The five sections of the Medallion are the major traits that comprise the Five Factor Model, the underlying psychometric model on which jobFig is based. They are: Openness to New Experiences, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (sometimes called Emotional Stability). Within each of those top-level traits are six base-level traits for a total of 30 different traits of personality which combine to create the complex and interesting characters that share this planet with us.

But you didn’t come here to read about a pretty wheel of colors. You want to know how this will help you to hire better. Our algorithms take the Medallions of everyone on your existing team and see how well they fit together, this creates the baseline. All incoming candidates are then ranked against how their Medallion fits into that specific team.

For employers, this gives a rank ordered list of how well the candidates will work  with their team. Hiring the ones that don’t fit  lead to decreased performance and morale of the team, and ultimately, hiring a replacement for that ill-fitting employee, incurring further costs.

For candidates, this helps avoid wasted time in interviews for teams they won’t get along with. Why suffer through months of agony, only to have to repeat the process of looking for a job? While not a full, public-facing feature yet where we recommend which teams to apply for, the principle is the same. For teams where a candidate fits well, they are ranked highly, for a team that will be a poor-fit, they will be low on the list.

Over the coming months we’ll share insights as we gather more personality, behavioral, and workplace data. Are there certain trait levels that are common among students of a particular school? What does a Googler’s Medallion look like? How about facebook? If you have ideas for what you’d like to see, please let us know, either in the comments or by emailing us.

Source: INTV Gene

It’s humiliating: That moment when you realize the person you hired to work at your Nerf gun-strewn office is afraid of projectiles. Nobody likes being the coworker who stands alone by the water cooler and it’s certainly embarrassing to be the one who hired the black sheep. While personality diversity can be an asset, potential employees need to be a good fit in the workplace. All professional strengths a person might bring to a team are useless if his or her overall personality doesn’t complement the inner office dynamic.

Like a too-tight pair of jeans, a hire with poor fit can cause an unfortunate case of professional muffin-top – you can’t sit down at your desk without feeling uncomfortable. You risk shoddy morale, low productivity and, of course, the unpleasantness of firing an employee. It’s also a waste of time and money. Additional work hours must then be spent conducting the hiring process all over again. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated the average cost to replace a worker in private industry to be a staggering $13,996. Now that the economy is still crawling its way out of a recession, businesses can’t afford to blow that kind of cash on a regrettable hire.

Personality fit is difficult to pinpoint with a standard resume. Job history won’t necessarily convey a candidate’s sense of humor, creativity or modesty. Outside of personality tests, hirers rely on interviews and intuition to determine which potential employees might gel with the rest of the workforce.

Personality needs also evolve along with the growth of a company. In the early stages of a startup, it’s wise to hire flexible generalists. Jacks and Jills of all trades will be able to roll with the punches and tackle a wide range of responsibilities. However, as a company establishes itself, there’s less need for Renaissance men and women, and more for specialists with very specific skillsets.

One of the best ways to avoid the pitfall of a poor hire is to have a clear concept of your ideal employee before you start interviewing. While screening for potential employees, keep a checklist of desired qualities such as humor and confidence. If you take great care during the hiring process, you’re less likely to have to shoulder the burden of rapid turnover.

Hiring is crazy difficult! Anyone that says otherwise is likely suffering from a case of delusion.

We all know that we should hire A players, but how do we know if we’re really hiring the best? There are a lot of great products on the market to assist in making good hiring decisions, but most hiring teams are making the most important decisions before the interview process starts.

The decision is:

To what extent should we look at pedigree when determining who to hire?

Some of the elite companies in the valley, Google for one, is famous for putting pedigree on a pedestal. It’s well known that candidates from top tier schools like Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, and MIT are given serious consideration. On the other-hand, candidates from non elite schools are at a significant disadvantage when applying. Let’s just say the odds are certainly in the favor of the candidate from the elite school in terms of who Google will invest in the interview process. This means some really great candidates are cut out of the process before they even have a chance to prove themselves. A quick look at the resume and the candidate is sent a rejection email. Google believes that pedigree is a strong predictor of future performance, and has data to validate their hypothesis.

