hiring – Workforce

November 12, 2024November 13, 2024

10 Tips for Designing a Better Hiring Process

Summary

The hiring process is an employer’s first chance to make a good impression. It needs to be seamless to attract the best candidates.
86% of HR professionals say that recruitment is becoming more like marketing. And in today’s competitive labor market, it’s easy to see why.
Applicant experience is crucial for keeping top candidates engaged and maintaining a good employer brand. Streamlining recruitment using technology can transform a good hiring experience into a great one.

In a tight labor market, hiring can make or break your chances of capturing quality new hires. It is often the first touchpoint between a company and potential new employees, and an excellent first impression is everything. A clunky approach to hiring will not only slow things down but also deter quality people from applying.

If you’re looking to attract qualified candidates fast while keeping things efficient, it might be time to rethink the hiring process. In this post, we’ll dive into 10 practical tips to improve your recruitment strategy.

1. Focus on setting clear hiring goals.

All of your recruitment initiatives will stem from your hiring goals. They act as your jumping point; if you’re unclear about these, you risk wasting resources and missing out on filling the company’s staffing needs.

When determining what your hiring efforts should aim for, here are questions you need to ask yourself:

What are the staffing gaps, operational needs, or business needs you must address? Is it filling roles for a new business location, or is it to replace team members who left?
What are the specific roles needed to fill the gap?
What are the characteristics of an ideal candidate?
What are the specific skills or experience candidates must have?
What soft skills must they possess? Consider your company culture and define what characteristics would make a hire fit to work with the team.
How fast should you be able to hire?

Talent acquisition requires significant effort, and you should focus your energy on defining hiring goals that drive business results.

2. Create clear job ads.

“What’s in it for me?” – This is the question your job descriptions should answer for potential candidates.

Try to frame your job listings through the applicant’s POV. First, the listing should cover the basics of the job role, which includes what’s expected in terms of tasks and responsibilities. Second, it should paint a picture of how an ideal candidate would fit in the organization, which can allude to the type of working environment you offer.

Let’s discuss wording. Avoid overly technical jargon and internal corporate speak. Potential candidates won’t care much for those. Instead, keep your wording concise and direct and language neutral.

Here are crucial elements that your job descriptions should cover:

Job title
Duties and responsibilities
Required skills, competencies, and qualifications
Preferred qualifications or nice-to-haves
Working location
Benefits
Salary range

In addition to the basics, you can include more information about the team they will be part of and brief details about the organization.

Writing job descriptions can be time-consuming. We’ve curated a list of job description templates to give you a headstart. Feel free to download them and customize them according to your specific requirements.

3. Be smart with advertising open positions.

Generally, hiring teams utilize job boards and social media sites like LinkedIn to reach as many candidates as possible. While those are great, there are other opportunities to get the word out.

Consider placing job postings in your place of business. Of course, no one has time to read a job description if they are just passing by your cafe or retail store, so why not simply print out a QR code that leads to the details of your job opening?

Workforce.com’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) lets you print customized QR codes that link to online job applications. Any interested applicant can simply scan the code and apply straight from their mobile devices, and you will be alerted when submissions come in.

But before you go broadcasting an open position to the public, think about the roles you’re trying to fill. Consider hiring from within to reduce the time and resources it takes to onboard a new employee.

What about referrals? Nothing beats word-of-mouth advertising. Your current employees can be your best ambassadors since they have first-hand experience. They can share insight into company culture far better than any job posting you publish.

4. Get serious about employer branding.

Better branding attracts better candidates. In fact, 86% of HR professionals agree that recruitment is becoming more like marketing, according to a study. And with today’s challenging labor market, it’s easy to see why. Like marketing, you need to understand your target audience—your ideal candidates—and find ways to stand out.

To get leadership on board, here’s a compelling stat: a strong employer brand can reduce the cost-per-hire by up to 50%. Plus, half of job seekers won’t consider working for a company with a bad reputation. In short, employer branding isn’t just nice to have; it’s crucial for staying competitive.

Start by improving the hiring experience. Use data to track candidate experience and satisfaction, communication frequency, and key metrics like time-to-hire. Streamlining these processes with applicant tracking technology enhances efficiency and leaves a positive impression on candidates. Remember, every interaction counts, and a smooth hiring process can make all the difference.

Keep in mind that negative stories spread fast these days, whether it’s a poor recruitment experience or a toxic work environment. With social media and online forums, you don’t want to be trending for the wrong reasons.

So, how do you build a strong employer brand? It starts with your core: a healthy company culture. Today’s candidates can spot inauthenticity a mile away, so your efforts need to be genuine. Once you establish strong values, they’ll naturally shape how you hire and manage talent on a daily basis.

5. Use technology to streamline the process.

There’s a lot of work that goes into hiring. Without the right tools to help you stay organized, you run the risk of mishandling important information, wasting time, and hiring the wrong people. Consider using an HR platform or an applicant tracking system (ATS) to streamline your hiring process.

