Tag Archive: High-Volume Hiring

  1. Nontraditional Talent Pools & How to Tap Into Them

    No matter which way you look at it, recruiting is hard work – especially in 2019. The jobs are plenty, the job seekers are few, and diversity is top of mind at many organizations. So it’s no surprise that gaining traction with potential candidates requires careful thought combined with a whole lot of action. 

    As a result, recruiters need to revisit their strategies, expand their reach, and tap into new or otherwise nontraditional talent pools. Of course, adding this to your current workload might feel like a second job, but thankfully, there are programs and tools that help facilitate the process. Here are three to consider adding to your existing toolkit:

    Returnship programs

    ‘Nontraditional’ applies to a wide variety of job seekers, including those out of the workforce for an extended period. Maybe they served in the military, spent a few years taking care of a loved one, or decided to pursue an advanced degree full-time. No matter the reason, a returnship offers these people the opportunity to slide back into the world of work.

    Felicia Fleitman, who manages strategic pipelines at Verisk, a data analytics company, explains the returnship experience as “an intern program for mid-level professionals returning to work.” Recognizing that returnees need help in specific areas, Verisk provides access to training, development, coaching, and mentorship resources designed to restart their career and get them up to speed. Sometimes this leads to a job offer. Sometimes their return isn’t the right fit – and that’s OK too.  

    In terms of recruiting, adding a returnship program provides direct access to countless candidates, who might go overlooked in an ATS. At the same time, you’re giving returnees the chance to get their confidence back while contributing to your organization. A win-win, all around. 

    Video interviewing

    Maybe you’re not in a position to implement a new program, such as returnship. Luckily, there are other ways to tap into nontraditional talent without building something from scratch. For a quick win, take a look at some of your most time-intensive recruitment processes. The administrative workload associated with scheduling and screening candidates is probably not the best use of your recruiters’ time. That workload, coupled with pressure to move fast, forces recruiters to stick with what they know and avoid looking outside the traditional mold. 

    With a tool like video interviewing to automate and streamline, recruiters are able to review more candidates in less time, while continuing to collaborate with hiring managers and other stakeholders. 

    As far as nontraditional talent goes, this technology enables all types of candidates to interview when and where they’re able to – rather than simply at the behest of the organization. Be it pre-recorded or live, video interviewing emphasizes convenience – an important factor in a tight job market, especially with so many job seekers either actively employed or else unavailable during office hours. Video interviewing is also mobile friendly, allowing you to reach candidates in different cities, looking to relocate, or those with mobility issues who can’t necessarily travel with ease. With this type of solution in place, you’re able to cast a wider net with fewer strings attached. 

    Soft skills assessment

    When it comes to finding and engaging new talent, you might still need to think outside the box – or in this case, your industry. Sure, it’s great when candidates fall into your lap having the exact resume and experience you’re looking for. But how often does that happen in 2019? Instead of limiting your search to candidates who’ve done the job before, you can use assessments to find people with transferrable skills that will work well in your industry. 

    Take sales, for example. The ability to sell isn’t contingent on years of experience in a sales position. It’s about having the soft skills and behavioral traits necessary to be productive. Using a pre-hire assessment, you can identify candidates with the highest potential for success, even if their background doesn’t correspond exactly. In fact, nontraditional talent may even outperform other hires because they’re a stronger match – and you won’t know until you assess. 

    It’s tough to say if and when the job market will change, but for now, it’s a candidate’s game and recruiters need to play through. To get candidates from those nontraditional talent pools you haven’t recruited from before, you need to shore up your resources and dive in head first. 

    Written by Greg Moran,
    CEO of Outmatch

  2. 5 Ways Workplace Assessments Are Better Now Than They Used to Be

    Workplace assessments have been around for over 100 years, and have come a long way to meet the needs of modern businesses.

    The ‘science of selection’ dates back to World War I, when the military began using assessments to place army recruits. After World War II, early assessments like Myers Briggs entered the mainstream. Fast forward to today, and more than 70% of employers are using workplace assessments to help them hire the right people (source: Aberdeen Group).

    Being able to measure a candidate’s personality and cognitive ability is powerful, which is why workplace assessments are so widely used today. But they haven’t always been perfect. If you’ve had a not-so-great experience with assessments in the past, know that the industry is evolving fast to meet the needs of modern businesses.

    Say goodbye to clunky roll outs, limited use licenses, and difficult-to-decipher reports. Say hello to a new generation of assessments!

    Here are 5 ways assessments have changed for the better:

    1. Subscription options.

    In today’s cloud economy, the ‘all you can eat’ subscription model is king. Previously, assessments came with pay-per-test pricing, which forced companies to use them only for their highest volume or highest value (i.e. senior exec) roles. Now, thanks to subscription options, companies can use assessments in huge volumes, and administer them even earlier in the process. This ensures that hiring teams are spending time with top candidates across positions.

    2. Use cases beyond hiring.

    Now that assessments aren’t limited to specific hires, companies can expand their usage outside of talent acquisition. Managers and L&D teams are hungry to learn about employees: What are their strengths? What are their gaps? Who are our high potentials? What’s the best next step in an employee’s career path? Leveraging the assessment post-hire can improve team dynamics, employee development, succession planning, and more.

    3. No barrier for small to mid-sized businesses.

    Before the shift to subscription-based pricing, assessments were used almost exclusively by large companies with large budgets. The previous pay-per-assessment pricing model created a barrier for smaller businesses that couldn’t afford to ‘buy in bulk.’ So, unless you were in an enterprise-sized organization, assessments were used ad hoc, or not at all. Now, newer assessment products offer flexible, unlimited use licences with pricing based on company size.