Google does catch a lot of flak for their hiring process by eliminating brilliant candidates who are self taught or have that X factor of learning fast and getting things done, simply because they didn’t go to Stanford or a similar institution.

Many startup companies love to hate Google, but generally believe in the pedigree focus as well. One of the side effects of having most of Silicon Valley in a talent war and everyone focused on pedigree is that there are a finite number of graduates from elite schools. If everyone wants them, their value goes up, possibly over-inflated, which means companies must over-pay.

So, what’s a start-up to do that wants to hire rockstars, but doesn’t have the funds to compete with the big boys on salary or can’t afford to give up too much equity?

One of the most important lessons is training your hiring team on how to properly evaluate candidates. This is often missed, as many managers think they are great at interviewing, when it’s really a crap shoot. Eliminating weak reasons for approving or rejecting candidates at both the application and interview stage is critical. Forcing hiring teams to invest in thoughtful and deliberate hiring processes and feedback only helps make better decisions. Incorporating personality tests with validity and job related challenges are also a good start. Using these processes can help find some of the diamonds in the rough that maybe don’t have the pedigree, but have the smarts and drive to build the company.

Pedigree might be a good predictor, but it’s certainly not the only predictor.

About the Author: Brian Samson, SPHR is Founder of HR for Startups, a San Francisco based HR and Recruiting firm that works with startups on issues related to talent acquisition of UX designers and engineers, leadership coaching, and HR compliance. He can be reached at: brian@hr-startups.com

Now, you might be saying to yourself, this guy’s nuts, there’s no way that we’re a third of the way to zero unemployment and a strong economy. Well, you’re right and you’re wrong. You’re right in that we’re not that close to getting to a point where everyone that wants job will have one. You’re wrong in that this is not nor should it be our end goal. If you didn’t actually say that second part then you would only be right.

A large portion of our current economy didn’t exist during those previous recessions and recoveries so I don’t believe we can accurately compare them to each other and so I suggest that we only  look at the last 13 years. During periods of strong economic activity in the US, unemployment has either held steady at, or decreased until it reached around 4%. A number that is arguably close to optimal for controlling inflation and keeping competition in the job market. The frame of reference I have personal experience with and also the one that most closely matches our current economy would be the boom of the late 90s, peaking at 3.8% in April of 1999. This was quickly followed by the BUST and a steady increase in unemployment until June of 2003 with an unemployment rate of 6.3%.

In May of 2007, the markets were heady once again with real estate prices going through the roof and the financial sector on a similar tear, the unemployment rate had gone back down to a very strong 4.4%… Alas, the gains were short-lived. Over the course of the next 2.5 years, it would more than double to a high of 10% in October of 2009.

Let’s look at the last three years to see how the unemployment rate is changing:

Oct 2009: 10.0%

Oct 2010: 9.5% (-0.5% per year)

Oct 2011: 8.9% (-0.6% per year)

Aug 2012: 8.1% (-0.96% per year)

Looking deeper into the data we can see that, the previous recession recovered 1.9% over 47 months, the economy this time has done the same in just 34 months and the rate at which we’re recovering is speeding up as well. We’re 1/3 of the way back to the magic 4% line and we need to put more effort into new companies, programs and methods that will keep building the pace. If we continue to recover jobs at our currently increasing rate, we’ll be back down to 4% unemployment in the first half of 2014. Is this possible? Yes. Is it probable? Depends on too many variables for this one post, stay tuned for more.

Let’s keep this trend line going and if it comes true, I’ll buy anyone dinner that reminds me of it.

source: MSEO FabianMedina via flickr

Social media is easily the biggest thing on the internet. Hundreds of millions of people are logging on to different social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter every day. They aren’t just quickly checking in, people are actively engaged in these social media websites. This has created a huge pool of information about people everywhere. So how can a recruiter use social media to fill open job positions?

There are a handful of interesting techniques that recruiters can use to utilize social media. A few of them I learned at #Tru San Francisco (The Recruiting Unconference) from a social media recruiting expert named Bill Boorman. He uses any and every form of social media (where people create an account and share information) in his recruiting. His main thoughts regarding recruiting via social media were that a recruiter needs to ENGAGE the candidate in some way.

