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Category: Talent Management

Rise in temp workforce: EasyHire interviews to the rescue!

Rise in temp workforce: EasyHire interviews to the rescue!

According to The American Staffing Association, in 2014 there were on average 3.2 million temporary workers each week, working for an average time of 11 weeks, in over 35,000 establishments nationwide. Additionally, with 20,000 U.S staffing and recruiting agencies operating 39,000 offices, industry sales grew to nearly $136 billion in 2015. Eighty-eight percent of those sales come from temporary and contract staffing.

With numbers like these, one can only imagine the preliminary work that temp agencies must perform in order to find great employees that fit the needs of their clients. Enter EasyHire.me, an interview management platform that would streamline and simplify the hiring process for temp agencies. Typically agencies have resumes, computer assessment scores, and employee availability on file. If agencies use EasyHire’s on-demand and live video interviews, they will have a record of the interview session, along with the questions asked  in the file that they can review when a new job becomes available to fill.

Imagine a busy law firm needs a front desk administrative assistant for six weeks while the permanent staff member is recovering from a surgery. The law firm is seeking someone computer savvy with strong customer service and time management skills, preferably with some law office experience.

Temp Agency A might send the first available employee who loosely meets the client’s criteria based upon poorly-written notes from a recruiter interview 3 months prior.

On the other side of town, Temp Agency B has interviewed folks with EasyHire’s interview platform when they signed up for employment. They can now reap the benefits of adopting a structured interview process:

  • The interviews are recorded and archived in the EasyHire platform for easy access
  • A candidate’s answers to questions are easily separated throughout the video, making it easy for the agency and the client to narrow in on what they need to know to determine the best fit
  • The recruiter can review the  recorded interviews to find the top three temporary employee candidates, send the videos to the law firm for review, and allow them to pick who will be the best fit for them.

Which temp agency has the best likelihood of sending a great employee to their client, thus securing future business? Temp Agency B, of course! With incredible numbers of job-seekers using temporary and staffing agencies to find work and earn a paycheck, and more companies relying on the expertise of an agency to fill positions with stellar candidates, EasyHire’s interview platform and unique features can make the process easier for all parties.

How do you fight bias in your hiring process?

How do you fight bias in your hiring process?

Hiring bias is something that affects everyone whether you are a candidate being overlooked or an employer unconsciously making a biased hiring decision. Fighting bias is a choice and more companies are starting to make that choice in their recruitment process and reaping the rewards of a team built on diversity.

Hiring bias can take many forms: the way the job posting is written; the effect of the name, age, and pedigree of the applicant;  what questions are asked in the interview and more. Employers need to be aware of their hiring bias whether it is conscious or not while asking themselves the bigger question – what aspect of the company culture is fueling the hiring bias in the first place?

Today many resources are available to the companies to reduce unconscious biases which in turn will bring diversity into the workforce. EasyHire.me recognizes that the interview process is potentially the gateway to many of the biases that influence the hiring process which in turn shapes the company’s culture. EasyHire.me’s interview management platform helps employers to conduct a more consistent interview across all applicants ensuring that every candidate gets a fair chance. Hiring managers can create pre-defined questions to evaluate the candidates which help the interviewers to stay on track during the selection process, put their biases aside and discover the best candidates.

In technology industries specifically, knowledge and skills create a strong candidate. Many a times employers have been less likely to interview a female candidate, an LGBTQ-identified applicant, an older applicant due to biases of who should “represent” the tech world. EasyHire.me’s interviewing tools and processes can help companies take the first step forward in hiring people based on “who can do the job well” and not “who they are”. This will not only help the companies find strong candidates but also bring diversity to the workplace. In a time of a technology boom, combined with an increasingly diverse community of technical applicants, it is important to face hiring bias and stop denying it exists.

What type of interviewer are you?

What type of interviewer are you?

Interviewing is an art! It is a self taught skill that you need to learn and master yourself.  There is no clear-cut course that teaches you how to be a good interviewer. An effective interviewer makes their candidate feel comfortable and relaxed to bring the best out of them in order to ascertain what skills they can bring to the table. They inspire the candidate to want to be part of their initiative and engage them in introspective discussions. They make the candidate contemplate on how they can improve themselves and their peers.

