I’ve been a hiring manager since the late eighties. My first attempt at hiring was relatively messy. I realized my notes were bad and I had a hard time deciding between one candidate or another. The second time around, I decided to create a spreadsheet with the most pertinent info in the first tab and background notes with observations on subsequent tabs. Over the last several years I developed quite a, dashboard of sorts, whereby I’ve been able to help my sourcers and recruiters deliver to me the best candidates on the market. The debut version of the Staff IT Right© product implements the first layer of a multi-layered spreadsheet that was my, candidate dashboard.

In our first installment of Hiring Needs Objectivity, we discussed the resume review process. It’s quite simple to just write a few notes on each resume and then sort each one into the “Call” or “Dunno” pile - oh, then there is the “No Way” pile. But, once you have made all those notes, are you able to communicate those results to your recruiter? Are you able to provide clear and objective analysis? How can you best capture those attributes that aren’t obvious on the resume and communicate that back to the recruiter? Other than keywords and the basic vetting done by your recruiter or HR team, what are the most important hidden attributes in your next candidate? And finally, can you compare and contrast your candidate pool fairly and objectively?

I just stumbled upon a great post by a gentleman in reference to finding the best programmer. He has provided a list of very basic attributes that can be grouped into positive and negative indicators. I’ll share Daniel’s bulletized summary that truly speaks to anyone interested in this subject:

Positive indicators:
- Passionate about technology
- Programs as a hobby
- Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged
- Significant (and often numerous) personal side-projects over the years
- Learns new technologies on his/her own
- Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages
- Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn’t believe to be “right”
- Clearly smart, can have great conversations on a variety of topics
- Started programming long before university/work
- Has some hidden “icebergs”, large personal projects under the CV radar
- Knowledge of a large variety of unrelated technologies (may not be on CV)

Negative indicators:
- Programming is a day job
- Don’t really want to “talk shop”, even when encouraged to
- Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
- Happy to work with whatever technology you’ve picked, “all technologies are good”
- Doesn’t seem too smart
- Started programming at university
- All programming experience is on the CV
- Focused mainly on one or two technology stacks (e.g. everything to do with developing a java application), with no experience outside of it

I’ll grant that this is far from scientific. However, how much science can truly promise you a great candidate? As long as you are objective and use the same criteria, scientific just sounds, silly …

Being objective is the key to securing great candidates for your company. The above attributes, which Daniel spells out quite eloquently, can be quantified to provide you a very powerful way to compare any candidate pool appropriately. The best part: these soft attributes become objective assessments that see beyond age, title, role, and formal instruction.

Unbelievable segue here — we’ll move on to the phone screen phase next … oooh … stay with us here at Staff IT Right© … we’ve got your “six”!

It’s the first week in the new year so we wanted to provide you all a quick update on what we are working on right now. A new web application front end is being developed, as well as follow-on articles in our Hiring Needs Objectivity series. Both of these projects, as well as the Holiday Break, and some California History project(s) for my daughter’s 4th Grade class homework, we’re pretty swamped!

Just to give you a small bread crumb on our objective hiring series, phone screens are a very important part of the hiring process. When we attempt to be fair as we decide to compare and contrast before bringing someone in for a physical (onsite) interview, how do you go about remaining, objective? Do you remember every nuance and answer during the phone screen? Can you honestly say, when phone screens are spaced out over a week or two, you remember how each candidate stacks up one by one, each to their own merit equally?

We know we can help here at Staff IT Right©, stay with me on this …

Yep, it’s happened, we’ve all made it to 2008!

The next few months are going to be action packed here at Staff IT Right©! We are working very hard at our tools suite and hope to have something scratched together near end of February. That’s a very aggressive goal, but without goals who ever knows if they’ve gotten to where the wanted to be in the time it needed to happen?

So, for all you major-partying-types that just woke up to find you are not sure if it is 2008 or not - it is, so GET MOVIN’ !!!

How many times do you get pinged by some recruiter saying, effectively, “Lemme tell ya, you are sliced bread! And, do we have a company for you!”

Once the wave of excitement has calmed and the rip-tide has receded, what is the next thought that pops into your head? Mine often is (of course I’m gonna share with ya), did this looney toon actually read my resume? How on earth can this recruiter have “jumped the shark” so bad as to think this is the job for me? And, more importantly, is this recruiter’s client prepared to look at my resume and in all honesty think of speaking with me?

I’ll grant that many recruiters see your resume, or mine for that matter, based upon keyword hits. Keywords are what make our resumes pop to the top, and that is very much something we’d all love to experience. The recruiter in question is obviously trying to get into contact with us for future reference, or to use our experience as a “compare and contrast” with the candidate they know will get the job. I don’t mind being used, but isn’t there a better way for recruiters to narrow their target search and get a higher hit return from their clients?

