Minnesota Technical Recruiters Network :: Blog

Measuring the Quality of Those You Didn't Hire -- Are You Missing the Best?

The quality of those not hired is the most valuable recruiting metric that you have never heard of! It informs you how often your organizations is failing to hire the highest quality applicants.

A few years back I was advising a Fortune 100 firm that had a painfully slow and somewhat arrogant hiring process. To demonstrate the negative impact of their process I had to prove to a skeptical senior manager that they were letting top candidates get away. I asked a manager hiring for an important job to rank, in order of quality, 100 applicants who had been sourced for the role. The chosen rank was discretely written on the back of paper copies of the candidate's resumes. Months after the role had been filled, the manager was asked if they were satisfied with the hire. He was, and felt quite certain that he had successfully hired a "top 5" candidate. After hearing of his satisfaction I had him look at the initial rank he had provided the candidate who was later hired: 75.

You can imagine his shock when he realized that the hiring process had somehow let every single one of the top-ranked applicants that the firm had prided itself in hiring "every single time" slip away. Clearly the quality of the people who they didn’t hire was significantly higher than the quality of the one that they did.

Selecting HR Metrics Is Unfortunately Not a Scientific Process

Most organizations adopt metrics based on those covered by benchmark reports or that can be easily enabled via their technology providers, instead of determining what they need to discover or prove. As a result, many organizations are burdened with data and reports that offer little in the way of guidance helping them improve their effectiveness. One metric often not fully taken advantage of is quality of hire, which I estimate less than 40% of organizations even attempt to use. Even fewer use the quality of hire derivative, quality of those not hired, because it can very quickly demonstrate how poorly a process performs.

Determine Where Your Recruiting Problems Are Occurring

During an advisory conversation with a recruiting leader at a well-known social networking firm experiencing difficulty achieving hire diversity, I asked "at what step or stage is your recruiting process failing?" I wasn't surprised when he responded "we don’t actually know, we just know that the overall recruiting process is not producing the results we need." Like many organizations, this organization lacked well-thought-out metrics that enable both performance reporting and process diagnostics.

Recruiting processes fail because either they do not attract enough top-quality candidates up front, or they fail to accurately identify, assess, and sell those attracted on the job at later stages in the process. Most organizations focus heavily on measuring sourcing effectiveness, but ignore the later stages of the process altogether. One benefit of using a "quality of those not hired" metric is that it focuses exclusively on the back end, where I estimate at least 50% of those organizations not meeting their goals have problems. If you doubt that the problem is post-attraction, ask your favorite agency or executive recruiter what percentage of qualified candidates are lost due to slow or ineffective actions on the part of hiring managers and corporate recruiting processes.

One of the purposes of the quality-of-those-not-hired metric is to force organizations with a high percentage of quality hires slipping away to identify where in their process the talent opts out or gets dropped. There are six post application stages where firms lose top candidates, including:

Resume screening process — the ATS, a recruiter, or a hiring manager mistakenly screens out top applicants.

Telephone screen — top applicants rank poorly on their phone screens or their screen cannot be completed, so they are dropped from consideration.

Interview scheduling — they get frustrated over the number of interviews and dropout or they cannot complete them in time because of scheduling conflicts.

Interview assessment — they voluntarily drop out before the interviews can be completed, or the interview process mistakenly rates them poorly.

The offer process — either the process fails to include most of the top applicants on the list of finalists, or they reject the offer.

Reference checking — even though they are high-quality candidates, they somehow fail the reference/background check.

Since the goal of a good metric is to help you identify what is not working, carefully select and implement at least one metric that can point out failures occurring during the latter stages of your recruiting process.

Focus Only On the Top Candidates

A quality-of-those-not-hired metric can become cumbersome if it attempts to categorize the quality of every applicant who doesn't get hired. In order to save time and money, narrow your focus to the strategic issue of "what happened to the cream of the crop?" Out of 50 applicants for a single job, there might only be three who were so qualified that a hiring manager would actually regret failing to hire them. I call these individuals "regrettable misses," and it is these folks that the quality-of-those-not-hired metric aims to highlight.

Action Steps for Developing a "Quality-of-Those-Not-Hired" Metric

If you decide to implement a quality-of-those-not-hired metric, there are several action steps to consider, including:

Setting goals — I recommend that you set goals for the use of this metric that include: accurately identifying the top three to five "regrettable" candidates; determining what percentage of top candidates become finalists for the position, and determining what percentage of new hires came from the top candidate list.

Select an evaluation range — this metric should focus solely on reporting the progress of "the very top applicants" who senior managers would regret not hiring. To limit the scope of evaluation, preselect what size of candidate slate will be evaluated. For most jobs, three to five top applicants would be a sufficient number to track. You can also use a set percentage of all applicants (i.e. top 10%) to define what you mean by top.

Determine when to identify top applicants — identify the top applicants early on in the hiring process so that you will have time to address any issues that emerge before a final hiring decision is made. If you are conducting an audit post hire, you need to make sure that the person doing the initial selection isn’t aware of which individuals were finalists and who was hired.

Select methods for identifying top applicants — the best method for identifying the top applicants is to have multiple evaluators select a finalist slate that is then merged to create the sample that will be monitored. An alternative approach involves using the profile matching capabilities of your ATS to produce a listing of top applicants. A third possible list segments applicants who come from high-value benchmark firms.

Report the metric in percentages — the best way to report the quality of "those not hired" metric is in percentages. For example: 66% of all finalists came from the top-ranked list, and 47% of the time a top-five-ranked candidate was hired.

Identify the stage where top talent slips through — for high priority and mission-critical jobs, after the hiring process is complete, identify at what specific stage in the recruiting process did a top applicant opt out or get dropped from consideration. You can then use that information to improve that stage.

Identify cause for top candidate removal from consideration — if a significant number of top candidates opt out or are dropped from consideration without becoming finalists, follow up and find out why. If your process screened them out prematurely, recruiters and hiring managers must be questioned to identify what knockout criteria is being applied. If the candidate dropped out on their own, they need to be questioned to see if their early withdrawal could’ve been prevented.

Keep in touch — separate from the process of calculating the metric, the organization should keep in touch with and build a relationship with the high-quality applicants who you regret missing. Building this relationship will help to ensure that they will favorably consider another opportunity with your firm in the future. Develop an alert system so that the star applicants can automatically receive e-mail alerts whenever a relevant job opens up.

Sample "Quality of Those Not Hired" Report

Here is a sample report illustrating what a recruiting leader or hiring manager might see.

Job Family: ASIC Engineer

Report Period: Q3 2010

Hire Volume: 53

Metric	Job Family	Organization
Percentage of top candidates in finalist pool	53%	52%
Party responsible for removal from consideration
–candidate filtered out by recruiting process	17%	48%
–candidate opted out of recruiting process	83%	52%
Percentage of top candidates who rejected offer	95%	22%
Percentage of hires from top candidate slate	31%	42%
Process stage contributing largest slate loss	Interview Scheduling

Recommended Actions

Candidates reported that more often than not interviews would need to be rescheduled because times initially proposed were no longer available upon confirmation. Many candidates reported that it took recruiting coordinators longer than a week to confirm meeting dates and times. Solution:

Allocate dedicated time slots to recruiting activities that cannot be booked by other activities more than 24 hours in advance.

Establish service level agreements that call for manager response to scheduling inquiries within four business hours.

Final Thoughts

If you were a competitive fisherman participating in a pro fishing tournament and you repeatedly landed prize-winning fish, you would be justifiably proud. However, if you repeatedly caught prize contenders but lost them prior to tournament completion, wouldn’t you want to know exactly where and why you kept losing them? That is exactly what the "quality-of-those-not-hired" metric tells you. It reports how often you successfully land a great applicant, but fail to convert them to employee. Your organization can’t attain the highest level of new hire on-the-job performance (quality of hire) if your process allows the highest-quality applicants to be missed.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/6Pp0-34UXz8/ Dr. John Sullivan

Factors That Degrade Employee Referral Program Performance -- Reducing Results from Great to Good

Without even knowing the name of your organization I can predict that throughout the most recent downturn you let your employee referral program "go," so to speak. By failing to take advantage of new trends, technologies, and tools, and decreasing efforts to update and keep the program highly visible, your organization has allowed a number of program-performance-degrading-things to occur.

Unlike the previously posted list of program design features that can "kill" an ERP, these factors plague even well-designed programs, rendering them weak and ineffective. While much more likely to occur during economic downturns and periods of reduced or halted hiring, these program degraders can emerge whenever an employee referral program is neglected.

If your program doesn't seem to wield the power it once did, do a quick mental audit to see if any of these factors may be to blame.

The Top 20 Employee Referral Program Performance Degraders

Loss of a program manager — losing or failing to replace a program manager charged with championing the program and keeping it active can lead to disastrous consequences even for a short period of time. Solution: a resource, hold them accountable, empower them with program metrics, and educate them on key ERP success and failure factors.

Reliance on job announcement spam — unfortunately it has become common practice to spam employees with irrelevant job announcements and generic program communications, both of which overworked employees quickly learn to recognize and set aside. Solution: use a more targeted approach to sending out announcements, decreasing the overall volume, and making sure each contains information relevant and of interest to the recipient.

Repetitive message formats — years of experience have demonstrated that using the same message format over and over will eventually result in employees tuning out the noise, just as you tune out the billboard that rarely changes on your commute to work! Solution: toss out form-messaging templates and craft a real communication that educates, empowers, excites, and calls for action.

Repetitive rewards — program rewards and prizes are intended to excite, but once they become commonplace or stale, they cease to be effective. Solution: periodically change or rotate program incentives using a survey sent to a sample of your employees to determine what would or would not work.

Program suspension — some organizations completely suspend their program when hiring is slow, resulting in an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality among employees with regards to being 24/7 talent scouts. Solution: regardless of requisition volume, never suspend a program. It's OK to narrow the scope of the jobs covered or temporarily reduce incentives, but the process and mantra to keep employees scouting talent for future hiring needs must never cease.

Not countering "inappropriate now" arguments — when reductions in force occur, it's not uncommon for arguments against external hiring to emerge on the premise that giving a job to anyone other than those displaced already would damage morale. Solution: it's unfortunate that reductions in force must occur, but when they do, those shed by the organization are often those in non-core roles or that possess skills no longer as valuable to the organization as their rate of compensation. To assume that a mission-critical or key vacancy could always be filled by the ranks of those laid off is silly. It's also silly to assume that other organizations would be laying off volumes of talent in previously hard-to-fill areas, reducing the difficulty of recruiting scare talent moving forward. It's the role of the ERP program manager to counter or prevent such arguments before they get started. In modern agile organizations, hiring can occur in critical business units just as layoffs occur in others. Make managers and employees aware that the development of new products and services (and their future job security) often depend upon access to new skills and technologies. While retraining those displaced is nice, sometimes it is both time and cost prohibitive.

