href="http://www.crowdyhouse.com/" target="_blank">CrowdyHouse</a> has been quite successful using our software, so we looked at the sources that their candidates were coming from. Even though they’re posting on multiple sites and job boards, we could see that <span><strong>over 23% of job applicants were coming directly from their website</strong>.</span></p>
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582653?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582653?profile=original" width="475" class="align-center"/></a></span></p>
<p>They have an attractive career site, and it’s directly attached to their homepage. Some of their customers decide to apply for a job, and some of their job seekers end up buying something. Everyone gets the feeling of <strong>a happy, healthy, growing brand</strong>.</p>
<h1>Three Tips to Encourage Applicants</h1>
<p>Okay, it’s a cool statistic, but you might be wondering what you can do to turn your website into a successful sourcing platform. Check out the following three tips to get more job applicants submitting from inside your site:</p>
<h2>1 — “Now Hiring” Widget</h2>
<p>You can put a convenient little widget on your site that will scream to your customers that you’re hiring. It won’t block their view or disrupt their experience in any way, but it will be noticeable enough that they may realize you’re a company who wants to hire.</p>
<p>This can turn customers (people who already like your brand) into employees.</p>
<p>Just be cautious about being too aggressive with this tactic. If it’s too flashy or disruptive, it might scare away some of your customers. Classy and minimal can still be noticeable.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582853?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557582853?profile=original" width="600" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h2>2 — Have a Career Site</h2>
<p>A career site is a corner of your website that gives you the opportunity to inform about working for your company, and lets potential applicants view open positions. Check out our other article for <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/8-tips-improve-career-site-with-employer-branding-on-your-company-website/" target="_blank">8 tips to build or improve your site</a>!</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557585888?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557585888?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>This is a great (and simple) way to show potential employees how much you care about the people who work for you.</p>
<h2>3 — Link to Your Site</h2>
<p>Once you have a career site (mentioned above), make sure you have help people find it. Whenever you post your jobs on LinkedIn, <a href="http://www.careerbuilder.com/" target="_blank">CareerBuilder</a>, or any other job sites, make sure to give a link back to your career page. Simply leaving contact information for that position may discourage people from applying when they aren’t a perfect match, but you might also have an opening for their dream job.</p>
<p>You can still advertise the openings on your own site without sacrificing diversity. You can spread links across job boards, internet ads, and social media, but make sure they have the opportunity to get back to your site!</p>
<p>Do you ever get applicants because of your website? Do you have any more tips that we didn’t think of? What about other questions you’re wondering about? Comment, <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">Email us</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a tweet</a>, and we can help research ways to make sure that your hiring headaches start to become a thing of the past.</p>
<p>- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This post originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</span> </p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>
<p> </p>8 Tips to Improve your Careers Site on your Company Websitetag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-02-09:502551:BlogPost:19477772016-02-09T10:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557584504?profile=RESIZE_320x320" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557584504?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></span></p>
<p><span>In today’s world, there’s no excuse to not have a quality page on your company website that’s dedicated to your job openings. Technology is easy and cheap enough that companies of all sizes (and all budgets) can afford to create and maintain one of those lovely Careers Sites.</span></p>
<h1>1 – Show Professional Image and Employer…</h1>
<p><span><a width="300" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557584504?profile=RESIZE_320x320" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557584504?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></span></p>
<p><span>In today’s world, there’s no excuse to not have a quality page on your company website that’s dedicated to your job openings. Technology is easy and cheap enough that companies of all sizes (and all budgets) can afford to create and maintain one of those lovely Careers Sites.</span></p>
<h1>1 – Show Professional Image and Employer Branding</h1>
<p>For many of your potential candidates, your careers site will be the first point of contact. They may or may not be familiar with your company, but it’s likely that this is going to be their first impression of employee life. So, if you wouldn’t make an interviewee wait in a dirty, outdated waiting room, make sure you have a modern and quality version of your website.</p>