You can be more successful as an interviewer by being conscious as to whom you are interviewing. Before commencing the interview, first establish the role and the job you are interviewing the candidate for. Are you interviewing for a customer facing role or a product development role? Additionally, while interviewing, be aware of the type of person you are talking to. Are you talking to a fresh graduate or an industry veteran? Would the candidate be reporting to you or would he be joining the team as your peer? These are but few of the factors that you should consider before initiating the interview. By analyzing and deciding all of these factors, you can pick a candidate who is best suitable for your work style and the job at hand, and hopefully, a long-term contributor to your company.

Here are some crucial qualities that you can pick from as the interviewer:

  • Assertive: If you are going to be their manager, establish the company’s hierarchy and accountability in a positive manner. Act like his manager and give the candidate a realistic glimpse on how you see them fitting in your company.
  • Collaborative: If you are interviewing your peer, solve problems together with the candidate. Your interview should aim in not only finding out how suitable the candidate is for the job but also how good it is to work with him.
  • Inquisitive: If you are interviewing your boss, talk about his vision and plans for the company and evaluate if he has the abilities to execute on them. Share your passion and commitment towards the job and find out if they are aligned with his.

Your evaluation on the candidate should depend on the interview session. If you were a tough interviewer, go easy on the evaluation. If you were collaborative and friendly, be tough on the evaluation. Finally, the choice is yours to pick a persona and conduct the interview accordingly.  Plan ahead – study the candidate, choose the appropriate persona, and provide a rounded, insightful evaluation on the candidate.

The art of interviewing

The art of interviewing

Yesterday, I was having a cup of coffee with a long lost friend from college who is smart, intelligent and a true engineer at heart. He was a problem solver and carved his path as an individual contributor in a reputed fortune 500 company.

Slowly sipping his coffee, he muttered “I am changing my job. I am joining this new startup next week!”.

Quite surprised, I asked, “I thought u are happy in your current job.  What happened? Why this sudden shift?”

“Oh yeah, I do love my current job. I was happily busy .  I was not at all  looking for a change.”, he said.

Looking at my confused expression he continued, “Well, I was glancing through an email that I got from a recruiter and was intrigued by the job description. It was not only interesting but sounded like fun.  So I responded to that.”

“Hmm.. So you are the typical passive candidate that they talk about in the recruiting blogs”

“Very much so. As soon as I responded, things started rolling fast. The manager talked and immediately scheduled an interview with their technical guru.  I had a long video chat with him and then everything just moved fast. I was impressed with their interviewing process and more so with their interviewer!”.

Then for about five minutes, my friend went on and on about the interesting discussion that he had with the interviewer. He continued,  “it felt like a discussion, nothing like an interview. He started with a simple question but soon interweaved it with the multiple challenges in solving it. We discussed in depth the algorithm to be used, optimizations to consider and implementation stacks to use. By the end of the hour, I decided that I want to work with this guy !”.

I started thinking,  is it that easy to get a good hire? Just have a good interview session with him?  The “interview session” was the one that made him decide to take the job, not how the company is doing or what  he is being offered. He knew that he could negotiate everything else. And he is convinced that if the company had great people like his interviewer, it has to succeed sooner or later.

So here I am,  more than ever convinced that if you want to attract great, passive talent, have a great interview session. No doubt, one frequently overlooked challenge in recruiting is finding a good interviewer!

Recruiting in Today’s World

Recruiting in Today’s World

With technology, networking, and social media, recruiting in today’s world is changing drastically.

Candidates today are going about job-hunting in unique ways than generations in the past. Platforms like LinkedIn allow people to reach out to contacts directly in order to make connections and test the waters for a possible job opportunity. Websites such as indeed.com or careerbuilder.com are giving candidates the power to search for job openings quickly and efficiently. With tools like this in place making the job search easier, candidates are expecting the hiring process to also be quick and seamless.

Unfortunately, the hiring process is greatly lagging. A variety of setbacks is keeping the process from advancing and therefore discouraging potential recruits. The hiring process is the first experience talent has with a company. If it is unorganized, frustrating, or requires too much time, the candidate is likely to move on to another lead. The process is a direct reflection of how the company does business as a whole. If recruiting is not dialed in, it is likely other aspects of the company are not as well.

