New Recruitment Toys, Gamification & Rehiring – #TruLondon 8

Last Thursday saw the first UK Talent Net Live event, brought to London by Craig Fisher followed on Friday by the 8^th edition of the #TruLondon Recruitment Unconference, organised by Bill Boorman and Aki Kakko.

On the Friday especially I came across a few useful recruitment tools and strategies I thought I’d share.  Anyone that’s been to a tru event will know they can sometimes be a little chaotic, but I’m pretty certain most of what I’ve remembered is accurate!

The Recruitment Reconnextions Strategy

This wasn’t actually covered by any of the tracks at tru, but while listening to Arie Ball, VP Talent Acquisition of Sodexo US explain their approach towards mobile recruiting, she briefly referred to their Alumni community called Sodexo Reconnextions. On the surface its easy to think it’s an Alumni network like any other, but after having a more in-depth discussion with Arie it was interesting to discover the effort that goes into maintaining this community for specific goals.  One such goal is to keep engaged with high performers that leave the company with the longer term objective of attracting them back to Sodexo at some point in the the future.

When an employee leaves Sodexo US, they receive an invite both via email and snail mail to join the Sodexo Reconnextions group.  A communication plan is in place for the group and members have access to regular webinars on a variety of topics from CV Tips and Interview Skills to Personal Financial Planning. Internally line managers are actively asked by the recruitment team to name at least 1 member of staff they wished had not left the company.   These high performers form part of a sub group that the recruiters can target in the future.   Often people leave thinking the grass is greener, but in the instance that down the line the reality is different, the Sodexo reconnextions strategy ensures that their brand is always at the forefront of  persons mind career wise. By providing useful information and support Sodexo improve the chances of attracting back high performers.  So far the programme seems pretty successful with around 10% of the people within the reconnextions group estimated to have been rehired.

Cool Recruitment Tools

Que Social –Another tool Arie demonstrated.  This is a recruitment gamification platform that Sodexo uses to help leverage the social networks of their employees.  Employees create a profile on the platform and link up their social media accounts and contact details.  The platform supports content curation which the recruitment team use to schedule engaging messages about brand initiatives, company news, jobs etc that the employees with Que Social accounts receive by SMS and/or email. The messages have a headline and small description of the underlying story and a hyperlink that if clicked will instantly share the content to the users various social media accounts registered in their Que Social profile.

All the links are trackable and feed into a dashboard the recruitment team have access to. The dashboard illustrates metrics relating to any content sharing activity, which platforms are hooked up, frequency of shares etc.  The data can be used to reward or provide incentives to users.  It looks like a great tool, a simple way to turn your employees into brand ambassadors and introduce simple game mechanics into the recruitment process

Joberate Signal – If you’re looking for a tool that easily allows you to create talent pipelines,  and monitors that pipeline to automatically inform you that an individual may be looking for a new job, then check out Joberate Signal.  Once you’re logged into the platform you simply create a folder or folders which you then populate with bookmarked social profiles (like LinkedIn or Twitter) of the individuals you want to keep an eye on (you can also bulk import candidate data via a csv file).  The tool monitors changes in the online behaviour of these candidates and then notifies you when they may be considering a move, thus allowing you to pro-actively approach them.  It’s simple to use and because it’s linked to active social profiles your database will never be static and out of date.

Connect Cubed – This is a candidate assessment platform that uses gaming technology to determine a match between your roles and the personality and smarts of a candidate.  Rather than being used after an application is made, or during the latter part of a recruitment process, the Connect Cubed platform delivers pre-application tests and simulations.  In theory, armed with this data you’ll be able to determine more accurately who to invite or not to invite to an interview, saving both you and the candidate valuable time.

That’s a quick update of a some of the tools and tactics I picked up at #TruLondon.  You can see a full list of what was discussed and find out about a host of other tools that were on show at the following address: http://www.globaltru.com/event/trulondon8/.

The Black Hole Effect – #TruLondon 6 & The Candidate Experience

A week ago on Monday the 22nd of October I attended #TruLondon 6 – the Recruiting  Unconference.   As usual a host of international professionals from across the recruitment spectrum had gathered to discuss, network and learn about all things recruitment.

Of the various tracks (tracks are like open group discussions around a topic) I participated in it was Gerry Crispin’s “The Candidate Experience” that sparked my interest the most given many companies are increasingly realising that the line between the candidate and the consumer is increasingly blurred.

Gerry is the Principle and Co-Founder of CareerXroads, a consulting practice that “facilitates peer-to-peer meetings between corporate staffing leaders to share, compare and innovate hiring practices”.  Aside from this Gerry is also heavily involved in the Candidate Experience Awards (or CandE’s).

In a nutshell the CandE’s exist ‘to enable any company to benchmark and improve their candidate experience’. Part of this benchmarking process involves detailed surveys completed by actual candidates who have applied to corporate vacancies (regardless of whether they successfully got the job).