<p><span>Whether you create your own page or use an outsourced service to manage it, make sure that it contains your company colors, logos, and fonts. Not only do generic sites appear less attractive and desirable to potential candidates, but they also raise concerns about sending their resumes to a scam artist instead of a respectable company.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557585196?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557585196?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>2 – List All Open Positions (and Delete Them When They’re Closed)</h1>
<p>It’s pretty common for companies to add new positions to their site when they’re trying to hire, but a problem arrives when they forget to remove them after they’re filled. Looking like you’re hiring 200 people will get a lot of attention, but sending just one “Sorry, that position has already been filled” response will cause many to wonder how many others aren’t available. Job seekers are already being told that only <a href="http://www.quintcareers.com/job-hunting_myths.html" target="_blank">15 – 20% of jobs are advertised</a>, so at least let them think that their list is up-to-date.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557588293?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557588293?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>3 – Use for Legal Protection</h1>
<blockquote><p>“Even though federal labor rules don’t require employers to post openings, human-resources departments at many companies require them to be listed on a job board or career site for some period… Such postings are meant to make hiring fair and transparent, and may help to protect employers from discrimination lawsuits…” – Lauren Weber and Leslie Kwoh,<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323706704578229661268628432" target="_blank">“Beware the Phantom Job Listing”</a>, The Wall Street Journal</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even if you created the position because you did an internal search of your company and found the perfect candidate for it, it’s still a good idea to give it a bit of advertising online. Whenever you fail to notify the general public about an open position, you leave yourself open to the possibility of a lawsuit because of discriminatory hiring practices. But, if it’s a strict company policy to always spread the news of a job, you’re far less likely to be sued because of picking favorites (and more likely to win the case, if it comes up).</p>
<h1>4 – Learn How to Apply Updates</h1>
<p>We already discussed why you need to update the positions when they’re vacant and filled, but don’t forget about the physical act of getting them on your website. This is pretty simple if someone in your company manages your site, but it’s trickier if it’s externally designed and managed. In that case, there are a few good options. First, learn a little web design, or invest in a software program, and become capable of letting the hiring managers update the website themselves. Your other option is to build your hiring system into your website, and then these changes will happen automatically (this is discussed in the next section).</p>
<h1>5 – Integrate with Recruiting Systems</h1>
<p>Many ATS services allow for the capability to combine your applicant tracking system directly with your hiring site. In some cases, they can host a dedicated page for you, so you’ll be sure to have a well-maintained career page, and all the information will be in one place.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592727?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592727?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>6 – Optimize for Mobile</h1>
<p>If you have read anything lately about the internet and recruiting, you’ve surely seen an article on the importance of having a career site optimized for mobile usage.</p>
<blockquote><p>“86% of current job seekers would use their smartphone to search for jobs” – Selina Kerley, <a href="http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/mobile-recruiting-to-stay/" target="_blank">“Mobile Recruiting: It’s Here to Stay!”</a>, Undercover Recruiter</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Glassdoor conducted a survey this past year, and they found that <a href="http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/9-10-job-seekers-search-jobs-mobile-glassdoor-state-mobile-job-search-survey/" target="_blank">75% of people are likely to search for jobs via a mobile device in the next 12 months, and 44% percent of those are also going to use it to apply for a job</a>. Studies have seen these sorts of statistics growing drastically and consistently over the past few years, so now is the time to make sure your career site can accommodate those searchers.</p>
<p>On a similar note, we all know that both sides of the equation are using their phones more, so check out our recent article for <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/5-advantages-of-a-mobile-recruitment-app/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=post_8_tips_improve_careers_site&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">some reasons why recruiters can benefit from having an app of their own</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557596268?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557596268?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>7 – Make It Personal</h1>