Workforce.com is a prime example of one such system. Its HR suite significantly reduces time spent sifting through resumes and onboarding new hires. Here’s how it improves your recruitment efforts:

It helps you get more applicants. Every time you create a new job posting, you can generate a QR code associated with the listing and post it in your business to make access to applications easier. Workforce.com also collates all previous applications and the positions a person is interested in. When you post new job listings that match a previous applicant’s interests, the system notifies this talent pool, automatically getting you more traction from the moment you post the new job.
It helps you with the selection process and pre-qualifies applicants quickly by setting up role-specific questions about availability, experience, and requirements. This enables you to screen candidates before scheduling interviews, weeding out those who don’t meet your criteria upfront.
It reduces data reentry by using one user profile across hiring, HR, and payroll. Since the whole employee lifecycle is synced in Workfore.com, applicant information from the hiring stage is automatically brought into a new hire’s payroll and HR profile. This means that once someone fills out an application, they have essentially already filled out about 80% of their employee profile. If you decide to hire them, all of this information is used—there’s no need to create multiple profiles with repeat information.
It helps you onboard new hires right away. Within minutes, your new hires can fill out onboarding forms, provide their personal information, and submit their W-4s and I-9s. No lengthy paperwork and manual entry is needed.
It helps you track recruitment metrics. It gives you an overview of hiring progress, spotting delays, and identifying roadblocks. Plus, it covers all your locations, so you can see who needs extra recruitment support.

An ATS is great for hiring, but one that’s housed in the same HR system as onboarding and payroll is a game-changer and can save a significant amount of time. It streamlines the entire journey—from recruitment to onboarding to that first paycheck.

6. Eliminate unconscious bias.

We’re human, and we’re naturally wired to have biases. However, if these biases are left unchecked during the hiring process, they can lead to poor decisions. Take steps to eliminate anything clouding your judgment from focusing on what a candidate truly offers.

Reduce unconscious bias by focusing solely on an applicant’s technical skill sets instead of their demographic details such as gender, race, and age. Furthermore, you can view job applications with redacted names or personal information so their skills and experiences are front and center.

7. Improve how you interview.

The interview stage is crucial for applicants and the company to get to know each other better. It’s an opportunity to assess technical skills and values, making it the ideal time to evaluate cultural fit alongside qualifications. And you do that by asking the right questions.

Whether you utilize structured questions or free-flowing discussions is your prerogative. But regardless of what route you choose, make sure that it helps you evaluate applicants objectively.

Structured interview questions help you gauge how applicants fare against each other. This interview style makes it easy to compare and judge applicants based on their answers to a series of important and relevant questions.

On the other hand, a less structured approach can better reveal a person’s values, personality, and soft skills, helping you assess their cultural fit. Unstructured interviews can also make applicants feel more comfortable during interviews.

Ultimately, the goal is to find the best fit for the role. Whether you prefer a structured or flexible interview style or a mix of both, ensure it leads to a fair and informed hiring decision.

8. Understand who you’re hiring.

Not all hiring processes are the same, especially when it comes to salaried versus hourly roles. Your recruitment approach should adapt to each, from sourcing, screening, onboarding, and compliance.

For instance, recruiting a line cook for one of your restaurants is a much different process than hiring a finance manager for an insurance agency. Hourly roles often require a faster and leaner process to meet urgent staffing needs. Having a system that lets candidates apply easily and keeps unnecessary data and timelines to a minimum is ideal.

In contrast, hiring for salaried positions usually involves multiple interview stages and a more thorough vetting process. For these hires, it’s crucial to have a comprehensive applicant tracking system that monitors each stage efficiently and keeps candidates engaged throughout the process.

Ultimately, hiring for hourly positions prioritizes speed, volume, and efficiency, while salaried roles focus on depth, fit, and long-term alignment. Understanding these nuances allows you to tailor your hiring processes and shapes how you manage time tracking, shift scheduling, and payroll for each type of hire.

9. Always communicate with applicants.

You don’t want to be labeled as an employer who ghosts applicants, do you?

While you will undoubtedly need to prioritize some applicants over others, you should never leave unqualified candidates hanging. Keep candidates informed every step of the way —from confirming their application to updating them on the next steps, whether they qualify for an offer or not.

Additionally, offer a channel for applicants to reach out when they want to follow up or ask a question. This will help them feel at ease and keep strong candidates engaged in the process.

10. Regularly evaluate your hiring process.

As new technologies and trends emerge, your hiring process can quickly become outdated. Conduct regular assessments of your hiring process and practices. Identify what works, spot areas for improvement, and tackle any roadblocks. A flexible, evolving hiring process keeps you aligned with market shifts, maintains efficiency, and positions you to attract top talent.

Fill roles faster and simplify your recruitment process with applicant tracking software

Hiring hourly employees? Workforce.com’s online hiring system can help you find the best talent to fill your staffing needs.

Workforce.com is end-to-end HR, scheduling, and payroll software for hourly teams.

The cloud-based platform features an applicant tracking system that streamlines hiring—from posting job advertisements to pre-qualifying candidates, interviewing them, and eventually onboarding them—all without lengthy paperwork or double entry.

Discover how Workforce.com can help you with hiring and more. Book a demo today.

May 22, 2021June 29, 2023

Slow rehiring of child care workers may stymie employers’ return to workplace plans

Employers are navigating a variety of issues as employees gradually return to a more permanent physical workplace.

According to a new survey by Aon, 52 percent of employers said employees will return onsite in the third quarter, and 81 percent of those organizations already have a tentative date in mind. A May 2021 survey by law firm Littler, however, reveals a disparity in employers’ plans and employees’ preferences when it comes to hybrid work models and returning to physical workplaces.

There are several reasons employees may hesitate returning to the workplace. Chief among them for parents of young children, returning to work means finding quality, affordable child care.