Not maintaining operational responsiveness — without dedicated attention, it is easy for programs with exceptional service standards to slip, resulting in delayed responses to inquiries, slower referral response times, and even complete non-responsiveness. Because response time is the No. 1 success factor for ERPs, service standards should be restored. Solution: re-examine the service standard expectations you have set for your program, and if unable to resource the program adequately to maintain them, reduce the scope of the program temporarily or seek volunteer assistance so that every interaction meets expectations.

Relying on the original business case — business priorities change, unfortunately few HR organizations update their business case for key programs such as the ERP to reflect the changing environment. Without ongoing program positioning, it's easy for programs to lose their executive champions and for participants to forget all the ways the program benefits them and makes the organization stronger. Solution: the business case for the employee referral program should be reexamined every quarter and changes should made to the program strategy and operating model in accordance with changing needs. Executives, managers, and employees in particular need to be reminded of the important role the program plays in building better teams and improving organizational performance. The communicated business case should include evidence of improved quality of hire, retention rates, diversity rates and promotion rates. It is especially important to update the "performance differential" calculation, which demonstrates that referral hires produce more on-the-job than other sources of hire.

Ignoring new tools and technologies — programs designed even recently might not have taken advantage of newly developed referral tools, approaches, and technologies. In recent years a lot of development in process and technology has occurred to support vacancy prioritization, electronic referral marketing/communications, social network extension, external stakeholder participation and automated program administration. Solution: every quarter reevaluate how technology can empower the world-class process you desire to execute and try out many of the new service/tool offerings among pilot study audiences. With many tool developers adopting agile development methodologies, product offerings are likely to change/evolve frequently.

A lack of employee education — even in great times many organizations failed to provide enough tools, training, and support to help employees uncover great talent within their network, so during tough times it's no wonder that education efforts all but go away. Without referral events, manager executed referral activities, PDA parties, referral open houses, "Give Me Five" visits, and priming exercises, ERPs become purely reactive and fail to produce the volume of flow needed in the most critical areas. Solution: the referral team must develop quick but compelling presentations/exercise kits for employees and hiring managers (available both online and in person). These tools should explain and clarify new and revised policies, procedures, and expectations, as well as walk employees through simple exercises designed to help them identify possible referrals for current and near term key talent needs. Participant research reveals that a majority of employees are underwhelmed with the amount of how-to guidance their organization provides on identifying possible referrals, networking, dealing with "would you refer me" requests, and how to convert contacts into referrals.

Not interfacing with related HR programs — in recent years many organizations have invested in social media programs, alumni group development, and contingent labor programs, all of which have logical ties to the ERP, but that might not have been used well during the downturn. Solution: put together a team with leaders from each related program to determine where partnerships make sense, where duplicate efforts are underway, and most importantly where resources/tools are underused.

Outdated prioritization — well-designed referral programs prioritize vacancies based on their business impact, and referrals based on the past referral success rate of the referrer. However, the organization’s priorities may have changed. Solution: if you don't have a prioritization schema, develop one now. If you do have one, work with senior management to adjust the schema based on emerging needs quarterly or as critical incidents emerge. (Note: prioritization does not require that individual referrals be treated any differently during the hiring process.)

Lack of recruiter training — failing to periodically update training of existing recruiters and skipping the training of new recruiters regarding the critical success factors of referral programs can degrade a program from within. Solution: program managers need to be continually educated on the latest benchmark best practices and performance targets leading organizations are adopting and develop periodic training/information sessions for recruiters outlining their evolving role.

Failing to do periodic upgrades — the performance of even the best-designed referral programs degrade quickly when program evolution ceases. Solution: if you are not now or have not been rolling out program enhancements and promotions at least once a quarter, start now. Tie enhancements and promotions to forecasted critical needs and short-term business issues to create natural excuses to communicate about the program and improve visibility.

Not using metrics — great referral programs rely heavily on metrics to continually improve, but when times get tough, metrics often all but disappear. Solution: identify how employee referrals impact business operations and layer program performance metrics into existing finance and operations reports, making the program visible as a performance driver. Do not forget to quantify the dollar impact on revenue of the key quality of hire metrics.

Mergers with other recruiting programs — during tough economic times, it is not uncommon for autonomous referral programs to be combined or merged with other recruiting programs. This lack of identity and control will rapidly degrade program performance. Solution: if you have merged your ERP with other initiatives, make the business case to restore its independence immediately.

Unfounded legal fears — even well-designed referral programs get "nitpicked" on by "overly nervous" lawyers and HR professionals who often present their personal opinion as unbiased professional guidance. Solution: don't argue with attorneys; instead, partner with them on the premise that it is the corporate counsel’s duty to find a way to do what the organization "needs" to do in a manner that reduces the organizations exposure to risk. You wouldn't propose writing their legal documents, so they shouldn't design your programs! Make the business case for key program features and outline the negative impact of foregoing a practice. Risk mitigation is about balancing the possible cost of litigation with the financial benefit of a practice. If you are not armed with ROI projections, real-world data, and best-practice benchmark examples, don't expect to fend off unfounded legal arguments.

New/alternate ATS — many applicant tracking systems provide an ERP module that becomes more attractive versus operating a separate ERP program with isolated infrastructure during tough times. These modules which allow employees to send an invitation to apply to referrals turn all referrals into online applicants long before they need to be. They also result in a dramatic decrease in the conversion rate of employee-initiated employee referrals. Solution: figure out when it makes sense in your organization for a referral to become an applicant, and structure your technology solutions to empower your process the way you want it versus altering your process to fit the design of an available tool. Hundreds of mashable tools and services exist today that can empower your program as you envision it.

Failing to scale — in tough times organizations merge and get acquired. If your organization has done either, it's not uncommon for a program designed for a small organization to be ineffective in a larger organization. Solution: evaluate what elements of your program can scale to meet the needs of the newly combined organization and which elements need redesign. Until all program elements can function effectively, consider limiting the scope of the program to that which the existing infrastructure can support at the service level desired.

No globalization — if your organization has become a truly global one, as many have, your ERP must be globalized. Solution: look at all processes, communications, and policies to ensure that cross-border referral of talent is being facilitated, and that all possible scenarios have been planned for. Identify what elements of your global program my require localization (communications, rewards, etc.) and develop a matrix specifying each.

Final Thoughts

Very few things that are easy to do have more of an immediate impact than using a failure analysis "checklist" to conduct a quick assessment of an important HR program. With hiring targets growing, there is no more important recruiting program to assess than your ERP, don’t you agree?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/rpVQ9TG4QZc/ Dr. John Sullivan

How to Recruit LeBron James ... a Case Study on Recruiting a Game-changer Employee

Recruiting history was made this month. You may not be aware that last week marked the culmination of the most sophisticated recruiting effort executed in this century, one that will go down in history as a case study on how to recruit "game-changers." The approaches used and the lessons to be learned are almost without comparison. If you want to recruit the best to your organization, don't miss this opportunity to learn how "game changer" recruiting differs dramatically from typical recruiting.

"Game Changer Recruiting" Is Needed in All Organizations

You do not have to be a sports nut to realize that for the last two months numerous NBA teams have been pulling out all the stops and spending unlimited amounts of money to recruit basketball star LeBron James to their team. Simultaneously, almost-as-intensive recruiting efforts have targeted other game-changing stars including Dwyane Wade, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Chris Bosh.

Sports teams and corporations alike need all the game-changers (individuals who can change the entire direction of an organization) they can get. While you might think that sports recruiting is not comparable to corporate recruiting, that notion would be erroneous. This sports-superstar recruiting effort is ultimately an illustration of world-class "game-changer recruiting."

If like most organizations, yours could use a few more "game-changers," innovators, or exceptional performers, consider the lessons that can be gleaned from the events of the past eight weeks.

Lesson #1 — Calculate the Economic Value of a Game-changer

The first lesson to be learned is to calculate the dollar impact a game-changer can have on revenue. Most recruiting managers focus on the cost of recruiting individuals (i.e. cost per hire), ignoring the potential return or the economic impacts that recruiting a game-changer will have. The LeBron case study illustrates a superior approach, one focused on return on investment.

Historically the largest economic game-changing recruit was Michael Jordan. One study conducted by Fortune estimated that Michael Jordan had a $10 billion dollar impact on the NBA. LeBron will have a similar impact, not just on team revenues, but also on complimentary businesses in the greater metropolitan area. One economist recently estimated that impact could be as large as $3 billion.

Unfortunately, few corporations invest in calculating the dollar impact of recruiting a game-changer on their organization. Those that do, often find that focusing solely on cost to recruit is silly. Google for example has estimated that a top performer generates three hundred times more revenue than an average performer. What would be the dollar impact if Warren Buffett joined your investment firm or Steve Jobs joined your technology firm? On a less-grandiose scale, can you imagine the impact on your organization if the inventor of the iPod or the iPhone were to join the organization?

When doing calculations, remember that the economic impacts of acquiring a game-changer are not limited to their direct contributions, but also include the attraction of investors and other high-caliber recruits that will also impact the performance of the organization. In addition, recruiting a game-changer from a direct competitor may significantly impact their ability to compete. Once your executives understand the startling economic value, they will support the use of a game-changing recruiting approach.

Lesson #2 — Realize That Game-changers Are Different

The second lesson to learn from the LeBron case is that game-changers, innovators, and top performers truly are different and must be recruited in a unique manner. The traditional corporate recruiting and executive search models will not work when recruiting most game-changers because those models do not accommodate superstar personalities, unusual expectations, and an unbelievable array of decision-influencers. To get the attention of a game-changer, you must understand exactly how they are different. While game-changers are not all alike, in general, they exhibit the following characteristics.

Not looking for a job — they are probably currently employed and they are almost always well treated where they currently work. As a result, they are not actively looking for a new job and if they did hear about an ordinary opportunity, they would not pursue it.

Power — they fully understand their value and their importance and as a result, they expect to be treated differently than the average applicant. They know that they hold the power in any potential new relationship or recruiting opportunity, so they expect to be courted.

Difficult to approach — they are incredibly busy and there is a constant demand on their time. As a result, most erupt numerous barriers that would prevent strangers from even approaching them with opportunities. In order to make an initial recruiting contact, you will probably need direct assistance from someone who influences them.

Trust is required — experience has taught them to be cynical of strangers and promises. As a result, you will need a strong relationship built on trust before they will seriously consider any offer from you.

A triggering event required — because they are successful and well treated at their current position, they are generally satisfied with their current situation. As a result, it will likely take a major negative career-impacting event at their current firm to shift them into job search mode. In the absence of a negative event, it will take a major "WOW" jaw-dropping positive opportunity before they would even look at a job opening.

A game-changer recruiting approach is required — the final thing to understand about recruiting any individual who is in high demand is that they almost always have an intense dislike for standard recruiting processes. Instead, they expect and require a "tailored" or personalized recruiting process that requires little of their time, that meets all of their expectations, and that contains not a single turnoff or “dealbreaker” element.

Lesson #3 — Shift to a "Game-changing Recruiting Approach"

The primary differentiator between a game-changing recruiting process and all other recruiting processes is the level of effort that is put into truly understanding the candidate and their needs. Most recruiters would argue that they already understand the needs of their candidates; however, heavy workloads force most recruiters to generalize and make numerous assumptions about what candidates need and expect.

