Steffan offers four main points to consider for keeping the rejection process in-line with the candidate experience and expectations.

1. Use the same level/form of communication established
2. Provide details on where they stand in the process
3. Keep them informed along the way
4. Provide candid feedback regarding fit and potential for future prospects

Use the same level/form of communication established
Steffan puts out some great criteria here. If you have spoken with a candidate, give them the bad news over the phone. If you have only had an email exchange, a digital dialogue is appropriate.

The personal relationship established with a phone call or an interview sets expectations high for the candidate. They know out of all the candidates you were highly interested in them. As many as 90% of candidates never get to a phone call, so this level of engagement sends a message that their qualifications are a close match. This creates hope and expectations for additional personal contact. (See more about candidate hope.)

The impersonal nature of the internet may at times make it easy for forget each applicant is another sentient human being. Delivering an exceptional candidate experience, even for the act of rejection, calls for some level of sensitivity and reciprocity.

Provide details on where they stand in the process
Gerry Crispin is an advocate for providing candidates with an interesting variety of data such as how many candidates typically apply per week or month and how many are hired during that same period. It’s a bit like the lottery publishing the winning odds. But, it also sends the candidate a message about the scope of challenge the company faces. In high applicant to hire ratio scenarios this can be a powerful form of level setting communication. This type of data does not have to be real-time data. Generalized stats should serve you well.

Having typical timeline and expected next step information can also be shared in a general format. With open or standing requisitions a blanket statement such as: “We contact the most qualified candidates by Friday of each week.” For one-off requisitions you may have more specific details. “The most qualified candidates will be contacted for a phone interviews by DATE. On site interviews will be conduct during the week of DATE. We anticipate a hiring decision to be made by DATE.

Candidates who do not hear from you by each of those dates know what that means. That does not remove the need to communicate with them, but it does in a Steffan Martell of CareerBuilder on the candidate experience manner let them know they have not advanced.

Keep them informed along the way
In our work on understanding candidate expectations, job seekers clearly stated one of their highest needs for information is on the status of their application. Steffan mentions the ‘black hole.’ It is too real for many candidates, due to recruiting processes that are void of communication tools being set up properly and recruiters who underutilize automation resources.

Any ATS worth its license agreement will have a candidate disposition process and automatically triggered communications. Make sure your process has well written messages to advise candidates of where they stand in your process.

Provide candid feedback regarding fit and potential for future prospects
Steffan offers another excellent point here. Job seekers want to know why they did not get the job. The evasive answer we used to teach our recruiters was to always use the “We were fortunate to get a lot of candidates to consider. After careful review, we advanced those candidates who seemed most qualified.”

While that response told the candidate the company process, it was void of insight for their personal growth. Martell suggests we share more. And to share in a manner that sets proper expectations for the future. Candidates hate to be strung along. Be frank and straight forward on whether you will keep them on your radar or not.

Remember, due to the fact that only one candidate gets hired, recruiting is the business of rejection.  Look for ways to do it well. Make better rejection part of your staffing process improvement initiatives for 2012.

Where Next?
Once again, there will be an application process for the Candidate Experience Award.
2012 will provide another opportunity to highlight those organizations that are doing it well, getting it right and being a leader in delivering an exceptional candidate experience. Check in here to begin the application process.

Candidate as Consumer

Either directly or indirectly, your business may touch the candidate from a consumer or customer perspective.  Maren suggests we treat each candidate much like your marketing function would:  have good communication tools and methods in place, keep track of who you have in the pipeline and reach out to them.  Each interaction provides and opportunity to create a brand positive candidate experience.  Examine the messaging; the continuity and reactions candidates have to how your recruiting process impacts their perception of your organization.

Earlier this year, the first Candidate Experience Awards were presented to a few organizations that take the candidate as customer issue quite seriously.  In addition, a  Candidate Experience Monograph was drafted to provide some guidance on this topic. Additional information can also be found here.

Support Career Search Objectives

Maren suggests HR professionals must not impede the candidate’s career pursuit with vague, misleading or lack of communication. Candidates want to use their time and effort well too.  They do not want to be strung along. Give the candidate a No, to free them up to pursue other options. I wrote about the candidate’s act of hope and possible desperation with each Apply Now click.  Be sensitive the candidate’s situation.