Top talent today look for companies that they can connect with – it is important to them to feel empowered at work. Especially when recruiting millennials, this generation is known for its dedication to the mentality of making the world a better place. Ensuring your recruiting process accurately depicts not only your company culture but the way business is handled is essential. In doing this, you are helping attract and hire the talent that will be the best fit with the team and also be motivated to give it his or her all. Being upfront with a candidate from the beginning is key in order to grow a candidate into a top employee.

While budgeting, time, and limited resources can leave you wondering how to build the right hiring process, there are still many solutions out there. Focus on the strengths in your recruiting department and build from there. Take advantage of recruiting platforms such as the websites mentioned earlier to post jobs and make connections. And finally, use an interview platform that solves the problems of budget, time, and resources. EasyHire gives you the power to conduct multiple interviews in a day during less time with video capabilities, recording features, and an extensive interview question database.

Make your recruiting process your highlight, not your downfall.

Event Recap: Find Interviewing Success

Event Recap: Find Interviewing Success

We recently attended an event, “Interview Training,” held by RockIt Recruiting. The event reinforced many of the ideas and beliefs that EasyHire is based on. Here, we give an overview of the event and how our unique platform can allow you to succeed.

The event made it clear that bad interview training leads to poor evaluation and of candidates and bad candidate choices for hiring. The first speaker, Natalia Baryshnikova, spoke about how different approaches and proper tools can impact the speed and effectiveness of the interview process. A confusing system or unorganized process can wreak havoc on recruiting and hiring the best candidate for the position. A structured interview significantly speeds up the hiring process meaning less time and money spent by the company. EasyHire is an all-in-one interview platform that gives companies the ability to proceed through the hiring process quickly and in an organized fashion. Our platform allows companies to focus time and resources on moving their business forward rather than getting stuck building up their team.

The second speaker, Gayle Leakmann McDowell, spoke about the importance of making the interview process as perfect and seamless as possible for better results. She also discussed the need to know the extent of a candidate’s tech knowledge in order to make the right hiring decision. EasyHire understands how crucial it is for the hiring team to have the tools to make the best business decisions to reach the company’s goals. The EasyHire platform gives hiring managers the ability to test a candidate’s tech skills directly within the interviewing system. With this unique feature, recruiting teams are able to fully evaluate a candidate and develop an accurate picture of him or her.

The final topic we found really hit home in regards to our platform was the importance of finding and using appropriate interview questions. EasyHire has a robust library of questions for the interview to choose from and use as well as document the answers given right in the platform.

Stop wasting time, money, and resources on a seemingly endless recruiting and interviewing process. EasyHire has what you need for hiring success. We found RockIt Recruiting’s event insightful and are proud to offer solutions to the obstacles companies are facing in today’s market.

RockIt Recruiting Event: http://rockitrecruiting.com/blog/22

Four Factors That Impress Candidates

Four Factors That Impress Candidates

Technical talent is in high demand. You want the best of the best when you are recruiting. So what should you know as you enter the market to find and acquire the talent many companies are vying for?

1. Move Quickly – It is no secret that experienced technical talent is swooped up fast. Companies are willing to pay big and go big when it comes to enticing these candidates onto their teams. Reach out when you find a candidate that seems to fit your needs and culture and be prepared to move the interviewing and hiring process along quickly.

2. Make it Easy – Times have changed. Candidates do not have time to attend multiple in-person interviews, especially if they still hold a current full-time position. The easier the interviewing process is made for them, the more appealing the position.

3. Benefits – It is not always just about the money. Candidates now look at the entire package when picking a company to join. Benefits, perks, culture, and atmosphere have all become factors in decision-making.

4. First Impressions – A candidate’s first impression of a company could be a “make-it or break-it” deal for them. If the process of even getting an interview is complicated, communication becomes crossed, or managers do not appear to be involved, this all affects the talent’s final decision. Start off on the right foot by using a platform that keeps the entire process moving along swiftly, organized, and on-time.

Gone are the days where candidates went door-to-door passing our resumes. Gone are the days when a candidate would put in hours of time with a company they do not know much about. Companies who are able to offer insight into the position and their culture are more likely to engage with interested and serious candidates. Use a platform that allows both sides to see the entire picture from the beginning.