In direct contrast, the game-changer recruiting approach is tailored to the individual who is being targeted. It is a market research/sales-driven approach that puts together a sophisticated candidate profile that covers the candidate's job search process, how best to contact them, and their job acceptance decision criteria. This in-depth profile takes a significant amount of time and resources but is necessary if you want to have a realistic chance of success. There are 10 activities involved in developing a deep understanding of your target and creating a candidate profile. They include:

Identify factors that trigger a job search — a job opportunity by itself will not be enough to trigger a game-changer into job search mode. Instead, a combination of a positive job opportunity and the simultaneous occurrence of a negative factor that makes the target uncomfortable in their current situation is needed. To time your recruiting effort precisely, you need to be aware of what negative triggering events could arise and when they are most likely to occur. You must conduct research and interviews with those who know your recruiting target extremely well in order to compile a list of the specific events likely to trigger a desired change. Such events might include a corporate merger, management turnover, corporate scandal, or a significant cut to their budget.

Map their job search process — whenever a game-changer does begin to consider change, you need to understand and map out the process they will use. If you fish using bait, you understand that to catch a trophy fish you need to understand how a trophy fish searches for food. Likewise, recruiters must find out how their target found opportunities in the past, how and where they research opportunities, and what factors get an opportunity on their "short list" of opportunities to consider. Once you fully understand how, when, and where they find opportunities, you need to customize your approach to mirror their activities. Additionally, there must be a process to reevaluate the quality of your recruiting process against world-class standards, because a game-changer will likely judge your entire organization based on the experience they receive. It is quite common for recruits to assume that their candidate experience is a direct reflection on how they will be treated when they become an employee.

Determine who must do the recruiting — in many cases, game-changers expect to bypass traditional recruiters and instead be contacted and recruited by professionals of similar stature (or even by senior executives). As a result, you must identify their expectations and shift the initial contact and much of the recruiting to individuals who they respect and trust. Leading off with the wrong person can result in your opportunity being filtered.

Identify the best way to communicate and to reach them — if you want prospects to respond to your messages, you need to understand their communication preferences. That means you must research their most-favored way to communicate (i.e. in person, telephone calls, text messages, e-mail, on Facebook, etc.) and what must be in a message for them to respond to it. You must also identify other opportunities to communicate with them, including events they attend, publications they read, and websites and blogs regularly visited. If you do not know precisely where they "lurk,” you dramatically reduce the chances on reaching them. It is also important to note that the sites game-changers frequently are likely to be learning on content sites related to their professional growth, rather than job or career-oriented sites.

Identify the factors that will grab their initial attention — due to the volume and level of competition for their attention, if you expect to get on their short list, you need to identify the factors that would cause them to initially consider your opportunity. Once you identify the factors that will get their initial attention, you must make sure that compelling information on those factors is clearly visible on the sites they routinely visit. You may also have to educate their friends and colleagues about your organization, so that they will know about you and as a result, may speak highly of your organization during their interactions with your recruiting target. If you are an unknown organization or if you have a weak employer brand image, this step is even more important in order to prevent them from immediately ignoring your opportunity.

Identify the decision criteria they will use to accept an interview — game-changers routinely turn down opportunities to interview for new positions, so understanding what it takes to excite them about a particular interview invitation is a critical factor in the game-changer recruiting process. Identifying interview acceptance criteria requires extensive research and benchmarking and some guesswork. In the end, you must develop a ranked list of the criteria that they will use when deciding whether to accept an invitation and make sure that you convincingly communicate each of them in all of your initial recruiting and interview-related communications.

Identify "deal breaker" or knockout factors — in addition to positive criteria that game-changers will use to filter opportunities, there are also negative factors that will influence their decisions. Your research must identify each of these "deal breakers" (i.e. a weak boss, no budget, restricted decision-making, a lack of control, etc.,) and ensure that there is not even a hint of one of them present within the organization.

Identify their decision criteria and the information they need to accept a job offer — this is without a doubt the most critical step in the overall process. Consider the recruiting process similar to the sales process for big-ticket item. In both cases, successfully making a sale requires understanding a customer’s buying criteria and a product that meets that criteria as closely as possible. Some identify a candidate’s job acceptance decision criteria by asking them directly at the beginning of the interview process, or by interviewing friends and colleagues. Typical decision criteria include their degree of independence, the extent of their authority, their ability to build their own team, their ability to select projects, and the availability of ample resources. The entire interview process must be geared toward convincing them that this job meets every one of their acceptance criteria. It is also important to periodically ask them during critical points in the interview process if you are successfully meeting their criteria.To ensure that the target candidate remains engaged in the process, give them some input into it, so that they do not view it as inflexible. Ask them what specific information they need and what questions they need answered before they can make an affirmative decision. You should also ask them who they must meet and talk with before they can make a final decision on your offer. The overall interview process should provide them with an excellent candidate experience and you should use it not just as an assessment tool but also as an opportunity to provide a comprehensive sales pitch.

Identify who will influence their decision — game-changers are much more apt to consult with and seek the advice of friends and colleagues than the average candidate. As a result, make an attempt to identify and then proactively "sell" those individuals who will influence the candidate's final decision. Incidentally, the process of identifying and educating "influencers" on the powerful selling points of your firm needs to start at the very beginning of the interview process.

Develop a counteroffer strategy — it would be highly unusual for a game-changer not to get a compelling counteroffer from their current organization. Because the normal reaction of a game-changer is to "stay put in a known environment," you need to proactively research what that counteroffer is likely to be and to prepare a compelling strategy to overcome it. In addition, you should anticipate that the game-changer will get several external offers, so you need to do your research and benchmarking to ensure that your initial offer is clearly superior and most closely aligns with your candidate's dream job.

Final Thoughts

Some people viewed the recruiting process used to attract LeBron James as a circus. However, on closer examination, it was unique, targeted, and comprehensive. There were numerous WOW factors, including the city of New York crafting a customized video including a message from the mayor, and several cities organizing mass public recruiting parties to show their commitment. Teams used high profile individuals including Jay Z and even the President of the United States to influence the process. Numerous websites were created, blogs were written, and literally millions of tweets were shared on the topic.

To further highlight the importance of this recruiting effort, Lebron’s offer acceptance was televised in an hour-long TV special (a first). During the special, his decision criteria were disclosed, including the probability of winning a championship, a new coach, a choice of teammates, team chemistry, supportive owners, a large fan base, broader media exposure, and lifestyle considerations including the interests of his entourage, and of course hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.

While millions were spent to recruit him and millions more will be spent to pay him, the economic return (likely to be in the billions) will far outweigh the costs. Believe it or not, the same dramatic results can be obtained by recruiting a single game-changer in the corporate world, although the fanfare would likely be less dramatic! If you are not landing your share of game-changers, the process that corporate executives must follow has been spelled out, all they need to add is ... courage.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/bBFqH1V8nz4/ Dr. John Sullivan

Spend the Summer Rebuilding Your Referral Program and Reap a Bounty of Benefits

I have a suggestion for you . . . dedicate your summer to re-building your employee referral program. Now is an ideal time to invest in program design and rejuvenation, as in most cases, chaos surrounding the new year and year end is a fading memory and distant nightmare.

It's also a great time because economic growth is just starting to ramp up, and with the growth of social networks and an unbelievable array of new recruiting tools available, opportunities abound. Why wait ’till competition for talent is once again über intense; focus now on optimizing a recruiting program with proven results and minute probability of failure. A recent poll conducted with several state-level SHRM chapters across the nation indicates that a majority of organizations are already dealing with significant double-digit growth in staffing needs, and anticipate that requisition volume will continue to grow throughout 2011. Unfortunately, those same organizations report that budgets are already stretched and that the recruiting workforce hasn't yet recovered.

With that in mind, a key concern on every recruiting leader’s mind should be: "how do we increase recruiting capability and capacity to improve results without placing added burden on an already under-resourced function?" Luckily, it's an easy question to answer. Retool your employee referral program and start managing it to produce the results you need.

The Many Benefits of Employee Referral (If you need further motivation!)

Having spent more than a decade advising staffing leaders and reviewing the performance of hundreds of staffing organizations, I can attest that when managed well, no other sourcing channel can come remotely close to producing the results of an employee referral program. Unfortunately, what most corporate leaders and recruiting leaders for that matter have experienced are poorly designed, loosely administered programs that despite their ad hoc nature still produce 1:4 hires on average. If you are going to invest the time in rebuilding your program, go big, go bold, and build a business case referencing the proven benefits of a world-class program listed here.

Organizational Benefits

Quality of hire — while accurately measuring quality of hire is a subject of much debate in many organizations, what is not, is that no matter what method used, on average, hires produced through the ERP rate the highest.

High-volume capability — even without formal management, the typical employee referral program produces 1:4 hires. When formally managed, several leading organizations have proven that the ERP can produce 75% or more of the organization's external hires needed.

Higher candidate quality — data shows that on average 1:5 (1:3 in best practice organizations) employee referrals produce a hire. When compared to other sources, ERP candidates are of significantly higher quality than the average applicant. The reasons for this are simple: no employee in their right mind would refer someone who would make them look bad, who would negatively impact their team, or who wouldn't fit inside the organization. The primary benefit to the organization of higher candidate quality … fewer people have to be turned away, decreasing the probability of damaging the employer brand.

Lower attrition rates — turnover can bread instability, and instability leads to non-optimized performance. Because hires produced through the ERP enter the organization with already established social connections, they not only become productive faster, but they turnover less frequently. ERP hires are also 3.5 times less likely to be terminated than hires produced through other sources!

High-impact hires — a world-class program targets the attention of the organization to quickly fill mission-critical, key, and revenue-generating roles, producing an immediately apparent impact on organizational performance.

Improved diversity — contrary to popular belief, a well-managed employee referral program does not negatively impact candidate slate diversity. It actually improves it.

Improved morale — producing a majority of external hires through the employee referral program requires a large volume of employees to be actively mining their networks and talking about the organization and what makes it a great place to work. All that talk reminds employees daily about the little things that may otherwise go unnoticed, keeping the workforce engaged and improving retention.

Improved network learning — another key benefit of promoting employee referral is that it gives professionals an excuse to proactively seek out and network with other professionals. While not all of those relationships will result in an application, a good number will produce professional interaction, sharing, benchmarking, and competitive intelligence.

Recruiting Function Benefits

Less recruiter time required — on average, sourcing consumes roughly one-third of a recruiter's time. ERPs essentially outsource sourcing to the organization's employees and produce a higher quality applicant stream that requires less administrative time than candidates from other sources.

Broader sourcing network — because your employees interact with professionals throughout the industry every day, the combined professional and social networks of your employee population dwarf the reach of your professional recruiters. In addition, the existing relationship and trust that your employees have built with individuals in their network make it easier for employees to convert their contacts into recruiting prospects.

Improved perception — because your employees live the job daily, what they say is likely to be viewed as more authentic than messages on your corporate website or those espoused by individual recruiters. Employee can often provide more detailed and current information about the job and the team than recruiters who service multiple org units.

