Talent Seeker

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#A. Use smart hiring strategies

### Use Smart Hiring Strategies

Recruitments provide opportunities for your business to align employee skill sets to your mission and goals and planning for departmental and individual growth. Proper planning of the hiring process and careful evaluation of the needs of your business are key to hiring the right person for the job.

**Newly Created Position**  
When a new position is to be opened, it is important to:

* Understand and take into consideration strategic goals that your business have in plan for this position and determine if there are any upcoming changes that may have an impact on this position;
* Conduct a quick analysis with respect to the UCR Core Competencies and ask the following questions:

  -  Are there any gaps?
  - What core skills are missing in the unit where the position will be opened?
  - What core skills are required now and what may be called for in the foreseeable future?
 
* Conduct a Job Analysis to see if this position is new to the unit, doing so will also help to identify gaps.
 
**Replacement**

When attrition occurs, finding a replacement is typically the logical step to take, however, before obtaining approval to advertise the position, consider the following:

* As with a newly created position, it may be helpful to conduct a Job Analysis in order to tailor the position to what is currently required and to ensure proper classification; your HR Classification Analyst can assist in conducting a review and completing this process;
* Review the role and decide if there are any changes required, given that certain tasks performed and responsibilities undertaken by the previous employee may not or should not be passed on to the newly hired; and
* Carefully evaluate if any of the following needs to be updated in line with your current business needs:

  - The appropriate classification level required to perform the relevant tasks; be aware that changes in the classification of a position from represented to non-represented will require union notice and agreement;
  - Tasks carried out by the previous employee and whether or not certain tasks should be removed and/or added, and any intra-business unit transfer of responsibilities;
  - Supervisory or managerial responsibilities;
  - Budgetary responsibility (if any);
  - Working hours; and
  - The underlying need for this position to be maintained
 
### Define your vacancies meaningfully

Offer purpose and career context, and talent will come by themselves.

* **Get serious about impact:**  
    Determine the positive impacts that your organization is seeking to make in the world, and do that goal justice. You don’t need to be a social enterprise or a triple-bottom-line firm, but joining the ranks of ethical and sustainable companies will allow you to offer a much more compelling purpose, even if it isn’t completely unique. However, this purpose should be real and never fabricated. People can tell the difference.

* **Tell that story, and tell it well:**  
    Once you are certain about your mission, tell it to the world. Whether this is referred to as marketing, communication, storytelling or branding, make sure that you iterate clearly and effectively on how much you care about your mission and how you’re working towards it. When done correctly, you’ll have potential applicants’ hearts beating even before they’ve learned about the details. Things like the start date, paid leave, and even pay package are then far less likely to be deal-breakers.

* **Make talent your #1 priority, period:**  
    Attracting, evaluating, hiring, and retaining the best people are serious business. Getting the best people builds a cultural momentum at your firm and makes it easier to attract and retain them in the future. By and large, this is how you make systemic progress; this is how your company stands out. If you don’t have a dedicated talent-hiring team that is on the pulse of what the most dynamic professionals long for in their work, consider investing in one.

* **Design your roles for their future, not just yours:**  
    In recognition that many people now see each job as just one of many stepping-stones over the course of their career, the best way to keep them with you is to offer a stone that is as attractive and inviting as possible. A lucrative pay package, rewarding perks, and a great degree of autonomy (on top of a compelling mission) demonstrate that you take their professional development seriously. Let them know what advantages your company can provide in terms of network, knowledge, exposure, and training in comparison to your competitors.

Do the above, and you’ll see the most dynamic, effective, and inspired professionals that you’ll ever work with show up on your doorstep. If harnessed correctly they’ll be the best thing that ever happened to your company — and to the society at large.
 
### Write an Attractive Job Description
 
**Job Title**

If possible, use a standard and easy-to-understand job title. On many job boards your job title is displayed as a search result (the headline), so spruce it up a bit if you want more people to click on it. Come up with a standard/simple title first, and when the rest of the job description is finalized, go back and try to create a compelling headline. For instance, “Software Engineer, C# expert for a hot start up” or “Entry level Sales Associate, to be mentored by the best.” If you aren’t inspired to write a snazzy headline, no problem: a simple, descriptive job title will work just fine.
 
