Hire Top Talent

Most companies are unwilling to invest the time to leverage the powerful tools LinkedIn provides to connect and engage with passive candidates - and then leverage those relationships for referrals. LinkedIn provides a platform to drive referrals through vendors, customers, suppliers, and employees. I'm shocked at how many companies don't use this tool to identify talent - instead relying on the usually ineffective tool of posting job descriptions on job boards.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

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Nick Corcodilos blasts the job boards for double-dipping in charging both employers and candidates, especially LinkedIn.

My perspective is that the job boards should be able to charge candidates and employers whatever the market bears - that's the great part of a free market system.

The real issue is not whether the pricing schemes are fair or ethical. The real issue is whether the job boards are an effective source of candidates.

My experiece matches with the studies done that job boards typcially account for 1-2% of hires. LinkedIn is no different than Careerbuilder or Monster in the quality of candidates. In fact, the same active candidates respond on all three sites.

As a retained recruiter, I find LinkedIn is an effective tool to "identify" quickly who the potential candidate pool is for a search. LinkedIn messaging to passive candidates also has a much higher response rate than traditional cold calling.

Keep in mind - posting ads and networking through a tool like LinkedIn are just two tools in your quiver of tactics to find great candidates. As an employer, you should never rely on just one or two tools.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

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Excellent ideas from Afton Funk writing on the HRM Talent Blog about attracting top candidates.

Our experience over the last 30 years matches one of the key points that Afton mentions:

"Write unique and interesting job descriptions--everyone has read listings that have a five-bullet profile of what a candidate should be; by making yours something different you will attract candidates that also think differently."

Be compelling and outrageous. Shock potential applicants into reading about your opportunity. DON'T use job descriptions to masquerade as ads. Job descriptions are compliance and regulatory documents, not compelling marketing ads to attract the best talent.

For some specific examples of how to write a Compelling Marketing Statement, download a few from our website at http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com under the free resources section.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

Alexander Portnoy, a Vistage Chair in Minneapolis, posted a blog article comparing Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to recruit for his Antartic Expedition with today's common approach to job advertising.

You are right on target with your example of Shackleton from 1914 about attracting candidates through an inspiring advertisement.

As you might be aware one of the key elements of our hiring methodology, the Success Factor Methodology, described in depth in our popular Vistage/TEC presentation, You're NOT the Person I Hired, is that you've got to fish in deep waters for the best talent.

Posting a traditional job description is a worthless activity that brings to your doorstep the bottom third of the candidate pool. If all you're seeing is the bottom third, you're doomed to fail before you've even started the process.

We recommend using at the core of your deep fishing a COMPELLING MARKETING STATEMENT, exactly what you refer to in Shackleton's advertisement. A statement of work that inspires the very best to put their hands up and want to learn more.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

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Most executives are NOT going to let a new hire go quickly. Instead they'll play a game called "Let's give it another 30 days". Unfortunately, it's usually 2 years later and you're still playing the "Let's give it another 30 days" game.

How do you know if you made a mistake?

Assuming the person is not a complete deadbeat, toxic, or dysfunctional individual - how do you know their performance is not going to be at the level you need - especially in roles where 60-90 days is the minimum period to truly test and evaluate senior professionals and executives?

I'm going to suggest a documented set of expectations (we call these Success Factors) help guide you month by month in performance management to determine if the person you hired can deliver on your expected results. The real question becomes: How many months will you let slip by when someone is NOT achieving your desired outcomes?

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

I cringe everytime I hear the phrase "oldie but goodie". I want to smack something everytime someone tells me they use the old-school, tribal, supid, inane, canned interview questions like:

Tell me about yourself

What are weaknesses?

We like people who like teams. How do you feel about teams?

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Who cares what happens in 5 years. Crystal ball gazing starts to set at the 3 year point - 5 years is just plain silly.