Accelerated time-to-hire — well managed ERP processes are proactive; in other words, they seek out referrals when needed instead of relying on ad-hoc referral flow. By using alert processes and proactive priming exercises, the program can pull applicants into the staffing lifecycle when needed to decrease time-to-hire.

Global scope — the social and professional networks of your employees are now likely to be global, so while many other sources focus on regional populations, ERP can scour the globe for top talent.

Improved college recruiting — because referral programs can be successfully applied to college recruiting, where applicants are extremely well-connected, your college recruiting results could improve significantly, especially at schools that you can't afford to physically visit.

Lower costs — expanding the use of ERPs or focusing them on roles with traditionally higher cost-per-hire — i.e. management and technical roles — can dramatically reduce overall recruiting costs. In addition, well-designed referral programs deemphasize large referral bonuses, often producing hires at a cost-per-hire equal to or lower than average.

Manager satisfaction — a no brainer; if you could review fewer applicants and make a higher quality hire, wouldn't you be happier?

An increased appreciation of the recruiting function — effective ERPs make recruiting highly visible, and as a result, can make the recruiting function a continuous topic of positive conversation for a change. Well-designed programs cause employees to develop a feeling of ownership for the hiring process, and introduce employees to both the difficulties and benefits of recruiting, increasing their understanding of and respect for the function.

Final Thoughts

When you decide that the time has come to rejuvenate your recruiting function, focus your limited time and resources on programs with the highest immediate impact, lowest cost, and smallest chance of failure. You have to get it right the first time, and fortunately, all of the data indicates that employee referral stands out as an opportunity above all others. If you want to look good fast and you can't afford a long learning curve or to suffer from a major failure, there really is no other choice.

Network With Fellow Program Managers

I'm listening! Some of you have reached out in recent weeks and indicated that you are knee deep in evaluating your program, devising proposed changes, and planning to launch a rejuvenated program this fall. To support you, in addition to repeating my program design and performance benchmark study, I've created a new networking group for employee referral program managers on LinkedIn. Join, share your issues, concerns, what you have learned, and collaborate with your peers on what makes a kick-ass program.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/M331igDadAM/ Dr. John Sullivan

Making Your Employee Referral Program Work Smarter -- Follow-Up Questions and Answers, Part 2

Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

Based on the registration response and volume of questions submitted during a recent ERE webinar on Making Your Employee Referral Program Work Smarter, clearly many organizations have retooling their programs on their agenda. With nearly a question a minute coming in from the hundreds in attendance, responding to all simply wasn't possible. What follows is Part II of the public questions that were submitted (grouped, combined, and summarized) and our brief response to each. Part I is here. Looking for more detail? Use the comments functionality following this article to let us know and we'll do our best to develop future content along those lines.

Employee Referral Program Management-related Questions

Who manages ERPs in most organizations?

Amongst the organizations in our best-practice sample, it is much more common for the employee referral program to be managed by a dedicated program manager as opposed to a program committee made up of recruiting department staff. This is a key differentiator between best-practice programs and typical programs, many of which are unmanaged or managed by committee.

How much time do best-practice firms dedicate to this, a lot of the suggested elements seem resource heavy? Is this a full-time job within most organizations?

In most organizations ERP management is not a full-time job, but that is because in most organizations ERPs are unmanaged! We don't really concern ourselves too much with what most companies are doing; we are, however, very interested in what best-practice companies do! Even in smaller best-practice organizations, managing the employee referral program is a dedicated task. In larger organizations not only is the role of program manager a full-time role, it is most often one supported by a multi-disciplined team. The key thing to remember here in that in most organizations less than 5% of the total recruiting budget is allocated to the ERP, which on average produces 1:4 hires. Best-practice firms simply realize that since ERPs produce one of the best yields of any source, it makes business sense to reallocate funds formerly earmarked for less-effective sources. In our best-practice sample, the percentage of the recruiting budget associated with employee referral averaged 31% in 2007.

How many people should be dedicated to the employee referral program for the program to run optimally?

Obviously, the size of the team needed depends on the size of your organization and the design of your program. Ideally, you look at what activities you need to accomplish to generate the flow needed to produce the number of hires needed and calculate how many man-hours will be consumed to accomplish that. For best-practice firms, even smaller ones, it's not uncommon to have at least three people dedicated to the effort and to rely on help from recruiters and shared administrative staff. A better rule of thumb is that if the source is producing 50% of hires, it should get 50% of the sourcing resources.

You have repeatedly mentioned a dedicated referral team. What roles comprise this and what is each responsible for?

While there is no standard structure for an ERP management team, most of the organizations in our best-practice sample rely on a combination of roles that include:

Program Manager (strategy, design, performance modeling/reporting, integration, etc.)

ERP Communications (workforce segmentation, campaign development/execution, core process communication, broader program marketing)

Program Coordinator (primary contact, referral screening/routing)

Program Administrator (reward administration, data entry, conflict resolution)

There is a pretty equal split in our best-practice sample between organizations that maintain ownership of a candidate within the program through disposition and those that transfer or route a referral to a line-aligned recruiter for disposition. In organization that maintain ownership of the candidate, program coordinators are often full life-cycle recruiters allocated to the ERP.

Can ERP principles and approaches be used internationally with the same results?

As few as five years ago, it was difficult to put together a global referral program that was executed consistently across borders, but that is not the case any longer. Around the world, especially in fast-developing economies, ERPs are either the dominate source of hire or the fastest-growing source of hire. Globalization of management practices, largely Western in nature, is also widespread. Remember that social network adoption is also widespread around the world, and that many of the activities behind top-notch referral parallel top-notch networking. The key to success is to institute a consistent program around the world while still allowing for some local flexibility, particularly in communication and reward structure.

Can you give provide more context around why the percentage of top-performing employees referring is a key metric?

A best practice is to proactively approach your employees and ask them for referrals. Most firms that run the data find out that the very highest-quality referrals come from top-performing individuals working in that job family. Given this, it only makes sense if you are going to proactively approach employees and ask them for referrals, that you first approach those who are most likely to know and have strong relationships with other top performers (your top-performing employees in that job family).

I would like more details on recommended software packages for tracking and managing referrals.

While we have many great relationships with a number of vendors, we are vendor-neutral and do not recommend one solution over another. However, we are fanatical about pointing out that vendors must develop products for mass-market appeal, and what benefits the masses is rarely effective for best practice firms.

That said, administering a best-practice ERP is work-intensive and technology can and does play a major role in making it feasible. While we disagree with the design of some aspects of products available today, we champion others.

Most of the solutions developed specifically to support ERPs today either focus on enabling email/social media-based campaigns or administering the application workflow. The modules from the major ATS providers focus more on the latter, using a model of engagement we detest, but provide stronger workflow management. The vertical specific solutions focus much more heavily on campaign management and social network sharing, but often lack robust tracking and administration functionality.

A third category of solution, CRM systems, often provide robust functionality on both fronts, but are complicated to get running and not always developed specifically for use by recruiters.

There are literally hundreds of existing and stealth-mode ventures developing products to support social recruiting and employee referral, many of which will launch products in 2010. While we would love to tell you about them, that might get us in trouble! Firms you may want to check out with products or services available today include: SelectMinds (sponsor of the ERE Webinar), Jobvite, IdealHire, Peerlo, LinkedIn, TMP, Jobs2Web, and your major ATS providers.

Can you share what some of the admin processes are that differentiate best-practice firms producing 45% or more of external hires from referrals and typical programs?

The answer to this question really is what we have been writing about for sometime, but quickly summarized they are as follows:

Programs are formally chartered and managed

Program strategy developed to specifically support segments of the overarching staffing strategy

Program measured against specific pre-developed goals and objectives

Prioritization of jobs (limited program scope or differentiated rewards)

Prioritization of inbound candidate flow

Formally developed program communication strategy and viral messaging framework

Proactive approach and priming of employees for referrals

Minimized front-end bureaucracy (simple process to invoke for all parties, few policies)

Leverages referrer throughout process

Empowered with technology

Measured from every angle

Allows participation by broader group of stakeholders

Delivers exceptional candidate experience to all parties involved

Legal, Diversity, And Tax-related Questions

Are there legal concerns with stating we would like employees to refer a greater number of diverse individuals?

The primary answer to this question is that you must look at your ERP as a sourcing channel just as you look at other channels. All firms that have an affirmative action program must by definition reach out to targeted groups. I can think of few organizations that do not attempt to influence diversity of candidate slates by reaching out to venues that offer skewed diversity pools. As long as you assess candidates from the ERP just as you do candidates from other channels, you are not discriminating by asking the employee population to help increase the diversity of your candidate pool.

What are the tax implications of paying a bonus or giving a gift related to non-employee referrals? Often companies like the idea of getting referrals from vendors or people outside the company but they don’t know how to handle the tax issue.

First you need to realize that some of your vendors, customers, and corporate alumni will make referrals without any promise of a reward, if you ask. Apart from that, paying rewards, be they cash or gifts, to non-employees does create a taxable situation that will increase the complexity of the transaction. However, before you dismiss the idea, ask yourself "does dealing with the complexity of paying an outside individual cost more than the value of the hire that will be produced?" In most cases, capturing a few extra fields of data from a referrer to enable tax reporting and triggering the reporting process will cost the organization less than $100 in administrative time and processing per hire. The key is to always weigh the tremendous business benefit generated by a great hire against any minor administrative pain; the benefit will win every time.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/0gopIcX_Tck/ Dr. John Sullivan

Making Your Employee Referral Program Work Smarter -- Follow-Up Questions And Answers, Part I

Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

The performance gap between the very best employee referral programs and the typical program is growing dramatically wider each day. Benchmark organizations dedicating resources and formally managing their programs are very close to producing 50% or more of all external hires from their programs — nearly double that of the average firm. They are also using their employee referral programs to accomplish objectives not directly related to closing requisitions, including increasing workforce diversity, and influencing their organization's employment brands.

The increasing disparity in performance is largely attributed to the lack of management. Many recruiting leaders view ERPs as simple programs, requiring little in the way of resources and day-to-day management. They throw together a simple policy and call it a program. Unfortunately, such efforts lack formal design, formal goals, and often ignore a multitude of variables that lead to improved performance and prevent barriers to performance from emerging.

The end result is easy to see in organizations large and small: newly launched ERPs become stale and outdated within months of launching, their performance rising, leveling, and dropping off until someone steps up and once again opts to retool the program.

Based on the registration response and volume of questions submitted during a recent ERE webinar on Making Your Employee Referral Program Work Smarter, clearly many organizations have retooling their programs on their agenda. With nearly a question a minute coming in from the hundreds in attendance, responding to all simply wasn't possible. What follows are the public questions that were submitted (grouped, combined, and summarized) and our brief response to each. Looking for more detail? Use the comments functionality following this article to let us know and we'll do our best to develop future content along those lines.

Benchmark Research

Many of our perspectives on employee referral program design and performance are based on benchmark research conducted in 2006, 2007, and 2008. With a data set that includes more than 600 organizations dispersed across more than 26 countries, there is little we have not seen. This fall (September), we'll repeat our core benchmark study, making summary results available for free to all organizations that participate. If you're interested in participating, register here, and you'll be notified when the process kicks off.