**About Us**

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Unless your company is a large, successful, and/or well-known business entity, most people reading your job description will have little to no knowledge on who you are and what your company does. Ideally, in as the first two sentences at the start of a job description, highlight the reasons why someone might want to work for your company. 

Here are a few ideas on some things to include:

* What industry you are in, what your company does, and what your products are
* What your work environment is like (closed office, cubicles, open floor plan, nerf balls flying around, library-like silence, etc.)
* Your mission, vision, and goals
* Some relevant statistics about your success and/or market position
* The size of your business (number of employees, revenue, years in business, etc)
* Key aspects of your culture and values
* Biographies of the corporate leadership

Also to help people visualize your environment and where this job opportunity can take them forward in terms of career, a few points to include:

* Opportunity: Are you going to train this person? Do they get to work with a great supervisor? Will they develop leading edge skills? What is unique or special about this team? Is this a growth area of the company? Is this working on a project of special significance? Does the job pay exceptionally well?
* Lifestyle: How many hours will they need to work? Will they have to travel? Will they get to hire or manage other people? What are their days going to be like doing this job?
* Team style: What are the common attributes of the top performers on your team? Do you share common interests? Are you morning people or night owls? Procrastinators or planners?
 
The goal here is simply the presentation of facts. Keep it short and sweet. These few sentences establish the context for people to get into the “substance” of your job description. Customizing the "About Us" contents for different audiences will help make your job descriptions more appealing. We strongly recommend that you create a separate career website, where people can learn more about your company. What makes your company attractive will likely vary for positions from sector to sector. 

**About the Job**

A job description should be practical, clear and accurate to effectively define your needs. Good job descriptions typically begin with a careful analysis of the important facts about a job such as:

* Individual tasks involved
* The methods used to complete the tasks
* The purpose and responsibilities of the job
* The relationship of the job to other jobs
* Qualifications needed for the job
* What to Avoid

When writing your job description, consider the following:

* Job objective or overall purpose statement
* Summary of the general nature and level of the job
* Description of the broad function and scope of the position
* List of duties or tasks performed critical to success
* Key functional and relational responsibilities in order of significance
* Description of the relationships and roles within the company, including supervisory positions, subordinating roles and other working relationships

Don’t be inflexible with your job description. Jobs are subject to change for personal growth, organizational development and/or evolution of new technologies. A flexible job description encourages employees to grow within their position and contribute over time to your overall business


**Requirements**

This is not a laundry list of things you’d like someone to know, it’s the absolute bare minimum requirements for the position. Try to keep this list to 4 one sentence bullet points or less. Here’s a good way to think about requirements: for every requirement you add, you’re tacking on two weeks to the length of time it will take to fill this job. Requirements are your “knock-out” criteria.
 
**Keywords**

Don’t forget your keywords. Most job seekers search for jobs on job boards with keyword searches.
If the person you’d like to hire could be searching for jobs with different titles, it’s usually a good idea to include them in the job description to make it easier to find. It’s usually best to work your keywords into the “nice to have” section.
 
**Ask for referrals and you’ll get advice. Ask for advice and you’ll get referrals.**

Try not to work on job descriptions by yourself. Hiring is not done in a vacuum. Ask everyone who is going to work with the person you are trying to hire to contribute to the job description. It helps them to develop a sense of participation, which makes them more likely to tell the people they know about the job and encourage them to apply. Their feedback is often based on experiences with specific individuals that they are acquainted with, and hopefully, their participation will prompt them to help recruit those individuals they have come to know, like, and respect. If no one on your team has ever worked with a person who is an embodiment of the ideal candidate you have in mind, your expectations may be unrealistic and/or you may be looking for a person that simply doesn’t exist. 
 
### Screening and Assessments

At the core of the recruitment process is the screening and assessment of candidates for your job vacancy. The following is a list of some conventional and creative ways to effectively screen and assess candidate’s available to you. 
 
