He pulled together some of the interesting facts about recruiter behavior. For additional detail, readers can go to the Candidate Experience Award and down load the 2012 white paper. While there, consider participating in the 2013 survey process.

John reinforces the fact that the vast majority of recruiter effort is candidate rejection. So it begs the question? What is your rejection process? (Here is a string or articles and video interviews on improving your rejection process.) The Candidate Experience Award winners have exceptional communication methods built into their process. In fact, one brand conscious organization knows that each candidate may already be, or could be a customer. They have a Brand Manifesto which mandates each candidate be personally dispositioned. Think about that level of commitment to your candidate experience.

While not a element of this particular company’s employment application process, many companies are adding a layer of candidate evaluation that requires more effort than submitting a resume. Treating candidates as decision makers and providing an interactive, educational and evaluation-based application reduces resume spam, gathers more useful information and supports better hiring outcomes. Better data = Better decisions for both the candidate and the recruiter. Well designed pre-employment assessment does just that.

Evidence-based hiring methods often document that previous experience is not the best predictor of success on the job. As such, the six second ‘wonder-look’ may indeed be placing emphasis on the wrong data. This is reinforced by John’s point that between 30 and 50 percent of hiring decisions are determined a failure. What other business process is allowed to operate with such a high level of staffing waste and rework?

John suggests it is time for a more scientific approach, and offers the candidate a few suggestions. There are sound alternatives for recruiters as well. Perhaps it is time for a shift from the hope-filled key word search to the research-filled capabilities evaluation. Companies that use HR analytics and evidence-based management for staffing process improvement achieve higher success rates. Learn more about this discipline here.

A few points that got called out:
There are several places where each company can look at the small side of big data.  Each company has internal data that be used for HR Analytics to drive staffing process improvement.

1. High population jobs – the 2 or 3 jobs with the most incumbents – the sheer numbers might suggest some opportunity for process improvement
2. Jobs with the highest 90 day turnover – huge opportunity to reduce staffing waste and rework
3. Jobs with objective performance metrics – opportunity to raise new hire performance consistency, reduce variation

The Three O’s of Quality of Hire:
Opinions - Does the hiring manager like the new associate?
Observations - Does the hiring manager rate new hire performance above average on behaviorally anchored rating scales?
Objective Metrics – Does the new hire achieve above average results on Dashboard Metrics, KPIs, production, outputs, etc.

A more useful alternative to Cost Per Hire is Cost to Proficiency.

Tweets during the broadcast mentioned
Benchmarking can be a “Me Too” strategy
Benchmarking prevents holding up the mirror
Recruiting is more about rejection

In addition, listeners were invited to consider and apply for the Candidate Experience Award

Listeners were also offered a free book – Practical Rigor; Evidence-based management to improvement hiring in high population jobs.

For your free copy go to our contact me page and type in BOOK or Practical Rigor in the notes form. An ebook version will be sent your way. A paper copy can be mailed to you, just ask.

Enjoy, and thanks for listening

Marc Wenzel, Ph.D. Joins Shaker Consulting Group

Shaker Consulting Group, the market leader in custom simulations for pre-employment testing is bolstering rapid business growth with the addition of assessment industry expert Marc Wenzel, Ph.D.  Wenzel’s previous experience in market development with Pan Testing and ThinkWise Inc. makes him a distinctive addition to our team,” said Shaker president Brian Stern, Ph.D..

“Marc has a truly unique depth of experience working with large companies to solve complex staffing challenges,” said Joseph P. Murphy, executive vice president at Shaker.  From his work with high-population jobs to assessing partners at Accenture and candidates for higher volume roles at talent leaders like P&G, and Dow Chemical, Marc brings a strong focus on rigor and HR Analytics which business leaders appreciate.  Marc has great capabilities to demonstrate how HR Analytics are tied to commercial outcomes through staffing process improvement.

Companies that hire 100’s or 1,000’s of people into one job require a specialized candidate evaluation solution.  Shaker’s core service offering, the Virtual Job Tryout®, deploys evidence-based management practices for staffing in high-population jobs.  The demand for these services at Shaker was up 30% in 2012.  The high return on investment (ROI) from these staffing process improvement initiatives has  fueled new client growth.  Equally notable, the continued year-over-year ROI has contributed to significant growth from existing clients as they expand their use of the Virtual Job Tryout into additional critical roles.