Engage Fewer – Reject Fewer

What is the right amount of candidates?  There is no mathematical formula for that.  However there are some resources to consider. Maren suggests the use of pre-employment tests or assessments. These tools are extremely beneficial with high applicant to hire ratios.  You can read more about these resources on our main web page of on this blog. Maren also suggests focused and effective use of social media.

Candidate pools or communities can be created with a range of social media resources.  To reduce the broadcast approach to sourcing, investing time and energy engaging potential candidates through social media can reduce the number of candidates you may need to engage to find a good fit.  And the benefit of fewer candidates is fewer rejections.

Candidate source can also be analyzed with pre-employment assessment results.  This can help refine sourcing effectiveness by examining both the yield – hires per source, as well as competency profile by source.  Armed with this data, sourcing strategies can hone in on talent pools that drive up recruiter efficiency, improve quality of hire and reduce the number of candidates that need to get the rejection message.

Thanks to Maren for sharing a few ideas for improving the candidate experience.  If you would like to explore improving your candidate experience, give us a call or drop us a note.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

I have worked in the trades and the joke about the advice above is – I cut it twice and it is still too short! Well intended and skillful recruiters sometime take a pipeline full of candidates, cut it twice and still make job-fit hiring decisions that miss the mark. Measurement to support job-fit decisions is critical.

Job-fit is complex. I have never sat across the desk from someone who said, “Our jobs are simple, people don’t need to bring much to be successful here.” In fact, even in entry level jobs, the variables that drive success are complex and can be difficult to objectively measure. Jobs with complex demands require rigorous evaluation methods, methods that measure twice and cut once.

Measure Twice

A common practice in the use of assessment is to administer a combination of a personality or work style questionnaire and a reasoning test. This is a simple form of two measures. The unfortunate and common outcome is poor accuracy and the ‘cut’ can be ‘off the mark.’ Candidate job-fit is far more complex than a test score and diverse high-to-low ratings on a number of personality traits.

Multi-method pre-employment assessment integrates an assortment of evaluation types to deliver a whole-person examination of diverse knowledge, skill, traits, characteristics required by the job demands. Multi-method assessment makes it possible to obtain two or more measurements or evaluations of each job relevant performance domain. When attempting to predict candidate behavior across six to eight competencies, a well developed multi-method assessment can evaluate each competency with multiple measures, thus delivering a confident job-fit measure.

Multi-Method Measurement

Here are some common assessment types that can be integrated into a multi-method assessment.

Situational judgment – choosing among options on how one might respond to common interactions with customers or co-workers

Problem solving – accessing and considering information to address questions, resolve issues

Idea generation/brainstorming – recalling or synthesizing options for a given scenario

Work history – identifying job relevant career experiences, achievements, work habits and career management behaviors

Data analysis – computations, trend analysis, comparisons and drawing conclusions from various information sources

Diagnostic reasoning – applying rule-based logic to system analysis

Prioritization – evaluation and ranking of relative importance and potential consequences of work flow demands

Delegation – discerning appropriateness of and approach to assigning work to others

Multi-tasking – splitting attention among competing demands while performance complex tasks

Work style- comparative description of preferred behavior patterns

The elegance afforded by many of these assessment methods is the ease by which the content can be created to reflect or mimic the actual demands of the job. For example, a day-in-the-life of a manager may include working with operating statements to identify issue that need attention, coming up with a variety of ways to handle the action items, selecting action items to delegate to team members and being prepared to handle a variety of team member responses.   A multi-method assessment can combine a series of exercises that present that entire sequence; Data analysis, idea generation/brainstorming, delegation, situational judgment.

Whole Person Job-Fit Profile

Whole Person Job-Fit Profile

The complexity and diverse range of job-fit attributes measured with this approach allows candidate results to be presented across a job specific competency model.  This is done through the use of HR analytics and a scoring algorithm that weights and values candidate responses according to their relationship with actual on-the-job performance.

In addition to obtaining the evaluation information, the candidates are invited to step into the job and get a glimpse of what it is like to handle the work flow. The assessment can become a form of realistic job preview.