Most employees, particularly younger ones don't have any clue what they are capable of achieving. The first key is to figure out can you deliver the outcomes we need in the next 12 months. For most hiring managers, this is a near impossible task, let alone worrying about alignment and fit 5 years from now.

If you want to raise hiring accuracy, start focusing your interview like it's the job, instead of asking a series of traditional, standard, canned, inane, stupid, common interview questions. You'll learn more about the person in gaining a few examples of how what they've done correlates to what you need done - without asking 15-20-25 canned interview questions.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

I was just having this conversation with a CEO at one of my presentions to a Vistage CEO Group the other day.

The question posed was:

"What do I do about the managers and executives in our organization that are fearful of hiring great talent that might outshine them?"

My response back was:

"If you have average and mediocre hiring managers who are afraid to hire the best talent possible, and continually underhire to maintain their control and security - then you're doomed to build an average and mediocre organization over time. The quality of your team dictates your organizational glass ceiling. If you have hiring managers who are the bottlenecks and obstacles, either coach them up or get rid of them."

Here"s what the author of the blog article said:

In theory, every job search is a search for the best possible candidate. In practice, thousands of job applicants get knocked back each year on the grounds they’re “overqualified”.

In the back of the mind of many a control freak bureaucrat lurks a deep fear.

A fear that they might, by accident or omission, accidentally hire someone who is smarter or more skilled than themselves.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

In his latest blog article, Adam Grant seems to suggest that we should abandon interviews due to the inherent problems and bias that occurs and causes hiring failure and errors. He recommends using selection tests instead of interviews as the primary evaluation tool.

In my 30 years of executive search in working with 1000s of companies and at least 20 times that number on hiring process improvemennt - I have NEVER seen a personality profile predict future performance or success.

These are great tools to wrap around an interview to validate what you heard or saw. They fall into the same category as reference checks, background checks, skill testing, role-plays, and homework assignments. As Bush called it, "other points of light."

Perhaps, a better approach than the "let's throw the baby out with the bathwater", is to improve the process of interviewing. My recommendation is that we start with training hiring managers and executives to conduct effective interviews rather than allowing interviewing to be a random and arbitrary event based on how each hiring manager does it in your company?

What's your specific plan to improve hiring accuracy and success in your company?

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

I'm not sure I would agree with Mckenzie that recruiting teams need a "culture makeover". I think most recruiters and recruiting teams would love to pursue passive job candidates instead of relying on the bottom third of the candidate pool that is generated by posting job descriptions and allowing those to masquerade as job ads.

I perceive the real problem to be one of time management. Posting ads on job boards, although usually ineffective, is a very low time consuming activity. Maybe 15 minutes to post the advertisement, 30 minutes to quickly review resumes, and perhaps a couple of hours conducting phone interviews to select who should come in for an interview.

Attracting passive candidates is a high time consuming activity. LinkedIn has changed one element of going after passive candidates - the initial identification and engagement. Unfortunately, the time required to connect with each of these individuals, track them, getting them to respond, pitching them on your job, conducting an assessment, pitching them again (remember - there passive not active), requires many hours of work.

Let's work the numbers using LinkedIn.

Creating a search and sending inmails/group messages. 20 messages an hour (send the standard message, tag them, and update your notes, and set a reminder to follow-up). Over the course of recruiting for a passive candidate, you'll probably send out a minimum of 100 messages - 5 hours of work.

90% of the candidates will respond - this requires followi-up messaging, a return message, and coordination of a time to speak on the phone - another 5 hours.

Average phone interview time is 20 minutes per discussion (since you're also trying to obtain referrals even if the person is not interested or unqualified (90 times 20 minutes = 1800 minutes or 30 hours of additional work.

We're now at roughly 40 hours of work  - and that's if everything goes perfectly. You know this doesn't happen - so you're really looking at 60 plus hours to recruit 1 passive candidate.