“I have had my eye on Shaker for over 10 years, and had the personal experience of installing the Virtual Job Tryout as a customer inside a large bank. There is really no one else like them in the assessment market.  Finding a company that can give relevant, rigorous talent data that business leaders can use along with the attention to the candidate experience is a rarity in our field.” said Marc. “Not surprisingly, Shaker has attracted a roster of world class clients who leverage the information to build a workforce that delivers superior results.  I am excited to be joining an organization with a brilliant solution for brand-conscious organizations seeking to deliver an exceptionally engaging candidate experience.

If you will be attending the SIOP 2013 Conference in Houston, stop at our booth #108 in the exhibit hall and congratulate Marc on his new position with our firm.

Alternatively, if you will be attending 2013 ERE Conference and Expo in San Diego, stop at our booth # 418 in the exhibit hall and congratulate Marc on his new position with our firm.

Marc will open a new office in Cincinnati OH, Shaker’s fifth location.

Practical Rigor: Evidence Based Management to Improve Hiring in High Population Jobs

How to Improve Hiring in High Population Jobs

Rigor in decision making is essential. Yet for reasons both good and otherwise, there is a big gap between how business professor’s think management decisions should be made and what happens in real life.

Employee selection is one of the rare areas where that chasm has been crossed. This is particularly the case for high population jobs where an organization is hiring hundreds of employees. Using multi-method assessment to evaluate candidates creates a data rich environment where statistical analysis and predictive modeling add rigor to decision making. This book zeros in on rigor in that kind of high volume selection.

Many organizations hire or engage specialists to solve complex measurement and analysis challenges.  This book touches on the specialist skills of industrial organizational psychology (IOP), and the use of selection science practices proven to deliver staffing process improvement.  Explore how you can reduce administrative burden to reduce time to hire, reduce staffing waste, and increase quality of hire.

Here are what a few people had to say about the book.

“Murphy and Creelman describe how to tee up and drive an evidence-based selection strategy straight down the fairway—while missing traditional staffing hazards or flirting with those intuitive out-of-bounds markers.”

Gerry Crispin

Chief Navigator, CareerXroads

“This savvy book drills down into the what, why and how of using evidence to hire the right people—and helps practitioners navigate the politics of evidence.”

Denise M. Rousseau, Ph. D.

H.J. Heinz II, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Public PolicyCarnegie Mellon University

“A clear, concise explanation of why gathering and analyzing data about candidates and employees pays off in higher quality work performance. The concept of “practical rigor” is useful and powerful, and should help to allay any fears of producing theoretical results that don’t work in practice.”

Kevin Wheeler

President, Global Learning Resources, Inc. & The Future of Talent Institute

To receive a free copy, follow this link and write PRACTICAL RIGOR in one of the text boxes.

Candidate Experience Award Council Member

A group of like-minded individuals (CandE Council), has come together to advance the quality of the candidate experience. The Talent Board was created to capture data, provide analysis and insight and support corporate initiatives for improving the candidate experience with an evidence-based management approach.

Now entering its third year, the Candidate Experience Award is gaining visibility and attracting more participants. We want you to participate – “Don’t Think Twice, Its Alright”. Click here to learn more and register for the 2013 program.

An often written about and frequently expressed concern is the lack of acknowledgment and engagement for candidates. Candidates flock to careers web pages responding to the message “I Want You”, but one common response is they feel like they have been left out on “Desolation Row”.

In an interview with Gerry Crispin he suggested companies define their candidate experience and then measure it to see of they are delivering on the candidate experience promise.  Well it might be a “Simple Twist of Fate”, that you can now do just that.

Candidates arrive at careers sites due to brand attraction. When they enter your experience it is important to“Handle With Care.”

Learn about your recruiting practices though self evaluation and the voice of your candidates. Participants get an opportunity to collect data from their candidates and learn from practices employed by other organizations. Armed with data participants can make choices and take actions to improve their candidate experience. And when that happens, we can all celebrate because we will know “Things Have Changed.”

After putting up with this article, you may be thinking of another great tune: “Idiot Wind.”

For additional content on the candidate experience click here.’

When sound data is used to document quality of hire, evidence-based management is being deployed for the business process called staffing.

Evidence of Quality of Hire

There is an underlying assumption with subjective measures that an individual rated higher on a valued behavior (job specific competency) is a more valuable employee. These are however, still opinions, and difficult to use in a calculation that documents value.

With objective measures, performance outcomes may be easily equated with dollar values, and thus contribute to a quantitative ROI analysis.

Some jobs do not have clear, specific performance metrics that are captured. Captured being the operative word.