Reestablishing pre-pandemic connections to daycare facilities is a challenge for many workers who are remote or unemployed and looking to return to work. The pandemic has crushed many small businesses, and child care centers are no exception, said Lauren Gill, head of people at New York-based child care provider Vivvi, which has 200 employees working on three campuses. Thousands of child care facilities have closed since March 2020, Gill said, and experts say that will have a profound impact on working families, especially women.

“Our challenge as an industry is how to rebuild and provide increased access,” Gill said.

Women bear the brunt of caregiving

The Center for American Progress found that the pandemic led to a 144 percent increase in child care-related work absences from September through November 2020, compared with the same period in 2019. The pandemic also led three in 10 women with children under 18 to temporarily or permanently leave the workforce to become a primary caregiver to children.

“The pandemic exacerbated the issues, resulting in over 2.2 million women leaving the workforce and the average parent spending 27 more hours per week on child care,” Gill said. “This has forced organizations to confront the fact that child care is a universal concern that affects all employees and that employee benefits have inadequately addressed this issue. Inadequate access to quality child care has been a challenge for individual families, for employers and for the U.S. economy for a long time.”

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said that child care providers bring invaluable benefits to children and their families every day.

“Our entire economy is dependent upon their labor, yet razor-thin margins and a dearth of public investment mean the workers themselves receive poverty-level wages and few benefits,” Goss Graves said in a statement commemorating National Child Care Provider Appreciation Day in May.

Early childhood education is already a physically and emotionally demanding field, said Kae Bieber, education programs manager at nonprofit ACCA Child Development Center in Annandale, Virginia. The additional workload from health precautions coupled with the stress of working in a field that exposes employees directly to COVID-19 has made it difficult to fill positions.

At the pandemic’s onset ACCA kept its doors open for the children of essential workers, Bieber said. The number of children dropped from over 210 to 40 in the early days of the pandemic.

Struggling now to fill positions

As more parents returned to work and enrollment increased, Bieber said they have struggled to find qualified staff to fill positions vacated by employees who left during the pandemic. Some employees felt pressure to find a less stressful, safer choice for them and their family, so they left, she recalled.

“With the limitations on capacity due to COVID regulations and the need for staff, wait lists for quality child care are increasing,” she said. “Most often, a parent may get the call to return to the office but then still must wait until child care is available. This causes stress on the parents during an already extremely challenging time.”

Kae Bieber, child care — Kae Bieber, education programs manager at the ACCA Child Development Center.

As ACCA — which has an infant-toddler center as well as a preschool building with 12 classrooms — began restaffing its workforce of 65 hourly employees, Bieber found job candidates were hesitant to join the field. Early childhood education previously was seen as a good starting point for someone interested in working with children and education, she said.

“Now a potential candidate must consider the low wage in comparison to the sacrifice they will be making with their lives for themselves and their family,” she said. “We may have 30 responses to one job posting but when a potential candidate sees the reality of the amount of work and exposure in-person, they do not see the value in their work due to the low wage.”

While money may not be everything, Bieber believes that if they were able to offer hazard pay as additional support during the pandemic, ACCA would not have lost as many child care professionals. In a worker’s mind, she said, they could at least feel as if they were being compensated in some way for the exposure they were faced with and bringing to their homes.

“No matter how vested someone’s heart may be, if their ability to provide for their family is struggling and they are now facing exposure to a deadly virus each day, it can be very difficult to rationalize staying in that position.”

Employees move on for safety and pay

Good employees were forced to choose between staying with a profession they loved versus switching to a job with less exposure and often higher wages, she said. The added sanitation measures quadrupled workloads in an already labor-intensive environment. Interaction with children also changed dramatically due to social distancing guidelines.

“Children thrive off of closeness, hugs, smiles, high fives, pats on the back and interacting with each other,” Bieber said. “We lost that, literally overnight. We went from creating high quality learning experiences to supervising social distancing and implementing nonstop sanitation. Our staff began to question if they were doing more harm than good by having children play six feet apart and keep their distance from the children. They had a very difficult time adjusting to the new normal.”

Stagnant wages for caregivers

Though there is a greater appreciation for child care, Gill said many programs are restricted in their ability to boost wages since they are under-enrolled and recovering from months on end collecting little or no tuition.

“We haven’t seen a major shift in wages in the child care industry since the pandemic,” she said.

Gill added that as a sector, they need to think about how to make early childhood education a true career with all of the financial stability, respect and growth opportunities that other careers offer both in the wake of the pandemic and beyond.

“We should never make educators choose between their passion and a comfortable life,” she said. “It’s vital that they become synonymous.”

Entice candidates by prioritizing benefits

There are opportunities to bring stability to the child care industry and its professionals. Only 4 percent of employers offered subsidized child-care centers or programs, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2019 employee benefits survey. There is a huge opportunity to move the needle, Gill said.

“Employer partnerships are a path to bringing high-quality care and early learning to more families” while helping employers recruit and retain top talent and increase productivity across the board, Gill said.

As a private employer that has partnered with organizations including the New York Presbyterian Hospital network, Gill said Vivvi built its business model with competitive wages for teachers at its core. “While we haven’t shifted our compensation strategy as a result of the pandemic, we continue to offer full-time, salaried roles and offer a full suite of benefits,” she said.