<p>All the mumbo jumbo about brand image aside, this is going to be a major factor in the minds of the qualified candidates who have (or will inevitably get) offers from multiple companies. Have testimonials from current employees, <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/simple-guide-writing-perfect-job-description/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=content&utm_content=8tipsimprovecareerssite&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">create a job ad</a>, list your event calendar, and show images of your office. Make sure that these potential employees can “feel” your company before they even talk to anyone. That will save a lot of time for everyone.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557597988?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557597988?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>8 – Have a Call-to-Action Method</h1>
<blockquote><p>“If candidates can’t easily submit their information on your career site, they’ll be gone before they can ever figure out how to apply.” –<a href="http://www.recruiting.com/articles/career-site-losing-candidates/" target="_blank">“How Your Career Site Is Losing Candidates”</a>, Recruiting.com</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This may be the last element of our list, but it’s probably the most important! Make sure you give these people a way to contact you. Without a form, a button to submit information, or at least <span>an email address, people will fall in love with you and be unable to apply.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557601565?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557601565?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a>How many of these tips are you taking advantage of on your site? Did we miss anything, or is there anything else that you’re wondering about? Comment, <a href="http://pr@recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Email us</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a tweet</a>, and we can help research ways to make sure that your hiring headaches become a thing of the past.</p>
<p>- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This post originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=post_8_tips_improve_careers_site&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</span> </p>
<p><em><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=post_8_tips_improve_careers_site&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=post_8_tips_improve_careers_site&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>How to Promote a Job Vacancy without Paying for Ittag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-02-02:502551:BlogPost:19469552016-02-02T14:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587483?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587483?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a></span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“We’re on a tight budget, but we need a new employee. How can I promote my job vacancy well enough to reach a wide range of job seekers without paying recruiter fees or the costs associated with featured posts on job boards?”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span>Have you ever found yourself asking this question? Many of our clients have,…</span></p>
<p><span><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587483?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587483?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a></span></p>
<blockquote><p><span>“We’re on a tight budget, but we need a new employee. How can I promote my job vacancy well enough to reach a wide range of job seekers without paying recruiter fees or the costs associated with featured posts on job boards?”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span>Have you ever found yourself asking this question? Many of our clients have, and we took this opportunity to put together five tips that can help you promote your open job vacancy for free!</span></p>
<h1>1 – Exploit Free Sites</h1>
<p><span>There are countless numbers of sites that will allow you to post your job ads for free. At the time of this writing, </span><a href="http://www.indeed.com/" target="_blank">Indeed</a><span> and </span><a href="http://www.glassdoor.com/" target="_blank">Glassdoor</a><span> are two of the top three most popular sites in the US, and you can post on both of them without paying.</span></p>
<p>Even so, don’t just fill one in and be done with it. Aside from the general boards, you can also find some specific to industry, location, and other factors. Try <a href="http://www.good.co/blog/2014/07/07/list-of-100-niche-job-boards/" target="_blank">this list from Good.co</a> to find some job boards in your specific area.</p>
<p><span><span>Basically, if it’s free, there’s no excuse not to post to them all. But this can be time consuming and frustrating, so use an <a href="https://recruitee.com/en/job-marketing" target="_blank">Applicant Tracking System</a> that can post to multiple boards with one click if you can. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span><a href="https://recruitee.com/test-en?utm_source=recruitingblogs&utm_medium=guest%20blogging&utm_content=How%20to%20Promote%20a%20Job%20Vacancy%20without%20Paying%20for%20It&utm_campaign=recruitingblogs" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557587662?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></span></span></p>
<h1>2 – Hack Social Media</h1>
<p>You have a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> account, and so does your company. Even if you don’t want to pay to post the job ads on the LinkedIn job boards, you can still share a link to where the job vacancy is posted elsewhere (such as on the career page of your company).</p>
<p>But, don’t share aimlessly. Find some groups or pages that are applicable to your position. For example, if you’re located in London and need a PR person, why not mention it in the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/London-PR-Jobs-3869088?home=&gid=3869088&trk=anet_ug_hm" target="_blank">London PR Jobs group</a> to see if one of the roughly 2,500 members is interested?</p>