Staff IT Right© knows there is a way … are you willing to stick with us and discover?
TAGS: looney toon, resume, keyword, reference, Staff IT Right, Intelligent Business Resourcing, staffing, sourcing, recruiting

As we here at Staff IT Right© get closer and closer to completing our debut version of our software, we would like to expand our reach into the staffing and recruiting industry. While we have developed a wonderful tool for you, it would be extremely helpful to receive input on our approach from industry experts like you.

I am beginning to build a team comprised of a few very close contacts. Several of our early members have spent the greater part of their careers dealing with various challenges and innumerable tools, processes, and approaches in the staffing, recruiting, and HR field. I truly value the input these industry experts provide me.

However, our membership is very one sided - everyone I know or have known over the past 20 years! I would really appreciate your helping make us - and you - a success! Let’s face it, no one can “go it alone” out there. I would love to get your input, suggestions, critical reviews, and even upgrade suggestions!

Please contact me if you are interested in participating. And, as an extra incentive, a select few Staff IT Right© Advisory Council Members will receive a free version of the software to use!

Please, let me know if you’d like to join us: advisors AT staffitright DOT com Better yet, just leave a comment and I’ll trace that back to you - if that is easier for you.

In the e-mail you are going to send, please provide as much information regarding your history in the field of staffing and recruiting. In fact, if you are also a member, feel free to include your LinkedIn profile link/URL in your correspondence. I’ll be sure to use your profile as your “experience of record”.

Thanks so much for your help, in advance!

Think about the above statement, carefully. Objectivity during the hiring process is more often than not a great way to ensure the new candidate has “the right stuff”. Granted, skills, abilities, and knowledge are in that perfect bundle: the resume. The first step on the path to an objective review of your candidates in the queue is reviewing that resume. Everyone involved in this process plays a part, and very often a big wrench clouts efficiency on the head, without even trying.

The Candidate
Being in a hurry and trying to land a job are two conflicting forces pulling at every candidate. The faster and more efficient searcher gains the advantage by having their resume in the queue first. And, if their resume and cover letter are golden, it seems like this job is in the bag. Then, at the bottom of the posting, of the job of your dreams, you’re asked to submit your resume through the dreaded “resume muncher machine” — or some such monster. Your speed and efficiency just went from Luke Skywalker’s Light Speed (or Dark Helmet’s Ludicrous Speed) to the pace of a dancing slug.

What do you do to stay ahead? Well, a surprising number of candidates cut some corners or just jam whatever they can into the resume muncher. The Society for Human Resource Management conducted a study where the findings indicated that more than 50 percent of all candidates misrepresented their qualifications on their resume¹. How many of these misrepresentations were due to painful processes on the front end that face the candidate? And, more importantly, how many of these egregious errors could have been caught up front with a less obtrusive tool? It is important to note that the process needs to cover everyone from the candidate through the recruiter and HR Team all the way to the hiring manager?

The Hiring Manager
How many job reqs does it take to ruin a hiring manager’s day? When the job is highly technical or integral to the success of the company (or both) the pressure is on to get the right person for the job, fast. Often times the hiring manager can spare only a few moments to review, catalog, comment, and then coordinate the mountains of resumes, phone screens, interviews, and feedback conversations. To hire just one candidate, during the peak of your day, one hour seems to stretch into half the day - or worse.

The hiring manager in this position can only survive if the recruiter and the HR Team are operating at 120% efficiency. Anything less results in misfires in resume reviews or phone screens which then leads to a less than objective assessment. As soon as the candidate gets into the office, and does not seem like a “psycho”, everyone is happy and relieved to meet someone that fits the culture and wants to be a part of something big. A few months later, as the honeymoon period wanes, the hiring manager sits up and says, “Sheesh, this person doesn’t know anything about this subject?” How often have you awoke, in a cold sweat at your desk, asking yourself this very question? How different would it be if you had been able to focus your efforts and still spend just a little less time reviewing that resume?

The Recruiter
Being in a hurry is the mantra for everyone involved in the hiring process. Recruiters have so many time sensitive tasks it’s a miracle they find time to get a drink of water. With the myriad of job search tools, time spent cleaning up a candidates resume, gathering information to provide better keyword searching, conversations with the hiring manager to understand what role is truly being sought, and providing feedback within to prove that, “Yes, I called 10 candidates and landed 2 new accounts this week.” Just to get a few real leads and land one hire a month there just isn’t enough time in the day.

Recruiters rely heavily on the information that a candidate supplies to them and the information they can extract, like a molar, from a hiring manager. With everyone trying to get to the goal as quickly as possible, with the least amount of heartache, it’s a wonder that there isn’t more than 50% of the hiring ending in a mismatch. Plus, even with very expensive onboarding tools, there are still misqueues and invalid information because those tools require far too much effort to record and report. How amazing would it be to just have all the right information, collected in short order, and clear enough to provide an objective screening of your entire candidate pool? Where on earth is this illusive tool, this process or approach, this grail we all hope to hold one day?