Some employers are looking at offering employee benefits that give employees options for access to affordable and quality child and elder care options, said Michelle Barrett Falconer, co-chair of the Leaves of Absence and Disability Accommodation Practice Group at Littler Mendelson.

“If an employee has access to affordable, quality child and elder care, the employee may not need to take time off from work using a paid family leave statute to address those caregiving obligations,” Barrett Falconer said.

Higher wages are not yet a reality for early childhood, Bieber said, although with the Biden administration’s new American Rescue Plan, she sees hope that wages for early childhood workers could begin to increase and meet a living wage for early childhood educators.

“The child care industry desperately needs legislation in place to recognize early childhood education as a valued profession and the message from top to bottom in our society needs to place emphasis on the recognition and need for quality child care,” Bieber said.

Having spent most of her career in education, Gill said that supporting the educational development of future generations is a monumental and vitally important task. Affordable, quality child care can be transformative for working families and make for happier, more productive employees, she said.

“When parents have peace of mind, they can pursue their goals outside of the home and be better, happier parents as a result.”

November 24, 2020June 29, 2023

Jushi Holdings builds its workforce in the cannabis industry despite pandemic

marijuana, Jushi Holdings, cannabis industry

While many industries have suffered through massive cutbacks in 2020 and were forced to make large-scale layoffs, at least one sector has weathered the economic downturn as hiring trends have blossomed.

According to Marijuana Business Daily’s Annual Marijuana Business Factbook, U.S. medical and adult-use cannabis sales has climbed by nearly 40 percent this year to about $15 billion as industry employment in 2020 will jump by 50 percent over 2019 to almost 300,000 full-time jobs.

To lend perspective to that figure, a story in Forbes points out that the number of cannabis industry jobs is on par with the beverage industry and computer programming. And to add a bit more perspective, cannabis is a highly regulated industry requiring strict compliance measures. Just 11 states have fully legal adult-use markets with four more states adopting laws following the November election.

Evaluating safety and hiring

Despite the industry’s growth, cannabis operators had to take a breath to evaluate their operations as the pandemic swept across the economy. Jushi Holdings Inc. remained operational at the pandemic’s onset, said Executive Vice President of Human Resources Nichole Upshaw, but company leaders assessed what actions needed to be taken.

Being a vertical operation with 450 employees (335 are hourly) in retail, cultivation, processing and manufacturing, there were certain logistical issues they had to address.

As an essential employer, Jushi immediately focused on the safety of their employees, patients and customers.

“We worked together as a team to source cleaning supplies and PPE for all locations and employees,” said Upshaw. Currently Jushi has operations in seven states as well as offices in Denver and Boca Raton, Florida. “We were early to provide N95 masks for our employees and start taking employee temperatures upon arrival to work.”

Prompt communication became key

Communication was immediate and urgent for this frontline employer. They established daily calls and senior management received regular updates to influence important decisions, Upshaw said.

Retail, corporate, and cultivation/manufacturing teams each had their own calls, she added. They also spoke with industry peers and constantly tracked health and employment law guidelines. Jushi also launched “Blazing the Trail,” a quarterly all-hands call where senior executives updated employees on company performance and initiatives.

Upshaw emphasized the importance of both executive and companywide calls. “Members of the legal and HR team each attended weekly industry calls to discuss how we were all addressing the safety of our businesses,” she said. “We attended webinars and read countless published articles to ensure we had the most up-to-date information and response measures in place. We reviewed the CDC website daily and communicated out each update that impacted our locations.”

Communication also was key to balancing employee safety and customer needs, she said.

Also read: Managing people in the growing cannabis industry

“The best thing you can do in the case of differing perspectives is communicate,” Upshaw said. “Changes that supported the safety of our employees created an environment of understanding. Reminding our employees of the responsibility we have to keep cannabis accessible to our patients and customers during these turbulent times also created an environment of understanding. These are the times when being a great listener is the best service you can provide to customers and your employees.”

Seeking talent from outside the industry

Jushi temporarily tapped the brakes on hiring at the outset of the pandemic, but it’s clear that has changed. A glance at Jushi’s careers site lists dozens of positions, from dispensary store manager and shift supervisor to HR generalist.

Upshaw said that Jushi enlists cannabis executive search and staffing company FlowerHire to assist its hiring. With its burgeoning employment numbers, the cannabis industry presents an opportunity for those who were laid off or looking for a career change to redeploy their skills. Cannabis could greatly benefit from leading professionals outside of the market, according to a release from FlowerHire.

“While we did have about a month when recruiting halted, that period of time didn’t last long,” Upshaw said. “FlowerHire was ready to jump in like a member of the Jushi and (retail locations) BEYOND/HELLO team and be our talent scouts while we focused on keeping our employees safe.”

Initially there was a lot of instruction to remind employees how important it was to follow safety protocols, she said.

“After months of adjusting to the pandemic, I believe that human behaviors have been forever changed,” she said. “People will continue to join the organization ready to work and adhere to safety standards because they have been doing so since March of 2020.”

Upgrading the onboarding experience

With the influx of new employees lacking a background in the cannabis industry, HR is responsible for onboarding employees with knowledge of what to expect before and after their first day, Upshaw said.

“My desire is to build out a mature pre-boarding, onboarding and training experience that equips every employee for their role at Jushi and BEYOND/HELLO,” she said. “Although we have all adjusted to the new work order, there are many initiatives and projects that have taken a back seat to the main priority of keeping employees safe.”