<p>Or, maybe you run an advertising company in New York City, and you’re searching for someone new. It would be wise to switch over to a separate social media setting and post about it in the almost 8,000 member strong <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/nycadjobsandnetworking/" target="_blank">NYC Ad Jobs and Networking Facebook group</a>.</p>
<p>If you’re still convinced that LinkedIn is the best and only place you’ll find candidates, then just think about the following quote (and check the resources in the <a href="http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/alternatives-linkedin-professional-networking-sourcing/" target="_blank">article it came from</a>).</p>
<blockquote><p><span>“Boasting over 300 million members, LinkedIn has cornered the market as the social network of choice for professionals around the world. However in the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of niche professional networking sites catering to different industries and specialties.” – <a href="http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/alternatives-linkedin-professional-networking-sourcing/" target="_blank">Maebellyne Ventura</a></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span><span>So, stop using social media to look at cat pictures, and start taking advantage of the possibilities for spreading your open position around the internet – for free.</span></span></p>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/100438239" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592011?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<h1>3 – Use Your Own Web Traffic</h1>
<p>This may sound obvious, but its potential is often overlooked. Having a career page on your site can boost interest in not only this position, but also others within your company. It doesn’t matter if the page is empty or has 10,000 vacancies because it puts it in the mind of visitors (and algorithms of the search engines) that your company wants to hire people.</p>
<blockquote><p><span>“Your career site is the primary research destination on the Web for curious job seekers. It’s also the one place where you own 100 percent share of voice, giving you the perfect opportunity to sell your company and your opportunities to candidates.” – </span><a href="http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com/2014/10/01/5-must-traits-quality-career-site/" target="_blank">Mary Lorenz</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>For instance, if someone follows a link to a position on your career page and also sees the rest of the vacancies, they might think of one of their friends who is perfect for another position, and they decide to forward it on. Suddenly you have two potential employees.</p>
<p><span>One of our clients, </span><a href="http://www.crowdyhouse.com/" target="_blank">Crowdy House</a><span>, uses our service of hosting a personalized </span><a href="https://crowdyhouse.recruitee.com/" target="_blank">career page</a>, and about 20% of their traffic comes from their own website (even though they post and promote on multiple job boards).</p>
<p><span><a href="https://www.crowdyhouse.com/" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592161?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></span></p>
<h1>4 – Join Online Discussions</h1>
<p><span>Using an Internet connection to communicate with other computers has opened up whole new worlds of networking. I’m sure when you’re standing in line at Starbucks and you overhear someone with a problem, you’ll politely give them some advice.</span></p>
<p><span>So, make sure you’re doing that online as well. This can benefit your career page because people are asking job related questions such as how to get into a specific industry. If that industry is yours, and your company is hiring, you just may have a new applicant. But, it gets better when you realize that future applicants can also find the conversation, your company, and your job posts.</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span><span>“As it turns out, there are tons of job search resources and employment opportunities on Reddit – if you know where to look.” – <a href="http://smarterer.com/blog/2013/02/01/secret-job-search-weapon-reddit/" target="_blank">Phillip Taylor-Parker</a></span></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span><span><span>Three popular sites you can check out are </span><a href="https://www.quora.com/" target="_blank">Quora</a><span> (a large question/answer forum), </span><a href="http://www.reddit.com/" target="_blank">Reddit</a><span> (the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet”), and </span><a href="http://www.hubspot.com/" target="_blank">HubSpot</a><span> (one of the best inbound marketing companies out there).</span></span></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3wtxwt/we_are_recruiting_for_nasas_newest_class_of/" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557592571?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></span></span></span></p>
<h1>5 – Connect With Institutions</h1>
<p>If you want to reach the right people without paying for it, you have to remember to think outside of the box. There are plenty of specific groups that can help distribute your vacancies to appropriate candidates.</p>