Pre-employment testing has evolved a great deal in the past few years. The web has provided a format for delivering a highly engaging and robust multi-method assessment experience. If you value accurate job-fit, it may be time to explore how a multi-method pre-employment assessment could support your recruiting and hiring process.

Call (888) 485-7633 or write to set up a demonstration.

Measure twice, cut once to reduce staffing waste from your hiring decisions. The result is a workforce that delivers superior results.

There is no team roster filled with the likes of Lebron James, Michael Jordan or Barry Bonds, (Although Miami tried). There is no company executive committee completely staffed with the likes of a Warren Buffet. The reason can be largely explained by population statistics. A Players or bright stars only make up a small percent of the available population.

As such, it is more of a myth to make all A Player hires. The size of the candidate population might have to be enlarged exponentially to create a finalist pool of only A Players to choose from. That could be a monumental task. The organization might not have the appetite for the time requirements nor the budget to complete such an undertaking. There is another approach to contributing to organization performance with each hiring decision.

Dim Stars Get Hired Too
Making the right hiring decision requires complex reasoning. To put this into perspective requires that you wrestle with another concept within population statistics known as variation. This can be best understood by looking at your hiring track record. You hired your best, and you hired your worst. When you examine the performance differences between those hired into one job, the variation in decision quality is revealed. Using a process improvement tool called Pareto Analysis (80-20) the impact of low end variation can be revealed.

Obtain a data set of performance variables from a group. Sales performance is easy place to look. Obtain territory revenue per sales rep in a spread sheet.  Calculate the average sales per territory. Next calculate the average for the top 80% and the bottom 20%.   Look at the gap.  After you stop shaking your head, you have to admit, “Yes our process hired those bottom 20% folks too.”  You can explore the impact of this with our ROI Calculators.  You can perform this same form of HR Analytics on any dimension of performance. It is pretty revealing.

This analysis reflects the current nature of the population from which you draw, and the decision quality variation that allows in your poorest performers. In your Shining Star hiring program, Dim Stars get hired too.

Scale of Magnitude
Hipparchus , the ancient Greek astronomer created a the six point magnitude scale to calibrate the relative brightness of stars. Since then the scale has been expanded, revised and refined to better describe the difference observed in the brightness of heavenly bodies.  Hipparchus uses analytical models to refine his conclusions. Your process hired the dim stars because of the calibration of your brightness scale.   Shining stars and dim stars looked more alike than different. The evaluation process was unable to see the difference.  Using HR Analytics your candidate evaluation can be refined and your hiring decisions improved. Better candidate data can improve the yield of your staffing process.  Maybe your recruiter was blinded by star gazing.

With a well calibrated candidate evaluation process, you get better data, which can support more effective hiring decisions.

Here are a series of examples of on-the-job performance differences that were identified by score ranges during validation analysis of a Virtual Job Tryout. Each chart depicts the performance gap between individuals who scored in the top 80% versus those who scored in the bottom 20% of a Virtual Job Tryout created specifically for the job they hold.

Top 80% Achieve 47% Higher Territory Revenue

Individuals who scored in the bottom 20% on the Virtual Job Tryout, on average produced $1.6 million LESS in sales revenue. In other words, about $1.6 million of performance variation was at risk with every hiring decisions. Recruiters letting soft glowing heavenly bodies into the sales organization.

Top 80% Achieve 8% Higher Closing Ratio

Individuals who scored in the bottom 20% on the Virtual Job Tryout, on average closed the deal on 8% FEWER opportunities.   In this case, millions of dollars of revenue are at stake with a lower closing ratio.  Candidates with less effective skills and attributes for bringing in new business were entering the sales organization.

Top 80% Scores Achieve 70% Higher Level of Products Booked

Individuals who scored in the bottom 20% on the Virtual Job Tryout, on average produced 70% FEWER transaction per month.  The previous candidate evaluation process confidently advanced less capable  individuals  into the sales organization.

Top 80% Scores Achieved 21% Higher Commission Levels

Individuals who scored in the bottom 20% on the Virtual Job Tryout, on average earned$21% LESS  in sales commissions. The Virtual Job Tryout is well equipped to discern underlying traits and characteristics that drive performance differences.