Social Media Integration-related Questions

Can you offer some suggestions on making smoother handoffs between the referral program or social networking program and recruiting?

As more and more psycho-social research about the impacts of social networks on relationships emerge, one thing is clear: social media tools dramatically increase the number of close relationships an individual can maintain. Some studies demonstrate that proficient social media users can maintain close relationships (relationships in which they know a number of recent personal details about the other person) with three times as many individuals as nonusers. These expanded networks are a rich resource that many organizations would like to tap, but early efforts to drive conversion from contact to applicant were rarely successful. One of the key drivers of failure in early adopter organizations was an assumption that the same old approach to communicating employment opportunities could be applied to social media communication channels. That assumption ignored the fact that social media tools were developed primary as a means for a close network of people to communicate with one another via a channel free from spam and noise. To better take advantage of social media within the enterprise and to smooth the handoff during conversion, organizations need to invest in three practices.

First, you need to develop a primer to help employees cultivate professional relationships online. This often entails educating them on how to identify valuable contacts, how to make a good introduction, how to establish a mutually beneficial dialogue, and how to determine if and when referring someone to the organization should be considered. We all know how employees feel about training, but to our surprise, 51% of 15,000+ employees surveyed in 2008 indicated that training on cultivating a stronger professional network was the No. 1 thing their organization could do to improve their ERP.

Second, you need to develop a way of communicating critical position vacancies to the segments of the workforce that are most apt to be able to refer a qualified person in a manner that isn't spam. We all know what spam is; the vast majority of HR communications qualify! A good approach uses hyper-defined segments and crafts messages that go far beyond just detailing the openings. Great ERP communications explain why finding great talent for the open positions is important to the organization and to the recipient of the communication. They also include priming questions, or questions that can help the recipients more quickly identify who they may know, and provide interesting information about the role, the team, or the organization that someone may actually want to share in casual conversation.

The third practice you need to develop is allowing referrers to make a referral in a manner consistent with dealing with a friend, but that delivers value to you the employer. This involves making the submittal process easy but qualitative. You need information, and both the referrer and the referral need a way to provide it to you that isn't cumbersome. The e-commerce model of sending a link to a referral that takes them back to the online application doesn't fit this audience and should be dropped like a hot potato. Consider allowing employees to make a referral using a social network ID, and ask them to prequalify the referral using one to three questions.

Having developed these three practices, the organization needs to highlight successes visibly and frequently. Establish goals for both the ERP and the social networking initiatives, because goals give you an excuse to communicate and a target to track against. Reward successes, and provide a means for employees to easily share what is and is not working.

What are some alternatives to social networking sites if these sites are prohibited by the company legal department?

Obviously the most desirable approach is to make the business case to change internal perspectives/policies, but until that is accomplished, there are still some actions you can take. A number of tools make it possible for employees to publish content to their social networks via e-mail; tweetymail is a good example. While this approach will not enable the same rich networking experience as interfacing with the services directly, it can provide organizations with an effective way to use the services within the network policy of the organization. Many proficient social media users also connect to social media services via mobile devices, which your organization may have a policy against using on company time, but which is most likely ignored. Recognizing that adept networkers will always find a way, and developing tools or approaches that lend themselves to the alternative access methods, is a way to be supportive.

What technology have you found most successful in tracking the social media network referrals?

As mentioned earlier, converting social network contacts into referrals can be a daunting activity. Early research has shown that the last thing you want to do is take a newly developed or cherished online contact and force them into the torture process that is the online application. Conversion rates of social media contacts to applicants can be as much as 10 times higher when alternative application methods are used, mini-registration forms on micro-sites and landing pages being the most common. Five years ago there were not many software systems available specifically developed to help administer ERPs, so many best practice firms built their own solutions internally to support their programs. Today, firms like SelectMinds (webinar sponsor) and Jobvite provide tools that can not only help you drive awareness of opportunities, but also track the response. An alternate method involves using a CRM system such as Salesforce.com or Avature and evoking the web-to-lead functionality. Web-to-lead lets organizations rapidly create a number of online forms that funnel data on respondents back into the CRM as leads, which can then be tracked through a defined workflow. The later approach would let you create different referral forms for departments, social media campaigns, locations, etc.

Program Administration-related Questions

My company requires a waiting period after hire of the referral, before paying any referral bonus. I am not sure it serves any legitimate purpose. Thoughts?

Never ever delay payment. It’s a program killer. I do not know where this silly practice originated from, but it is a useless policy that will severely dampen enthusiasm. Unless your organization does an incredibly poor job selecting who to make offers to, 99.9% of the time the referral will outlast the waiting period, saving the organization nothing and penalizing the employee in the process! Delaying the reward just adds another administrative issue, expanding the process time significantly and forcing developing of a tracking element. Most reasons for early turnover are related to the manager or are related to issues beyond the new hire’s control and have nothing to do with the referring employee. If you do have an employee consistently providing bad referrals, coach them. If an individual manager has high early turnover rates from any source of hire, coach the manager.

If you can't develop a business case to stop delaying payment, consider repositioning the reward. Instead of communicating that the reward is withheld until completion of a probationary period, give the referring employee a small reward at time of hire and alter your reward structure to provide a larger reward for all referrals that result in a hire that obtains above-average performance ratings after six months. This approach will encourage the referring employee to support the referral during the early stages of employment and possibly even reduce overall program costs. Our 2008 research revealed that 58% of employees are comfortable with ERP rewards that vary with hire performance and that another 13% are neutral on the issue.

It seems difficult or ambiguous to tie referral credit to someone blogging. How do you identify who deserves credit, especially if the referral wasn't a warm referral at the first point of contact?

There is a quite simple solution to identifying who gets credit for a referral. Ask the referral who played the biggest role in getting them to apply! If they list a specific blog, video, social network contact, etc. you can use that information both to allocate the reward and to educate your employees about "what works" and what does not.

I understand that it is very important to respond to every referral within an acceptable period of time, but is an automated response enough?

It is certainly acceptable to send automated acknowledgments that a referral has been received, but that should never be the only communication sent to all parties involved. When automated responses are used, they should help establish expectations by outlining the referral process and estimated timeline. All referrals need to be closed; i.e., result in a hire or a decline. A personalized communication needs to be sent to every party involved at each stage of the referral process until the referral is closed, with the first personalized communication occurring within 24 to 72 hours of the referral submission. Think of it like an employee suggestion system; if a suggestion that an employee has worked hard on gets only a generic response, it is unlikely that you will get future well-thought-out suggestions either from them or their colleagues.

What should you do if the referral is clearly not qualified for the position?

This happens much more frequently in programs that lack a design element requiring referring employees to pre-assess or qualify their referrals. You must respond to all referrals, but in the case of outright rejections, it helps to provide the employee with feedback so that they know what they did wrong or the general reason for the rejection. This might include a checkbox list including insufficient education, insufficient experience, or lacking specific skills. If you do not have the resources for customized responses to all, you should at least provide specific feedback to first-time referrers, to well-connected individuals, to senior managers, and to individuals in the hard-to-fill positions.

Is there any research that demonstrates that companies make employee referrals a priority? If yes, how do they maintain two different recruiting processes?

In our benchmark research, we isolate the top 40 performing programs evaluated as our best-practice sample. In 2008, all but one of the firms in the best-practice sample maintained a separate recruiting process for referrals that fast-tracked evaluation and scheduling. Prioritization is becoming more common as more organizations acknowledge that treating all roles and organizational units equitably doesn't mean equally. Business leaders expect prioritization even though they may not be happy when it negatively affects them. From an economic perspective, ERPs produce the best hire yield for external hires: 1:3 in best practice firms. So prioritizing flow from ERPs is a logical resource optimization tactic that drives not only efficiency, but effectiveness.

Other factors driving prioritization include the fact that all high-quality applicants (and referrals are top-quality candidates), once identified, should be given expedited treatment because they remain in the job market for such a short period of time. Prioritization also encourages your employees to continue referring, by providing a positive experience that validates that their input is valued. Incidentally, prioritizing referral applicants does not imply that they will undergo different screening or assessment, only that the process will trigger faster.

What should happen if a referral that was made for a position that involves a bonus … ends up being a better fit for another position that does not have a bonus attached to it?

Generally referral bonuses are tied to a specific job or requisition number because they are hard-to-fill jobs or are mission-critical. As a result, filling another position with a referred candidate would not automatically result in a reward.

What do you do when two employees refer the same candidate? Do you reward the earliest referrer or split it between them?

Generally, referral bonuses are paid to the earliest referrer but referrals can be set to “expire” after six months or one year. However, even the best-designed referral programs run into conflicts, so the best practice in those rare cases is to have the referral identify who played the biggest role in them joining the organization.

All referrals are important but how do you balance the fairness of someone who really worked hard to get a referral to someone who did not?

The foundation principle behind employee referrals is that employees will only refer those folks whom they desire to work alongside and who can do the work. Rewards primarily focus on results, not effort. I am not aware of a single firm that measures or rewards the amount of effort that the employee puts in to get a referral. Obviously, well-connected individuals can more easily make referrals, but they have over time invested in developing those connections. However, if all employees are given a wealth of information, templates, and best practices, you can certainly narrow the gap between the effort required by the well-connected and less well-connected.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/pOqL4FEePHg/ Dr. John Sullivan

A Checklist for Predicting Corporate Disasters -- Is Your Firm the Next BP?

You might feel far removed from the current oil disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico because your firm is not involved in oil drilling or sophisticated mechanical operations. However, assuming that there are not important lessons to be learned from BP's handling of the issue would be shortsighted. Any organization experiencing a "critical incident" needs to look beyond equipment failures and natural disturbances to determine if human factors or people-management practices were an underlying or contributing cause. Apart from establishing accountability, investigations play a more strategic role in helping identify indicators of impending disaster that could serve as a warning moving forward.

If people management practices play a role in creating situations whereby a disaster is more likely, then it stands to reason that people management metrics (long collected, rarely leveraged) could provide vital insight into disaster risk.

Put more simply, HR functions have a strategic responsibility to determine if measures of overtime, absenteeism, temporary labor use, training hours attended, engagement, etc., can be used to predict potential business problems.

Do People-Management Factors Cause Failures?

In recent years, numerous scandals and disasters have demonstrated the far-reaching impact of corporate policy, and more importantly corporate practice. While firms like Enron, Bear Stearns, and "systems" best practice icon Toyota had well-documented processes, policies, and procedures, they also all engaged in management practices that led people to make bad decisions that ultimately cost the organizations billions.

Given the spotlight on bad management, it is somewhat disturbing that so few HR leaders are acknowledging their role and stepping forward with solutions to help predict and prevent disasters. Yes, most HR leaders react quickly to assist when disasters occur, but rarely if ever do they step forward to suggest that management systems may have played a major role in causing the disaster, and accept responsibility. Even fewer HR leaders attempt to proactively predict upcoming disasters.