    4. Easy to take, easy to interpret.

    The last thing you want is a long, complicated assessment that generates a long, complicated report. Reports of the past often required an I-O psychologist to interpret, which was additional expense. Newer assessment products offer user friendly tests that can be completed in less than half an hour (ours is less than 10 minutes for hourly roles and less than 20 minutes for professional roles). The reports are easy to understand and the tests are available on mobile and web.

    5. Real-time data and analytics.

    The days of paper-based assessments are behind us. Cloud-based solutions make distribution of data efficient and give users access to real-time analytics. Each time you hire a new employee, you add a data point to your aggregate analytics, which helps your teams make more intelligent and predictive hiring decisions. 

    The 100+ year history of assessments is a testament, not only to our fascination with the science of selection, but also to the practical and enduring value of assessments in the workplace.

    To learn more about implementing a workplace assessment, or expanding your use of assessments to other areas of the business, check out these helpful eBooks:

    Or, schedule a demo with Outmatch today!

    Written by Keith McCook, Ph.D.
    Vice President of Talent Analytics, Outmatch

  3. Is Resume Screening Software Biased?

    Resume screening software is a quick and easy way to scan lots of resume data without actually reading resumes.

    The option to automate resume screening – which most talent acquisition leaders say is the most challenging part of recruitment – is enough to perk the ears of any high-volume hiring team. That’s why resume screening software and AI screening software are growing in popularity. But are these tools effective? And do they solve, or perpetuate, bias?

    As companies increase their hiring volume, recruiting teams have to find ways to do more with less. Resume screening is incredibly time-consuming, taking up to 23 hours per hire. And we all know, the longer it takes to screen and hire, the less likely you are to snag a top candidate.

    With so many advancements in AI, why would humans still need to read resumes?

    A better question might be: With so many advancements in AI, why are we still so reliant on resumes? Resumes are problematic for many reasons:

    • They’re self-reported descriptions of work experience and education
    • They include half-truths, exaggerations, and lies of omission
    • They say nothing of knowledge, skills, or character
    • They put too much emphasis years of experience and gaps between jobs
    • Information is hard to verify, because a resume is not an official document
    • Job seekers can easily optimize a resume using keywords, or hire a professional resume writer

    What we’re doing when we use resume screening software is making an ineffective process faster. After news broke of Amazon’s resume screening tool that showed bias against women, this type of AI is under increased scrutiny. But, in Amazon’s story and others like it, it’s not the technology that’s to blame. It’s the underlying data – in this case, the resume.

    A 500-700 word document, even when it contains action verbs and job-related keywords, isn’t a good predictor of success. AI doesn’t change that.

    Luckily, there are other ways to screen candidates at scale:

    • Pre-screening questions are a simpler, lower-tech option. Instead of training AI to scan for keywords on a resume, you could simply ask candidates what is it you want know. Do you have four years or more experience in customer service? You can do this through your ATS, or in your video interviewing platform.
    • A pre-hire assessment integrated into the application process is another good option. This is how American Airlines fuels all their front-line hiring. According to Rob Daugherty, Director of Global Talent Acquisition:

    With a  name like American Airlines, we get a lot of applicants. It’s almost impossible to understand who’s a fit and who isn’t. The assessment helps us focus on candidates with the right personalities and skill sets.”

    • Video interviewing software has also proven its value in time and cost savings. By replacing the phone screen with pre-recorded videos, most companies see at least a 60% reduction in candidate screening time. At Virgin Atlantic, video interviewing enables recruiters to screen 3X more candidates per day.

    AI-driven technologies have unlocked exciting gains in efficiency. What’s important is that we’re driving efficiency in the right areas – not just hiring people faster, but hiring the right people faster. It’s also important that technology is used to inform our decisions, not make our decisions for us. Learn more about AI and the future of hiring in our on-demand webinar: How to Keep Your Hiring Process Human in the Age of Automation.

  4. What To Do about Hourly Turnover?

    Hourly turnover, especially in a competitive talent market, can feel much like a revolving door. In an hourly work environment, the pay is low and the job isn’t all that “sticky.” (Unless you’re pulling gum off the bottom of dining room tables, or cleaning buttered popcorn from a movie theater floor.)

    What we’re talking about here is the challenge of retaining employees in not-so-desirable jobs, or jobs that are easy to walk away from. That’s the reality for companies with large hourly workforces, like restaurant, retail, property management, manufacturing, call centers, and countless others. You can’t change the job, and often you can’t bump the pay. HR leaders in these industries have come to accept high turnover as a fact of life.

    Maybe you can’t stop turnover at the hourly level. But what if you could slow it down? Stretching an hourly employee’s tenure from 30 days to 90 days can have a surprisingly big impact.

    Think of it like this:

    • You hire A, who stays for 30 days.
    • You replace A with B, who stays for 30 days.
    • You replace B with C, who stays for 30 days.

    In 90 days, you’ve made three different hires. Now compare that scenario to this one:

    • You hire Z, who stays for 90 days.

    Here, you’ve only made one hire. Let’s say the cost of each hire is $2,000, conservatively. In scenario 1, you spent $6,000 in 90 days. In scenario 2, you spent $2,000 in 90 days. When you multiply that out across your entire hourly population, it adds up to big savings.

    Here’s an example: A retail client of ours hires over 60,000 hourly employees per year. That’s 15,000 hires per quarter on average (not accounting for seasonality). Hiring people who turn over early (within 30 days, for example) could potentially triple this client’s number of vacancies from 15,000 to 45,000 per quarter. On the flip side, hiring people who are more likely to stay for 90+ days could reduce their number of vacancies from 15,000 to 5,000 per quarter. What a difference!

    To learn more about hiring’s effect on turnover, as well as internal promotions and customer experience, check out our white paper: The Business Case for Hourly Assessments.