<p>For an example, take local universities. They can be a great way to find intelligent workers who can do administrative tasks and don’t need to work full time. Or, why not try clubs with solid membership bases? Even if you think that the local bingo group has nothing to do with you, they might be happy to pass on your offer to their participants. It’s even better if it’s an organization dealing with the topic of your needed employee (such as a hacking club when you’re searching for a programmer).</p>
<h1>It Doesn’t Stop There</h1>
<p>This list, of course, doesn’t contain every source you’d ever need to post something for free. But, the big takeaway that you should get is that you can spread news about your job without breaking the bank. Don’t be afraid to use some out-of-the-box thinking and enlist a little creativity.</p>
<p><em>Do you know any other ways to promote a job vacancy offer for free, or do you have a specific question about anything else related to recruitment? Comment, <a href="http://hello@recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Email us</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a tweet</a>, and we can help research ways to make sure that your hiring headaches become a thing of the past.</em></p>
<p><em>- - -</em></p>
<p><em><em>This post originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</em><span> </span></p>
<p><em><span><a href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a><span> is an avid recruitment writer at </span><a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a><span>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at </span><a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a><span> to try it out and follow us on Twitter </span><a href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a><span>.</span></span></em></p>
<p></p>A Simple Guide To Writing The Perfect Job Descriptiontag:recruitingblogs.com,2016-01-26:502551:BlogPost:19459722016-01-26T10:00:00.000ZHagi Trinhhttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/HagiTrinh
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557586097?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557586097?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a> Some of our clients asked for advice about how to write a good job description. Since this is one of the more challenging and overlooked aspects of the hiring process, we decided to share some tips.</p>
<p>When you need to hire someone, it’s very normal to feel some anxiety about writing the description for your job vacancy.…</p>
<p class="lead-capital-letter"><a width="750" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557586097?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557586097?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a>Some of our clients asked for advice about how to write a good job description. Since this is one of the more challenging and overlooked aspects of the hiring process, we decided to share some tips.</p>
<p>When you need to hire someone, it’s very normal to feel some anxiety about writing the description for your job vacancy. After all, some companies hire people whose primary responsibility is writing these posts. So, it’s fine for everyone else to ask for a little bit of help in crafting your message.</p>
<p>Below you’ll see six simple tips that will help you know what to do next. If you take these into consideration, you should be shaking hands with your new employee in no time!</p>
<h1>1 – Create a Concrete Definition</h1>
<p>Before doing anything, take a moment to relax. As with many worthwhile things in life, you will be more successful if you start by really thinking about what you need.</p>
<p>Who are you trying to hire? What needs to be accomplished? What is the problem that they need to solve?</p>
<p>It can be very tempting to give into the time pressure surrounding the need for your new employee. But doing something quick often leads to poor results and plenty of regrets. A sloppy definition can lengthen the whole timeline of the hiring process, so don’t make that mistake.</p>
<p>When crafting your definition and writing your job description, you need to be able to truly understand the ideal candidate. Only then will you be able to write a description that meets their desires and makes them realize that they want to be part of your company.</p>
<p><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557586601?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></p>
<h1>2 – Use Proper Keywords (not Buzzwords)</h1>
<p>You painstakingly optimize your website for SEO practices, so don’t overlook the same concepts for your job descriptions. Since many job seekers will find open positions through searching online job boards, it’s important to integrate appropriate keywords to help their searches.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>“Your keyword phrases in your job posting should be specific, not general (i.e., “sales job” may describe the job generally, but “financial services sales job” would be a better phrase to target.) Also keep in mind that the more general or broad a keyword phrase is, the more competition there will be for it.”</em> – <a href="http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/attracting-job-candidates/search-engine-optimization.aspx" target="_blank">Matt Evans</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>To put it in perspective, one of our clients had a position posted on multiple job sites. After slow progress with the responses, we examined the job ad and saw that it had mistakenly included “recruiting” as a primary keyword (for a non-recruiting position). And a quick switch saw their number of applicants jumped from 5 to 40 in the same day.</p>