If you were the new general manager of an NBA franchise and were presented with a set of people-metrics that revealed that your average team member is 5'9", 40% of starters are on injured reserve, team salaries are the lowest in the league, and that scoring attempts per game result in success less than 9% of the time, would you really be surprised that the team lost every game? Would it be news to you that unless significant "talent-management" changes were made, that you would continue to lose?

While the investigation into the BP disaster continues on, like other recent disasters, it's already clear that human factors played a major contributing role. Employees surviving admit damaging the blowout preventer prior to the incident and indicate that management routinely dismissed warnings and documented procedures to hasten making the well productive. A one-time incident BP could blame on a bad hire, but BP's safety track record is one of the worst in the industry, indicating that a culture (established through management practice) of tolerance for sidestepping is present.

"Failure Prediction Checklist"

With the list of corporate scandals and disasters growing, it is becoming clear that people-management plays a major role in crafting situations that allow disasters to occur. What follows is a long list of people-management factors that, when modeled, can serve as predictive indicators. Not all factors will contribute to critical incidents in every industry, so investigate the linkage in your own organization and devise an appropriate set of warnings.

Short-Term Indicators (Weekly/Monthly Monitoring)

Absenteeism % — a shorthanded team or one augmented with temporary underskilled labor, particularly in maintenance and safety roles, will result in increased errors rates and activity postponement. Significant absenteeism may be symptomatic of deeper problems.

Overtime utilization - like absenteeism, chronic fatigue and stress may contribute to increased errors rates and activity postponement.

Temporary labor % — when temporary labor makes up a high percentage of a critical work team, their unfamiliarity with processes and standards may give rise to the foundation of a critical incident.

Vacancy rate — a high vacancy rate could be indicative of important work being postponed, ignored, or reallocated to underskilled labor.

Performance/engagement/satisfaction rates — low or dramatically decreasing 360°, engagement, or employee satisfaction survey results may be an indicator of future problems with an individual or a team.

Productivity rates — sudden bursts or declines in workforce productivity may be indicative of policies being violated, process steps being side-stepped, or warning measures being ignored.

Cost-containment rates — cost-containment rates that exceed planned operational buffers may increase use of shortcuts and inferior materials. Oversight is needed to ensure that short-term savings do not result in long-term costly disasters.

Whistleblowing incidents — having no whistleblowing reports can be an indication that employees lack interest, have experienced retribution in the past, are unaware of how to report issues. Regardless, both too few and an abundance of reports may be an indicator of serious problems.

Accident rates — not only are they costly, but they may be an indicator that procedures are not being followed. Unresolved safety issues, the routine violation of safety rules, or lax safety training may all be a predictor of larger safety issues.

Error rates — although errors are not entirely a human factor, a high error rate may indicate that procedures are not being followed or that the training is lax. Delaying or not responding at all to major errors may be the most critical indicator.

Longer-Term Indicators (Quarterly/Annual Monitoring)

Turnover/transfer rates — managers with high employee turnover rates or high employee “transfer out” rates may be weak managers prone to higher rates of major problems.

Complaint levels — when complaint or grievance levels increase, it may be a predictor of upcoming major problems.

Training — an untrained team, an unevenly trained team, or one with “dated” training can dramatically increase short-term error rates and eventually lead to major disasters. Lax training of supervisors and managers may be a separate but more serious problem.

Staffing levels — whenever the ratio of employees to work falls below a certain point, fatigue and stress may eventually lead to major errors.

Management span of control — when the ratio of managers to employees exceeds a certain level, the likelihood of poor supervision increases dramatically. In the other direction, the likelihood of the micromanagement of employees also increases.

Performance management issues — an overall high percentage or an increase in the percentage of individuals on a performance management plan may be an indication of bad hiring or poor supervision. In contrast, having an extremely low percentage may also be an indication that management is lax and that it is unwilling to acknowledge and punish poor performance.

Excess accumulated vacation — an excess of accumulated vacation may mean that workers are overworked.

Managers fail to meet goals — a manager with a track record of failing to meet goals may continue that pattern unless proactive action has been taken. New managers unfamiliar with practices may cause more errors, as may a long-term manager that has grown complacent.

A history of problems — the mere existence of a pattern of problems in the past may be the best indicator of future problems in a team or business unit. (It has been widely reported that BP racked up more than 760 safety violations, while Exxon received only one in the same time period.)

Poor internal handoffs — whenever complicated interdependent work is handed-off between different internal functions or teams, the likelihood of an error increases dramatically. Poor or nonexistent coordination and integration mechanisms are an indication of continuous problems.

Disability rates — high short-term or permanent disability rates may be an indication of both current and future problems, if they are the result of high stress and poor working conditions.

Recruiting metrics — a slow time to fill and a weak quality of hire may be precursors to future problems.

Pay rates — when average pay rates are significantly below the prevailing norm, the likelihood of weak hires and unmotivated workers increases.

Incentives — whenever bonuses or incentives exceed 25% of base pay, there is a significant chance that the high incentive will drive employees and managers to violate rules or ethical standards.

Outsourcing % — miscommunication and poor coordination are always issues when critical work is outsourced. When a significant percentage of critical or sophisticated work is assigned to vendors, the handoff process may also be a source of major problems.

New procedures — whenever new or significantly revised processes or procedures are put into place, the odds of a significant error increases tremendously.

New technology — whenever major new technology is implemented, the likelihood of a significant failure increases dramatically.

No forecasting algorithm — the lack of a statistical process that forecasts and provides alerts by itself may be an indication of upcoming problems.

No if-then scenarios — the lack of a routine process for testing managers and employees on how they will handle likely worst-case scenarios may be a predictor that solutions will be slow in coming when problems do occur.

A rigid company culture — although there may be many benefits from having an established company culture, a rigid one may also be an indication of inflexibility and overconfidence that problems will not occur.

Review past major incidents in your own organization to determine which factors are indicative of increased risk of incident to come. Rank and weight each, then set a warning threshold based on safe operations. Be conservative as too many warnings are better than no warnings.

Future Developments

While simple analysis and a checklist are a decent start at being prepared, much more robust systems are needed that can analyze thousands of pieces of data in real time to determine where risks exist. The practice of analyzing risk isn't new; many corporations already have a risk management function, but the focus of risk assessment related to people analytics is relatively new and rare. Risk modeling involves gathering massive volumes of data and applying sophisticated statistical models, the latter activity being one that few in HR are good at. As Dan Hilbert, founder of OrcaEyes and a pioneer in the space of risk modeling related to workforce factors, can attest, few in HR "get it." When demoing his suite of business intelligence solutions, he often finds that while finance and operations professionals get it immediately, many in HR are overwhelmed and dismissive. The demand for robust workforce risk modeling is most certainly present in organizations, but the interest to fill that demand isn't coming from HR.

Final Thoughts

"All the things that they told us could never happen, happened."

This was the bottom line observation of Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician who was on board the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig at the time of the explosion. Take heed of his observation and develop a process to more accurately predict upcoming problems in your organization. Start by realizing that there are precursors or early warning signs to most problems. The key is to develop a process for identifying these precursors and using them to trigger action early enough to prevent minor problems from becoming major problems. Finally develop a checklist of these factors and periodically use the checklist to identify potential problem areas.

Note: What additional people-management factors could serve as precursors and thus should be added to the checklist? Add yours using the comments function.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/xfgQHmJA47s/ Dr. John Sullivan

Advanced Employee Referral Programs -- Best Practices You Need to Copy

Organizations that collect data on sources of hire consistently find that employee referral programs produce a high volume of high-performing hires with longer retention rates, and in most cases, at relatively low cost.

Unfortunately, when it comes to managing ERPs, there are a handful of organizations doing it really well and a lot of organizations doing it dreadfully bad.

After more than a decade of collecting program performance data, researching program design, and writing a book on ERPs, I can attest that there are many factors that differentiate a great referral program from an average one.

Many recruiting managers with woefully under-performing programs think they have great programs and are somewhat shocked when they learn that, on average across all industries, 1:3 hires come from employee referral and that it is no longer uncommon for more than half of all external hires to come from employee referral in organizations with leading talent management functions.

If your organization doesn't have an ERP, or has one that produces less than 30% of all external hires, now is the time to benefit from the learning of organizations like AmTrust, Accenture, Amazon, Google, Tata, Aricent, DaVita, and Edward Jones to improve your efforts.

40 Practices That Distinguish Great from Average

The following list is separated into eight categories, based on what the composite practices are trying to accomplish. Benchmark firms are highlighted in parentheses.

Improving the Business Case for ERPs

The best referral programs are well-funded because they have convinced business leaders and managers on the business impact of employee referral programs.

ERP metrics — top programs emphasize metrics that cover the performance of new hires, retention rates, diversity, participant satisfaction, and program ROI. (DaVita, AmTrust, and Aricent)

Calculating the dollar impact — using business impact measures, leading ERPs calculate their program’s financial impact on the organization to increase executive and management support.

Improving Program Responsiveness

The No. 1 factor contributing to poor referral-program performance is a lack of responsiveness to inquiries and referrals.

Rapid response — the best programs provide qualitative individualized feedback to the referrer and the referred individual within 24 – 72 hours of submission. (Aricent and AmTrust Bank)

Priority processing — referrals are given a priority for processing over other sources to ensure that the employee and the referral feel like they are special. (Accenture)

Expedited interviewing — make a promise to interview all employee-referral candidates within a certain number of days. (Owens Corning)

An "on-the-spot" evaluation — when referrals are collected at referral events, provide on-the-spot screening and evaluation with instant feedback (Tata)

Online tools — offer online assessment and/or self scheduling of interviews. (Alaska Airlines)

24/7 help desk — always-open referral help desks to provide information and to answer questions. (Tata and Aricent)

Changing Who's Eligible

Second-generation referral programs often broaden the scope of who is allowed to make referrals.

Manager eligibility — because managers and HR professionals are well-connected, allow them to refer for roles outside their organizational unit. (Accenture)

Non-employee referrals — allow consultants, customers, references, corporate alumni, and other stakeholder groups interested in driving the success of your organization to participate. (Internosis)

Internal referrals — internal referrals are encouraged to expedite internal movement and ensure that under-used talent doesn't get overlooked by other internal systems. (Booz Allen)

Discourage weak referrers — ban individuals who do not follow program guidelines or who consistently produce weak referrals from further participation.

Improving Program Motivators and Rewards

While many top-performing programs use program rewards, rarely are financial incentives the primary motivator.

Motivate without bonuses — several firms have successfully produced 50%-plus referral rates without using cash bonuses. The key is to excite participants about building an effective team and communicate how hiring top talent leads to job security and improved company performance. (Edward Jones and AmTrust Bank)

Increase recognition — publicly recognizing employees and managers for participating using personalized thank-you notes from executives and special lunches exclusively for referrers can dramatically improve participation.

Charitable donations — providing donations to a charity of the referrer’s choosing for successful referrals can be a significant motivator in organizations with a strong social responsibility mission to employees not driven by bonuses. (Accenture and DaVita)

Reward all referrals — while most referral programs reward only for a successful hire, a growing number of top programs are offering small rewards for the introduction of any quality candidate to encourage more referrals. (Accenture)

Manager targets — individual managers are given specific targets for the referral volume of their team and themselves to motivate and spur internal competition. (Acumen Solutions, Yum Brands)

Develop an SLA — the very best programs increase the responsiveness of line managers by instituting service-level agreements that spell out expectations. (Aricent)

Increasing Proactive Referrals

While traditional referral programs rely on the erratic flow of referrals subject to the whim of the employee population, many top programs use proactive components that create flow as needed.