We’re getting there, not to worry …

Footnote
1. “Personnel Assessment Tools Can Increase Hiring Success”, Lisa Rice, Principal, Talent Assessments
Guest Columnist Special Feature: 13 Principles for Conducting Worthwhile Assessment Programs
03-10-2006 — CarolinaNewswire.com

I’ve been in a very small discussion regarding how best to charge customers for ones product, service, or process. Granted we’re all discussing this inside a Plaxo Pulse discussion area called Blogging for Business, but the issue is valid and I’d like to take a moment to provide insight into my current predilection.

Scott Andrews, the CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions, posited the following:

“I’m offering a training program and access to a resource center filled with downloads, screen prints, slides/audio recordings, links to helpful widgets, tools, code, and methods to make money with blogs and grow traffic to blogs.”
:
:
“I’m trying to determine the best way to position the price for this program …”

I suggested that Scott think of offering to his customers a price break for his product in return for ad space and a share of revenue. This seems like an affiliate program at first glance. However, an affiliate program is not tied to the purchase of a product or service, just the real estate on the page. I’m suggesting he charge less for his product with the intention of being able to tie the success of his product to a share of the profits his customer attains.

The product, service, or process one sells as a package in essence provides your client a big benefit. Why not provide them the opportunity to share a percentage of the back-end value instead of paying 100% up front? This is important because now you’ve got skin in the game by not charging them too much. Any increase in their traffic, which also provides proof that what they bought from you truly works, in turn pays you both back, handsomely.

Look at it this way: you are making your client successful and you both share in that success. As your product proves itself, taking them from nothing to something, they have invested a modest amount and you’ve shown your commitment to your product and their success.

And, for an internet business, this is like promising to help the farmer clear the weeds, by hand, if your product fails. It’s a solid and sound hand shake.

For as long as I have been a hiring manager, I have been faced with the problem of getting the right candidate for the open req - or reqs if I was lucky. Back in the day - you know before online job sites, resume scarfing/scrapers, and formal in-house onboarding tools suites - we had a notebook (the paper kind!), a pen, a spreadsheet, limited e-mail capability, and the phone and a FAX machine. If you wanted to get a candidate into the queue, you contacted your HR Team for the approved list of “head hunters” and you started collecting resumes. Alas, the fun begins …

On the other side, the recruiters that I worked with back in the day were troubled every single time they began a new relationship with a hiring manager. There is really no nice way to put this, but, more often than not the HR Team and their hiring managers weren’t very clear or helpful in making the relationship work. Recruiters were saddled with tons of paper needing to be sifted through, having to make keyword-based searches using tools ranging from the well developed to the really clunky, and these sites and tools not being very recruiter savvy. Let’s face it, our recruiting teams continue to face these huge challenges today, and they can really use support! Alas, newer tools hit the market …

Today, there are so many tools, so many sites, and these solutions are huge and expensive requiring considerable tweaking to get it right. Often I hear from both hiring managers and recruiters that we really haven’t matured. True, these web-based services (SaaS) or heavily entrenched corporate tools (say, Oracle/PeopleSoft) have made great strides in organizing the candidate pool, providing accountability to keep candidates moving through the system, and even giving everyone an easier way to get the candidate into the company (onboarding), it’s still a very inefficient system and relationship.

Is there really room out there for another tool? Is there truly a very simple process, based upon some “old school” approaches, that can make the relationship flourish? And, hopefully, can you provide me with this tool, at a very competitive price, and help me get what I need, regardless if I am the hiring manager, the HR Team, the recruiter, the senior executive, or even the candidate?!

We here at Staff IT Right© know we have what you need. Keep reading, we’re listening, and we know …

Staff It Right© is simply one of the simplest tools with which any organization can manage their resources. We’ve begun to build something that provides targeted and objective analysis related to talent acquisition. While these views are predominantly of your candidate pool, one can expand their view to include the current pool of talent.

We at Staff IT Right© are well aware of the fact that you can snatch up the market leading talent acquisition tool suite. We also know that you are going to pay through the nose - all the while having to learn new, complex, and somewhat foreign processes. In fact, you’re going to have to change existing resume collection, inspection, and import processes! Oh, and, even though you bought an onboarding component, you’re never going to use it because you are overloaded learning all the other “stuff” the whiz-bang tool you bought has to offer.

Oh yeah - the team that created your whiz-bang tool is just a bunch of engineers looking to strike it rich — somehow. They just forgot that you are NOT an engineer, per se. This really shouldn’t be so dang convoluted and obtuse!

So, sit back, and watch our posts here at Staff IT Right’s Blog©. We are going to begin to discuss the advantages of our approach and take the time to listen to YOUR troubles, cares, wants, and desires.

Even though we’re engineers, we get it - really.