Without data capture, there can be no analysis. Without analysis, no insights, and quality of hire remains elusive. As a practitioner, being well versed in methodology for HR analytics is important. If you are seeking assistance in this area, seek out an industrial organizational psychologist (IOP)

Quality, it has been said is determined by the customer. Who is the customer and what outcomes are important in talent acquisition?
If it is hiring manager and their opinion, a survey will work for QOH
If it is the hiring manager and their department production goals, then opinion may not be an adequate metric.

As an exercise, ask the hiring manager to produce a list of the objective performance metrics for the job. If there is enough people in the job to calculate a group average. (see more on performance variation here.) Quality of hire may then be viewed as new hire performance that lifts the average of the group. In accomplishing this you have delivered staffing process improvement

For more to think about, take a lesson from Lake Wobegon

Reposted from http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

President Obama was recently inaugurated for his second term after a tough race, with pundits on the left saying the President would prevail and those on the right predicting a clear Romney victory. News viewers were no doubt on the edge of their seats waiting to see who would ultimately come out on top.

Unless they read Nate Silver’s blog, that is, and knew with 90.9% certainty that Obama would win.

But, how could one person successfully predict such a dynamic and complex outcome? Furthermore, how could he predict which candidate would win each of the fifty states with perfect accuracy? Maybe he just got lucky, right? Nope …

Silver runs what is considered a “poll aggregator,” a process that combines and weights the results of all polls to arrive at a conclusion, rather than standing on the result of a single poll. The problem with single polls is that they are subject to considerable error; you get a much more reliable result if you combine your observed poll data with all other prior poll data.

Silver uses Bayesian statistical methods to combine and weight polls. The methods, used as a way to update one’s beliefs based on evidence, were originally developed by a minister from the 1700s named Thomas Bayes.

What can these methods teach us in the Virtual Job Tryout and larger employee selection business? Turns out, a lot! At a conceptual level, these ideas help us to realize that each data point (e.g., the way a candidate answers an interview question) should be balanced with other competency evidence. In other words, we should not over-interpret something we observe, especially if it conflicts with other prior evidence. By taking into account historical data, we can ultimately make more accurate decisions in hiring, and also in life.

Stay tuned! In the next few weeks, we’ll be examining Bayesian ideas in more depth, and seeing how they can add accuracy to our decisions, in both employee selection and life in general.

The paper can be found here: Improving Communication in Virtual Teams

Don't leave your hiring managers out to dry!

As a lifelong hockey player, sports have always carried significant weight in aiding my understanding and explanations of different concepts, so this post describes some parallels I have noticed between hockey goalies and hiring managers. I’ve always been a goalie, often labeled “the last line of defense”. When someone on the opposing team gets through the rest of my defense, it becomes my job (read: responsibility) to maintain positive outcomes for the team. In organizational contexts, hiring managers can then be seen as organizational goalkeepers, as they must deal with everything that gets past the rest of the selection system, when trying to hire the best candidates to fill open positions and ultimately help the organization succeed.

Now that we’ve established the parallel, it’s time to dole out some knowledge based on personal experience in both arenas.

One thing I have learned over the years is that my job as a goalie is much easier when there is a strong defense in front of me to help minimize potentially negative situations. In an organizational setting, this is where pre-employment assessments come into play. Many organizations are still hanging their hiring managers out to dry, so to speak, by not utilizing the correct (or any) pre-employment assessment to better filter the barrage of applicants for open positions. This places an overwhelming amount of pressure on the hiring manager to try and pick exceptional employees out of an excessively large crowd.

Another parallel between the two contexts is that both on the ice, as well as in organizational settings, formal training can help improve outcomes, but in and of itself will not ensure positive outcomes. You can teach fundamentals all day (e.g., structured interviewing), but if the hiring manager is bombarded with candidates, much like shots in hockey, unqualified ones are nearly guaranteed to slip through every now and then.

At Shaker, we strive to assist hiring managers in making optimal hiring decisions by utilizing the Virtual Job Tryout to filter out candidates not fit for open positions. This helps the hiring managers, as they are now interviewing candidates judged to be more suitable to the job than vetting via a résumé alone would produce.

It is also worth noting that the Virtual Job Tryout is not meant to be the “last line of defense” in hiring situations, as it is still expected that hiring managers will conduct structured interviews of candidates who score highly on the Virtual Job Tryout (though we do offer aids such as structured interview training upon request to further assist your hiring managers). Instead, the Virtual Job Tryout merely acts as a strong filter that works in conjunction with the hiring manager to help identify candidates most likely to succeed in the open position. This ultimately produces a situation more likely to result in organizational success, as can be seen when utilizing our ROI calculators Here and Here.