**Screening of CVs** 

* **Screening of CV by a recruiter**: The conventional process of reading and assessing a candidate’s cover letter and CV — Most firms.
* **ATS scan**: Scanning resumes using ATS software — Most large corporations.
* **Video cover letter**: Encourage a video instead of a written cover letter and use it for assessment.
* **Use a LinkedIn or Facebook profile**: Reading and assessing the LinkedIn and/or Facebook profile of a candidate along with their CV.
 
**Pre-interview assessments**

* **Anonymous employee assessment**: Having employees assess the behavior of candidates before the interview.
* **Job assignment**: Giving shortlisted candidates an actual job assignment before the interview
* **Identify their preferences and job acceptance criteria**: Having the candidates fill out a questionnaire designed to identify their preferences, interests, and motivators to assess their compability with the manager, job or firm, and also their decision criteria for accepting a job
 
**In-person interviews**

* **Traditional interviews**: An initial phone call screening followed by one or more sessions of in-person behaviour- and experience-related interviews by recruiters and managers
* **Speed dating**: Quick initial interviews modeled after speed-dating followed by screening and then normally paced interviews
* **Peer or group interviews**: Ask past and present coworkers of the candidates to provide accurate assessments on the candidates
* **Develop a statistical algorithm**: Use past hiring successes and failures to statistically predict which of the candidates will succeed on the job
* **“Screening in” innovators**: Modify the entire interview or selection processes and constantly educate recruiters to identify innovators that are often missed with conventional screening processes
* **Stress interviews**: Subject the candidates to real-world stress scenarios during the interview to assess their ability to work under pressure
 
**Remote interviews**

* **Live remote video interview**: use video interview to assess the candidates – quite popular nowadays 
* **Internet questionnaire**: the interview is made into a questionnaire format that measures the candidates’ aptitude and other skills, and is then scored using computer software
 
**Problem solving and interest approaches during and outside of interviews**

* Verbal problems during interviews: Ask the candidates to solve a real or brain-teasing problem presented verbally
* **Virtual reality simulation**: Use a job-simulation tool to assess either college students or professionals
* **Work with the team**: Put the candidates to actually work with the team for an entire day to assess their fit and teamwork skills
* **Shadowing current employees**: Have the shortlisted candidates follow employees for a day after completion of their interview for assessment and job preview purposes
* **Project the future**: Ask the candidates to forecast the future in their functional area during the interview
* **Focusing on failures**: Instead of asking what employees have been successful at, ask the candidates where they have failed at and what valuable lessons they have learned from these experiences
 
**Using Tests as supplements prior to interviews**

* **Dominant approach – Commercial tests** :Use commercially available skills and job fit assessment tests
* **On-line tests**: Use online technical skill assessment tests to supplement interviews
* **Psychological tests**: Use psychological or personality tests to assess job fit
 
**Assessing their references or background**

* **Recruiter phone calls**: Conventional approach where the recruiter calls the references to assess work experiences, educational background, and credit history of the candidates
* **Using social media sites for assessment**: Use personal social media sites as an assessment tool to identify potential problem areas
 
**On–the-job assessment after hire**

* **Assessments during initial hiring stages**: Conduct follow-up assessment after temporary hiring and let go any underperformer
* **Pay mis-hires to leave**: Allow new hires who deem themselves to be unfit for the job to quit voluntarily with a severance package during training
* **Internships for assessment**: Internship serves as an excellent means to assess potential college hires
Over hire: Hire two or more individuals for a single opening, and, after an appropriate period of assessment, and release the underperformers
* **Training and assessment**: Introduce individuals with a core aptitude for technical work, train them, and release the underperformers
* **Convert temporary posts into permanent ones**: Hire the shortlisted candidates as temps and later hire the best among them as full time
 
<u>Reference</u>

* “Recruiting and Selection Hiring Process,” University of California, Riverside. Retrieved Dec 2013
* Nathaniel Koloc, “What Job Candidates Really Want: Meaningful Work,” Harvard Business Review. Retrieved Apr 2013
* Joel Cheesman, “How to write great job descriptions,” JobScore. Retrieved Dec 2013
* “Latest Candidate Screening, Interviewing, and Assessment Practices,” Innovators4Hire. Retrieved Dec 2013