Bill once created a FarmVille community via a Facebook group and managed to fill job positions through it. The idea there was that the primary focus of the group was on the game. Additionally, there was information provided about job openings. The job candidates in the group didn’t feel overwhelmed by a recruiter trying to make a hire. They were comfortable in their environment and were easily approachable.

There are many other clever ways to utilize social media to recruit. Tweetdeck is an invaluable tool that allows you to have different columns that can hold different information. You can have a column that shows all tweets containing a #phrase. You can have a column that shows all tweets from a certain @account. This allows for some competitive advantages, if you can get creative. For example: if you want to know what is going on with your competition, you can add their tweets into a column without following them. They won’t know that your monitoring them, so you can stay under the radar.

LinkedIn is the place to go if you are recruiting. It is hands down the best way to recruit online. Professionals create profiles that showcase their resumes, skills, and connections. LinkedIn has a tool for requesting and writing recommendations, which is a great way to make a hire. You can search keywords, previous employers, skills, etc. for professionals that fit your company. LinkedIn also has groups that job-seekers and employers can be a part of. Its important to get creative when recruiting online. Use different strategies and tools to find your job candidates, but using LinkedIn is absolutely necessary. If you aren’t using LinkedIn you are losing valuable prospects to your competition. Hack social media in any way you can, and use it complementary with LinkedIn.

The Bottom Line

If there is one thing to take from this post it is this: use social media to recruit. Beyond using it conventionally, exploit social media in a way that your competition isn’t and give yourself the advantage. Your competition may be using some of these tactics and more to scoop the best job candidates from under your nose.  If you aren’t using the power of the web to hire, you are falling behind. Remember, the more creative you can get with it, the more likely a job candidate will respond.

Conference expos are a great way for companies to gauge the interest for their products by their customers, assuming the company has chosen the right event of course. As the very first expo for jobFig and it’s unofficial-official coming out party to the recruiting world, we chose the ERE Expo. Not only was this conference and expo geared directly towards are chosen customer base (recruiters), we had already formed relationships with a fair number of attendees prior to arrival so we weren’t going in completely cold.

It was a power packed 2.5 days and well worth the cash and time expense to get there. jobFig was well received, we found both business contacts and friends amidst our booth attendees, and, we learned a lot more about what our customers really want. The ERE staff were absolutely amazing, coming to check on us, making sure we had everything that we needed. They really provided a great atmosphere for us to showcase our product. We gave over 50 demos in that short time frame! If you missed out leave a comment below or email us to set one up.

Here is a picture of Dillon and Ravi in front of the booth.

Looking forward to attending AND exhibiting at future ERE events. Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and made our first conference exhibition such a wonderful experience.

source: www.someecards.com

A new position just opened up in your company and you are in charge of filling it. Before you start gathering resumes and scheduling interviews you need to post a job description. This could be anywhere: the newspaper, Craigslist, or any other job posting website. Many hiring managers underestimate the importance of the job description. Writing a job description is absolutely crucial to the success or failure of finding a good employee. If you want to hire the right employee, you need to attract the right applicants!

What is a job description? First and foremost it is a legal document. It is illegal to include anything that has to do with race, ethnicity, religion, sex, nationality, etc. Second, it is a document containing the expectations and necessary qualifications for a job opening. It is hugely important to accurately describe the role of the employee in the job description. Describing the duties and qualifications concisely will help to filter who applies and create a pool of qualified candidates. By creating an accurate job description you are assuring that the applicant will know well before being hired what is expected of him or her. It can be used as a guideline down the road for assessing the performance of an employee. This will keep employees focused on what they are there to do.

Finally, a job description is an advertisement for your company. Another thing that you want to do when writing it is: use language that puts your company on a pedestal. Make your company seem like the best place in the world. Write a description that will make people want to work for you. This will attract the best possible candidates who strongly desire the job and know exactly what is expected of them should they be hired.

Let’s take a look at the important details to include on any job description.

1. Job Title: This is pretty self-explanatory. Applicants should know what position they are applying for. This is especially necessary if the company uses unique job titles like “The Duke of Dollars” (CFO) or “Sanitation Samurai” (Janitor). Also consider writing a few sentences about why the position exists.