Jushi has implemented pulse surveys to gather feedback on various topics, she said. During a time when health care is on everyone’s mind, Jushi also increased the level of company contributions to benefit plans.

Adhering to compliance measures

Following governmental guidelines is nothing new to cannabis companies, Upshaw said. At the federal level, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, while states and local agencies have layers of regulations and policies.

“We are accustomed to operating in highly regulated environments and we have a culture of doing what we can to elevate the reputation of our industry,” Upshaw said. “This opportunity has brought us together and allowed us to continue to reach our unified mission. I am proud of the way we have worked together, have had a bias for action, and have complied with all local, state and federal guidelines.”

Dump manual tracking and avoid costly labor-law penalties. Ensure simplified and automated compliance to federal, state and local labor regulations with Workforce.com’s powerful compliance platform.

November 25, 2019June 29, 2023

How to Hire Your First HR Leader

So, business is good, growth is strong and you’re ready to hire your first HR leader. That’s great news. Congrats!

Now comes the hard part.

This column is not meant to help those looking for their first HR hire, which is generally an individual added by small to medium-sized business when transactional items like payroll and compliance overwhelm an office manager or similar administrative employee with another job to do.

That was your first HR hire. You’ve likely made that hire at least a year or so ago. You thought that person was going to shore up your recruiting issues and get to needed projects in performance, training and other areas. You were wrong.

So here we are. You just posted an opening for an HR manager/director — your first HR leader. If you’re going to invest the money, you need the person to innovate and deliver the return in all your areas of need related to talent.

Finding the right hire in this situation is hard, and misses occur often. Here are ideas to assist in your search:

Experience matters, so prepare to dig. If you’re looking for someone to come in and build your next-level HR platform, you’re going to need to make sure they’ve done it before. The biggest lie the devil ever told the world about HR is that titles equate to ability. That’s not only false in the world of HR, it’s dangerous.

There’s a high degree of variability across HR manager/director candidates. To ensure you end up with what you need, pick your top three HR areas of need, then prepare to interview candidates purposefully on how they have built strong programs in those areas.

Ask candidates to bring a portfolio of examples of their work in each domain. Make sure the experience is real, not hypothetical or you’re going to be less than satisfied in under a year.

Company size of current and past employers is important. As a growing company, you’re going to be naturally attracted to HR leaders in small companies. While that’s one path to success, you shouldn’t discount HR pros who want to downshift from a mega-company existence to the SMB life.

There’s a high degree of variability across HR Manager/director candidates. Pick your Top Three areas of need, then interview purposefully.

Big company HR pros have the benefit of growing up with great tools and resources in the areas important to you. The best ones (who are a motivational fit for life in a smaller company) can use that experience to build your HR platform in a meaningful, progressive way.

Consider recruiting backgrounds as an alternative. Most growing businesses seek to add their first HR leader at around the 100-employee mark. You’re likely adding this leadership team member due to growth, which means recruiting is almost always a pain point. For best results, look to add candidates to your hiring process that have been pure recruiters in their past in addition to holding pure HR positions. Interview to understand their success and satisfaction in the former recruiting role. If your first HR leader has past success as a recruiter and enjoyed that life, you’ll be set up for success.

Of course, all of those tips are related to candidate backgrounds and what you’ll see on résumés. To truly win with your first HR leader hire, you’re also going to have to be brutally honest with yourself related to your company environment and the behavioral DNA you need in a candidate that provides the best match.

My new book, “The 9 Faces of HR,” digs deep into the behavioral DNA of HR pros. Here’s the must-haves I’d recommend for anyone seeking to hire their first HR leader:

Quick on the draw. Taking in large amounts of data/feedback and making quick, accurate decisions is key. Things move pretty fast at a high-growth company, and the right candidate for you will need to match the speed.

Fearless. Your new HR leader needs to be naturally inclined to deal with challenges head on. The right candidate for you will have a bias toward action.

Loves chaos. Let’s face it, you have a cool company but it’s a freak show, as all high-growth organizations are. The right candidate is going to view chaos as a ladder, not a barrier.

Successfully hiring your first HR leader is about finding a candidate in the sweet spot — the intersection of hustle, hard work, innovation and the ability to create product and services others will use to move your company forward.

The right one is out there, but only if you go into the search with a clear plan of what you are looking for. Don’t settle!

December 26, 2018August 25, 2023

5 Easy Onboarding Strategies for Small Businesses

The onboarding process is among the most critical parts of the employment experience and it sets the tone for an employee’s expectations throughout their time with an organization.

Implementing an effective onboarding strategy shows a new employee that the company is organized and excited for their arrival. Onboarding also doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. Here are some ways to enhance the onboarding process without breaking the bank.

Be prepared. In most situations, HR will have about two weeks to implement its onboarding strategy for a new employee to start, which is plenty of time to ensure the team is ready for their newest addition. Make sure managers build a realistic schedule, considerate of sufficient time for questions, hands on training, and breaks.

It helps to include employees in other departments who can loop the new hire in on ways their roles will impact each other. Notify the IT department as early as possible that someone new is starting and when. Ensuring the equipment, software, email address and key card badge are ready before the employee’s arrival streamlines a majority of the initial problems new hires general encounter.