When you see the order of magnitude and the insight into performance provided by candidate results, ask yourself; “What would my workforce look like if I could hire from the top 80 %, or even the top 50% of the candidate pool?”

When you calibrate your candidate assessment process to on-the-job performance, you can better distinguish the difference between stars and black holes.

Call us for more information on calibrating your candidate assessment process to reduce low-end performance variation.  And, remember, the sun is a star. If you stare at it, you can go blind.

Top Employers Deliver Better Candidate Experience

According to Moses Bar-Yoseph, the national director, talent attraction, for KPMG in Canada, “The line is now blurring between assessment and branding.”

KPMG Canada recently launched a pre-employment assessment for managerial candidates.  Positioned as a Day-in-the-Life experience, it provides a candidate experience as unique as the KPMG brand, and as challenging as the role of a manager in tax, audit or consultancy.  KPMG sees candidate engagement as a two-way process of both education and evaluation.

The KPMG Canada virtual job tryout was developed with high levels of involvement from across the firm.  Hundreds of existing managers completed the initial version of the assessment to support the in-house validation analysis.  Their responses to various day-to-day work issues, job relevant questionnaires, and individual business results were analyzed to create a scoring algorithm.  The go-live version reports on Overall Fit and provides ratings on KPMG Canada specific competencies.  Recruiters identify best-fit candidates quickly and objectively.  The results provide better candidate data for comparing and contrasting among candidates and exceptional decision support for hiring managers.

Bar-Yoseph was recently interviewed by Todd Raphael of ERE Media about the process.  The article is here.

2011 Candidate Experience Award Stamp

Some organizations take their candidate experience seriously.  This year, after considerable thought, some survey data and insightful collaborative writing, The Candidate Experience Awards were conceived.

Gerry Crispin and a team nurtured the idea and a process for application and evaluation was born.  The industry is fortunate to have forward thinking individuals willing to get out in front and take some pull-forward actions.

Dwight and Jean Accept CEA

Our Kudos and Congratulations go out to the entire talent team at SunTrust.  Way to Go!

Candidate Evaluation Time Well Spent?

In his recent post on ERE, Kevin Wheeler suggests interviews may be a waste of time. He poked the nest and stirred up some good interaction. He also suggests, that the use of more objective methods, such as simulations for pre-employment testing can improve the candidate evaluation process.

At the end of the day, the hiring decision is an act of personal judgment. The interview plays a big role in supporting that decision. And suggesting that companies abandon the interview will fall on deaf ears. However, the bigger question is what methods and criteria are used to determine who to interview. With high applicant to hire ratios, getting to the best candidates, the ones worth investing the high cost of interviewing, is a place to put some considerable focus.

A note about the gap between interviewing concepts and practices.
I conducted a survey with SHRM and in 2006 published a white paper The Use of Objective Candidate Evaluation Methods. (Non SHRM members may write me for a copy).

Here are some stats.
55% of respondents stated they use behavioral interviews that are based upon questions prepared in advance. 40% of respondents stated they do not conduct interviews with prepared questions. Kevin most certainly has his editorial comments pointed at this group.

When I explored further, and asked who uses behaviorally anchored rating scales and numeric summary of interview outcomes. Only 24% of respondents stated they use of this known best practice. This is the group that Tom Janz (see comment to Wheeler’s post) may be using to support his retort.

Another way to look at it is this:
Every company interviews (bold assertion) in their candidate evaluation process.
40% of companies begin with no preparation for what they want to learn.
76% of companies have no structured way to evaluate what they hear.

I think Kevin’s assertion has more generalized weight about the current state of affairs than Tom Janz’s point (see comment to Wheeler’s post) about results that can be achieved when interviewing is done exceptionally well. The process that Lou Adler teaches is a great example. Lou demands adherence to the process to get the results he purports.

Kevin’s bigger point is that there are better ways to learn more objective information about a candidate. And thanks to Tom Janz for the reference to the Virtual Job Tryout as one example (see comment to Wheeler’s post). At issue here is the professional/technical capabilities of practitioners in talent attraction and selection roles and their ability and desire to build rigor, selection science, and discipline into their practice. Kevin is inviting a shift to more thoughtfully developed and objective methods for candidate evaluation. When your process obtains better candidate data, you may be able to make better decisions.