2. Company Description: Talk about the company. What is the mission statement? What are the short-term and long-term goals of the company? What kind of environment do the employees work in? This is a good place to show applicants why your company is the best and working anywhere else would be a bad career decision.  This section is very important for startups and small businesses where the applicants may not know much about the company.

3. Job Summary: Write a short paragraph that outlines the basic responsibilities of the job. Make sure the language is clear and concise. Avoid ambiguity and vagueness. Bullet points are effective in this section. Try to have at least 5 points that outline different responsibilities.

4. Department / Supervisor: Briefly state what part of the company the employee will be working in and who they will be reporting to. Ongig does this really well by using video job postings. This gives a much more human context to the question of whom the candidate will be working with.

5. Qualifications: This is the most important part of the description. Make sure that you are very clear when explaining the qualifications and skills that are necessary in the position. Spend some time writing this section as it will directly affect who applies to the job. Include: education requirements, experience requirements, skill requirements, or anything that has to do with necessary certifications or licenses. When writing this section, be realistic. There aren’t many extremely overqualified unemployed job applicants out there. Make sure that your expectations are not too high so there will be enough candidates that will fit your requirements. The goal is to get real people to apply not “purple squirrels.”

6. Employment Term: Is the position full-time, part-time, or seasonal? You should explicitly state how many hours per week the employee will be working. Also be sure to include the start date if applicable.

7. Pay Rate / Benefits:  What is the hourly wage or yearly salary of the position? If it is an internship include whether it is paid or unpaid. Be sure to include any benefits that the company provides. Remember you are trying to sell your company to the best possible job applicants for your company. What perks do you offer that make your company unique?

8. Location & Contact Information: For the most part this is self-explanatory and easy to grasp. The applicants need to know where they will be working and how to contact the person in charge of hiring. For some reason, many recruiters don’t put their name or contact information on job postings. Adding a name, picture, and contact info will help to convert more people (just like in sales).

The Bottom Line

An effective job description is the first step in hiring the right employee. Spend some time when writing a job description as it is the most influential part of the hiring process in terms of who will apply. Write a good description, and you can expect some good candidates. Now that you know how, write your own killer job description and watch as the applications come flowing in.

Many companies are abandoning paper resumés in the recruiting process and adapting more efficient ways to weed out the good from the bad. There are 5 big reasons for the move away from traditional resumé usage.

1. People Lie… A Lot

Everybody is a liar! Not you or me, of course, but everyone else is. Forensic Psychology [link removed] reports that 31% of people admit to lying on resumés. Think about that: 31% is a huge number. It means that nearly one out of every three people provide false information when applying for a job (and these are just the people admitting to it). Recruiters want to find honest hardworking employees. Do you really expect them to fact-check every single “award” and “achievement” of each job candidate? Me neither. The problem is that recruiters will throw away resumés of qualified candidates and go after the highly decorated “fake” ones. This isn’t fair for us honest people!

2. Paper is Dying

When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter and had it snail-mailed to a friend? The truth is people are so connected to smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. that there is little use for paper anymore. I can’t say that print is dead, but it is definitely on its way out. From email to online newspapers, the web is rapidly making paper obsolete. Resumés are no exception. Trust me, recruiters would much rather have an email with your application than some piece of paper they might “lose.” This is especially true in the high tech industries. We have amazing sources of information about people like LinkedIn and Facebook that go way beyond black text on white paper. These websites are living profiles that get frequently updated and can provide a much deeper insight into a potential employee.

3. Recruitment Software is WAY Better

This is 2012! It’s time to use your computer to do all the hard work of finding job applicants! Imagine that you had 300 applicants for a job. Wow, you must be a great company if that many people want to work for you! Are you going to read each one of their resumés? Are you going to call or email every single one of them? How are you going to screen these people? Recruitment software can do all of this for you. The right tools can help you to screen the right candidates and track their progress. Online job postings are a huge database of available information that can be easily sorted through. Reach more applicants and you are more likely to find the right one. If you are not using your laptop (and of course, good judgement) to hire, you are wasting valuable time.