Onboarding referrals — ask new hires to make referrals during onboarding. (Eli Lilly)

Referral activities — visit top performers and coach them through a talent discovery exercise to generate referrals for a particular need. (Quicken Loans)

Alerts — send targeted alerts to the most relevant employees or those who have signed up in order to make them aware of current need. (CACI International and Quicken Loans)

Follow-up interviews — following a successful referral, interview the referring employee to thank them, find out how they sourced the hire from their network, and to ask for additional referrals. (Amazon)

Referral cards — provide both paper and electronic referral cards to highly visible employees in order to increase referrals. (Accenture and Southwest Airlines)

Referral events — hold referral events and hiring parties for referrals in order to garner attention, to educate, and get spot referrals. (Monster.com)

A referral database — develop a pool of referrers who can be proactively approached. Select these individuals based on their past referrals and the likelihood that they know someone with a particular skill set. (Accolo)

Provide feedback on quality — provide employees with honest feedback on the quality of their referrals so they can continually improve. (Accenture)

A diversity emphasis — emphasize and proactively seek out diversity referrals, using metrics to track what is and is not working.

Using Social Networks

The lack of a robust social recruiting strategy in most organizations means that employee networks and social media tools are often not being usedeffectively to support employee referral.

Educate and encourage — fight corporate policies that discourage social media participation and educate employees and managers about how to effectively use social networks for professional purposes, then encourage mass participation. Build online training resources that instruct on quality profile creation, information sharing, online networking, and converting network contacts to referrals. (KPMG, Acumen Solutions)

Give them something to talk about — most professional social network activity relates to the sharing of valuable information or interesting stories. Make content that features your organization available in formats that are easy to share. Publish shortened links to new stories, blog posts, product announcements, article shares, etc. to Facebook and Twitter so that employees only need acknowledge the post to share it amongst their networks. (Microsoft, Facebook, PepsiCo, and Zappos)

Create learning networks — one of the best ways to take advantage of micro-blogging tools like Twitter is to create learning networks where people inside and outside the organization can share links to articles they find of value professionally. Source micro-bloggers posting relevant content to specific groups within your organizations and encourage employees to follow them and to comment of shared content or possibly contribute complimentary or contradictory content.

Provide help — the social media landscape changes daily, so getting started can be daunting. Consider hiring an ERP coordinator dedicated to helping/coaching top performers on establishing and leveraging their social networks.

Accept social media profiles — few things can kill conversion of a referral initiated via social media more than forcing the individual through the ATS application from hell. Consider maintaining the social media experience by accepting complete profiles on social media sites in lieu of a resume or online application. (Sodexo)

Changing the Program Scope

Many organizations either over-restrict the scope of their ERP or don't provide enough program structure.

College referrals — referrals work even better among the college population because they are well connected through social networks. An advanced program must include referrals for college hires and interns. (Endeca)

Executive referrals — include executive openings and encourage executives to make referrals across the board.

Boomerang referrals — devise program elements that focus on top-performing employees who quit or were laid off. Corporate alumni can also be the source of referrals. (DaVita, Deloitte, and Booz Allen)

Global referrals — do away with regional barriers to participation and open up referrals from anywhere to anywhere. (Tata)

Limit the scope — the very best programs do not treat all jobs the same; instead they prioritize key, mission-critical; and revenue-producing roles. (Accenture)

Improving Program Administration

One of the key differentiators between average and exceptional programs is program management.

Employees can track their referrals — allow employees to continually track the progress of their referral using an ERP portal or stage-triggered communications. (Accenture and Aricent)

Require the employee to pre-assess — exceptional programs require the referring employee to submit an assessment of the applicant being referred. By requiring employees to actually know the work of referrals and to assess them based on skills and fit, you help eliminate junk referrals. (Aricent)

Website customization — provides detailed information to first-time referrers and those seeking assistance, but provides fast-track option for submitting referrals for individuals with prior experience. (Accenture)

Hire a dedicated program manager — every one of the top performing programs I have evaluated had a dedicated program manager and many had dedicated supporting staff members. Establish program performance goals, and hold the program team accountable for producing a program design capable of meeting/exceeding them. (Tata, Owens Corning, Amazon, and Aricent)

Avoid program killers — the very best referral programs avoid common program-killing features, like delayed or partial bonuses, failing to update marketing materials, and extensive program rules.

Final Thoughts

The “build-it-and-they-will-come” mentality that many organizations approach their ERP with is silly. In recent years, employee referral programs have become the dominant source of external hires, and they deserve a level of program strategy and management commensurate with that status.

Exceptional referral programs are extremely sophisticated and require highly coordinated resources. If your program is woefully out of date and under-performing, I'm sorry to inform you that buying new creative from your recruitment advertising agency will not bring it up to par. Program excellence comes from design, and now is the ideal time to rip out your existing program and replace it with one that can produce results in the incredibly challenging years to come.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/DOjYyyPuXkM/ Dr. John Sullivan

Finding the Failure Points in Your Recruiting Process -- Some Final Approaches

Some recruiting directors don't like it when I criticize them for not operating their recruiting function in a more businesslike manner. They fail to realize that the recruiting process directly impacts business revenues and it is at least as important as supply chain, lean production, and CRM. Many who are responsible for the overall recruiting process rely on their gut to determine whether the overall process is running smoothly.

In direct contrast, other major business process owners use a "data or evidence-driven" approach to determine not just whether a process is producing the desirable results but also to determine precisely at what step are the failures occurring. If you’re ready to shift to a more businesslike and data-driven approach that can help you pinpoint the “failure points” in your recruiting process, this article will outline what you need to do.

FPI (Failure Point Identification) — a process for identifying recruiting failure points

The technical term within the field of process reengineering for identifying the specific causes of process failure is “failure analysis” and when a significant percentage of a processes errors occur at a single stage or step, that is known as a “failure point.” As a result, I call the process that I have developed for identifying the weak stages of a recruiting process "Recruiting Failure Point Identification" or "Recruiting FPI.” Rather than trying to completely rebuild the whole recruiting process, the FPI approach helps you identify the steps that are contributing the most to poor results. In fact, it’s quite possible that the majority of your recruiting shortfall is occurring as a result of weaknesses in one or two, out of a dozen recruiting process steps. Unless you can accurately identify these failure points, you run the risk of wasting significant amounts of money and time fixing the wrong step. And by not accurately identifying and fixing these key failure points, you may be dooming your recruiting process to a long future of continuously disappointing results. There are three broad categories of approaches that corporations can use in order to identify the key failure points in any hiring process.

The three basic FPI approaches include:

Evaluating the steps in the recruiting process — in order to find failure points, locate the deluded individual step to determine if it is even being carried out, who is accountable for it, and whether there are metrics for assessing the output of that step. I covered that approach in a related article.

Using a yield model to identify failure points — this approach identifies failure points by measuring the yields or the volume remaining after each step. For example, if at the interview step it takes 10 interviews to yield one offer (or a 10% pass-through rate) you know you have a quality issue when the normal pass through is 20%. Whenever the process manager encounters a significant decrease from the average expected pass through percentage at a step, they must take notice and analyze that step. I covered that approach in a related article.

Alternative approaches for identifying failure points — this last category includes two dozen alternative approaches that you can use to supplement the “step approach” and “the yield model.” In this article I'll cover those remaining approaches that can be used for identifying failure points in the recruiting process. I have purposely provided “too many” approaches so that you’re not forced to select an approach that you are not comfortable with.

A list of alternative approaches (categorized by recruiting step)

Each of the major alternative approaches for identifying failure points are bullet-pointed here under the most relevant step in the recruiting process.

Step 1: The application classification step — is the problem originating here?

Submit “perfect” resumes for screening — if you suspect your problem is occurring at the resume receiving or sorting step, you can test the effectiveness of this screening step by using dummy “perfect resumes.” By taking each of the critical job requirements and placing them into newly created résumés, you can in effect create a “perfect resume” that perfectly fits every requirement of the job. By submitting a variety of these “perfect” resumes under different names you can identify which percentage are actually received and are then classified as "qualified" (i.e. passed along for a phone screen). The percentage of these perfect resumes that should receive a phone screen should be close to 100%, and if it’s not, you will know right away if you have a screening problem (one firm found that 82% of their perfect resumes never made it to step two). Another alternative is to disguise the resumes of your own top employees and submit them to see what percentage of your own top employees would be rated highly by your own screening process (one firm found only two out of five of their top employees would receive an interview if they applied under another name). You can also include some clearly unqualified candidates to see if any (unfortunately) make it through to the phone screening process.

A comparison classification of the applications — have one or more of your technical employees independently classify a large group of applications/resumes into qualified and unqualified categories. Then compare those results with those from the original classification done by the recruiter to see where the recruiter made mistakes in assessing unqualified applicants to be qualified and vice versa. You can also hire an external agency recruiter to do a similar comparison assessment.

Use mystery applicants — one of the best ways to identify where problems are occurring in any customer setting is to use mystery shoppers. A similar approach, using anonymous applicants can be an extremely valuable tool for identifying process problems. This process (users have included DaVita and Publix Markets) allows you to hire trained customer service professionals to become applicants in order to assess first-hand at least the early phases of the application and recruiting process. The mystery applicant works best for high-volume jobs that don’t require a high level of professional level knowledge.

Step 2: Sorting applications into the right jobs — is the problem originating here?

A comparison sort — have one or more of your technical employees independently sort a large group of received applications into what they consider to be the most appropriate open requisition. Then compare that job sort with the same sort that was originally done by the recruiter to see where the recruiter made mistakes in putting the wrong applicant with the wrong job.

Step 3: The phone screen step — is the problem originating here?

Add professional assessors to the phone screen list — if you are concerned that problems are occurring during the phone screen or during the reference-checking steps, you can check the effectiveness of the process by using trained assessors. Start by periodically inserting the names of trained assessors among the real names to call for phone screens or reference checks. These assessors can take notes and use a checklist to identify potential problems with the phone screening or reference-checking process. Incidentally, just letting your screeners know in advance that a professional assessor may be on the other end of the phone line might by itself significantly improve their performance.

Step 4: The interview step — is the problem originating here?

Survey candidates about the interview process — one of the best ways to identify problems with the interview is to survey a small sample of the applicants who participated in the interview process. Use a simple e-mail survey after the job has closed and ask them to identify problems that they saw and things that they would improve.

Survey managers and recruiters about the interview process — survey a small sample of the hiring managers and recruiters after the job has closed and ask them to rate the overall effectiveness of the process on a 1 to 10 scale. Also ask them to identify problems that they saw and things that they would improve.

Have HR professionals participate — periodically have an HR professional sit in on a random sample of interviews in order to identify what’s working and what isn’t.

Step 5: The offer step — is the problem originating here?

