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THE PAINLESS EMPLOYMENT PROCESS
How user friendly is your employment process?
RECRUITER WORKLOAD
Some benchmarking data to assist you in determining the number of recruiters you need.
PASSIVE JOB SEEKERS
Who are they and where do you find them?
INCREASING YOUR EMPLOYEE REFERRALS
How to get the most out of your employee referral program.
The employment paradigm has changed. Instead of employers herding applicants
through an employment process with a few lucky ones making it to the end,
today we have a few, often demanding applicants telling us that they might
consider working for our companies. And, we are happy to have their interest.
Successfully landing the few candidates that surface in this job market requires
a strong customer orientation, with the applicant being the customer. Many
companies have found it necessary to reengineer their employment processes
to make them applicant-friendly, quick and painless.
Applicants today want and expect to be treated with the utmost respect. They
do not want to be subjected to two-, three-day or longer interviewing and
selection processes. They would rather take no more than one day away from
their current jobs to meet with three to six decision-makers and expect to
hear the results - - offer or no offer - - within 24 hours.
Is your company's process as efficient and painless as this? It probably isn't
if the people involved have not been uniformly trained, take a haphazard,
seat-of-the-pants approach to interviewing, create an interview environment
that seems more like an interrogation than a conversation, or repeatedly ask
the same questions in each successive interview. What would you think of a
company that treated you this way in an interview?
Applicants perceive the company based upon the people they meet in the interview
process. It is often their only window to the culture and environment of the
company. As such, it is important that we structure our processes to ensure
that we give as much information as we seek from the candidate. This requires
planning and assigned responsibilities. Leaving this to the individual discretion
of each interviewer will inevitably fall short of your true desire - - to
sell the candidate on the company, the job, and you.
Candidates have been known to walk out on interviews when they have been kept
waiting between interviews by managers who are tied up with something more
important. To the applicant, there is nothing more important, and to be put
off this way is rude, inconsiderate and unprofessional. It speaks volumes
about the way employees are treated at your company.
Today's applicant also expects the employer to be decisive. many companies
are stream-lining their processes to ensure that candidates get an offer the
same day as their interview or within 24 hours. This means that all members
of your selection team must be trained regarding what an acceptably qualified
candidate needs in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities.
Too often today we hear recruiters complaining about the large volume of job
vacancies they are being asked to fill. Recent surveys of Washington-area
employers revealed that the typical company has over 80 ongoing vacancies.
The question is often asked - - How many recruiters should I have to deal
with this workload?
Over the last decade, through our work with a variety of clients, we have
determined the optimum workload for a recruiter handling predominantly professional
level positions to be 18 to 24 open positions on a month-to-month basis. Recruiters
who focus predominantly upon administrative and clerical positions might still
be effective handling up to 40 openings at a time, while executive level recruiters
may be more effective handling 12 or less. These numbers, of course, will
vary by industry.
A dedicated recruiter in a corporate environment can average 8 fills per month
if activity levels warrant. Agency recruiters, however, are likely to generate
2 or 3 placements per month.
The decision to add a full-time, part-time, or contract recruiter should take
these workload benchmarks into consideration. If your company has 80 or more
vacancies on an ongoing basis, you should have 4 recruiters on board, and
you should be netting 36 to 40 fills per month. However, recognize that adding
an additional recruiter will usually not generate meaningful results for at
least 30 to 45 days.
With unemployment rates dropping to 4.3% nationally and 1.7% for college-degreed
workers, is it any wonder that we will do anything to try to identify a qualified
candidate, interested or not?
Recruiters today have come to realize that the majority of people who possess
the skills we demand are employed and not actively looking for a job. A couple
of million people out of 63 million workers in this country have made the
conscious decision to place their resumes on various internet resume databases.
These folks are among the active job seekers, even though many of them are
gainfully employed.
The passive job seeker can be one of several types of people. She may be happily
employed but has a personal web page which contains a lot of recruiting intelligence
information. Or, he may be a skilled professional who chooses not to post
his resume on the web because he can't handle all the annoying headhunter
calls, but he actively participates in news groups or a professional users
group. And, there is the diligent employee who uses the internet to do research,
but while digging for competitive intelligence information on your corporate
web site, decides to click on your job opportunities button.
All of these people are accessible via the internet, and could be turned into
an active job seeker by a well-constructed web site, job posting, or convincing
recruiter.
Also, anyone on whom public information is available, or has been published
or quoted in the media, can be found on the internet.
Passive job seekers will not be found in the thousands of resume databases
which have proliferated on the internet. They must be mined from the lists,
news groups, user and special interest groups and directories accessible by
means of carefully crafted queries on any of the various, free, web search
engines, such as Altavista, Yahoo, HotBot, Infoseek, Reference, Four11, Dejanews,
Techweb, etc.
The competitive nature of today's job market has made it imperative that employers
be more aggressive in recruiting. Utilizing the principle of six degrees of
separation, many of us have come to realize that our existing workers have
the potential to become productive resources of many additional workers. Our
challenge is to give them the knowledge, tools and incentives to do so.
Companies like Cisco Systems have captured the interest and enlisted the involvement
of virtually their entire work force with programs such as You've Got a Friend
at Cisco. It is mot necessarily the size of the reward that stimulates employees
to participate, but rather the fun and excitement about the promotion of the
program and the frequency and clarity of the communications identifying the
needs to be filled.
It is not enough to create a policy authorizing a cash award for the hiring
of a referral and posting your jobs on your intranet. If you build it, they
may not necessarily come. To get your employees to participate, you may need
to take the program to them individually or in small groups. Get management
involved and excited about the program and frequently publicize the reward
recipients.
It is recommended that you refresh your program every 12 to 18 months. This
does not mean you need to up the ante every year, but rather you should make
it new and exciting to draw attention to it and get people involved.
In addition to cash rewards, many companies are offering quarterly or annual
drawings for additional rewards such as cruises, big screen TVs, cars, etc.
Again, the purpose is visibility and a chance to communicate your specific
needs to your employees.
Employee referral awards generally range from $500 to $5000 with an average
of approximately $1500. The typical advertising campaign costs twice that
amount to land a single hire, while agency fees can run 5 to 10 times higher.
Revamp your referral program and watch your cost per hire go down.