4. One Page Isn’t Worth The Risk

A significant number of newly hired employees fail. In fact 46% of new hires will be considered a failure within the first 18 months on the job. Cost-Per-Hire is very important to think about when hiring a new candidate. NACE Research estimates the average Cost-Per-Hire for 2010-2011 was $5,045. Note that this number takes an average of all employment. In the engineering or knowledge worker field the number can be anywhere between $30,000 and $40,000. We can’t trust one piece of paper with some work history and some faulty achievements to guarantee a $30,000 investment. It is crucial to go beyond the resumé to truly find the right hire. As a hiring manager you can save thousands later by utilizing the right technology now. 

5. “Hire For Attitude, Train For Skills” Mentality Doesn’t Work

The number one reason that new hires fail is because of personality issues. 8 out of every 10 failures among new hires are due to personality issues. Obviously something is wrong here. The one page resumé (and an interview or two) is not enough to guarantee a new hire will fit well with the existing team’s culture. Culture is a very important factor in the success (or failure) of a company. A laundry list of work history won’t show you as a recruiter that your new job applicant is going to get along. A deeper assessment is necessary to provide the right insights.

The Bottom Line

There are so many tools available to anyone with an internet connection that can provide a 3D view of job applicants. Its the 21st century, let’s utilize modern technology to make life easier for both recruiters and applicants. In a high-tech world it is time to abandon the “low-tech” resumé and evolve into more advanced and efficient recruiters.

Company Culture Defined

So what is a company culture? First, lets look at what culture is. Culture is the way a group of people think and behave. This could be American culture, California culture, family culture, etc. The main idea is that in any group of people there are unspoken ideals that mandate how people act.

Company culture is the personality of the company. Are new ideas received with constructive criticism or shot down? Are employees comfortable making jokes with their boss? It is easy for an observer to see company culture from the outside, but it is not as easy to see from within the company.

Company culture dictates how people will treat each other. It is the shared values and ideals of everyone involved. This includes the way people talk, interact, and perceive. It keeps everybody on the same page. There are many benefits to having culture in your company.

Why Your Company Needs a Culture

A company with a good culture will have happy, motivated employees who are comfortable at work. Every single person involved in the company is affected and influenced by the culture. Having good culture can lead to higher productivity, better morale among employees, increased communication, more teamwork, and creative new ideas.

Google is famous for treating employees right. They keep their employees happy with great benefits and perks. For example they provide 3 free meals a day for employees (plus snacks!). Business Insider estimates that Google spends $72 million per year on free food for employees.

Google is one of the most successful companies in the world. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has been quoted saying, “The goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees’ way.” Google is spending millions of dollars every year to make sure they have happy employees.

The Bottom Line

If you want to have a successful company you don’t need millions of dollars like Google, but you do need to invest in creating culture. It will create a happy workforce of employees who wake up in the morning excited for (not dreading) work. When morale increases, people work harder. Hard-working employees will lead to higher efficiency and productivity. Keep your employees happy and motivated and success will come knocking at your door.

Say that ten times fast. And now seriously think upon what that might mean. If the country is increasing the number of recruiters being hired, might it be increasing the rate at which it is hiring new employees overall?

I read an interesting post today by Joshua Bjerke on the latest data from Wanted Analytics which showed that over 36,000 jobs for HR professionals were posted in June of 2012. The biggest gain was in recruiters, with 18,000 openings, followed by HR managers & assistants, benefits and payroll.

Is this large jump in the postings for, and eventual hiring of, recruiters a precursor to an equal or greater gain in the general workforce? We all certainly hope so.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the private sector grew by 5% between April and May of this year and by 17% between May of last year and this one. There was a large slowdown last summer during the debates over the debt ceiling and the future of our economy, but had that not occurred, we may have seen an even greater jump in job postings and hirings.

As the country continues to rebuild its economy and post new jobs, one of the best ways to continue that growth is to ensure that those candidates that do get hired are the best fit for the team. Reducing the number of new-hires that don’t work out will increase confidence in the economy creating a virtuous feedback loop, resulting in further hiring until we have returned to pre-recession levels of employment and beyond.