Be thoughtful. Nothing is more uncomfortable for a new employee than having no idea what to expect during the first few days of their new job. They’re likely already overwhelmed with anxiety. “What do I wear? Who will I sit with at lunch?”

onboarding small businesses — Cheryl Strizelka, human resources manager for Orlando-based Design Interactive Inc.

The best way to deal with those kinds of questions during the onboarding process is to answer them directly. Sending an email a few days before the employee’s start date outlining what time they should arrive, what they should wear, that they can expect breakfast and lunch with the team, and that they’ll be able to take off early. This is guaranteed to alleviate most first-day jitters.

A small swag bag for the new employee to dig through on their first day is a great touch. Throw in some candy, maybe a bottle of water or a small gift card to a local coffee shop. Include items with the company logo that you normally hand out to clients or at conferences.

Get integrated. It’s vital through the onboarding process that a new employee starts to feel like they’re part of the team as quickly as possible. To get ahead of the game, email the new hire a week before they start to get some fun facts about their life and post them for the staff to see before the start date. This opens the door for friendly conversation and allows the new hire to relate to their colleagues immediately.

For any employee’s first day, facilitate a 20- to 30-minute all-hands breakfast in a common space so everyone can take a moment to put a face with a name. This doesn’t have to be terribly expensive. Doughnuts for 40 people costs about $25 and the experience takes the edge off typically boring or intimidating introductions.

And ask a manager to plan a lunch and invite anyone who identifies as part of the team’s nucleus. This is a great bonding experience and only has to cost the price of the lunch for the manager and the new employee. To avoid the expense all together, invite the team to enjoy lunch together in the break room to get better acquainted.

Stay organized. During the onboarding process the HR professional should check in with the new hire regularly to make sure they have everything they need or aren’t too overwhelmed. Most new employees feel embarrassed to ask questions and don’t want to seem like a squeaky wheel. It helps to have several points of contact that the employee feels comfortable approaching, including an HR professional, an office administrator and a receptionist.

Also read: Shortened Onboarding Times See Mixed Results

Also read: Onboarding Tips HR Leaders Can Adopt from the First Day of School

These friendly faces should offer to make themselves available for any issues the new hire may encounter. To alleviate some of the more common questions, go ahead and give a facilities tour early in the process. Show the employee where the bathroom, water cooler and supply room are. Make them feel at home as quickly as possible.

Follow up. Most crucial to this entire onboarding process is the follow-up. Call a new employee in a month or two after their first day and get their insight into the process. Find out how they’re transitioning onto the team as a whole and ensure they have the resources they need to do their job well. Schedule a session for a group of new hires who started around the same time so they can talk about their experiences together. Every time an employee makes a suggestion, they provide a gift. Use their feedback for future onboarding hacks to create an even better experience for the next round of newbies.

While effective onboarding may seem daunting, or to some, a formality at best, it actually sets the tone for your new hire’s overall employment experience. Companies should invest time and energy into ensuring new employees transition successfully to their new position through an onboarding strategy. While managers technically absorb this responsibility once formal training begins, it behooves human resources representatives to facilitate the onboarding process behind the scenes.

After all, it’s HR’s job to maintain a healthy company culture and overall fulfillment.

November 9, 2018September 5, 2023

Meet Your New Colleague: Artificial Intelligence

communication with artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is increasingly people’s interviewer, colleague and competition. As it burrows its way further into the workplace and different job functions, it holds abilities to take over certain tasks, learn over time and even have conversations. Many of us may not even be aware that who we’re talking to isn’t even a “who” but a “what.”

In 2017, 61 percent of businesses said they implemented AI, compared to 38 percent in 2016, according to the “Outlook on Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise 2018” report from Narrative Science, an artificial intelligence company, in collaboration with the National Business Research Institute. In the communication arena, 43 percent of these businesses said they send AI-powered communications to employees.

Many candidates don’t even realize that they’re not speaking to a human, according to Sahil Sahni, co-founder of computer software company AllyO, which uses an AI-enabled chatbot to speak to candidates and answer questions in the recruiting process.

Based off data from AllyO’s applicants, he found that less than 30 percent of candidates think that they’re speaking to something not human. The other 70 percent either did not disclose what they thought or believed there’s a person behind that chatbot.

AllyO does not disclose up front to the candidate that they are not speaking to a human. However, if they were to ask outright if they are speaking to a person or an AI-enabled chatbot, the system discloses that information. “The goal is not to goof anyone here. The goal is to have the best candidate experience. Lying about it is not the best candidate experience,” Sahni said.

Candidates don’t behave differently when speaking to an AI as opposed to a human, Sahni added.

“When you’re a job seeker, it’s not like you’re calling customer service to complain about something. You’re at your best behavior,” he said. “You tend to be a lot more tolerant, you tend to be a lot more respectful, no matter what the process might be.”

Dennis R. Mortensen, CEO and founder of New York-based technology company X.ai, also has access to conversations between people and machine agents, and his team spent the past four years assembling a data set of more than 10 million emails on these dialogues. Their findings have similarly found that people don’t communicate differently just because they’re speaking to a robot.

Giving X.ai’s own personal assistants Amy and Andrew as an example, he said, “It would be very easy to imagine that I will treat them like machines and remove any level of emotion otherwise applied to a traditional conversation with a human, or that the system as a whole would not leave any room for empathy toward the machine. I am happy to say that it is not the case.”