EasyHire. Technical Interviews Made Easy.

Training Hiring Managers Webinar Overview

Training Hiring Managers Webinar Overview

Carmen Hudson’s webinar “How to Train Your Hiring Manager” openly discusses the struggles of recruiting top tier talent with unprepared hiring managers. Recruiting can put in countless hours and effort to find the best of the best. But if the hiring manager is unclear as to how the process works or unwilling to professionally make the leap to a decision, those efforts can go to waste.

A hiring manager could cost a company not only money, but also important talent. Hudson expertly recognizes hiring managers that don’t understand the recruiting process often display these characteristics: unresponsive, no-shows, unprepared for interview, don’t provide feedback, and are indecisive.

Hiring decisions are some of the most important business decisions a company makes and therefore all those involved need to be on the same page. Hudson recommends creating a clearly defined process for recruiting. Spell out what steps will be taken at what times during the hiring process. In this way, you can expect hiring managers to be accountable for specific steps along the way.

Avoid setbacks from the beginning by following these steps:

  • Ensure the job description is accurate and detailed. This prevents wasting time interviewing candidates that don’t have the skills you are looking for but that also aren’t listed in the description.
  • Engage hiring managers from the start. Their decision and thoughts on candidates that could potentially join their team are important.
  • Know when to say no. Some candidates may look great on paper but not meet any expectations during the interview. Say no and move onto the next qualified candidate.
  • Move quickly. Time is of the essence when it comes to hiring. Be prepared to offer the position to a candidate in a timely manner to avoid counteroffers from other companies. Efficient communication within the company is key here. EasyHire.me offers the platform necessary to make this communication easy, fast, and clear to move this step along.
  • Tap into emotions. What makes you enjoy working for the company? Offer a competitive package, perks, and benefits to entice top talent to your company. The competition in the market is stiff so know what it takes to stand out and do it!

Working with hiring managers is no simple task for recruiting. EasyHire.me makes it easy to keep the decision-makers connected and on the same page.

Check out the full webinar here: http://bit.ly/1Mk1UGs

The Challenges of Recruiting

The Challenges of Recruiting

Every company, no matter the location or the industry, is vying to recruit to best talent possible. The success of a company can be directly linked to the professionals who work diligently in moving the company and its business strategy forward. But actually finding this talent? Well, that comes with a new set of challenges. What holds a company back from being able to identify and successfully onboard talented recruits?

  1. Time – Browsing websites, reading resumes, and scheduling interviews adds up quickly. Human Resources departments and recruiting experts can spend weeks digging through potential candidates without finding the perfect fit.
  1. Money – All of this time spent on researching adds up to money. A company is paying these employees to help build a team of professionals. The more time this takes, the more money is spent.
  1. Resources – Some companies have the luxury of having an entire team dedicated to recruiting talent. Others have a one-man show trying to advance the business plan.
  1. Organization – The actual recruiting process can be a confusing one. Beginning with the job posting and lasting through the offer letter and actual recruitment, you have to remain organized and quick to remain effective in your recruiting purposes. A normal recruiting process can go through these phases: job posting; resume research, phone interview, in-person interview, second in-person interview, testing, management meeting, and final decision.
  1. Success Rate – When you do find that perfect match, how often do they accept the offer you extend to them? No matter what, every company has to contend with the fact that even though a candidate has gone through the entire process, that does not mean they will accept the official offer. When this happens, you are usually forced to start the entire process over again.

These are just a handful of challenges that come with recruiting the best talent. By recognizing these weaknesses ahead of time and forming a plan to improve the process, you put yourself ahead of the game. EasyHire.me is a platform that helps manage and control all of these challenges. It is an all-inclusive platform that allows the recruiter to attract the best talent in the industry in the most efficient way.

Why Does Recruiting Need a Platform like EasyHire.me?

Why Does Recruiting Need a Platform like EasyHire.me?

Why are we still having challenges in recruiting?

“In the year 2015 the landscape of talent acquisition is a war zone littered with wasted money, broken dreams, and endless frustration. It’s not pretty, and the casualties are mounting by the minute.”

~Dr. Charles Handler, a thought leader, analyst and practitioner in talent assessment and human capital space.