Survey those who rejected our offer — identify problems with the offer process by surveying each of the applicants who turned down our job offer. Use a simple e-mail survey after the job has closed and ask them to identify problems that they saw with their offer and the process as well as things that they would improve. You might want to delay the survey for several months in order to improve the honesty of the answers.

Survey new hires — during the onboarding process, survey all of your new hires. Ask them about the positive and negative aspects of the offer process, the interview process, and the overall candidate experience. Because they now work for you, they are much more likely to provide honest feedback so that the firm will be better able to recruit effective coworkers for them in the future.

Survey managers and recruiters about the offer process — survey a small sample of the hiring managers and recruiters after the job has closed and ask them to rate the effectiveness of the offer process on a 1 to 10 scale. Also ask them to identify problems that they saw and things that they would improve about the offer process.

Other Miscellaneous Approaches for Identifying Failure Points

Some additional approaches to consider include:

Identify the dropout point of high quality applicants who you "didn’t hire” — nothing demonstrates failure more prominently than having a process that rejects or somehow loses the very best quality candidates. To check to see if you're losing top quality candidates, periodically take one or two high-priority jobs. After the position has closed, compile all of the resumes of individuals who were not hired. Identify any of these individuals who would be classified as “high-quality” candidates and identify at which step that they dropped out or at which step you dropped them. Any step where you are losing more than one high-quality candidate must be further analyzed. By the way, if more than 10% of your “didn't hires” (or whatever number you determine to be appropriate) are rated as high-quality candidates, you must assume that your overall recruiting process is failing.

Identify the dropout point of diverse applicants you didn’t hire — periodically take one or two high-priority jobs and after the position has closed, compile all of the resumes from diverse individuals who were not hired. Identify any of these diverse individuals who would be classified as high-quality candidates and find out at which step that they dropped out or you dropped them. The steps where we are losing any high-quality diversity candidates must be further analyzed.

Force-rank all applications and see what happened to them — select one or two high-priority jobs and have a hiring manager rank them and number each one from best to worst. Keep the numbers secret until the end of the hiring process. Then see if the person that you actually hired was in the top 10% of the initial ranking. Next, check to see at what step of the hiring process that you lost the remaining top ten percent of all applicants. If a significant percentage are lost in a single step, consider that step to be a main failure point.

Ask them to rate each step — give a small sample of applicants a rating sheet and ask them to rate the effectiveness of each step immediately after it is completed during their hiring process. Promise to keep their evaluation anonymous (or don’t open it until after the hiring process is over), in order to minimize any fear they may have of retribution.

Identify their frustration points — survey applicants and new hires in order to identify their relative frustration level at each of the steps in the hiring process. Even if their frustrations didn’t cause them to drop out at any step, it’s important to limit their frustration wherever possible.

Implement a complaint process — implement an anonymous web-based complaint process that allows applicants to anonymously make comments or to complain about each individual step, as well as the overall process. Then track the number and the seriousness of the complaints at each step, in order to identify the step where the most serious problems are occurring.

Survey them three months later — due a follow-up survey of applicants long after they have been rejected in order to see if after a long delay, they are more honest about problems that they encountered.

Use external experts -- hire an external recruiting expert to sit through the different steps of the process over several different hires. Use their assessment to identify which steps contain the most problems.

Force the step's owner to periodically conduct an audit -- require the process owner of each major step of the recruiting process to develop an audit checklist, which covers all of the potential major problems that are likely to occur. Require them to periodically do a self-assessment or audit, so that they can continually improve.

Use common staffing metrics -- monitor common recruiting metrics like time-to-fill as warning signs. Look at the time that each recruiting step actually takes, and compare it to the expectation.

Focus on typical problems — overall, my research indicates that the root causes of most recruiting process problems come from the top of the funnel, as a result of poor sourcing. As a result, if you’re unsure, I recommend that you focus on sourcing problems first, such as over-utilizing sources that contain primarily active candidates, having no direct sourcing, and having a weak referral program.

Look for patterns — many recruiting leaders find that the same recruiting problems periodically return. As a result, try to identify these patterns so that you can use them to identify the most probable steps where problems are likely to return.

Benchmark other firms — you might find that other firms of a similar size in the same industry have already identified common problem steps. Although they might not be exactly the same, they might be a good indicator as to where to look further. Even if each step in your process is meeting your expectations, it might help to compare your level of expected results against other firms to see if your expectations are too low.

Calculate the cost of a bad hire — calculate the value difference in revenue between a great hire and a bad hire in the same position. Use that dollar amount to motivate everyone to continually improve not just the step that they own but also recruiting the overall process as well.

Final Thoughts

I’ve attempted in this series (see the first and second) of articles to highlight the importance of looking beyond the simple question of “is the recruiting process meeting its goals?” and to develop a process for identifying failure points at each step in your recruiting process. Unfortunately, most recruiting leaders have no formal process for pinpointing their problems.

As a result, I have also provided a long list of failure point identification tools and approaches that I have found to be helpful to me when I’ve been asked to audit a corporate recruiting process. Of course, every organization needs to select the tools that best fit their needs and their culture but the key learning is to have in place a formal process for periodically identifying specifically where your process is failing. This might require you to become a CSI-type investigator but at least you now have a long list of tools that you can use to quickly and accurately pinpoint though your problem steps.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/nn_o4OgxnHI/ Dr. John Sullivan

A Recruiting Yield Model ... How it Can Identify Failure Points

A yield model is a great business planning tool used throughout modern organizations. It relies on basic math to calculate the net output (outputs minus rejects) from a process. For example, if you are a baker and find that 1:10 muffins produced fails to meet desired quality standards, you have a net yield of 90%. The yield model helps you as a baker realize that in order to deliver 100 high quality muffins to a customer, you'll need to bake 12 batches.

Within the recruiting function, yield models are commonly used for two activities, projecting the number of initial applications needed to close projected requisitions, and calculating the resource requirements (labor, time, tools, etc.) that will be consumed in the process, i.e. budgeting. While not all organizations leverage a traditional yield model per se, nearly all organizations rely on some derivative including companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Tenet, Humana, Wipro, Life Technologies, Textron, and Southwest Airlines.

While many recruiting leaders are aware of the role yield modeling plays in planning activities, most are unaware of the third, and perhaps the most important use, identifying recruiting process failure points. It turns out that if you look at each of the individual steps within the hiring process, you can use any decrease in the "yield" of that step as an “alert” to warn you that problems maybe occurring.

How a Yield Model Can Help You Identify Recruiting "Failure Points"

Recruiting managers and recruiters are constantly complaining about their recruiting problems, but few have any systematic way of identifying precisely at which step in the recruiting process the most impactful problems are occurring. Fortunately, a yield model can also be a helpful tool in a Failure Point Identification process.

Benchmark Pass-through Rates At Each Step

I recommend that you begin the failure point identification process by calculating the average "pass" or pass-through rate at each step in your process. You can start with benchmark data from other firms. For example, the following data covers over 130,000 applications from nine companies in five different industries.

Process Step	Average % that "pass through" to the next step
Resume Screen	55%
Phone Screen	56%
Interview	53%
Offer made	73%
Accepted	83%

You can see from this chart that 56% of the candidates who undergo a phone screen successfully move on to the next step, and that 83% of the candidates extended an offer accept it. While you can certainly use these benchmark numbers as a guide, the best approach for identifying your firm's recruiting failure points is to gather your own yield data over time. After gathering the data, you should then set a range of minimum and maximum passing percentages. Once you establish a benchmark “low passing percentage” at each step, you can then consider any passing percentage data that falls below that benchmark minimum level as an “alert” that something is wrong at that step.

For example, if your average offer acceptance rate has been 83% and it drops to below 70%, it would be wise to look further into that stage of the process to identify the root cause of the problem. Obviously a drop in offer acceptance rates could be affected by competitor actions or a drop in the unemployment rate, but it could also mean that your recruiters and hiring managers need to be retrained in how to effectively sell and close candidates.

In contrast, if you are exceeding the maximum passing percentage, it’s an opportunity to examine that stage of the process to determine if someone has discovered a new "best practice." Of course, it’s also possible that there is a data collection or calculation problem. That possibility should also be examined. The key is to use any negative change in the pass rate at each step as a “heads-up” that a large problem could soon negatively impact the overall yield of the recruiting process. Unfortunately, the yield model cannot tell you the cause of the problem, for that, you need to use “root cause analysis,” which usually requires a combination of surveys, interviews, or focus groups.

Using a Yield Model to Calculate Applicant Volume Needed

As mentioned earlier, many organizations use yield models to help develop recruiting budgets. Assuming no changes are planned to your recruiting process, a yield model can be used to forecast the volume of applicants that will be needed to produce the volume of hires the organizations anticipates needing. When a yield model is used in this way, it is more commonly referred to as the recruiting funnel or pipeline. This representation is borrowed from sales functions which have yield modeled sales functions for centuries.

While yield models measure volume, they do not measure quality. Yield modeling assumes that effective quality control measures are in place to ensure that poor quality outputs do not advance from one step to the next. For example, if your organization has a weak recruiting process coupled with a poor employer branding effort, you may need 100 applicants merely to get a single hire, because a large number of the initial applicants will be unqualified. To ensure that quality is a component in your modeling, I recommend that you look at both raw applicant and “qualified applicant” (those who meet at least 90% of stated qualifications) volumes as the first level of your modeling.

A Yield Can Also Help You Set Realistic Expectations

Anyone who has ever managed a process can attest that a great deal of achieving execution relies upon setting realistic expectations among all process participants. I learned the value of yield models in recruiting by working with unrealistic hiring managers. One particularly optimistic hiring manager was starting up a new business unit within a Fortune 500 company and proclaimed that he would hire 100 people in a month and begin operations within 60 days. Using a yield model, I pointed out that based on his past recruiting performance, his expectations were unrealistic. This particular manager had a history of interviewing a minimum slate of 10 candidates per position and almost always required three separate one-hour interviews. Assuming no changes to his process, that meant he would need 1,000 qualified applicants in order to “yield” 100 hires. Interviewing 1,000 applicants at three hours each would require 3,000 hours of the manager's time alone. Achieving both goals might seem possible if our “yield model” didn’t warn us that even if the manager worked full-time on interviewing (50 hours per week), it would require four months simply to cover the 3,000 hours of interviews. After being presented with this best case scenario yield model, he moved his projected opening date back from 60 days to a full year.

Final Thoughts

In my experience, a large percentage of the metrics that are used in the recruiting function have little value. Unfortunately, one that has great value but that is often underused is the yield model. At the very least, it should be used by sourcing to identify the number of qualified applicants who are needed at the beginning of the pipeline. It can also be used to ensure that realistic timelines are set for filling positions. With those foundation practices in place, you can then use yield models for failure point identification. In this capacity, it can quickly direct you to a specific point or points within your recruiting process where your problems are originating. Once you understand the broad strategic value of yield models, it’s no longer acceptable to blame the whole process or to say that you can’t find out where a problem is occurring.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_drjohnsullivan/~3/cGl6lqxSwiU/ Dr. John Sullivan