Thanks Kevin.

Find the truth about predicting on-the job success

This week in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, it was reported that gamers contributed to a scientific breakthrough.  The problem-solving was achieved by a form of crowdsouring with a focused purpose. Earlier this year, I wrote about Jane McGonigal and her view that gamers can make significant contributions to solving significant world problems.  This is one more piece of evidence that her theory is on track.  Validation of a pre-employment assessment can be viewed as a form of crowdsourcing to solve a complex staffing problem.

Read this quote from an article about the breakthrough.

Gaming, science and computation are at the core of the Virtual Job Tryout.  We crowdsource from two groups to solve the question of what it take to be successful in a job.

When you ask ten recruiters or ten incumbents about what it takes to be successful in a job, you get ten opinions.  Of course there will be some overlap, but the overlap will contain both true and false assertions.  Humans can describe the same experience in many different ways.  People perform the same task differently as well.  What is needed to solve complex staffing problem is better candidate data.

The Virtual Job Tryout is a bit of a game.  It is work-sample and problem solving activity.  We crowdsource a large group of existing employees to complete the sample activities in the validation process.  When hundreds of people complete the same tasks, we obtain a robust data set on different approaches used to address the same issues.  We also crowdsource a comprehensive data set of on-the-job performance by asking the supervisors and managers to document productivity and rate competencies of the existing employees.

Computers are good at collecting information in a standardized format.  The web makes it easy to deliver an engaging, multi-media experience that can mimic certain aspects of a job.  In addition, how people navigate web experiences allows us to collect far more data than just a specific response.  Think about it like solving a math problem.  Sometimes the teacher wants to only see the answer, however, sometimes seeing ‘the work’ is more insightful.  The web allows us to collect ‘the work’ as well.

Industrial-Organizational psychologists are scientists.  One specific skill set of these scientists is developing algorithms to drive insightful outcomes from HR analytics.  The development of the correct algorithm is critical.  Using algorithms based upon validation from other companies delivers ‘vanilla candidates’ at best.  At worst, you hire candidates just like your competitors, thus reducing your differentiation in the talent aspect of your business.  Using data from your company, your employees, and your candidates is what makes pre-employment assessment work most effectively.

If you want to use crowdsource data to create  a highly effective solution to your complex staffing problem, give us a call.

The discovery may not be as significant as learning more about the HIV virus.  However, a better way to define what it takes to be successful in your company can improve the health of your bottom line.

This is our sixth year as a sponsor/exhibitor at Taleo World.  It is a great opportunity for us to connect with our existing clients on the Taleo platform.  It also allows us to showcase our simulation for pre-employment testing to other Taleo clients.

If you are attending Taleo World, stop in and see us at Booth 23.

If you would like to read what some of our clients are saying about the Virtual Job Tryout, check out this sample of testimonials.  The decision support from candidate results enhances the recruiter experience.  Your recruiters identify best-fit candidates faster and build a workforce that delivers superior results.

We look forward to seeing your in San Francisco.

Recruiter Rights begin with recruiter responsibilities.  Sourcing that creates unnecessarily high applicant to hire ratios, candidate evaluation methods that rely on subjective word search and resume data review technology, and posting methods that present jobs to geographically distant populations are examples of recruiter self-inflicted wounds.

Resume spam is a function of technology looking for a solution versus recruiters designing a candidate experience that adds two-way value to the information exchange.  Most applicant technology interfaces are incapable of offering an assessment of candidates that differentiates job-fit capabilities in a meaningful and valuable way.  Beginning candidate evaluation with resume data is a GIGO proposition.

Gerry Crispin and I, plus a small, but growing list of people see a more candidate centric process as raising the rights and responsibilities of both parties in the business process called staffing.  Placing a more engaging and meaningful candidate experience into your process can reduce unwanted through a percentage who self-select out, and by providing data that compares candidates in a more useful manner.  Candidates and recruiters who have been through a meaningful experience offer testimonials that document the win-win.

The new Candidate Experience Award is about the entire, balanced approach to staffing process improvement.  Recruiter Experience AND Candidate Experience.

Come visit us in booth at 351 the HR Technology Conference.  Learn about the power of a Candidate Experience that improves the Recruiter Experience.