There is nothing that will short circuit this process or reduce the time. Recruiting passive candidates past the initial identification stage (which LinkedIn has dramatically improved upon) is no different today than it was 30 years ago when I started doing executive search.

Is it any wonder why most companies do not attempt to recruit passive candidates, and continue to rely on job boards to source active candidates. As I indicated earlier - this is not a recruiting department culture issue - it's an issue for the company in terms of allocating resources.

Is it worth 60 hours of a recruiter's time to fill one job? Obviously, as you get to the higher levels of the food chain, you can begin to justify this investment of time. However, would you do it for an engineer, a systems analyst, or a human resources manager position?

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

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Liz Ryan wrote an excellent article on how job ads turn off and drive top talent.

Her article gets at one of the core elements of our hiring process: You must compel top talent to raise their hands to learn more about your opportunity. The tribal and traditional approach of posting a job description on a job board is revolting, disgusting, and a complete turn off to top talent.

The best candidates you would like to attract couldn't give a darn what you want as an employer. They want to know WIIFM: what will I learn in this role, what impact will I have, and what will I become for having been in that role.

When you can't answer those questions, the best talent take their hands and put them down. You end up seeing the bottom third of the candidate pool - and when all you get is the bottom third, you're doomed to fail before you even start the hiring process.

A better approach is to throw the job description in the trash can and write a COMPELLING MARKETING STATEMENT using classic copy-writing and marketing tactics. Remember that this statement is not the regulatory and compliance-oriented internal job description, it's an advertisement. Classified job advertising is no different from any form of advertising.

Let's STOP disgusting candidates right now by ending the practice of posting job descriptions and letting them masquerade as advertisements.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

My perception is that most advice and recommendations to improve hiring come from "within the box": tried and true ways that are tribal and traditional stemming all the way back to Henry Ford in the early 1900s.

If you want to streamline, speed up, get better talent, you've got to think outside the box.

Instead of posting job descriptions on job boards, write compelling marketing statements.

Instead of passively waiting for candidates to fall into your lap off job boards, go to where your candidates hang out and affliate with each other. Proactively seek them out.

Rather than conducting the traditional interview of asking the 20 standard, stupid, inane, canned interview questions - base the interview around the performance expectations and results desired.

Using the centuries old approaches in finding, assessing, and selecting candidates will not get you the very best - instead it will help you hire the average, mediocre, and minimally qualified.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

In a study by Glassdoor on which companies have the most difficult interviews, buried in the article was the following comment:

"If an employer has a clear, well defined interview process that seeks to set expectations about what the job involves, as well as looks to get to know the candidate, where their interests lie and how they can help move the company forward, it’s a natural correlation to see higher employee satisfaction rates given that candidates will have a clearer idea as to what the job entails and where the company is headed."

The problem is that most companies DON'T have a well defined interview process, DON'T set expectations, and CAN'T paint a vision of where they are going and how this person will help.

The result is that over 50% of all hiring fails - the candidate either realizes the job is not what the interviewed for OR the hiring manager realizes YOU'RE NOT THE PERSON I HIRED.

A tough interview is not "bright lights and rubber hoses". Rather it's a rigorous process of case studies, role plays, deep probing that simulates what it will be like to work in that particular role. Most companies refuse to invest enough time in the interview process to validate, verify, and vet a candidate's ability to deliver the outcomes required for success.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

I love the increasing volume and debate the issues of Generation Y replacing the Baby Boomers/Gen X is creating among those thinking strategically about hiring talent.

As Baby Boomers retire and move out of key management roles, Gen X moves up into those roles, and Gen Y begins to replace many middle and senior managers - what are the issues, mistakes, and errors in hiring that you never had to contend with in the past?

Are you prepared to hire people in the future who think and process information differently, and have different approaches to work/life balance, loyalty, and patience in career/impact trajectory?

How are your plans, tactics, and strategies evolving to manage this fundamental demographic shift of your workplace? Are will you be waiting on the sideline to see what your competitors do first?