This is not to say that everyone treats a machine with respect. If people tend to be more aggressive or rude with a real person, that same communication style can be seen in how they converse with a machine. The same trend goes with people who are neutral or overly friendly in how they speak to others.

Also read: Artificial Intelligence, Automation and the Future of Talent Acquisition

How potential employees actually speak to AI is a different conversation than how potential employees should speak to AI, he added. That is, it’s unclear whether how a person treats a machine says anything about how that person would treat other people, and it’s unclear whether something like a person being rude to a machine agent should impact their job prospects.

“We can certainly agree that we do care if it’s a human recruiting coordinator,” Mortenson said. But machines have no feelings or emotions and cannot be offended, so it would be easy to argue why employers shouldn’t care. Ultimately, “I do think we should care even if it is a machine,” Mortenson said. “I understand why we might care a little bit less, but I don’t think we can just discard that as a signal.”

He gave the example of a report which found that this technology could have implications on how kids learn how to communicate and teach them that speaking harshly or impolitely to people has no consequences.

“In real life there’s a penalty to being an asshole,” Mortensen.

Limits and Capabilities of AI in the Hiring Process

Machine learning allows AI to gain knowledge over time and learn from its interactions, much like a person would. That being said, even though it has the ability to mature in its own way and become more humanlike over time, that still doesn’t make it human, and there are certain questions that a person might have to answer, for example, questions about company culture, according to Sahni.

AI systems are capable of taking this into account. For example, AllyO can recognize when a candidate asks a question that cannot be answered by a machine and brings in a person who can answer that question, Sahni said. This way, the candidate can have a positive experience and not feel like they’ve lost out by not speaking to a real person.

“If the process is objective, AI knocks it out of the park. If the process has any subjectivity to it, AI does really well looping in the hiring team,” he said. “A good AI system typically has human support behind it.”

Much like people themselves, AI has the potential for bias, according to Eric Shangle, director of people operations at AI platform Figure Eight, based in San Francisco. For example, Wired reported in July 2018 that Amazon’s facial recognition software system Rekognition confused many black members of Congress with publicly available mugshots and that facial recognition technology’s problem in detecting darker skin tones is a well-established problem.

One reason why a tool may be biased is training data bias, Shangle said. From the developmental side of machine learning, the creator of a tool must input a data set to train the algorithm, and if it does not use a diverse data set, then an employer using the tool may come across bias blind spots.

“What are the biases of this tool?” is a legitimate question for employers who are looking to purchase a machine learning tool such as facial recognition software, Shangle said. A recruiting tool may, for example, have a bias toward college-educated job seekers.

David Dalka, founder of Chicago-based management consulting company Fearless Revival, agrees that AI has its limits. He has a more traditional view of what recruiting should look like, arguing that companies should invest less in technology and more in human recruiters who work at the company long-term, know the company culture and know what kind of person would be a best fit for the job, rather than look for trendy keywords or job titles in résumés.

“I’m not opposed to AI tools if someone built the full data library of all the factors and stopped focusing trivially on things like job titles,” he said.

He suggested that companies should more carefully consider the attributes that matter in a candidate — Do they read any books? Are they naturally curious? What are their skills and degrees? — and consider how they would weigh these attributes in an AI system. Ultimately AI is simply a tool that analyzes content.

“This idea that some wizard will magically create this black box that will hire the right people without you thinking of these things is a fallacy,” Dalka said.

This article originally appeared in Talent Economy.

July 28, 2016October 28, 2020

The Increasingly Important Role of Screening in Recruiting

Today’s recruiters face tough competition for good talent — and they worry about losing good candidates to long, drawn-out screening processes.

Recruiters are also facing increased pressure to fill more roles faster as 3 out of 4 companies plan to increase hiring. “With hiring on the rise, there is always a time challenge,” said Clare Hart, CEO of SterlingBackcheck, a background-checking provider. “The war for talent has enabled people with skills to change jobs more frequently, which is creating anxiety for recruiters tasked with filling those roles.”

At the same time, recruiters can’t afford to skip this vital step in the hiring process, especially with trends showing candidates are misrepresenting themselves more than ever. “I don’t want to be responsible for hiring someone with an unacceptable background,” said Kimberly Martin, senior human resources manager for Dentsply Sirona, a global dental supply company based in York, Pennsylvania. “People falsify their applications all the time.”

Mary O’Loughlin, vice president for global customer experience for HireRight, attributes this rise in part to the recession. “A lot of candidates were unemployed, and they are trying to expand previous jobs to cover those gaps,” she said.

Automate Everything

To meet the needs for faster, better and more seamless screening, employers are looking to their background-checking providers to streamline the screening process and make it as transparent and easy as possible for both the candidates and hiring managers. In response, vendors are revamping their technology and processes with a focus on improving the candidate experience from start to finish, and eliminating much of the manual entry and administrative tasks that bog recruiters down. “It’s all about addressing the pinpoints in the screening process,” O’Loughlin said.

These upgrades include integrating user platforms with clients’ applicant tracking systems in order to automate candidate data capture, offering tools that enable candidates to enter their own data from any device rather than requiring recruiters to do it, and providing text and email alerts to let the candidate and hiring manager know where they are in the screening process. Some vendors are also working with clients to develop candidate-facing tools including videos for their hiring sites to educate candidates about the screening process. “It helps set their expectations, which helps them build their brand as a great place to work,” she said.