Gerry had some interesting knowledge to share regarding some of the research the CandE’s have generated.  A couple of the main points that stood out were:

1. Very few companies manage candidate expectations by explaining what to expect in the recruitment process up front.
2. “50% of candidates surveyed, believed that once they made an application online they had a personal relationship with that company”

Now when you combine the latter statement with the results of other candidate surveys such as that from MysteryApplicant.com, which indicated that 38% of their surveyed applicants “were less likely to buy from or use the company’s products or services after their job seeking experience”, it’s clear that there is a pretty sound business case for improving the candidate experience.

Previous CandE reports can be downloaded on their website here.  I’ve had a read through myself and unfortunately it was not surprising to see the “Black Hole Effect” being mentioned.  Statistics highlighted that 30-40% of those candidates surveyed did not receive any status updates on their applications.  It was also worth noting in the summary of the report that an “auto message receipt of submission does not count as a communication/response”

So what are other companies doing to improve the candidate experience?  Well there were some simple ideas Gerry mentioned that a few had adopted.  A simple one being generating an automated email to all applicants after a set time (20 days in the example he mentioned) asking candidates for feedback about their application experience.  The point of this was that it built into the internal recruitment process a system that would result in invariable negative feedback if applicants were particularly frustrated.  The internal team know this, and are motivated to provide a positive candidate experience.

If you are an in-house recruiter looking to learn more about the CandE’s or for ways to improve the candidate experience, then I would check out their website http://www.thecandidateexperienceawards.org .  Although the CandE’s originated in the US there is a UK survey also, and you may find some of the research and insights beneficial to your organisation.

Musings on #TruLondon 2011 – Recruitment & Referrals

Bit of a belated post this one, but on Thursday the 17^th of February I attended the #TruLondon Recruiter Unconference, organised by Bill Boorman. For those who don’t know what an unconference is, it can be described as “a gathering of minds, experiences and opinions where the attendees (or active participants) lead the conversation”. There are no PowerPoint presentations, name badges or sales pitches (hope that makes some sense to you).

This is the second #TruLondon I’ve attended and I always find some case study, technology or new application that sparks my interest.  I could only make half the Thursday session but still managed to catch a couple of interesting discussions (or “tracks” as they call them at an unconference). One track in particular was hosted by Kevin Wheeler, founder of the San Francisco-based Future of Talent Institute, the topic of which was ‘referral schemes.’

A good referral scheme can do wonders as part of your direct recruiting strategy.   Kevin, speaking from his experience, suggested that state-of-the-art US firms are recruiting as much as 40% of their staff via referrals. After much debate in the room about what makes (or doesn’t) a good referral scheme, I noted the following points (some may seem obvious, but I thought I’d share them anyway):

1) Any referral programme needs to be bespoke to the business

2) A programme’s effectiveness will largely be dependent on the growth cycle of a company. The more rapid the growth, the more effective the scheme.

3) Long term effectiveness of programmes is an issue with many becoming significantly less useful after the first year or two (there are only so many times you can ask the same people for referrals)

4) It’s best to initiate any referral process/request only when the need/vacancy actually arises.

5) Flexible schemes targeted around specific skill sets related to the current business needs are more effective in the long term

6) Monetary rewards should not be the primary driver for referrals. Referrals should have a foundation in the company culture and be embedded into aspects of the recruitment process

7) Alumni programmes specifically tend to be a very effective source for referrals. Good schemes sign up candidates as part of the exit process

8 ) You should be able to go direct to your team for referrals rather than going through HR

9) If you’re not careful, your referral scheme can end up alienating your existing workforce (and potentially your consumers)

The above points emphasise some critical issues with referral programmes, and why they should also be embedded into the company culture to begin with. Employees that are leaving are no longer ‘black sheep’ as they are potentially ambassadors of your brand and a source of future referrals.

On the reward issue, I’ve personally referred staff at previous companies and received a monetary reward. However when quizzed on this during the track, I admitted that I would have been happy to refer good candidates I knew even if I didn’t receive a monetary reward. In this instance I only knew of the existence of the referral program in the first place because the monetary reward had been used to market the scheme internally.

The final point is an interesting one, and can occur when a scheme works too well in many ways. If a particular demographic or ethnic group becomes the dominant referring source, it can lead to lack of diversity amongst the workforce.

So to summarise my learning outcomes on a good referral programme (and no doubt it’s easier said than done) – ideally a good scheme needs to be bespoke to the business, embedded in the company culture and recruitment processes, and contain an alumni element. It should be flexible enough to target relevant skills on demand (so it doesn’t annoy people long term) to support current business growth.

I would also emphasise an element of creativity in any scheme to find ways to more fully engage current employees in the process. Kevin cited a great example from Yahoo in the US who have a ‘bring a friend to lunch’ scheme as one element of their referral programme. It’s a great way for employees to introduce people in their network to the company (Yahoo pays for the lunch).

You may agree or disagree with some of the points I gathered from the track; any suggestions as to what makes a successful referral scheme, or what has worked in your experience are welcome.

By Jean-Paul Smalls