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

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Although this article focused on lead generation for a sales team, Kevin made a comment that caused me to perk up and take notice of his blog article he said:

"Does your sales team have a clue about what’s expected of them?  Clear understanding and direction can make the difference in how well your sales team is performing"

I'll content that in most cases your employees, especially your sales reps, have no clue what you actually expect of them beyond a final quota number at the end of the quarter or year.

Not defining expectations clearly, specifically, and on a time-based approach is the number ONE reason hiring and retention (employee engagement, satisfaction, and motivation) fails.

Don't take my word for it, read the book in which the research was done - First Break All The Rules.

If you don't define your expectations on performance at a very detailed and specific level, your hiring accuracy will NEVER be more than a 50/50 level of success, and your ability to keep great performers will steadily decline over time.

Are you going to accept mediocrity OR do something about it by starting to define expectations and performance.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

I'm not sure I buy into the idea that roles go unfilled due to hiring managers seeking the perfect employee.

In our 30 plus years of executive recruiting and hiring consulting, we've seen a couple of key issues preventing hiring managers from being able to fill critical roles with top talent.

First, most hiring managers and executives have not defined what they want from that role. This has nothing to do with the traditional job description, which is a worthless tool for predicting and managing performance. What is the real job - what do you need this person to deliver, accomplish, achieve, change, impact? Once you've developed this list of results required, the next step is to define which ones are game-breakers that you cannot afford to ignore, minimize, or risk not accomplishing.

If you don't know exactly what constitutes great performance in your open role, you're doomed to fail at the hiring process.

The second constrait, bottleneck, obstable, hiring mistake that leaves jobs open for a very long time is a lack of fishing in deep waters. Posting ads in various places by using the common approach of sharing the entire or partial job description brings the bottom third of the candidate pool to your doorstep.

If all you are seeing is the bottom third, you're doomed to fail at the hiring process.

Instead of thinking about lowering your standards, how about first defining what you really need to the person to deliver in the role, and then targeting the proper fishing holes and going deep after the best candidates in those areas. Even though I make my living doing executive search, most companies can do this on their own.

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about

I have to respectfully disagree with the author of this article on his premise that talent can't be identified through traditional techniques such as past performance.

Even in the athletic world, past performance is one of the most important elements of hiring at the coaching, administrative, and player levels.

In companies, not focusing on past performance is one of the major reasons hiring fails. Numerous hiring mistakes occur which have nothing to do with the issue of whether past performance is a good predictor of future success. Bias, emotions, bad interview questions, poor sourcing, and first impressions are just a few of the problems in hiring mistakes and errors.

Using behavioral interviewing techniques to get examples of how a candidate's past performance matches up to your expectations of performance is one of the most accurate methods of hiring. I agree with the author that we should also look at character traits and values - but not until we've determined if someone has the capability to deliver on your expectations, outcomes, deliverables, results desired.

I do love the quote he shares:

"When I think of the challenges involved in finding the right talent, I think about what Capital One CEO Richard Fairback once said: “At most companies, people spend two percent of their time recruiting and 75 percent managing their recruiting mistakes.” In my experience, the world’s best talent spotters have the courage to focus on people’s underlying character traits and motivations, rather than getting hung up on classic measures of ability."

The question I have is: Why do companies perform this dysfunctional dance of giving lip service to the idea that our employees are our most important asset - but their actions around hiring, coaching, and retention are the OPPOSITE?

Barry Deutsch

IMPACT Hiring Solutions HIRE and RETAIN Top Talent

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog

Do you have a FREE Copy of our best selling e-book on how to hire and retain top talent?

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/hiring-managers/hiring-products/our-award-winning-book/a-digital-ebook-version

Learn how your success depends on the quality of the team you build and keep by joining us in our LinkedIn Discussion Group on hiring and retaining top talent

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IMPACT-Hiring-Solutions-HOW-Hire-1819296/about