To demonstrate the effect of these new tools, they are also offering more metrics to help customers understand how the screening process is functioning and to track key trends such as where red-flag candidates might be sourced from, said Christine Cunneen, CEO of Hire Image, a national background screening firm, and a member of the board of directors for the National Association of Professional Background Screeners. “Employers want more metrics about screening because it helps them to hire faster,” she said.

Contingents to Marijuana

Along with streamlining the screening process, employers are also turning to their screening vendors to help them manage a number of emerging trends in the broader recruiting world. One of the most notable trends is the tremendous uptick in use of contingent labor.

In 2015, the U.S. Labor Department found that 65 percent of employers anticipate an increase in the use of flexible staffing arrangements to meet their future talent needs, and consultancy Ardent Partners anticipates that 50 percent of the workforce will be contingent by 2020. Yet, less than half of organizations screen these workers, which exposes them to increased risks of negligence, fraud, theft and violence.

O’Loughlin said that interest in screening these workers is rising, though it can be more difficult to track down data about serial contracts, particularly because of how they record their work history. “They may say they worked at IBM, but really they were part of Beta Staffing Co. doing a project for IBM,” she said. “It’s a challenge to sort out.”

There is also the question of how to handle the data, and what you can screen for with contingent laborers, said Chris Dyer, founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a background checking company. “In most cases you can evaluate more data for contract workers because they have fewer protections,” he said. However, as contingent labor becomes a more dominant aspect of the workforce, that’s likely to change. Employers should pay attention to shifting regulatory trends. “If compliance rules for screening contract labor changes, it could impact the business,” he said.

Then there is the issue of drug screening, which Cunneen believes is an area of the background-checking process that is “ripe for change.” The big issue: marijuana. In many states marijuana use is legal in some or all cases, but it is still a federally banned substance, and unlike alcohol there are no tests to determine whether someone is using on the job because the drug stays in a person’s system for a long time. Employers are already asking how they should address marijuana testing if at all, she said, and she anticipates that there will be a lot of lawsuits as employers and regulators figure out how to handle this issue.

Lax Compliance Puts Employers at Risk

One area that employers are less worried about than they should be are general compliance rules. Less than one-fifth of employers say they are extremely concerned about compliance issues and related lawsuits despite the ongoing risk of lawsuits tied to mishandled screening processes.

In 2015 alone, BMW Manufacturing Co.; Chuck E. Cheese, also known as CEC Entertainment; Food Lion; Home Depot Inc.; and Whole Foods Market Inc. paid substantial Fair Credit Reporting Act class-action lawsuit settlements ranging from $716,400 to $3 million for conducting illegal background checks, failing to disclose background checks to applicants and breaking other FCRA rules.

Cities and states might also have a unique set of regulations governing what employers can screen for, how far back they can look, what constitutes a personal intrusion, and how exactly an employer needs to notify a candidate about the screening process. And when employers “screw up,” they face serious consequences, Cunneen said. “It is the employers’ responsibility to follow these rules, but they need to be able to rely on their background-screening provider to let them know what’s going on.”

This risk will only increase as more employers use these firms to screen employees in other countries where data can be less accessible, rules vary and information is harder to track down. Employers also need to be concerned about where screening data is stored when screening global candidates. “If a vendor’s data center is overseas, employers should be aware of their security protocols and their liability if that data is breached,” she said.

The issue of global compliance is becoming more important in light of the rapid growth of this $2 billion industry where several leading vendors have been acquiring competitors in order to quickly grow their global footprint. In the past two years alone, Accurate Background acquired fellow background checking company Hirease; HireRight acquired Powerchex, a pre-employment screening firm in the United Kingdom; and SterlingBackcheck acquired EmployeeScreenIQ then merged with cloud-based TalentWise earlier this year.

The industry has also seen HR tech firms from other areas of the workforce management software world moving into the background checking space through deals such as CareerBuilder’s acquisition of Aurico, a global provider of background screening and drug testing services. “Background screening is an essential part of recruitment and a natural extension of CareerBuilder’s product line,” CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson said in a news release about the deal.

And this is just the beginning, said SterlingBackcheck’s Hart. “The industry is definitely consolidating, and we will continue to make future acquisitions as opportunities arise.”

Hart said that the consolidation trend is being driven by demands for better, faster and cheaper screening. “You gain advantages with scale,” she said, arguing that larger firms have the talent and resources to upgrade their platforms and provide a global service to meet the needs of international customers.

Vendors need to be thoughtful about their acquisitions and how they will continue to meet the needs of clients during the often tumultuous integration process, Dentsply Sirona’s Martin said. Martin previously worked with a background screening vendor who provided great service until it was acquired by another firm.

Suddenly the technology stopped working as well, links were broken or timed out, the screening process was delayed with no explanation, and in one case the vendor asked a candidate to travel 200 miles to do a drug screening.

“It was frustrating for the applicant, and it took up a lot of my time,” Martin said. It also caused a few good candidates to move on to the next job offer because the screening process took so long. “We hung in longer than we wanted to make sure the next vendor would be a good fit,” she said.

Martin now uses HireRight, which she said eliminated a lot of the technical glitches, automated much of the data entry, and in most cases completed the screening process in 10 days or less. “Background screening should feel seamless,” she said, adding that vendors need to stay on top of that customer experience or risk losing business. “If it’s not done well, customers will feel it,” she said, “and they have a lot of other options to choose from.”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.