Recruiting high-tech employees is a challenge with so many fast growing companies competing for similar talent. When it comes to recruiting, employers are constantly looking for more effective and efficient ways of hiring using social networks for sourcing candidates and online tools for interviewing them.

While successful enterprises are incorporating increasing amounts of technology into their core business processes, the adoption of technology in the talent management space is still quite sparse. According to a recent Deloitte report, more than 90% of large enterprises in the U.S. have ways to model and predict budget, financial results, and expenses but less than 4% of those have any visibility into their workforce.

This problem is not the lack of interest or expertise but is a lack of quality data to perform any meaningful analysis. Existing tools used for recruitment are too fragmented or they are simply not designed for generating metrics or data analysis.

Attracting Candidates

Classic job postings that were successful in the years 1990 – 2010 are no longer effective. Candidates are looking for a more interactive, transparent and socially connected experience when applying for jobs. Impersonal job listings modeled after print media advertisements are definitely out of tune with the rest of the Internet-based services that we have come to except and value. Companies that fail to invest in time and resources to engage directly with candidates and market their brand and culture often find it difficult, if not impossible, to attract the right talent. Glassdoor does an awesome job at presenting candidates career-related visuals, CEO approvals and recommendations to candidates. Resumator is a startup company that helps organizations to create a branded career page that is accessible from any device. The reality today is that the sourcing challenge is no longer finding candidates; it is about attracting candidates.

Engaging Candidates

Technology has added another dimension to the area of talent acquisition. An always-connected lifestyle is so commonplace that we hardly mention it anymore, nor can we imagine any other way of life. Technology is revolutionizing the way we connect in our personal lives and has made it possible for us to engage with people on multiple levels. However, the experience is still fragmented for candidates and hiring manager alike. Existing consumer tools cannot easily allow us to separate work life and personal life. Enterprise tools do not have the flexibility or ubiquity that we need to stay engaged with candidates.

Social Recruiting

While LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are still the mainstream social networks used for recruiting, GitHub or StackOverflow are the places to look for top IT talent. Poachable.co targets passive candidates by tempting them with matched job listings. For candidates, JobFusion is a startup that crawls the user’s social network to find jobs in companies where their friends work. “Hackathons” and coding challenges offer another way of engaging directly with the top talent. Research from social recruiting platform Jobvite indicates that the vast majority of recruiters (94%) either uses or plans to use social media for recruiting. Meanwhile, research firm Aberdeen Group says that 73% of 18 to 34-year-olds found their last job through a social network.

Hiring Right

While attracting candidates is a sourcing challenge, making the right hire remains the most impactful process. A recent study published by Personnel Psychology (3) puts top performers producing four times more while being paid less than 20% more than the average workers. Just as important as hiring top performers is to productivity, bad hiring decisions are expensive and tend to have an adverse effect on the existing team including top performers. The difference between an “A player” and an “A-plus player” is the difference between a million in revenue and a billion in revenue, said Paul English, Co-founder of Kayak. The online interview platform EasyHire.me makes it easy to hire the right tech talent by arming the hiring managers with live video, online code editor, and a databank of questions, packaged together to provide a one-screen interview experience.

Recruitment Workflows

What is stopping us from following a data-driven approach to recruitment? The short answer is fragmentation of data across tools making it difficult, if not impossible, to analyze and improve.

Let’s look at a possible set of tools that a company uses for recruitment:

  • Glassdoor to create a company profile
  • Resumator to create a career website
  • ZipRecruiter to post the job listing to multiple websites
  • Careerify to manage employee referrals
  • Greenhouse.io to manage the recruitment workflow
  • EasyHire.me for scheduling and conducting interview
  • Checkr for background check
  • Workday to manage onboarding and other HR workflows

While there are products and services that aim to provide a unified workflow for managing recruitment and talent management, the current talent acquisition landscape is a war zone, fragmented and frustrating to employers and candidates alike. There is tremendous opportunity for platforms that try not to address every aspect of talent management but instead allow easy integration of services; and for services to address specific needs efficiently while offering APIs to integrate easily.

Conclusion

Given the current trends in cloud computing, the established value in building services around talent management and recruiting, it is possible in the very near future for us to expect a more data-driven approach to recruitment. It would turn the trend and cause companies to invest significantly more on technology around workforce as well as talent acquisition and management.