Candidates: Are you interviewing and need support?
Candidates: Are you interviewing and need support?
Every week uncover the best HR news, articles, and insights, compiling them here in a weekly roundup. In this week's roundup, we look at using tech to improve productivity, analogues between sales and recruitment, and organizational momentum. We'll also examine the latest news regarding women in tech, and dilemmas in healthcare recruiting.
HR plays a huge role in the success of a business. From training programs to hiring, HR curates the quality of an organization’s makeup. In order to fully fulfill these duties, HR can use a bit of help. Kayla Matthews identifies eight ways HR can use tech to boost productivity:
I think we can take Matthew’s first point a step further. We’ve looked at the power of transforming the hiring process before, and it does not stop with the ATS. The “traditional” hiring process looks something like this: Online application -> ATS screen -> manual resume screen -> pre-employment assessment -> phone screen -> live interviews with stakeholders. Any number of these steps can be compressed or eliminated with the right investments and a little innovative thinking. A streamlined recruiting process doesn’t just provide an advantage when filling competitive roles, it also makes for a great candidate experience.
“Sales professionals are at the heart of our resurgent American economy,” Laurie Ruettimann begins. “They do everything from selling cars to sophisticated SaaS solutions, to working as recruiters and talent acquisition leaders.” Unlike the stereotype would have you believe, sales is not a one-way bombardment of information. Recruiters work with hiring managers and clients on hiring strategy while at the same time sourcing and screening candidates. Ruettimann examines three ways to help your recruiting “sales” process along:
Both rewards packages and technology can work in unison to boost an organization’s employer brand. If an employer gains a reputation for great perks and forward thinking, it will be reflected in review aggregation sites like Glassdoor. Getting financial support for these initiatives tends to be another story. Dr. John Sullivan just wrote a great piece on appealing to your CEO, and there’s a lot to be said for creating a shared language with those that hold the checkbook.
Momentum is the force that drives an object to increase in speed or strength over time (think a boulder rolling down a hill). In the context of the workplace, momentum plays a key role in creating a “critical mass” of productivity, engagement, and innovation. Sharlyn Lauby examines six things that can bring organizational momentum to a sputtering halt:
Lauby’s second and sixth point are hugely underrated. There’s always been a huge push to bring employees to productivity as quickly as possible, but maybe this approach is short-sighted. Putting new eyes on old business practices could very well be the fuel a struggling organization needs to jump-start its momentum. In regard to the sixth point, employer brand encompasses the whole of the employee experience - even if that experience involves leaving. Referrals continue to be the best source of high quality talent, so building bridges (rather than burning them) is a great way to cultivate a healthy talent pipeline.
A new Harris poll found that 37% of tech workers left their jobs because of mistreatment, with women and minorities the hardest hit. All in all, 80% of respondents indicated they faced sexual harassment, bullying, stereotyping, or unfair people management. “The tech industry claims to have difficulty recruiting and hiring under-represented employee groups, namely female, African American and Latino candidates,” Valerie Bolden-Barrett says. “Even if tech firms met workforce diversity hiring goals, this new survey shows they would still struggle to retain women and nonwhite hires due to deep company culture issues.” To combat these issues, organizations need to:
Just this week, a number of female engineers at Facebook released data showing their code was rejected 35% more often than that of their male counterparts. Which is odd, considering that women are consistently rated as better coders than men - so long as their gender is hidden. It’s no wonder then, that underrepresented groups in tech are inclined to leave - even if they perform better work, they receive heavier criticism. And if the best workers leave due to bias, they don’t get promoted, and the vicious circle continues.
“As unemployment numbers continue to drop to historic lows, healthcare recruiting is becoming a full-blown crisis,” Sackett begins. According to SmashFly, over 400,000 new nursing jobs will be created by 2024, while 700,000 will retire - creating a nursing deficit of over 1.1 million. To stay competitive, TA leaders in healthcare organizations need to adopt a more progressive approach:
“You need to build a recruiting organization that never sleeps. Just like your hospitals, you need to be running 24/7,” Sackett concludes.
Children’s Mercy Hospital provides the perfect example of innovation in the hiring process. Rather than starting the hiring process with a job application, people who are interested in working at Children’s Mercy upload a short video introducing themselves to the recruiting team. Healthcare job postings tend to be filled with jargon, and every hospital has a different name for similar duties (at Children’s Mercy, a front desk clerk is listed as an “Access Representative). But when interested individuals introduce themselves, recruiters can suggest job openings that are a good fit, bypassing this issue entirely. As a great unintended consequence, the proportion of diverse hires made through this program is significantly higher than that of traditional channels.