<p>However, it’s extraordinarily important to understand the difference between keywords and buzzwords. Make sure you’re not using the wrong ones. A keyword is a descriptive word that helps retrieve proper words from a database. A buzzword, on the other hand, is a word that is fashionable and fun.</p>
<p>Before you describe your company as a “market leader,” think about what the potential applicant will see. If you are that important, you probably don’t need to tell them. If you aren’t, they might wonder which other “facts” you’re using that are far-fetched.</p>
<p>Tell the buzzwords to buzz off.</p>
<h1>3 – Be Precise, but Not Too Precise</h1>
<p>Now that you’re thinking about the importance of keywords, it’s time to remember that you shouldn’t overdo it. The more specific that your job ad is, the less potential candidates will match the profile. So, if you really need someone who is a licensed CPA, you should probably mention it. But, it might not be necessary to say they need to have very specific experience or skills. Many candidates won’t even bother to apply because they aren’t an “expert” with that certain computer system, and you could miss out on an intelligent employee whose ability to learn would get them to that level within a month. So, even if you had 30 applicants with less than great keywords, do you know how many qualified candidates didn’t even bother to apply?</p>
<blockquote><p><span><em>“While you shouldn’t apply for jobs you’re wildly unqualified for, you should apply for jobs that you’re not perfect for, because no one is perfect for any job.”</em> – <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-do-not-apply-for-male-sounding-jobs/" target="_blank">Suzanne Lucas</a></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The quote comes from an article giving advice to job seekers, but recruiters should also keep it in mind. No one is perfect for any job. It’s time to relax your requirements a little bit.</p>
<p>Also, think about how much you love seeing bullet points in resumes that are submitted to you. It’s true that job seekers like looking at job ads with a brief, organized amount of text, and that will cause a direct increase in the amount of candidates replying to your offer.</p>
<h1>4 – Use a Checklist</h1>
<p>To make sure you don’t miss any elements to include, here’s a handy checklist with the minimum points that your job description must include:</p>
<p><span><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557586993?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></span></p>
<h1>5 – Keep It Personal and Professional</h1>
<p>For most people, this job description will be their first interaction with the business side of your company. To that end, it’s crucial to remember that you’re talking not only to potential employees, but also potential customers. Don’t cause them to lose faith by being of poor quality or demonstrating a lack of professionalism.</p>
<p>Also, don’t lose sight of the point of a job description. The following quote can serve as a reminder that a job description is a good way to give a glimpse of your company culture, but be careful about overdoing it.</p>
<blockquote><p><span><span><em>“If all you’re talking about is ping pong tables, happy hour and beer in the fridge, then you stand a good chance of coming off more like a frat house than a serious company that balances a lot of hard work with blowing off a little steam.”</em> – <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-roberson/7-tips-for-writing-a-job-_b_2258175.html" target="_blank">Steve Roberson</a></span></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span><span>One more thing to keep in mind is that people want to work with other people. They don’t want to work with robots that generate awkward messages. So, throw a little bit of your personality into it. It’s not unprofessional to show that you have humans at your company.<span><br/></span></span></span></p>
<p><span><span><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1557589758?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></span></span></p>
<h1>6 – Find a Template</h1>
<p>If at this point you still don’t know where to begin, just think about how fortunate you are to be living in the 21st century. Unless you’ve recently perfected commercial space travel, many people have already hired for a very similar position, and you can borrow their work. To save a little time weeding through bad information, Recruitee has compiled <a href="https://recruitee.com/academy/job-description-templates/" target="_blank">a very comprehensive list of job description templates</a> for 200+ different professions.</p>
<h1>Moving on to the Next Step</h1>
<p>Since the hiring process doesn’t end here, we’re working hard to bring you more helpful resources on the other stages. Have a specific question about anything else related to recruitment? Comment, <a href="mailto:hello@recruitee.com" target="_blank">Email us</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">send a tweet</a>, and we can help research ways to make sure that your hiring headaches become a thing of the past.</p>
<p>- - -</p>
<p><span><em>This post originally appeared on <a href="https://recruitee.com/blog" target="_blank">Recruitee Blog</a> </em>(newsletter: <a rel="nofollow" class="_56pjv" href="http://eepurl.com/bMHiZD" target="_blank">eepurl.com/bMHiZD</a>)</span> </p>
<p><em><a href="https://twitter.com/alvafir" target="_blank">Hagi Trinh</a> is an avid recruitment writer at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">Recruitee</a>. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at <a href="https://recruitee.com/" target="_blank">recruitee.com</a> to try it out and follow us on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/recruiteeHR" target="_blank">@recruiteeHR</a>.</em></p>